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Iron Man 2 (2010)
Terrible sequel, don't waste your time
Having absolutely loved the first Iron Man film (gave it an 8/10) I went into this with relatively high expectations. Unfortunately, it was a mess. There is no story here, just a heap of awkward scenes, characters that just seem to be kind of ''there'', and lots of boring angst-filled conversations. Why does Tony Stark still insist talking at the same time as the people he has a conversation with? Who the hell is the villain here, the crazy-annoying Hammer guy or the bird-obsessed Russian? These are not compelling or scary villains, they are just smug, annoying failed comedy elements.
By the way, let's make something clear: I don't give a goddamn about Captain America, SHIELD, or all that other fake comic book garbage. It's nice that they found another franchise to milk, but I don't want them do devote any time to hype up ANOTHER MOVIE while I'm in the process of watching THIS movie. I get the bad feeling this whole movie is like a giant advertisement for the upcoming Avenger movie, and that's just sad.
But the absolute low point for me, in this movie, was Scarlett Suckhanson's character. The minute I saw her face, I wanted to have her die screaming. I still can't put my finger on what annoyed me so much about her, but it probably has something to do with her gobbling up more time that could be spent on some worthwhile plot thread. She also has an air of smugness that most characters are already overloading the movie with, so that doesn't help. She's just in the movie as eyecandy, nothing more.
Anyway, this is turning into a rant, and I've spent way too much time thinking about this already. So, to summarize: poor sequel, poor plot, smug characters, they blew their money on CGI and big-name actors, and the result is a terrible mess. Good afternoon.
Caprica (2009)
Garbage, just like BSG season 4
Well, I just watched the pilot and it was a huge disappointment, OBVIOUSLY. I thought I'd give this show a chance. After all, it's not cool to fair a show based on the failings of it's predecessor. Apparently it has Polly Walker and Eric Stolz, so it could be good, right?
But no, it's awful. Awful awful awful. We're right back where BGS left off: endless whining about religious God-nonsense. Wooden characters. Bad CGI. And also: angst teenage brats! Terrorism! Italian stereotypes! The writers just keep on giving! It's like an endless fountain of excrement!
What a bunch of quacks. What a waste of time, money... Why? The premise is so good: a race of people living on a cluster of planets, with future technology, who worship the ancient Greek Gods. So much more could be done with the setting, yet they choose to make a mess out of it. Rather than taking the few things that were good about BSG, they choose to incorporate the bad bits and center the show around some stupid, unlikeable brats.
Right, that's that then. I should have known better than to expect anything worth watching from these hacks.
Deja Vu (2006)
An insult to anybody who finished elementary school
I have recently been watching a string of movies dealing with time travel/parallel universes, such as Primer, La Moustache, The Machinist. Deja Vu seemed to fit the category, so I decided to give it a try. While most of the other movies were a bit obscure, this one had a sizable budget and did well in the box office. A 7.1 looks good, so I was expecting something meaningful. Boy did I get burned. This movie is atrocious.
The protagonist is Doug Carlin, also known as DIAPR, Denzel In Another Police Role. In the beginning it didn't seem too bad. A terrible 9/11 like terrorist attack kills 543 men, women and children in New Orleans. A team of specialists are assigned to tackle the investigation.
Enter Doug. A loudmouth, annoying, overpaid ATF agent. He drops in shouting ''who's in charge'' like some sort of action hero, then laughs when it turns out to be some fat dude, which is always cause for hilarity, and goes for coffee. (let's get our priorities straight, eh?) He proceeds to watch footage of what appears to be a suspect for the terrorist attack, at which point some other dimwit cop makes a joke about how he's taking a leak on the highway, and Doug bursts out in uncontrollable laughter.
Can it get any more unprofessional? Over 500 people just died in the greatest attack on the USA since the Twin Towers, and nobody seems the least bit shaken.
But it gets worse. We finally get to the time machine bit. Of course the scientists don't bother explaining how it all works to Doug, because they quite rightly figure out he's not the brightest bulb.
