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Serenis
Reviews
A History of Violence (2005)
Flat characters but great violence
My main issue with this movie is that it focuses too much on a few characters (Viggo Mortensen and perhaps Ashton Holmes) and leaves the majority of the cast flat and dull. Maria Bello's character, for example, seems to exist merely to provide the love scenes, which I also found to be unnecessarily graphic and to cheapen the movie. The characters of the bad guys (excluding our protagonist) are even thinner. They continually pop up as silly comic book villains to give Tom (Mortensen) someone to kill. The son Jack (Holmes) at least constitutes a part of the story and also has a background of himself.
The only good aspect of this movie, which actually makes it worth seeing, is the depiction of the violence. In an uncut version, you will see spurting blood and crushed body parts.
Swordfish (2001)
Hard to believe due to misuse of technical terms
Often it is not fair to judge a movie by its trailers, but this one proved to be an exception. It starts off pretty good with some nice acting and special effects, but after a while, the usual "hackers are cool" image starts to appear. Why is it that no movie can give a believable image of hacking or even computers? If the real image is too boring, stay away from it! I've seen many computer related movies and there are but one or two that I find the slightest bit believable. Perhaps all areas are treated with such ignorance and disrespect in movies, but I'm not knowledgeable enough in the other areas to be the judge. The misuse of technical terms and techno-babble presents itself on numerous occasions throughout the movie.
Apart from the above, which makes the story really bad, Swordfish is a decent action movie. Although I could do without the mediocre computer generated explosions. Maybe the movie didn't have a big budget to work with, but in that case, I wouldn't set my mind on doing an action movie.
There is something about this movie that is not all bad, though - the acting. The people in this movie didn't do as I think would be natural (the CIA agents for example) but that should be considered part of the plot.
I was shocked at the high user rating of this movie, but I guess most people are blissfully ignorant in the computer area. I couldn't give this movie more than 3 or 4 (stayed on 3) out of 10.
Wing Commander (1999)
Bad acting in a storyless movie made off a half-movie game.
It doesn't take a genius to realize that this movie was never intended to be good. At least, I pray that it wasn't - that it was solely to make some money off a famous game, which, ironically, included a great part of movie clips. For a movie like this, no great actors are required, just some semi-known ones to pride the cover with their names. These roles fell upon "cutie boy" Freddie Prinze Jr., who seems to have but two expressions - surprised and concerned - and his friend Matthew Lillard.
As for the plot, is a plot really required for plot holes? It is supposed to be a space adventure with a bit of a love story and a bit of shooting and explosions, but this messy patchwork of illogical, pathetic scenes made me wonder if I wouldn't be better off cleaning my bathroom.
I gave this movie 2/10, only because I didn't fall asleep as I sat watching it in a wooden chair.
Days of Our Lives (1965)
Silliness ruined what must have been a great soap
I started watching some episodes of this soap because I heard it was really good - good acting, good story and all that great stuff. Since the series has been aired for so long, it must be true, or so I thought. After watching one episode I got the impression that the actors were cast outs from drama schools, doing overly dramatic (more like silly) role interpretations. This silliness is also reinforced by the soundtrack (or background sounds) that presents every scene as the most sincere and emotional ever and the light, which is unexplicably dim. At first, I thought this was due to bad reception by my TV set, but, seeing as I've seen it at several other sets, I doubt it.
Maybe this soap was superb in the good old days, but nowadays, it's not worth watching.
Il silenzio dei prosciutti (1994)
Highly underrated
This is possibly the best parody I've ever seen. I admit it's somewhat childish at times, but parodies shouldn't be serious.
This movie is full of details for which you have to see it many times to discover.
Before you see this movie, I recommend that you see Psycho and Silence of the lambs.