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boris82
Reviews
Layover (2001)
Layover Is Both a Blessing and a Wretched, Awful Movie
David Hasselhoff. I've never understood why he's so beloved worldwide. He can't act, sing or dance (as one unintentionally hilarious scene oof him at a rave displays). Now comes Layover. This movie has to be seen to be believed. To call this a B-Movie would be an insult to the alphabet. For me, this movie is the funniest 90 minutes I have ever spent. I have seen many great comedies, but none had me on the verge of having a seizure from an overload of laughter. The first 30 minutes of the plot is actually good. It almost reaches Mamet "Heist and Con" territory. The rest is just a sleazy, violent, incredibly awful, accidentally funny movie experience. SPOILER ALERT: Check out some of the dialogue (I know them from memory, as I've seen this movie 3 times now):
DAN (Hasselhoff): "I'm so scared, I've got my balls coming up to my lungs."
Jack GiLardo (supremely mysoginstic, evil guy who goes against Dan): (to Dan) "Not a bad day's work, Danny Boy. Escaping from the cops and finding me. You've got more gonads than I thought."
SEXY GIRL speaking to Dan after having slept with him and then conned him twice: "I bet the last time you've been F*#$ked three times in 12 hours was in college."
Dan Responds:"Not even then."
OKAY JUST ONE MORE, HAHAHA:
Dan, speaking to a beautiful temptress that has supremely conned him: (describing himself) "A guy so nice, you f*&^ked him twice." -- it rhymes, get it? Well, Hasselhoff is an acclaimed lyricist/songwriter.
A SEX SCENE also appears in it, although it is filmed so awkwardly that a guy watching would be almost disturbed. What went wrong in this scene? The girl is pretty. An Italian model in real life. Could it be the fact that she and David Hasselhoff have sex on top of strange peoples luggage in some storage room? Or could it because she nearly falls off him at one point while unsuccessfully attempting to straddle him?
PRICELESS. I just can't get enough of this. This one has to make it to the bottom 100. And the greatest thing is that on German Amazon.com, the movie has received an average customer rating of 5,yes, count 'em up, 5 stars. That's the highest rating? Germans just love the guy. But I'm not dumping the Germans here, cuz some Americans I know enjoyed this too. They found it unpredictable and edgy! That sounds like a razor blade to me and getting sliced with it would be half as painful as watching this.
Anyone who loves campy and supremely hilarious yet unintentional comedies, please rent this.
Let me also point out the the "autuer" of this crap fest is Alan B. McElroy. This guy got a screenwriting masters degree from Columbia University. IVY LEAUGE! This could have been penned better by a drunk donkey. He also wrote the Spawn script. That was decent. I'll give the guy some slack.
I found this at my local Blockbuster. They carry a vhs and dvd version of it, but they don't have "Night of the Hunter" or "Rashomon." The world is coming to an end people.
Less Than Zero (1987)
5.3? Come On People, This Is A Pretty Good Movie
An imdb rating of 5.3 is pretty messed up for a movie with such a good cast. Downey Jr. is a treat in any movie he's in. Andrew Mccarthy is also quite good. Seeing him here makes me wonder what the hell the happened to his career? He's a decent actor. He has a good screen presence and he's quite a handsome chap. The screenplay has a few scraps of crappy dialogue but that's a wonder compared to other 80's movies. The direction was pretty good. Jami Gertz is just beautiful. Why didn't she become a big star in the 90's? She's still young, maybe she'll be famous later on. James Spader is his usual WASP rich-boy sleaze bag. I gave this a 6.
Safe House (1998)
Warning: Twinkie scene spoiler ahead!
How could Safehouse attain an imdb rating of over 7? That's beyond me. I'll tell ya what else is beyond: the plot of this movie. It was simply incomprehensible. Unfunny, trite sitcom antics, espionage and pathos involving Alzheimer's Disease add up to a boring and unintentionally funny movie experience. To call this a B-Movie would be an insult to the alphabet.
Patrick Stewart stars as Mace Sowell. I like Patrick Stewart. He has a natural charisma and he's a Shakespearean actor for god sakes. How could he lower himself to star in this pathetic picture? The awful dialogue and clumsy romantic scenes with Kimberly Williams made me not only cringe but also chuckle uncontrollably. Sample Dialouge between Kimberly Williams (Andi Travers) and Stewart (Mace Sowell) :
ANDI: Mace? That's an unusual name. What does it mean? Mace.
MACE: It's short for IN YOUR FACE!
Huh? What the hell is goin' on? Dont' ask me. Even more pathetic is a dinner scene between them, the one where Mace loudly sucks cream out of a twinkie. Other scenes include Mace showing Andi his sound-detector alarm system by telling her "if you so much as break wind it will go off."
