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Reviews
Black Hawk Down (2001)
And you Thought WAR was Hell!
The horrors of combat are nothing compared to sitting through this movie. Actually, I didn't sit through it. For the first time in a long time, I walked out 105 minutes into it.
There is no cast of characters. It's a cast of clones. And don't give me any arcane crap about how this "merely represents the anonymity and expendability of every man or woman who serves in the U.S. military's giant killing machine." If the script is done correctly (a la "Saving Private Ryan") everybody in the audience would care about the soldiers they see.
As far as visuals are concerned, the movie is stunning at first. Hey, everybody loves a good music video. But after more than 90 minutes, the quick cuts, fast camera moves and dazzling effects make it feel like the same dance tune playing over and over in the drive-time radio rotation.
Turn off the stereo when you leave, fellas. I'm outa here.
Nurse Betty (2000)
Do Not Resuscitate!
Absolutely the worst film of the year.
One minute, the director treats you to an unbelievably brutal murder. The next, he tries to make you laugh about it.
One minute, he makes you feel sympathetic about the heroine. The next, he makes her the butt of jokes and the object of verbal abuse.
I don't just want a refund. I want to be compensated for the misery this incredibly bad movie inflicted.
Mission to Mars (2000)
Visuals - Ten; Content - Zero
If big screen success is all about the pictures, this movie deserves every one of the 20+ million box office dollars it raked in on opening weekend. The visuals provide an interplanetary experience like no other movie before it.
If words are what matters, "Mission to Mars," should never have made it to the screen. The script is overly melodramatic, preachy and poorly delivered.
DePalma's ability to entertain through visual imagery has never been better; his ability to pick a good script (or perhaps his ability to shield a good script from unskilled studio suits who have nothing better to do than destroy it) has never been worse.
My advice? See the movie -- but take a Walkman.
Siegfried & Roy: The Magic Box (1999)
The ILLUSION of Entertainment
The IMDB lists this one as a "documentary." It's more like a 40-minute commercial, written by Siegfried & Roy themselves. At no point do you feel you've learned anything new about these carefully coiffed slight-of-hand experts. The first half of the production spins a magical tale of how fate brought the two European artistes together and eventually made them the toast of Sin City. The last half of the film indelicately drives home the point that Siegfried & Roy's animals live pampered, un-abused existences on the pair's luxurious Las Vegas estate (the only thing that could have made this sequence more obvious would have been a subtitle that read "Take that, PETA!"). Yes, it's filled with fancy 3-D effects, not to mention all those magic tricks that have made this decrepit duo two of the biggest stars on the Vegas Strip. But the best trick doesn't even happen on the screen. It takes place at the box office before the show even starts when you're duped into forking over eight bucks for a so-called "documentary" that turns out to be forty minutes of fluff.