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jbbarrett
Reviews
Prairie Fever (2008)
Agreed. Just watched this flick.
I thought Kevin Sorbo was the only highlight. The 4 women...couldn't tell them from the 2 mules. And I think it was filmed on the same piece set. They simply shot from every conceivable angle to make it look like they were traveling. And now this stupid website says I have to make ten lines of comments? Waste more words on this piece of celluloid trash? Well, the only good looking woman gets shot and killed - thankfully, as her character was the most annoying. The female lead who saves Sorbo from his character flaws, zero sex appeal. I think everyone mailed in their performances. Yikes, and now it wants more comments from me. Lance Heinriksen is in this flick too. Once upon a time he had a career. Now, well, he's in tripe like this.
Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)
an incomplete story **possible spoiler**
Clint Eastwood left a crucial bit of evidence out of both this movie and flags of our fathers. from the flags of our fathers book, pp 344-36...
john Bradley: "my buddy was a guy from Milwaukee. we were pinned down in one area. someone else fell injured and i ran to help out, and when i came back my buddy was gone. i couldn't figure out where he was. i could see all around, but he wasn't there. and nobody knew where he was.
"a few days later someone yelled that they;d found him. they called me over because i was a corpsman. the Japanese had pulled him underground and tortured him. His fingernails...his tongue...it was terrible. I've tried so hard to forget this.
"and then i visited his parents after the war and just lied to them. 'he didn't suffer at all' i told them. 'he didn't feel a thing, didn't know what hit him.' i just lied to them"
cliff Langley: Langley told me it looked to him as though Ralph ignatowski had endured just about every variety of physical cruelty imaginable.
"both his arms were fractured...they just hung there like arms on a broken doll. he had been bayoneted repeatedly. the back of his head had been smashed in.
John Bradley: "jim wants us to come visit him (in Tokyo). they tortured my buddy. the Japanese stuffed his penis in his mouth. i'm not too interested in going to japan."
it might be understandable to leave this out of letters from Iwo Jima if you are trying to bring a Japanese perspective to the screen for the first time. but to leave it out of flags of our fathers and Letters from iwo jima is at best historically irresponsible and at worst a blatant sign of political purpose.
leaving this passage in, in either movie, would have gone a long way towards portraying both sides more accurately.
when eastwood leaves this out, it actually makes it less likely that people will respond to the Japanese side of the story. it will be seen as disrespectful to American suffering during the war, and make people more resistant to the multicutlural approach Eastwood is trying. rather than telling a story that hasn't been told, he is telling a story that never existed and dividing the races even further.
Frisky Dingo (2006)
evil villains as caring parents
i absolutely love this show. you'd think after venture brothers and the tick a super hero send up would be old and tiresome by now, but the incredible humorists from sealab 2021 do a great job of exposing a new side to the comic motif.
most obvious is the way they use the corporate structure to mock super heroes. Xander crews is an incompetent CEO, Kill face is a struggling business man. I especially liked the part where killface lost his health insurance for his company.
my favorite though are the "tender" moments between killface and his son simon. its hard being a single father, harder still when you're trying to blow up the world.
this is fast becoming my favorite adult swim show, i think its even better than robot chicken and Aqua teen hunger force.
Munich (2005)
a poem inspired by the film
I do not like Munich, I find it quite trite./ Terrorists are innocent, that doesn't seem right. /How can they be the victims when they shot the Jews? /In the name of peace, should killing happen to you?/
In this world of ours, Spielberg thinks we should play nice./ Don't fight for your liberty, the cycle will grow thrice. /Killing makes more killing and this leads to pain and death. /Thanks for the civics lesson, you should save your breath/
Bombers are better dead, they live for paradise./ Why not send them on their way, now wouldn't that be nice./ "Oh, but that's not PC, you racist anti-Christ."/ Forget it hippie film maker, you're not paying the price./
Spielberg betrayed us with this apologetic trap./ Munich was a terrible flick, disingenuous crap./ How could he betray freedom, liberty, and Jew? /How could he do it? (And war of the worlds sucked too.)
Donnie Darko (2001)
godawful, i don't understand the appeal
this movie was horrendous. i don't understand what everyone is raving about. It's a whiny teenage drama like the breakfast club meets some existential nonsense combined with a silly time travel story. And why is Hollywood so obsessed with teenagers. 90% of the people in Hollywood spent their teenage years on movie sets anyway, what makes them think they know how it works. The acting is horrible. They speak softly, and that is supposed to create drama. Horrible movie. The entire thing was like watching a deleted scenes special feature on a DVD disc. None of the scenes made any sense. Drew Barrymore, Noah Wyle, and Patrick Swayze could not have been more worthless in this movie. This is one of those movies that everyone is supposed to like, but in reality it is crap. stay away from it and think for yourself.
