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Reviews
Transformers (2007)
Not really living up to its hype
I didn't intend to see this movie at first, but after some stellar reviews from friends who I usually agree with in movie selections, I decided to give it a chance. First I will say what I did like about the film.
The visual effects were superb. The shots with the transformers transforming were amazingly realistic. My wife told me that there were a few times that she was watching them and thought "come on, don't take so long..." and then realized that what she was watching was not really happening. Very cool.
There were some of the funniest one-liners I've seen in an action movie. Even though I wasn't especially enjoying the film, there were several times that I laughed out loud at a line or sight gag.
Now for what I didn't like about the film. First of all, I'm over the whole "amazing visual effects" effect. Have been since the last LOTR. I don't go see CGI movies because I don't care how amazing the animation is if there isn't a good story. So I see them when I hear there's a good story. To me, Transformers had the effects, and that's it. And I got bored with it.
Further, there were too many characters, and none were developed at all. Not to mention that Bernie Mac's cameo was extremely unnecessary and distracting. It appeared that the filmmakers were trying to tug on your heart about certain characters, but you didn't know who they were or care about them. The only character I cared about was Bumblebee, and that was because you just thought he was sweet. Everyone else seemed like people you were looking at while you walk through Wal-Mart's toy section.
I paid one dollar to see this through RedBox. I'm glad I didn't spend any more.
Clockstoppers (2002)
Fun movie
I actually read about this movie in a trade magazine where they talked about how they did the effects, and had been interested in seeing it since then. When I saw it on Joost, I decided to finally watch it. It's younger than I expected, but overall I had a good time with it. There are a couple of things that bothered me about it, though, and here they are, hence the spoiler warning.
I love science fiction and love taking an implausible idea like this and making a set of rules about it. The filmmakers had well-defined rules, I thought, about how the watch worked. And then they promptly broke them in one completely unnecessary scene. The scene I'm talking about is the DJ scene, where the kids move the DJs and make them dance. Now, according to the rules set up, the watch doesn't make the people invisible, it makes them go really fast. So if you sit there and hold a pose for what would be one second in normal time, people would be able to see you. Yet they operate the DJ's invisibly as if they were puppets (also way too fast, if they were really moving them at the speed that they were then their dance moves would be a blur); that scene had the feel to me that someone who didn't write the original screenplay decided to add to get some extra human element into the film, because everything else was so well thought out. The second thing that bothered me initially was the car chase in hypertime, but they did explain that the cars were in hypertime (and since it's a molecular level phenomenon that did end up fitting into the rules set by the filmmakers.) In spite of this, though, I do recommend it and give it a 5 out of 10 rating. Between that one scene, and kind of a lame attempt at creating family tension between the father and son, it only gets 5. But it does get 5, not 3 or 2, because it still was a fun movie.
Deja Vu (2006)
Needed something obvious to...
... show where he changed the time line. I love sci-fi and especially time travel, and don't care what rules you come up with as long as you follow them. The only problem I really have with this movie is that he goes back in time and sees why the things he saw in the future were there, meaning that the future he came from included his going back. But if he is going to change the future, there has to be something obvious where he does this, it needs to be something that he knew happened that he is able to change, and then from that point forward everything changes. Plus, that would be a great opportunity for a dramatic visual effect to show that the timeline has been skewed. There is nothing like that, so at what point does the past he goes back to change to the alternate future? Also, to save the people on the ferry, all he had to do was call in a bomb threat and they would have evacuated the ferry. But that would make the end of the movie kind of anti-climactic. I still rate this an 8 out of 10, though, because I really enjoyed it in spite of its pitfalls.
Catch and Release (2006)
I never got into it
First, let me say that I usually can appreciate "chick flicks," which this movie definitely is. And I love Jennifer Garner. But this film just did not do it for me. I never got emotionally invested in any of the characters, and I didn't see why Gray (Gray? What kind of a name is "Gray" for a girl?) ended up making the decisions she made, and never really liked any of the other characters. There were a few places that I thought were funny, but I felt a lot of the time like they were trying to be funny and, well, it just wasn't funny. Maybe her character was too much like Sidney Bristow, and inside I was wondering if she was going to blow her cover. I will say that my wife did like the movie, but I'll let her comment on it if she wants to rebut by opinion. If you want to see a Jennifer Garner non-action film, go see 15 going on 30 (which I do really like - see? I do appreciate "chick flicks") and don't bother with this one.
Facing the Giants (2006)
Easily the best Christian film, possibly one of the best films period
I get so tired of Christian films that preach a message with no story. This film preached a message with its story, and that's how it's supposed to work! I have never been so touched by a film as I was with this one. What really is amazing about this film is that the success of the film itself proves that they believe and live the message that they are presenting. Sure, the acting is sub-par, and some of the things that happen are predictable, but for the first time in my life that had no bearing on what I think about a film. There are plenty of movies with great acting and unpredictable plot twists that don't even come close to touching the power of this film. As a Christian I am finally super-proud of a Christian film, and to the filmmakers I say, "bravo." I'd give it more than ten stars if I could, it was that good.
