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Movie review Paycheck (2003)

9:35 am by Post in Biography

Phillip K. Dick must be rolling over in his grave after observation this one. This manque sci-fi/thriller might be more than aptly highborn The Ben Identity, as it bears many similarities to a little picture starring Flatness Damon from a couple of geezerhood back. It also has a draw in coarse with Add up Recall - which is no surprise given that Mr. Cock wrote that one as well. That movie, all the same, moved like a load train spell Paycheck zips along like a tugboat.

In Paycheck, Affleck plays a scientist of sorts who loses chunks of his remembering after agreeing to hire part in an experiment (don’t ask why, as I’m a tad confused to the answer). With only a handful of clues, he struggles to figure out what he’s been doing for the last few years. This leads to a apocalypse that could be fatal.

Paycheck was directed by action meistro John Solicit, and piece this expert craftsman has dazzled with his Hong Kong whole kit (see Hard Boiled and The Orca) and even entertained with some of his American efforts (see Broken Pointer and Showdown), his last picture was atrocious (I’m reffering to the dreadful Mission: Impossible 2). Truth be told, Paycheck does offer up a couple of bang-up sequences including a motorcycle chase that ends in many an explosion, but none of these sequences move the story along. Like the big state highway chase in Matrix Reloaded, they’re simply there to look cool. And Mr. Woo’s trademark slow movement shots of doves flying into frame have become increasingly ostentatious. They’re no longer cool. They nearly seems like they’re being included as a caper.

An challenging story is what’s missing in Paycheck. Sure, it has elements of an interesting tale, but they never film shape, and the big revelation in this film comes crosswise as more silly than anything else. I know this flicker is supposed to be escapist fun but I just couldn’t get into it. I was likewise busy laughing.

Ben Affleck doesn’t do anything exceptional here and he has yet to prove that he is capable in an action role. Madcap was overrated, and while decent, Sum of All Fears didn’t blow me away. Affleck is gifted to be sure. He’s terrific in movies like Chaising Amy and even looks better in Kevin Smith’s upcoming Jersey Miss, but here, I just didn’t buy into him. Uma Thurman is precisely dreadful in this part which is a shame because she’s coming off an spectacular, high get-up-and-go turn in Kill Bill. In her defense, the dialogue she’s asked to deliver, plausibly couldn’t be carried off any better by whatever other actress. Aaron Meister Eckhart shows up in a villainous persona, and his absolute absence of menace doesn’t help matters. Even dependable actors like Alice Paul Giamatti and Colm Feore can’t breathe life into this tidy sum.

As I stated, there are some interesting ideas buried somewhere in this movie. Phillip K. Hawkshaw is a terrific sci-fi writer (check out Minority Report, Bladerunner), but piece watching Paycheck, you’d never guess it. Because of the way of life it was written and directed, it just feels like a compilation of much better movies. There are plenteousness of wagerer movies playing at theaters right now (Return of the Martin Luther King to make one). The only bounce in this paycheck is going to be due to insufficient fun.

Okay so Afflleck proved he could pull off playing Tom Clancey’s hero - but for the lovemaking of Cock - Sting to drollery Ben - hook up with Mat for another one or give Kev a call see what he’s got cooked up.

How was Affleck able to buy that drawing ticket and conceal it in the bird cage if he was locked in a lab for three days?

nice! coherent movie!

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Movie review The Life of David Gale (2003)

1:59 am by Post in Biography

While watching The Animation of Saint David Gale, I couldn’t help oneself but think of the dreadful I Am Surface-to-air missile and the awful John Q. Like those pictures, this motion-picture show takes a serious subject (capitol penalization), and approaches it in an solely unrealistic fashion. Thankfully, this film is better than the antecedently mentioned titles, but not by much.

In The Life of the David Gale, Kevin Spacey plays the claim character; a philosophy professor/death penalty opponent, who finds himself on death rowing in Texas. He may or crataegus oxycantha not have committed the murder for which he has been sentenced, and it’s up to a reporter (Kate Winslet) to put the pieces of the criminal offense together in front it’s also late.

This picture was directed by the terrific Alan Dorothy Parker (Angel Heart, The Paries, Midnight Express), which makes this live all the more demoralizing. First off, as a statement on capitol penalisation, The Life of David Gale fails miserably. In the first-class honours degree half of the photo, the film takes an obvious anti-death penalty approach, but as this dull thriller progresses, it’s unvoiced to know what variety of position the celluloid makers want the audience to take up. The characterizations here ar very poor, and those who contradict the dying penalty in the film are drawn as mad zealots–making it very difficult to empathize with them. Even leads Spacey and Laura Linney come crossways as wacky, which entirely undermined any statement the film hoped to make.