Then the really good part. Doug decides to point a laser pen at the screen, which of course CAUSES THE SYSTEM TO CRASH. Hunh?! So is this screen a direct portal to the past, or something? I'd say NOT, seeing as how they have a special chamber to teleport small animals and pieces of paper to the past. So what exactly is the logic behind this? There is none.
Then Doug gets enraged, and demands to know how this machine really works. They try to tell him. But no, even the dumbed down, layman's terms explanation are too much for Doug to handle, and he demands an even simpler explanation? What? Was this movie targeted at preschoolers? Which part of ''space time continuum'' is so hard to understand? Is the folding paper example really necessary? It's obvious the writers didn't have a clue what Quantum Mechanics are, nor did they hire a consultant to help them with it. They oversimplified and altered the entire theory so that any Joe Average can understand it. What's the point of technobabble if it's crystal clear to everybody what they are saying anyway? Anyway, Doug continues to be out-of-control angry, and even smashes up an expensive monitor to have an example of what ''death'' means. Broken monitor means dead. Brilliant. I guess the taxpayers won't mind if you randomly destroy government property for no real reason, with no repercussions. It was at this point that I switched off the movie.
This garbage is an insult to anybody with half a brain. I realize this is an action movie, but when the protagonist is such an unlikeable bastard who I wish got a bullet to the brain, it's obvious I'm not gonna enjoy the rest.
1 out of 10 stars. Don't waste your time on this, not even as a joke
The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo (1985)
The only Scooby show I ever liked as a kid.
Seriously, the 13 ghost spin off series was awesome. I watched this religiously. Its far better quality than the original series, the characters are way less wooden. But most of all it actually had different plots.
The originals all had the same story: Some sort of haunted house, Scooby gets his cookies, they split up and Fred goes with Daphne and Shaggy with Velma, they catch the monster, turns out its a guy with a rubber mask (sometimes several) the guy expresses his distaste for the gang, end of episode. Yawn.
This, however, is different. This time Shaggy gets the girl. (Velma isn't one in my book, yuk) This time there is Vincent VanGhoul, the scariest cartoon character ever. The 13 ghosts story was refreshing and very captivating for me as a kid.
Too bad about Scrappy the little turd, and whats-his-face, the Indian kid, but they don't really manage to ruin the series.
13 ghosts forever! I wish they made a movie out of THIS one!
Earthsea (2004)
Come on people, it wasn't THAT bad.
I really liked the Earthsea miniseries, not great, but good fun. 7/10.
It probably helps that I haven't read the book: then it would probably be a major disappointment. Because every book to movie adaptation, from LOTR to Hunt for Red October, to Harry Potter, to Net-Force, to Eragon, to Earthsea, is worse than the book. That is simply because movies, or, in this case, a mini-series, can never capture the magic of a book. It is simply impossible to cram it all into 3, 4 hours. On top of that, a book always speaks to the readers imagination, whereas a movie/miniseries doesn't.
And thus the movie/miniseries will always disappoint readers.
Earthsea however, given it's budget, is a pretty good experience. Sure there are plot holes. Sure there were WTF moments. But overall, I was entertained.
Minotaur (2006)
Cheap, annoying, stupid.
This movie is absolutely not enjoyable. When I read the DVD cover, it said: from the makers of ''Lord of the Rings'' and ''The Mummy''. Idiot that I was, I actually believed it. They probably hired one of the Orc extra's from LOTR to be able to put that on the cover or something.
The movie starts out promising enough, some sort of mythological mumbo-jumbo story about an evil empire that worships the Minotaur. What's this? Full frontal nudity already? They don't waste time, do they.
And the the movie starts. Very slowly. We meet some stupid kids who are on their way to be sacrificed. Some guy, high on drugs, uses his magic skull to get the women high. They proceed to tongue kiss his sister, and each other, passionately.
Ummmmm. OK. What exactly was the point of that? Yes, exactly, to give the viewer a boner.
Almost immediately after that, the sister seduces our hero and gets him into bed.
Yeah.
And then I turned off the DVD-player and went on to do something else. This movie is boring, uses cheap tactics to try and keep the viewers attention... it's silly and insulting. They butcher the mythology of the Minotaur story to make this... like somebody else said, it reminds me of a bad Stargate episode.
