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Reviews
Blackjack (1998)
Blackjunk
Didn't make it to the end - stopped watching about halfway through. Had that itching notion how the things will work out, and I can't remember another flick where I sympathized with the bad guys so much. Sadly, my hope for the model to get a bullet through the head had faded too quick to sustain my interest, and Dolph Lundgren's chances to get his butt kicked were few to begin with. The storyline is pathetic, the performances wooden, and the opulent motorbike explosions are worth no more than 3/10.
Wo hu cang long (2000)
120 minutes you'll wish you'd spent elsewhere
It seems the worst thing you can do is trust the enthusiastic reviews and the unbelievably overblown hype some titles - CTHD included - enjoy in abundance.
I'm not much of a reviewer myself - words would fail me had I tried to describe in detail how bad this movie is. It's not the flying thing, that was actually amusing, not annoying. The fight scenes themselves were fairly average - still, I enjoyed them. At least they helped me stay awake.
It's just that CTHD desperately tries to tell a story that is not there. What I have seen was just a heap of scraps glued together in some vain attempt to make up for a storyline. The beginning is somewhat promising and then after 15 minutes or so everything starts falling apart. New characters appear out of nowhere, things happen for no apparent reason, emerging subplots turn out absolutely meaningless. Now, I know this was supposed to be a story about love, but I expected some logic nevertheless. Silly me. The desert part caught me off-guard, just as I was beginning to doze off, and kept me puzzled for the next half an hour. There is no momentum, the pace is in reverse proportion to the swiftness of the fighters. Halfway through I still didn't care a bit how this was going to end. All the excellent performances I'd read so much about turned out to be just mannequins walking or flying around, staring blankly at other mannequins' faces and going off into overdrawn conversations on a par with an average "The Bold and the Beautiful" episode. I can't remember a single laugh from any of them, not a tear shed, not a single expression of unrestrained emotion. I'm not sure which of those dummy figures I was supposed to dislike or sympathize with. I wouldn't be able to anyway.
The only good thing about it is that I didn't see it in a theater. Wasting 2 hours is enough, having paid for it would have made it even worse.
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
The Shawshank Whimpering
Have watched the thing twice and frankly I still don't have a clue what the fuss is all about. There's hardly anything special about the movie, let alone breathtaking, intriguing or groundbreaking. The beginning is somewhat promising, but pretty soon it all gets painfully predictable right down to the moment the credits start rolling. The narrative is way too often overdrawn and phoney, the music - heavily pretentious and irritating. The performances are not bad, but let's face it - the script is far from demanding. The storytelling is overwhelmingly fairytale-ish and even the drastic bits seem oddly out of the place, as if thrown in to make the thing feel more dramatic. Words keep flowing in abundance, soothingly creating the impression of a nap story told by a lit fireplace. Having recently watched the ingenious "The Straight Story" I was astonished to see how much damage may be done to a picture by putting in too much talk.
All that is not to say the movie is appaling. However, an inch above average is as good as it gets. Both "Midnight Express" and "Escape From Alcatraz" beat the weepy Shawshank experience hands down. 6/10.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)
Faithful to the book, disappointing to watch.
I don't consider myself a huge Harry Potter fan - still, I've read all the books and enjoyed them a great lot. I was quite anxious to see how well was the atmosphere of the books translated to the big screen. I'm sorry to join the displeased side, but the movie IS disappointing - to say the least.
Its main asset seems to be the way all the familiar locations are portrayed - Diagon Alley, Gringotta Bank, platform 9 and 3/4, finally the majestic Hogwarts itself are all visually stunning and wonderfully brought to life. I have no complaints about actors' performances either - with Emma Watson as Hermione, Robbie Coltrane as Hagrid and Alan Rickman as Snape doing particularly well.
Alas, for the rest of the movie... Following the original story it is - logical it is not. There are far too many bits missing to make it sensible. Where's the constant competition of the houses? How come Snape doesn't take points from Gryffindor on every occasion? Why is Malfoy nearly absent throughout? What's the point of having Crabbe and Goyle or the centaur appear on the screen if they have absolutely nothing to do there? I couldn't even see any mention of Professor McGonagall being the head of the Gryffindor House! And most of all - where has the Snape's potion riddle gone? It makes the entire ending feel incomplete and unsatisfying.
While I realize it's plain impossible to transcript ALL the details from the book, many humorous ones COULD have been included if it hadn't been for the irritating exploding wands gags, Neville's broomstick exploits or some overdrawn conversations. Even the great scene in Olivander's wand shop was rewritten and ruined for a bunch of cheap chuckles.
And to all those saying the effects were great - where have you guys been for the last couple of years? I mean, c'mon! The quidditch match is way too fast and chaotic - makes me wonder what are they going to do when it's time to shoot the World Cup match in "Goblet of Fire", which is supposed to be played MUCH FASTER than anything Harry had ever seen! At the same time the effects are lousy, including the most obvious blue screens I've seen in months and flying broomsticks that make "Back To The Future Part II" look top notch in comparison - and that's a 1989 title, mind you. The troll was laughable and shrekish to the point of incredulousness. The stiff dummy pretending to be Neville falling off the broomstick was embarrassing. And since "Forrest Gump" there's hardly anything impressive about a feather hovering in mid-air.
The camerawork is merely average. Having seen how splendid the castle of Hogwarts looks from outside I expected the same kind of grandeur inside. Sadly, apart from the few scenes in the Great Hall, they never manage to convey the sheer size of the place. And excuse me, was that supposed to be the dreary dank dungeon where the potions classes took place? Give me a break.
All in all - an big effort, but with half its potential lost somewhere on the way. Could have been so much more. This - 6/10, tops.