Oh, and I can't forget the awful comedy stylings of Craig Shoemaker. He plays Mace's assistant. He also (pathetically) impersonates several celebrities and doesn't get a measly laugh out of that. And he's a comedian!
All and all, this movie deserves a 3. But I gave it a one because it's present rating is a 7.1.
Jackie Brown (1997)
Tarantino Proves He's The Real Thang
How could anyone doubt QT's filmmaking skills after having made Pulp Fiction? I have no idea, but it happened. I didn't much enjoy Reservoir Dogs. I found it gratuitously violent and with more holes than a block of swiss cheese.
Then came Jackie Brown, a refreshing breath of air compared to other, flashier heist movies. The dialouge is top notch, the characters infinitely interesting and the sweet, sweet direction amazed me.
Pam Grier deserved an Oscar nomination for her turn as the money smugling stewrdess making 16 thousand dollars a year. Her amazing screen presence brought me to a catatonic stupor in which I could not take my eyes off the screen.
And the great Sam Jackson has a great time playing Ordell Robie: the crime magnate with a penchant for the n-word. A great turn for Robert Forester too.
Pulp Fiction (1994)
The perfect film
Tarantino's Pulp Fiction is pure perfection. Not only is it highly original, humorous it also has no plot holes. And that's amazing considering it's warped time line.
It's quite rare to have a film so free of holes. The only thing I can think of is that the adrenaline needle scene is pure imagination. Mia would have not awaken from that because the needle would never pierce her chest bone.
Everything else though is terrific. This film is much better than the rancid Reservoir Dogs that featured colorful but unnecessary dialogue.
Pulp's dialogue had a clever way of foreshadowing future events in the film. Example:
1)The foot message scene including the discussion of the diabolical fate suffered by Tony Rocky Horror was a prelude to Mia's overdose. If Tony got nearly killed for touching Mia's feet, what would happen to Vincent after Mia O.D's?
Another trick that QT has bestowed on us through his dialogue is softening our expectations for carnage and violence by having his characters discuss Royal With Cheeses and TV Pilots right before Vince and Jules quickly kill 4 guys in an apartment.
Great picture. Long live QT and renegade cinema.
Reservoir Dogs (1992)
QT's First (and worst) Film
I loved Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, it's in my all time top 5. Jackie Brown was also quite good. QT is truly a natural born filmmaker that doesn't have to resort to stylish excess and cinematic acrobatics like so many mainstream directors do.
But Reservoir Dogs is a very weak movie. There were several plot holes: SPOILER ALERT
1) Why would the head criminals, who have had decades of experience, let Mr. Orange into the heist just because he told them some lame drug story? Anyone could make up that story, ESPECIALLY an undercover cop.
2) Why did the cops risk a bloodbath by not stopping the jewel heist before it happened?
3) And...(SPOILER) Why did Mr. Orange tell Mr. White that he's a cop right before the film ended? Isn't that incredibly dumb? I know that QT probably used that as an homage to samurai films with the theme of pride and loyalty. But Mr White did not do much to help Orange in the first place. Orange asked to be taken to a hospital and White didn't do that. So what the hell does Orange owe him?
My last complaint isn't a plot hole but the dialogue. Granted, the dialogue is nice and a breath of fresh air compared to James Cameron crap, but it had nothing to do with anything. The dialogue in Pulp Fiction toyed with the audience by foreshadowing future occurences and tricking us into thinking about Royal With Cheeses and Foot Rubs right before Jules and Vince blow away 3 guys in 5 minutes. The dialogue in Reservoir Dogs doesn't do any of that. It doesn't even say anything about the characters. I would greatly appreciate e-mail responses to my complaints, because I could be wrong.
I have to hand it to QT though. He's a marketing whiz. He made a film too damn flashy for it's own good and with disgusting violence. This was the formula to get him noticed by Hollywood. And as you see with his later films, they are not at all flashy and hardly have any blood in them. Pulp Fiction wasn't violent at all. And Jackie Brown had absolutely no blood on screen.
Reservoir Dogs sucked, but I think it was QT's "gateway" into greatness. Long Live Tarantino. Can't wait to see "Kill Bill."
Rating - 5
Gummo (1997)
Worst movie ever?
Yes, this is the most boring, useless piece of crap to come my way in the longest time. I know Korine claims that he's bored with "ordinary plot-lines." This has no plot, but you can still make something interesting and disturbing. Gummo was neither. A great disturbing film without a plot would be Bunuel's "Une Chien Andolou." Gummo's so called "disturbing" images came out of ideas that seemed to have blossomed while sitting on the toilet. You could make this kind of movie filth in a week. This is truly the worst movie I have ever seen. Gummo is worse than "Dude, Where's My Car," and that's saying something.