Do not watch this film unless you are drunk, horny (pun intended) or enjoy watching bad movies.
World Trade Center (2006)
Underwhelming
Before I start out with the review, I would just like to make clear that I am not anti-America in any way. I just think it needs to be said that this movie is just... not very good. Which is a shame, because the premise had lots of potential: we are, after all, talking about one of the first major dramatic events in the Western World at the dawn of the 21st century.
If this movie didn't have the WTC label on it, I doubt it would have been picked up as a script. For a disaster movie, it just is just LACKING in a lot of critical areas.
The movie starts out excellent: a new day rises over NY, a cop wakes up and goes to work, where he meets his partners. They get called in to the WTC. The place is falling apart around them as they try to rescue the people inside. They get buried alive. So far, the movie is pretty captivating. But then it goes wrong:
-The focus.
So, The entire movie focuses on 2 cops and their families who are waiting at home, eating themselves. We get some real footage (that didn't really fit well) some news footage and a Bush speech thrown in, as well. Couple of nice effects of the tower collapsing, too.
But it isn't enough. I was expecting to see it from the start. To see how the planes got hijacked, the scared people on board, the terrorists as they flew into the buildings. Indeed, the crash or the planes themselves are never even shown, just a lame shadow effect and a couple of loud bangs. Wow. They sure cut corners in the graphical department here. We don't see the planes going into the buildings, there isn't enough footage of the towers burning, and then collapsing. This is supposed to be about 9/11, right? How the towers were attacked? Well how about SHOWING US THE BLOODY CRASH?! This was a golden opportunity and they MISSED it. And what about all the other people who died, the people in the planes, what about all the victims on the top floors. Don't we get to meet them?
-The cast.
Sure, Nicolas Cage is a great actor, but... wait a sec? Is that the chick who got spanked by her boss in that S&M-themed movie, ''Secretary''? What the hell is she doing in a movie about the WTC? I can't see her as an innocent pregnant woman after seeing THAT flick, sorry. And a lot of the other family members looked like they had never seen a camera before. With a big movie like this, shouldn't there be some bigger names in it?
-The misplaced religious stuff.
What? Why are we looking at some guy sitting in a church, looking at a giant cross? Why is Jesus in this film? Don't get me wrong, I respect Christians, but this was just plain... weird. At one point I thought they were actually mocking the religion itself. Something about Jesus holding a bottle of water, and how he was trying to tell them to hold on. Are these writers on drugs? What does this have to do with anything? It was just more padding. This movie could have lasted an hour without all the useless scenes. They didn't put in the planes but they had room for some extremely vague dialogue and scenes like this?
-The dramatic scenes.
It wasn't all bad. There was some powerful stuff in here, like how the blond wife was fantasizing about how her husband was in his workshop while he was teaching his son to saw. Nicolas talking to his wife while half-awake was good. The woman at the hospital who's son got buried: good.
But what's up with the stupid children. Some angry kid keeps telling his mom to go look for his dad, in a collapsed building, with lots of dangerous debris and pitfalls? Is he insane? He is clearly past the age of 10, so he should know better than this. Or the hilarious subplot about what to name one of the guy's unborn child. Useless banter. Shouldn't we be focusing on the main plot? Maybe?
-The comedy.
This film is supposed to be a drama. Unfortunately, I, and most of the theater with me, laughed out loud when one of the officer's gun was starting to fire on it's own. Was that intentional? A big OOPS moment...
-The happy ending.
Yeah, the cops got rescued, and their families are happy. Years later they are still celebrating. A perfect ending to any random disaster movie.
However, this movie is about the WTC TERRORIST ATTACKS. For thousands of people, there was no happy ending AT ALL. It must have been an enormous slap in the face for all the people who's loved ones died that day, to watch... this.
You guessed it, I didn't come out of the theater very pleased. This movie was a very forgettable experience, and doesn't do the subject ANY JUSTICE at all. Somebody should have stepped in and rewritten the script. What a waste, what a waste...
The Hellcats (1968)
A horrible waste of time and film.