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)
at least it's not episode I
So i was skeptical, but it turned out pretty good. The action sequences were pretty cool to see, and parts that i thought would be stupid looked pretty cool. I liked this movie, i am surprised by how much i enjoyed it. I expected it to suck. Don't get me wrong. George lucas has no ear for dialogue and the scenes where people are talking are pretty rough because of it. Acting is bad in this movie for several reasons, ewan mcgregor is straight jacketed into an alec guiness impersonation. Everyone seems to have trouble working with the huge amounts of computer effects. It seems like no on really has any idea what is going on in the shot. Hayden Christensen would have been good, there is a scene where he starts to get angry, but unfortunately George Lucas lacks Cajones and doesn't show anakin skywalker go insane and kill a bunch of tuskan raiders. That would have been cool to see, but Lucas had to make it kid friendly and that hurt.
Also, the effects in the movie are way overdone. I read some where that it had a shooting schedule of 60 days, which i totally believe. The rest is computers. Maybe Lucas should ignore the computers and focus on people, his movie would have benefited from it. The effects kick butt though, so hey!
I did like this movie. Despite deficiencies in the script and acting and a dependence on computer graphics that rivaled robert downy JR.'s dependence on drugs, it has a great plot. Real confusing, pretty complex, rather impressive. And the abundant eye popping action sequences are cool. I gave it a 7/10, Jar Jar Binks still sucks though. He is only in it for a few minutes total.
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
best movie i have seen since lord of the rings
this is the best movie i have seen since lord of the rings. That really doesn't sound like much, considering that they came out at the same time. But i saw this movie in late april, so some time HAS elapsed. It is truly great. It gets kinda boring after an hour, but the first hour, and the last fifteen minutes or so more than make up for the momentary (and i emphasize momentary) lapse in action. Gene Hackman is brilliant in this movie. Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson have crafted a beautifully devious script. It is dark and hilarious. Ben Stiller is truly a great actor, not just a great comedian. I really wnat to emphasize Ben Stiller. He is really superb in this movie. The soundtrack contributes so much to the movie with familiar voices and familiar songs. The choice of well known actors to play bit parts is fabulous. This is a great, great, great, great movie. I really enjoyed it. I do have to be honest, for about forty five minutes there it got kinda scary, it almost turned out to be a bad movie, but the ending was great. I loved this movie. It somehow managed to pull itself off. 9/10
The Last Castle (2001)
this is basically a harmless movie
Okay, i am not sure about this one. It is entertaining. However it requires a certain amount of faith. First of all, the catapult they build is absolutely ridiculous. Second, it was very predictable, so don't try to think to much during this movie. The ending i thought was very unsatisfying. It didn't make much sense the way it turned out. I think the worst part about this movie is that it shows how Hollywood has run out of all original ideas. There is not one iota of originality in the whole movie. It reeks of "The Shawshank Redemption," "Cool Hand Luke," John Steinbeck's book "In Dubious Battle," and the ending is somewhat reminiscent of "Gladiator." I enjoyed this movie as a mindless action flick, but as nothing more. Hollywood is truly starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel when a movie like this gets made. But what the hell, this is a fun movie. Why not see it? It is a good way to kill two hours and 13 minutes. I was going to give it six out of ten stars but i decided to give it five just out of spite.5/10
Bad Taste (1987)
why can't more movies be like this?
