Change Your Image
Darth_Zombie
Reviews
Guess Who (2005)
Guess Who's not funny?
The answer to that question would be Ashton Kutcher, or basically anyone having to do with this movie. It has a couple of funny lines, but overall it's very, very generic. Even Bernie Mac wasn't funny in this movie, which I didn't think was even possible. It's pretty much like this - you know how on his show he's basically doing a watered down version of what he he does in his standup? Well, this was like the third filtration from the standup and basically a watered down version of what he does on the show. I don't even know why this movie was PG-13. It was a solid PG as far as I could tell. You could edit out the word "sh*t" maybe a couple of times and show it uncut on network television.
I hate it when comedies forget to be funny. Another lame, unimaginative, completely generic and formulaic "comedy" from Hollywood. Skip this one and find a good comedy to watch.
Alexander (2004)
Awful...just awful
Wow. I watched the director's cut this weekend and was blown away at just how bad this movie is. I'm really surprised by the number of glowing reviews here at the IMDb. It had so many problems - poorly developed characters (pretty much all the side characters), bad dialogue, pointless jumps in timeline (sometimes this can be extremely effective, obviously, but in Alexander it served no purpose), lack of focus, and directorial overindulgence. I've read some of the threads comparing the director's cut with the theatrical release, and it seems that maybe some of the problems I had with the film, particularly on the character development front, are due to changes made for this cut. I hope that's the case. This film is convoluted, historically inaccurate, and more importantly, boring and self indulgent.
Brothers in Arms (2005)
Meh...
While parts of this movie are kind of fun, and the director uses some really nice shots, other parts were super lame. The acting overall was mediocre, but given the script, they did about as much as they could with the material. David Carradine was the only standout as far as the acting goes.
There were some costume decisions that were really bad and pulled me right out of the wild west. One character has a jacket with zippers on it. Zippers weren't around back then - they weren't invented until the early 1900s. The female lead's leather, belly-baring, bustier outfit was extremely anachronistic as well. It's straight out of a current day pop video and definitely something you could imagine Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera wearing, but not someone in a western lawless town in the 1800s. These things might seem nit-picky, but those are examples of the half-way done tone of the entire film.
Overall it's a mediocre movie that should have been more fun than it was.
The Devil's Rejects (2005)
Partly good but there are some character and tone problems
I'm a little torn on this movie. I think maybe I wanted to like it more than I really liked it. Parts of it are great, and parts of it are not so great. It definitely rose above 1000 Corpses in terms of character development and cinematic style. Certain scenes are put together real well, and there are some very intense moments.
I think my biggest problem with it is that it felt like it's supposed to be sort of a fun, butt-kicking romp on a certain level, and it was a little too grim for that to work. The tone just didn't fit in with the severity of the situations. I've got no problem rooting for bad guys, or having anti-heroes that you root for, hell, I've written a feature script about an anti-hero serial killer. It's just that these anti-heroes are kind of hard to root for, or to even care about at all, because they're absolutely awful, disgusting human beings. You just don't like them, or I didn't anyway. Sure, Baby's hot and somehow kind of appealing in a psychotic sort of way, but Otis is just a sickening display. The character is played brilliantly by Bill Moseley, and it might be his best role ever, but that character needs to be the bad guy in a movie. That was one of the weaknesses of 1000 Corpses - there were no good guys that you gave a crap about. You didn't want them to make it through alive. The bad guys were so much more interesting, which is always a slasher flick trait, but these killers were so much more developed than the one dimensional good guys that you just didn't care what happened. Devil's Rejects is like that too, but there aren't even any good guys to watch to see if they make it. William Forsyth's sheriff character is great and he nailed it, but given the choice of him catching the Firefly family or the Firefly's getting away from him, I really didn't care which happened. I felt like they just took all the different bad guys from lots of different movies, and threw them all together in one story. Like I said, the characters are interesting on their own and well developed, but when you don't have any foil for how nasty they all are, it's easy to not care about the outcome of what's going to happen. I have the same problem with movies by folks like Sam Peckinpaugh - that nihilistic approach where all the characters are disgusting just kinda gets old and leaves me wanting more characters I can identify with. There are plenty of movies with characters who are immoral or criminals or whatever that are likable - Tarantino is great with this for example - but Devil's Rejects didn't pull that off very well in my mind.
Some highlights - it was really nice seeing so many horror icons in one movie. Michael Berryman and Ken Foree were a great team. Sid Haig is very good, once again, and delivers some pretty good lines. The duo of Danny Trejo and DDP was pretty awesome, too. It also has a kick ass soundtrack and some very cool camera-work in places. It's a little too "shaky cam" at times, but a lot of the hand-held stuff is pretty effective. The Freebird section (to not give too much away) was also very effective although maybe a little too drawn out. If I had had felt more in touch with the characters it might have been even more effective. There's a nice little tribute to Empire Strikes Back as well that was pretty funny.
Overall, it's a mixed bag. It's fun to see this cast go all out and be the most insane bunch of lunatics you've ever seen, but it's very brutal, dark, and nihilistic. If that's what you're in the mood for, then check it out. It's certainly not for everyone. The sheer brutality of it will turn off lots of folks. I haven't seen so many walk out of a theater since House of 1000 Corpses. Somehow I just wanted to like the characters a little more. Maybe I wasn't in a deranged enough mood when I saw it. I'll give it 5 stars out of 10.
Ulli Lommel's Zodiac Killer (2005)
low budget, but not bad
My wife runs a video store so we try to watch at least part of most every new release to get a feel for it. So The Zodiac Killer arrived at the store and we gave it a shot. We could tell immediately from the look of it that it was a low budget affair and expected the worst. We've turned off so many of these horror cheapies after only a few minutes. However, we were pleasantly surprised. I won't say that it was a work of genius, but the story was very interesting and kept us both intrigued. It had a bit of a low budget cheesiness, and some questionable acting here and there, but personally I would rather see a low budget flick like this that has some originality than a big budget movie that looks great but doesn't deliver anything you haven't seen a hundred times.
The DVD case says it's from the director of The Boogeyman, and it is...just don't confuse the 1980 film "The Boogeyman" with the 2005 film "Boogeyman." A shrewd piece of marketing to be sure. The director of The Zodiac Killer, Ulli Lommel, also stars in it.
I would warn viewers who are of the faint of heart to steer clear of this movie, however. It contains lots of crime scene photos that are very disturbing, and that I have to assume are real. It's got some pretty gruesome stuff in it, even for gore fans.
Overall, I would say this movie is average, but the idea is entertaining and unique. A little more money and better actors would help it out, but as far as low budget horror/thrillers go, it's not bad. It's definitely a cut above most in its class. As I stated earlier, I was pleasantly surprised. Even though it doesn't succeed on every level, it's still more enjoyable than a lot of movies that cost 50 times or more what this one probably cost to produce, and I can appreciate and respect that.