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Natural Born Killers (1994)
keep the camera still moron.
*CLANG-CLANG-CLANG* That's the sound of the movies message being relentless beaten into you. Other sounds that you might here during the film is the swallowing of headache tablets and the snoring of someone who's taken the easy way out leaving you to slog through the rest all alone.
This film can be summed up in one word. You might pick garbage, tedious, or just plain stupid. But in he end i think we have a winner in obnoxious. Two words? Really obnoxious. I'm sure some people can come up with explanations for why the film switches between black-and-white and colour at random intervals, I'm sure the random use of slow-mo didn't strike them as odd, nor the lens switching. Some people can see the future in chicken guts, I guess if you look hard enough you'll always find what you're looking for. And did anyone else think "Battlefield Earth" with all the tilting camera shots? What is it with bad films and the inability to keep the camera level?
I have no doubt the story was just as inane as the direction. Alas i can't remember a damn thing about it, maybe it didn't even exist. That'd explain all those directorial flourishes, who gets annoyed at the lack of plot when they've got a pounding headache? Bravo Mr. Stone! Bravo!
When the film settles down for the second half (or maybe I just started blocking out all the tricks in a desperate bid to get to the end of the film without snapping in frustration) it gets slightly better, or more accurately less bad. It's still a terrible film but I was so relieved to be able to tell what was going on my opinion shot up from "this film really really sucks" to "this film really sucks". Adios Natural Born Killers, I hope never to watch you again.
Lake Placid (1999)
proud member of the 6%
The 6% that gave this film a lowly 2.
Yep, a measly 2. The mind boggles at the thought of people who would give this dross a 10!
1. Self-effacing irony is all well and good as long as it's funny. Otherwise it's like having a neon sign saying THIS FILM IS CRAP AND WE KNOW IT! LAUGH AT OUR CRAPPINESS!
2. Self-referencing is all well and good as long as it's CLEVER.
3. This film just sucks.
My main problem with this film is remarkably simple. When I watch a killer animal movie I expect a fair death count. Yep, simple minded it might be but if I was wanting intelligence I wouldn't be watching a film about a giant crocodile would I? Gimmie a decent sized death count and I'll forgive the painful attempts at humor, the factual inaccuracies and the plot holes (again I don't have high expectations of killer animal movies) but what's the grand total of deaths in this film??
I'm not going to tell you but take whatever estimate you might have, then think lower.
And ignore anyone who tells you that the film is gory. Their either lying or really really squeamish. Frankly there can't be much gore in a film with so few actual deaths.
This film is dumb, boring, unfunny (is that a word?), doesn't provide the requisite high body count for these movies, and the crocodile is perhaps the lamest most unthreatening predator ever CGI'd into existence. What else can you say about a killer animal that won't munch a guy one meter in front of it swimming in the water?? You're a crocodile for Christ sake, man in water, kill kill kill!
It gets two points. One for a moment that made me laugh (kinda). One for a highly amusing death. Two points, that's your lot.
The Hunt for Red October (1990)
good. great.... no just good.
It had potential damnit! Genuine potential! But it falls short in a number of different areas, and outright tramples over one of my pet film hates. This film could have so easily been a 9 or 10, instead I gave it a 7 and on reflection I think that was generous.
First some of the good points. Sean Connery is good. Excellent in fact, he does give off a natural air of authority and I could totally believe him as the captain of a nuclear sub. Not a Russian nuclear sub though, but I'll get onto that later. Tim Curry and Sam Neil both turn in good performances as well, in fact as far as the acting goes this film has got it largely nailed.
The score is a high point. It doesn't throw up any surprises (Communist Russia = Choir) but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Predictable, but none the worst for it.
The story has a number of plot holes, but it wouldn't take much to tighten it up. As it stands the plot is enough to see the film through easily and holds the attention. In fact it more then holds your attention, it grabs your attention with both hands to start with. As he film progresses it loosens its grip quite considerably, but it never becomes boring.
Alas, there are problems.
Accents accents accents. Largely ok (Sam Neil seems to be able to pull of Russian quite well, and Tim Curry manages to avoid hamming it up to much ala his performance in Congo) but Sean Connery doesn't even bother trying. It's difficult to think of him as a Russian captain when he speaks in a Scottish accent (although admittedly a bad Russian accent would have been even worse).
I can't stand films that use The Infallible Good-Guy technique, and this is the most blatant use of it I've seen in a long time. Alex Baldwin is apparently psychic and able to work out what Captain Ramis is thinking right from the beginning. He's right about everything, and the film portrays anyone who raises reasonable objections or questions his huge intuitive leaps as an idiot. Oh please, this is indicative of lazy scripting, it treats the audience as morons, and annoys me to the point of ruining the film.