Oh, i wish, i do wish that more movies could be this shamelessly violent. Why do we have to be bogged down by plot, whiny sniveling actors, and directors that are full of themselves? Why can't we just have mindless violence like this without it suggesting something wrong in society, like in a Quentin Tarantino film? This movie is one hundred percent enjoyable because of the way it has absolutely no redeeming qualities. It is funny. It is hysterical. After you see this movie, you are glad that Peter Jackson was the one who got to do Lord of the Rings because any other director would have just bastardized it. You get the idea from this movie that Jackson knows what is really important in a movie. Entertainment. Plain and simple. This movie is utterly silly, and way too much fun. You see this in Lord of the Rings as well. Even with the big budget, great acting, makeup, and visual effects, Jackson didn't sacrifice the entertaining aspect of the movie in order to appease the academy. Just like Bad Taste, i get the idea that the purpose of that movie was to have fun, and Jackson's story telling abilities are allowed to flourish because of movies like Bad Taste. This movie is absolutely horrible, and i loved every minute of it. 9/10
Gosford Park (2001)
what the heck is the big deal
This was quite possibly the most boring movie i have seen in a long time. When i look at the films that were nominated for best picture(the watchable A Beautiful Mind, the Jaw Dropping Moulin Rouge, and my personal favorite Lord of the Rings; I have yet to see in the bedroom) i quite frankly expected the same caliber of film from Gosford Park. This movie does absolutely nothing for the first hour and a half. It is character development. For an hour and a half. I have never seen anything so slow or uninteresting. The key to any story is conflict. In this case, i feel conflict was given up in favor of amusing english banter. It is NOT an hilarious send up of British upper class. It is NOT a twisted murder mystery that keeps you guessing.It is an excuse for Robert Altman to get out of the house. Plain and simple. By the time anything closely resembling a conflict happens, I was so completely inundated by their dry english wit that i stopped caring. I don't think it was possible for me to care less about any of the characters on screen. When the plot starts to thicken around the dinner table as angers start to flare at the would be murder victim, i just stopped caring. I didn't care when he died. I didn't care when the inspector came. I didn't care when the maid started snooping. I didn't care when "shocking revelations" were made clear. Ultimately, i didn't care when i found out who the murderer was. I just didn't care. Oh God, i don't care. don't care. don't care. for the love of god, i can't stress to you the level of my "not caring." There were no, NO, impressive actors, Robert Altman is a ninny, the script was so bland i wouldn't eat it with tabasco sauce, the ending went like this: "okay we are bored, we need to end it now...um...you, you were the killer." The end.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
too cool for words
I do not remember the last time i saw a movie this good. I am thinking maybe braveheart, only this is way better than braveheart. Superbly acted, awesome visual effects. The way cinematography is used to make elijah wood appear small and make gandalf the towering sorcerer is beyond cool. Superbly written, three hours long and not one wasted shot, not one wasted word, not one wasted movement. This movie will sadly not win the oscar's it deserves. They will more than likely go to the middle of the road "A Beautiful Mind" simply because LOTR is too good and too popular. If they have any brains, they will give this movie all thirteen oscars it has been nominated for.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
great flick
this a masterful piece of storytelling by Steven Spielberg. This showcases his talent to play with the emotions of people that we would later see in his oscar winning movies on a much larger scale. This movie is genuinely suspenseful and it filled me with a sense of wonder. The effects tend to get dated a little, but the power of the story remains the same. The best parts, at least in my opinion don't even require special effects as Spielberg resorts to not showing the aliens or spaceships. By doing so, he does what he did in Jaws which is leave it up to the imagination of the viewer. In so doing, the end result is more frightening than if he were to just come out and show the aliens. Great movie, 9/10
We Were Soldiers (2002)
good flick
this movie was incredibly graphic. I really thought it was well made. It grabbed your attention with it's intense surreal battle scenes. However, this film is not without it's flaws. Namely, the biggest flaw is when they interrupt the grim intense and surreal battle scenes to cut to the reactions of the wives getting their telegrams about their dead. Who cares? As if they could get these telegrams out so fast that it could happen at the same time. Basically every single scene with the wives of the soldiers in it, every single scene, was worthless and could have been cut from the movie as it only constituted about ten mintues of film. It was very distracting.
On the other hand, the characters, basically all of them, were very one dimensional. I didn't find this so distracting as the wife thing, but it bears mentioning. Hal Moore (Gibson)is the model person, it is almost ridiculous, but fortunately for the movie his shallowness is only contained in the first few minutes of the film. Once the action moves to Ia Dang, Gibson brings remarkable depth to an unremarkable character.
Aside from the lack of depth, the obligatory wife scenes, and anything that has to do with chris klein, this movie was great. I take a point of for each infraction, 7/10.
Collateral Damage (2002)
bad ass
okay, not a lot of people liked this movie, but i saw it as a return to good old arnold stuff with some new surprises thrown in. Surprise surprise, the austrian oak can act. surprise surprise, he can be totally awesome without once touching a gun. I sometimes wonder if this movie would have had a different effect on me before september eleventh, but in reality the attacks made this movie a much smarter film than it would have been ordinarily. It is just a dumb arnold movie at heart, and i can appreciate it. This movie will probably do poorly at the box office because it is more fun to make fun of arnold than to think his movies as worth while, it is released during the dumping grounds of the movie season, and it is competing with the olympics. However, this is a good movie, and i highly recommend it to anybody.