The Life of David Gale never really works as a thriller either, because it’s so blamed predictable. I had the murderer pegged before the movie even started. It’s been suggested by many in the press that the ending of this movie is mind blowing. The only mind blowing thing about it is that more people weren’t able to figure out where this story is headed.

The Life of David Gale certainly has an attractive and competent cast at it’s disposal. Kevin Spaced-out is upstanding as Gale, but the stilted script and fumbling direction force him sinful in a number of scenes (the whole alcohol-dependent thing really wore thin.) Still, Spacey remains a captivating screen presence, and even in this mess hall of a film he makes the most of what he has to work with. Kate Winslet is entirely wasted in her underwritten role, and many times in the film she overplays her part. In fact, there were a couple of dramatic scenes that brought giggles from the hearing. Of the entire draw, it is Laura Linney who actually comes alert as Gale©ös good friend and colleague death penalisation opponent. With each passing performance, Linney proves to be a compelling actress. This is better do work than this picture deserves.

I really hoped for more stunned of The Life From David Gale. I treasured a challenging look at capitol penalisation. Instead, I got a predictable, half baked thriller that fizzled out altogether beneath the weight of it©ös ham-handed polemics. It’s almost as if Parker and his crew became intimidated by the matter matter, and just ditched it–resorting to trite thriller clich s. Which is all the more confusing when you consider that Parker is the director who delivered the goods in the daring Mississippi Burning.

Skip this one, folks. If you desire a thought-provoking film about capitol penalization, rent Tim Robbins’ bowel wrenching Dead Man Walk. And if you want to see Kevin Spacy in a thriller with spectacular plot twists, crack out Bryan Singer’s truly mind blowing Usual Suspects.

The Best Movie I Have Ever Seen Before Night of The Living Dead. I Can Understand How You Could Say Kate Winslet’s Part Sucked But I Like Kevin Spacey’s Part. So Chink Your Brain And Find out It Again.

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Movie review XXX (2002)

2:34 am by Post in Biography

I was really look forward to XXX. The trailer suggested that the movie would be forte, dumb and entertaining hardly like the last Plume Cohen-Vin Diesel collaboration, Fast and the Furious. Well, XXX was loud and dumb alright, but it was anything but entertaining.

XXX is an obvious homage to James Bond. It features Diesel as extreme sports star Xander Cage–a no-nonsense bad-ass who’s tapped by government full-grown wig Samuel L. Jackson to go on a mission. The assignment involves capturing a Russian bad guy with world domination on his mind. I think I got the plot right. But then plot rattling isn’t an issue here, as I’ve again been subjected to another photographic film that seems to have no shooting script. No, XXX is basically one crazy stunt after some other and if you’ve seen the house trailer, there’s no reason to see the movie, because it offers no surprises.

Vin Diesel engine does get the potency to turn a big action star. We’ve seen that in movies like Pitch Black-market and Fast and the Furious. He’s also adequate to of depth, as showcased in the underrated Boiler Room. Here, Diesel looks tough just that’s or so it. The moments in which he attempts to demonstrate intelligence activity are idiotic (watch that silly sequence in which Diesel knocks out a bunch of guys at a diner, and goes into a explanation right after). XXX is so relentlessly stupid and unidimensional in it’s approach, that I really had a hard time even enjoying it for what it is. I hate to sound care a party pooper. I beggarly I passion a goofy action flick as lots as the next bozo. Movies like Commando and Rambo 2 will always be close to my heart. Unluckily, XXX never rises to the occasion, it practically sinks off the screen door.

Rob Cohen is discrepant at best. Of all his pictures, Dragon: The Bruce Spike Lee Story is clearly his best work. It was cohesive, dramatic and electrifying. And in Mr. Cohen’s defense, I wouldn’t call XXX his worst picture. That dubious honor goes to the dreadful The Skulls. He really blew a fortunate opportunity with his modish effort. Since Fast and the Furious was a huge strike, he had much more than money at his disposal, and spell some of the stunts are effective, Cohen is unable to make manipulation of his best plus which is Diesel. Epistle of James Cameron knew how to shoot Arnold Schwarzenegger. Even though the famed action star was already well known, Cameron had the ability to make him seem fifty-fifty more fabulous. Cohen has no such luck. Rudolf Diesel has been much more effective in his other action efforts.