''The Hellcats'' is another vile biker movie that was shown and commented on in MST3K. It reminded me a little of another movie, ''Wild Rebels'', but that one had at least a reasonable and somewhat follow-able plot. This movie however, doesn't. It falls flat on it's face and makes no sense at all. It's supposedly about bikers, the mafia, drugs, violence, free love, and takes place in the 60's.
*** Spoilers here ***
The movie starts at a graveyard, where bikers are paying their last respects to someone by entrusting the coffin with some of their prized possessions. Things he may need in life after death, you know, knives, keys, beads, a worn-out jacket, a giant bra... then we get introduced to the police, some mafia-type guys, and we cut to the opening credits. These alone are enough to make someone vomit violently. We are constantly zooming out on some horrible paintings that look to have been made by a 5-year old that just threw cans of paint at the canvas. The music is horrible lame.
The first major plot point comes when a guy and his girlfriend are having a romantic meet by the river. The guy gets sniped by some mafia guy. The guy's brother comes flying in, and he and the girlfriend infiltrate the biker gang for some reason. This gang consist of some guys with stupid nicknames like Sixpack, Snake and Hiney, and a bunch of supposedly tough, leather-clad women. One of them appears to be a pirate. Now don't make the mistake of thinking the women may make this movie worthwhile, because they don't. Another guy comes into their hide-out and tries to hit on one of them.
And here is where the movie officially starts to go south. We have been able to keep up until now, but that changes now. The bikers and the guy start to talk, but it looks like they are talking in code. For example, the guy seems to be saying: ''Bye sayyy... take your old lady hog and you move... I tell her blue... and he says not here you don't... and he spikes me 5 times on the wrist..'' Biker woman: ''You sound like a preacher.'' Biker: ''Yeah.. all mouth.'' WHAT? What did they just say? Before you can scratch yourself on the head, the guy pushes the biker over, then leaves. The bikers start a wild party, with lots of drinking, drugs, corny music, people kissing, dancing, spanking, men licking each other's nipples (yeah...). It all ends when one of the bikers gets a bad trip and starts talking about his mommy.
The movie plods along but I have lost track of the plot. Another guy comes by in the bar. Then we see bikers beating up a guy that was painting a woman in the forest. Another party with the bikers, with more stupid music, and this time out in the open. Another gang comes by and the leaders have a bike race, that ISN'T BEING SHOWN ON SCREEN. Instead, we get to see the bikers watch in terror. Then they have a chain fight. Then they play some kind of dangerous game involving two bikes driving in opposite direction and a man hanging in between them. After that is finally over, we cut to 2 guys in a house, playing chess, who seem to be keeping a heroin addicted woman as their slave. The biker women come by to buy drugs, and show their contempt.
After that we see one of the biker women have what must be the most unconvincing bike accident in cinema history. She rides along at like 20 mph, then hits a piece of metal and drives off the road. Bang, dead, face covered in blood. Then some of the bikers go visit the mafia one by one, and all get beaten up and tied up. Some guy threatens the bikers at their hide-out with a gun, but one of the women slaps his wrist with a belt and he drops it. Yeah, right. Then we get another unrelated scene, of a blonde woman getting strangled for no reason. This train-wreck of a movie ends with the bikers assaulting the mafia on a boat, freeing their comrades, and everyone lives happily ever after.
*** End spoilers ***
Bottom line: this movie sucks. The plot started out normally but became nonsensical and there was no real conclusion to the whole 'brother got killed' plot point. The acting was bad. The audio was even worse. Most of the time it was impossible to make out what they were saying, and if it was, it seemed to be random nonsense. The movie was padded with miles and miles of footage of people riding on bikes. And then another shot of bikers. And another. And another god forsaken biker riding on the highway. AARGH! The music was horrible, even for the 60's. The camera-work was 'unique'. The cameraman has very shaky hands, and he likes to zoom in and out a lot. For instance: during a biker party, he keeps zooming in and out on a dancing woman with her eyes closed. What was the point of that? Was it supposed to arouse the viewer or something? Well it didn't. Sometimes the camera just loses focus, too. Shoddy.
Don't watch without MST3K commentary on. 1 out of 10.