Ramis is less a brilliant captain and more a dangerously incompetent one, some of the special effects are incredibly poor, and frankly the film could do with having the pointless sub-plot of Ramis and his student cut out of the film to shorten the running time a little.
These things all undermine the film and prevent it from being the classic it could have been. The basic story is there, the actors are there, the score is there, the script is largely there but they can't cover up the deficiencies (and make up for that damned Infallible Good-Guy).
Street Fighter (1994)
hey at least Raul Julia was good....
A lame film, yes. But how did it ever get into the bottom 100??
I can't believe there are people out there who actually manage to hate this film. Ok the plot is weak, characterisation non-existent, and most of the acting ranges from poor to mediocre, but it has a number of small things going for it and one very big thing (hey don't get excited girls)
The plot may be lame, but c'mon, you have to give it points for focusing on it rather then bogging down the run time with masses of pointless subplots. Hell even the obliquity romantic subplot is pushed so far into the background so as to be almost unnoticeable. It's not a laugh a minute, but some of the lines did strike me as funny. Yeah yeah I have a lame sense of humour, but it's not like I get to choose what I find funny.
Neither of these two points are any reason at all to watch the film. There is in fact only one reason to do that. Raul Julia. Wow. If you're playing an insane megalomaniacal villain you have to go all the way or the whole thing falls down. Raul Julia goes all the way, then a little bit further. The screen positively lights up when ever he's on it, frankly the film is worth watching once just to see him in action. I would go as far as to say that Bison is now one my favourite film villains ever, and the only thing that stops this film from becoming utterly forgettable. Don't get me wrong, it's still a bad film, but Raul Julia's performance prevents me from hating it.
I am surprised to see it so widely panned. C'mon, it's a street fighter movie, what did you expect?? You didn't go into this looking for an emotionally moving experience with numerous fine understated performances, and if you did you're a moron. It's action fluff, that's all it aims to be, and on that level the film is a success.
I have no idea what to rate this film. On one hand it's a piece of crap, on the other I can't slam a movie that had such a great villain. Watch it, but keep your expectations low and you won't be (to) disappointed.
Character by character line up (in no particular order).
Bison - well I just went into how great I thought Raul Julia was in this film. A+
Guile - huh?? Who cast Jean Claude Van Damme as an American soldier? Once you get past his accent though, he turns in a fair performance. Make no mistake though, that accent is very distracting for the most part. Weren't there any American action guys (with smaller salaries) available? C+
Cammy - again with the casting. Why is Kylie Minogue playing a British solider when she's Australian? Granted the American audience won't notice, but it was bothering me for the whole film. Anyway a small part, and again a fair (if dull) performance despite the accent. C
Ken + Ryu - well their both fairly interchangeable (hey just like the game). They both look fairly good in a fight (or at least their body doubles do), and when their required to actually say something they do a fine (albeit bland) job. C+
Zangief - the main source of the comic relief. Hey I liked this guy, and the accent actually fits! Wow! B+
Dee-Jay - apparently he's the computer guy. Huh? So why's he called Dee-Jay? The name made much more sense in the game. A lot of his part consisted of having to look at Zangief when the Russian makes a stupid comment. Not very demanding, but he it done well. B
E.Honda - this guy sucks. Only the Godzilla reference while fighting Zangief was funny. Otherwise he was just another good guy. Ho-hum. D
Balrog - like E.Honda. only without the funny Godzilla bit. D-
Vega - well he's not in it very much, just around for the fight scenes which make assessing his character difficult. Still, from what little we got he was good. C
Segat - suffered from being the second villain to Bison. Hell anyone would have paled next to that, but the fact that you actually noticed Segat in comparison says a lot. C+
Dhalism - yep, he's in it. He's the nice doctor bloke in case you where wondering. Utterly different from what he was like in the game, they really only made him the doctor because there was no other place for him. D+
Blanka - green guy with a dumb wig. Sounds interesting? It isn't. Still, the wig was funny. D+
T.Hawk - who? His name was only mentioned once in passing, he was one of the generic solider guys. Seriously, they could have cut him out and noone would notice. Hell I doubt anyone noticed him anyway. F
Chun Li - cute girl. Lame actor. But still.. She's cute, and her opening news broadcast was well done. She bought two irritating sidekicks with her though. C-
Batman & Robin (1997)
make the bad man stop
I'm not a fan of Batman. i never read the comics, the cartoons all bored me to tears, the old 60s series made me want to tear my eyes out, and while the first three films were by no means awful i found them very forgettable.
then why is it that i hate this film so?
i can understand how fans of gothic Batman would feel betrayed by what the talentless hack Shumacher has done to thier beloved franchise, and i can only imagine the bile this film rises in thier stomachs.
whats the worst film ever? it's certinly not this one, but it's bad enough that whenever the question comes up this is the film that immediatly comes to mind.
lets do the checklist
Dialouge - awful. unless your a fan of every possible cold based pun. if thats your idea of fun, then you must be the elusive target audience for this film.