I really wanted to like XXX. The drone suggested that the moving-picture show would be fun. Unfortunately, the trailer was far more entertaining than the film itself. I don’t know that I get much hope for Cohen’s future photographic film career, only I am looking forth to visual perception what Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel does down the road. This vainglorious truck is going places.

Not a great photographic film, I’ll admit, but I like eyesight Vinny do just about anything - I think I’d pay to see him take a dump

If you liked this you might as well like Inside Deep Throat

I actually met the Moody Brothers back in the day, and I establish them to be pretty decent guys. Of course I cought them when they were kind of in their salad days, but even so - they were polite and respectful people

I love that bald sexy bastard period - even though he’s just a mensch from joyzee

They whould have renounce while they were behind in Hands At

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Movie review My Giant (1998)

2:04 am by Post in Biography

This fish-out-of-water story gets a big boost from a upstanding performance from Billy Crystal and an extremely sympathetic turn by the NBA’s Gheorghe Muresan. Crystal plays a talent agent wHO discovers a Romanian giant star. In a frantic effort to save his droopy career, Crystal gets the giant a role in a plastic film. Then it’s off to America to search for his long lost love.

My Whale is predictable and exceedingly manipulative, pulling at your heart strings nearly every second, just for the most division, it works. Michael Liehmann, the isle of Man who made Heathers, throws in some hilarious stuff including a wrestling sequence that involves Muresan and an angry mob of dwarves. This scene alone was worth the price of admission. Rounding extinct a great cast is Kathleen Quinlan as Crystal’s supportive married woman.

Question: When Sam and Max meet for the first time…when SAM runs screaming out of the press where he is concealment…I know that Maximus knows world Health Organization Sam is by his driver’s licence…but how does Surface-to-air missile know Max’s name???

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Movie review Poseidon (2006)

1:13 am by Post in General

Poseidon is a slack remake of the 1972 Irwin Allen, all-star catastrophe epic. I say loose, because, by from the basic premiss and the name of the ship (damn! No Shelly Winters), everything else has changed to keep pace with the multiplication, both in terms of social commentary and applied science.

The position up in Poseidon is extremely simplistic. Several vacationers are having a grand time alongside the prodigious cruise ship Poseidon, completely unaware of the catastrophe that awaits them. Taciturnly racing toward the pleasure boat is a rare oceanic anomaly known as a rogue moving ridge - a powerful wall of water nearly doubly the height of the ship. As they party the night away, the ultimate buzzkill hammers the vessel at a parallel angle with such tremendous force, that Poseidon is flipped top down. The hundreds of passengers wHO survive the ordeal are faced with the realisation that they might non make it if help does non arrive.

A small grouping of strangers (including Kurt Russell, Jolly Lucas, Richard Dreyfuss, and Emmy Rossum) decide to separate from the attest in an effort to reach guard, but their journey to the surface proves to be enormously challenging - hence the reason for going to the pic.

As disaster movies go, Poseidon is pretty damn thrilling - even if the dialogue is consistently hokey and some of the action sequences ar implausible. At the very least, it’s worlds better than Roland Emmerich’s schlocky The Clarence Shepard Day Jr. After Tomorrow (on a side distinction, the dull Poseidon score sounds awfully reminiscent of the music in that movie). There’s no question that Poseidon is a technical wonder and granted that the picture was directed by Wolfgang Petersen (no stranger to getting his feet wet on set - he made Das Boot and The Perfect Storm), how could it non be? Seriously, as extraordinary and cheesy as the movie gets (a few moments regular felt plucked from the Zuckers’ virtuoso parody Airplane), I never looked at my observe.

As a character survey, Poseidon pretty much sinks like a rock. I wasn’t rottenly interested in any of these people - although I was slightly won over by Richard Dreyfuss’ suicidal Richard Nelson. As the miserable passenger contemplates taking his own living, his determination is dead altered as he sees the varlet wave barreling towards the ship. The rest of the characters are pretty much farm animal. You throw a duo of new engaged love birds, a father who’s a shade leery around his daughter’s pending new life, a lonely individual who’s been dumped by his significant other, a desperate mother and her young boy, and, of course, a stowaway. We also have the relic smart ass, big mouthpiece (played by an irritation Kevin Dillon). Don’t scram me untimely, I like Dillon specially on the terrifically entertaining Entourage, simply here, I just precious to skag him. Naught he does or says feels real. He doesn’t act as a soul in this situation would really play. Then once more we do get to a point in Poseidon when we realize this asshole of a character serves a distinct purpose.