The Lake House (2006)
Almost perfect
We rented this movie after seeing (and being disappointed by) Preminition and reading reviews that this movie is much more solid than Preminition. After seeing them both on back-to-back nights, I agree. The only reason I'm giving it a 7 and not a higher ranking is because I felt that the directing and editing was a little weak (the pacing of several scenes were distracting, it took me a long time to get into it, and I was jarred out of the movie into being an audience member several times because of the way it was edited/directed.) But the story is nearly perfect. There are a few nit-picky things that when analyzed thoroughly don't fit within the rules that the filmmakers set up, but you have to think kind of hard to find them (as opposed to Preminition where the flaws are so obvious and so easily fixable that you want to take the filmmakers out and shoot them for squandering such a brilliant premise... but I digress, this review is about The Lake House...) It is strange that Sandra Bullock did two so similar movies back-to-back like she did, but I guess they are very different even though they are so similar. If the director of Preminition had done The Lake House, I probably would have rated it a 9 or a 10.
Back to the Future (1985)
The time travel film that all time travel films are measured by
I love sci-fi that is based in reality. By that I mean that you can test the logic defined by the rules set in the film, and it stands up from all angles. Most time travel movies break their rules somewhere. Sometimes it's forgivable, sometimes it's not. But Back to the Future (and its sequels) is as close as I've seen to the perfect logic in a time travel movie. The writers clearly thought this through from all aspects. They defined the rules of time travel that they were going to use (of which there are several to choose from) and they wrote the story around those rules, rather than just making a time travel movie and not thinking through the ramifications of what the characters do.
This movie and its sequels remains to this day my absolutely favorite movie(s) of all time. All other time travel movies pale in comparison.
Premonition (2007)
So close, could have been a perfect film...
...but as many people here commented, there are plot holes that really ruin it. There are three parts of this movie that make absolutely no since to me, and all three of them could have been easily fixed with just a little thought. That's why it really bothers me, it's like they didn't re-read the script once they finished writing it to make sure that there weren't any inconsistencies (maybe the writer needed to be on Lithium), and it's not like it would have been too difficult to fix them.
Warning: the following contains spoilers that give more detail than you will want if you haven't seen the movie yet!
1) We meet the character on Thursday but the daughter's face gets cut up on Monday or Tuesday (I don't remember which). But her face is fine on Thursday; we discover the cut up face on Saturday. Were they just thinking "hey, the audience won't notice this." Maybe they thought "the audience won't want to see this movie a second time so they'll never remember that we left out that one detail." Come on, it's so obvious and yet nothing is done to make it work.
2) How did she get out of the funny farm at the end????
3) What happened the rest of Wednesday where she was able to go get the kids from school and go home and go to bed? And how did she know when she woke up Thursday that Jim had gone on an overnight trip?
That said, really, the only day that didn't work was the very first day we see. I could probably forgive #2 because I suppose after she wakes up after the week she would have been acting normal and they would have let her go. But it should have been SOOO easy to make #1 and #3 work, just a little thought! Since they didn't deal with that one day, it comes off as being amateurish. If they had done something clever to deal with it, the I would rate the movie much, much higher.
Cats & Dogs (2001)
What a great premise - too bad they didn't take advantage of it
When I saw the trailer I thought, "that will be a great movie!" I read critics all the time complain about a filmmaker not taking a film to its full potential. I usually don't think that, but I did with this film.
It was still fun, but it seems to have been written is such a hurry that they didn't put into it even 10% of what they could have. It's a shame, because now you couldn't do a film with the same premise without coming off as a copy-cat (and dog). I get the feeling that the writer wasn't an animal person. Oh, well, maybe in time this one will be forgotten and someone will re-do it with its full potential.
Ladder 49 (2004)
Pleasantly surprised at how good this movie was
I grew up loving firefighter shows. I loved Emergency (it was in syndication and then my parents taped "The Greatest Rescues of Emergency" for me and I watched it ad nauseum growing up...) so I usually get excited about this genre.
Let me first say that I'm not a John Travolta fan. But, if you are turned off at this film because of John Travolta, don't be. He's nothing more than a supporting role, and he does well enough in it. This is really Joaquin Phoenix's movie and he carries it extremely well. This is a story about firefighters, not your typical action-style firefighter story. You are taken into the lives of these people, and the result is absolutely fascinating, extremely real; there's no garbage cluttering up the story with affairs or drugs or political undertones. It gives a viewer a very real empathetic experience of what it feels like to be a firefighter. This is first and foremost a character study, not an action movie. As such it is well done and I fell in love with all the major characters.
The only complaint I have about this film is that the ending was a little sappy; other than that, I loved it and recommend it to anyone who has ever dreamed of being a firefighter.