Acting - awful. you'll have to decide for yourself where the bad script stops and the bad acting starts, i sure as hell coulden't discover the dividing line.
Special Effects - ahhh! this must be where the budget for this film went!
Set Design - you like neon? no? well brace yourself. you can shut your eyes if you want but the damn stuff burns it's way through your eyelids.
Plot - plot? what a plot? Poison Ivy wants to cover the world with plants. Mr Freeze want to freeze the world. correct me if i'm wrong, but if the entire planet was put through another ice age woulden't that kill off a large amount of vegitation?? aren't Mr Freezes aims and Poison Ivys fairly incompatable? actully the main problem isn't the lack of plot, rather there's to much of it. it boils down to watching a group of random events tied very loosely together, but never actully reaching anything approaching cohesion.
it's not all bad though. the special effects were good and Micheal Gouth (Alfred) turned in his usual excellent performance for what little screentime he has.
this is an awful awful film. don't say i never warned you.
The Running Man (1987)
trashy 80's action film? no thanks.
argh! this film hurts my head. and not in a good way.
maybe it's just my growing hatred for the action genre, but even as a kid when i would swallow tripe like Navy Seals, i still regarded this film with dislike. now i utterly despise it.
take one fairly good fast-paced story. keep the title and throw the rest away. instead use some half-assesd future gladiators storyline thats so full of plot holes the whole things in danger of collapsing (why is there a rebel base in the middle of the arena, what about the cameras? why have clearly marked footage of what really happened at bakersfeild in an unguarded room?)
the whole film screams eighties, from the truley awful score to the goofy shiny costumes. ugh.
don't watch this film. i know some people liked it, but some people get off on being peed on and i don't understand them either.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
no no no
"The Two Towers" is a mediocre action film. there, i said. go burn my effigy.
the people who are giving this 10 are the equivalent of the Star Wars fanboys who will try and convince you "...Phantom Menace" was a good film. it wss not a good film and neither is this.
the pacing for this film was awful, for the first half i was wishing for a remote control to skip to something intresting. the re-introdution of Gandalf was moronicly done (was ANYONE fooled by the whole Gandalf/Saruman thing?), Theoden was laughable, the whole Aragorn falling over a cliff stank of trying to eat up running time (in a three hour film! why did they need to eat up running time in a three hour film??) and the Aragorn-Arwen sub-plot was slow and pointless.
the problems continue, Gollum had his moments but they were few, and the annoyance factor of him otherwise was just not worth it. Sam is just as annoying as he is in the book. not a good thing. Frodo is a wuss, even more so the Theoden. the fact that the three most irritating charcters in the whole film share nearly all thier scenes together doesn't help. i was hoping the orcs would catch them.
Liv Tyler is an awful actress. i don't know why she delivers all her lines in that stupid goddamn voice but i wish Jackson had told her to knock it off. it dosen't help that she's given awful dialoge in a pointless sub-plot either.
some of the CGI was good, but the Wargs were crap. and what were the Nazgul riding? they looked like aborted dragon fetuses.
300 guys against 10,000 orcs? maybe they should have got Steven Segal to play Aragorn instead. and in the best action film tradition, the Orcs are treated as cannon fodder, thus destroying any credable threat they represent. nursery school infants could take down an army or Orcs in this film.
the constant onslaught of short jokes did not help. i'm convinced Jackson has something against short people, look at how he's pushed Merry and Pippin as far away from the story as he could. i'm convinced he would have written them out entirely if he thought he'd get away with it.
Faramirs change didn't serve any purpose. i suspect Peter Jackson was just running out of ways to make Frodos journey intresting (theres only so many shots of Frodo, Sam and Gollum walking and occasionly looking over things that you can put in one film) so used Faramir to liven it up. at least it's more worthwhile then the time-wasting romantic sub-plot.
i suppose i should mention things i liked; Gimli was cool, even with Jacksons best attempts to undermine him. the Elves coming to Helms-Deep. the occasional good moments with Gollum. most of the cast turned in pretty good performances (with the notable exception of Liv Tyler)
hey i didn't like it but you should probably go see it anyway. just don't expect anything more then a bog-standard action film.