While we’re on the topic of character determination - as was the case in J.J. Abrams’ Charge: Impossible Tercet, there were few handbill cast members here - each role player serves a purpose. Whether it be falling behind so they can be rescued by one of the larger name stars, or performing some important life preservation duty, I liked that none of these characters felt irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. What’s more, I was never completely sure which one of them might die. Speaking of dying, I wish Wolfgang Petersen would make taken some real enterprisingness and killed-off supporting player and pop sensation Stacy Ferguson in some imposing cinematic fashion. After all, it was Fergie wHO killed The Black Eyed Peas, so a little payback would have been nice. Just a piddling somethin, somethin - possibly a little spill where the statue of Poseidon catches her . . . with his trident.

Poseidon features some truly painful dialogue and cornball melodrama. Watch as one rider looks deeply into his lover’s eyes and says; "I need you to tell me that you love me." It likewise features ridiculous, "wherefore the hell on earth is he doing that?" type scenarios (top dog among them, Josh Lucas’ heroic - or if you prefer, moronic five story stand out into a virtual stone of fire to save a grouping of hoi polloi he barely barely met.) This mightiness have been an effective and even noble action had the scene been handled with a little more pragmatism. As presented in Poseidon however, it’s downright uproarious. Perhaps Kurt Russell sums it up best with his enormously profound cable, "There’s nothing fair about world Health Organization lives and who dies." Word. The screenplay does offer one or two decent nods and winks
At one point, Russell’s quality Robert Ramsey reveals that he victimized to be a fire fighter. That’s convenient. Not only because practically of the ship happens to be on fire, but because Kurt George William Russell starred in Backdraft nigh fifteen long time ago.

The real star of the show is director Wolfgang Petersen (The Neverending Story, Enemy Mine, In the Line of Fire). When he’s rental the action do the talking, Poseidon bristles with undeniable latent hostility even if we’ve seen such concern before. His opening shot in which the tv camera swirls around the tremendous boat giving the hearing a true feel for the enormity of this ship is breathtaking, but it’s the claustrophobic nature of the picture that sends the heart racing. The sequence in which a grouping of passengers try to make their way through an elevator shaft is gut wrenching, particularly when one character is put in a horrifying situation where he must make an impossible decision. A set piece in which several winder characters ar forced to shimmy through a narrow-minded ventilation system of rules as it quickly fills with body of water, is even more queasy. Yes, Mr. Petersen knows how to ratchet up the tension (granted this film doesn’t come close to beingness in the same conference as his own Das Boot). What’s more, this film lord has balls. People die in this movie. A lot of people. And in fact, there were moments when I thought the studio apartment got off light with the PG-13 rating.

Poseidon isn’t a masterpiece, just it is a optical stunner, and features star special effects. It besides benefits from skipping a lot of the set backstory and just cut right to the chase. Almost immediately, we are plunged into the buddy-buddy of the action. Again, there isn’t a unanimous lot of insight into these characters’ lives, but what Poseidon lacks in character development it more than than makes up for in spectacle and heart-pounding suspense. The movie offers up a tight linear time and a taut pace, and for what it’s worth, it whole kit and boodle pretty advantageously as a quintessential disaster movie. Simply put, I enjoyed myself because I didn’t expect much.

On a side note, Poseidon is playing on various Imax screens across the country. If you take an opportunity to see it in that format, do yourself a party favour. When the wave hits the boat, it’s an impressive spell de force-out of ocular effects. I’ll bet the tiny inside information would be far more effective on an Imax screen.

I couldn’t get past the corny roll in the hay script, possibly they were trying to recreate the dialogue of the 70s, but it was so painfully bad, that it ruined it for me. It could have been so practically better if everything that came extinct of the character’s mouths didn’t cook me beaming they were probably passing to die.

Bring on the Lofty Inferno, or do we have to wait basketball team years for that to clear the PC metre?

I was just watching a show on TV called 10.5 Revelation, which ironically featured a pleasure cruise vessel organism overturned by a immense wave. And then after a Vegas hotel sinks into a brobdingnagian chasm thanks to an earthquake a handful of survivors must make their way through major obstacles to get out. Plagiarisation or barely a piffling "winkler?"

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