Change Your Image
the dude-23
Reviews
Brain Dead (1990)
A Decent Thriller with the 2 Bills!
I didn't expect much from this movie, but it turned out to be decent thriller given its low budget and its cast - Bill Pullman and Bill Paxton, arguably the two dullest actors in Hollywood! Bill Pullman is Dr. Rex Martin, a brain scientist who has developed a technology to manipulate a person's thoughts and therefore their reality. He is recruited by a sleazy corporate administrator, Jim Reston (Bill Paxton), to use this technology on a former corporate genius, Dr, Hasley, turned paranoid psycho killer, to pry some valuable corporate information from his memory. Martin then suffers an accident, and then descends into a world of madness and paranoia, where objective reality is turned upside down. In true twilight zone fashion, it appears that Dr. Martin's technology is now being experimented on him. Pullman plays the part of the eccentric Martin well, and Paxton does a reasonable job as the ambitious, yet, sleazy, corporate type. I found the ending, at least my interpretation of it, somewhat conventional and a little disappointing. This movie has some genuine scenes of suspense without needing to resort to lavish special effects. There is also a gratuitous nude scene involving Martin's Wife, Praticia Charbonneau, which, of course, is always a bonus. Again I didn't expect much from this movie, and I was pleasantly surprised. For those who enjoy movies that involve the theme that objective reality is, or can be made to be, an illusion, this movie is worth seeing as a pre cyber version of this theme; the cyber version of course being the Matrix, The 13th Floor and Existenze.
The 13th Warrior (1999)
A decent action movie
Although this movie was an action movie with very few profundities, there was some irony present in the fact that the vikings,who pillaged much of Europe, found themselves under attack in their homeland by a bear-cult tribe. This movie was an action movie first and foremost and should be judged by that standard. As an action movie, it succeeds for the most part. The battle scenes were frequent and they displayed the necessary quantities of sword play, hand-to-hand combat, and blood. The minor sub-plot of the tension between the lord's son and the warriors wasnt developed very well and probably should have been left out since it added very little to the overall story. More effort could have been spent showing how Banderas' character transformed himself from an Arab poet into a Norse Warrior. As an added bonus, I thought the scenery in the Norse homeland was stunning: endless forests of lush pine surrounded by hills scented by mist. Apparently these scenes were filmed in Canada, which as a Canadian makes me very proud!