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axts01
Reviews
Day of the Dead (2008)
Much better than 'Land of the Dead' and most other zombie flicks
Firstly, I would ask you to not pay too much attention to all these other reviewers whining about this film. This is the biggest point I would like to make.
Perhaps the reason for the moaning is that this film does not have the 'horrfic' factor that dawn of the dead had, and is inclined to lean toward the action gore flick side of a genre.
I thought this was a very good movie. Admittedly, I am certainly not an amateur movie critic who believes my say so is gospel, which those who are reading this will identify with. But i would like to point out a few reasons why I thought this film was good : -
1) A good budget - which equates to having very good special effects, some very nasty ones too, which will make you smile.
2) A speedy beginning yet it delivers the storyline adequately.
3) Zombies return to Dawn of the Dead 'Vicious, fast and rip face to tatters' style, instead of the slow bumbling zombies which was seen in the last film.
4) Whilst watching the film, I was thinking how this is how a Resident Evil game-to-film conversion should have pursued. Although they are entirely different story lines, my point being is that in this film you get to see basically everyone in town get ripped to pieces and in other zombie films, you may see about 10 deaths before the town/city appears deserted.
On the negative side, I found myself quite annoyed with the stereotypical token black man portrayed by Nick Cannon. The constant one liners were cheesy and misplaced. The lack of thought regarding the character development was a metaphorical bullet to the storyline and did quite a nasty job at stripping the tone of the movie reminiscent to how Ryan Reynolds character did in Blade:Trinity.
Even if you do not concur with the for and against points which I made you would certainly agree that once viewed this is NOT a film like Fido nor Flight of the Living Dead.
Borg War (2006)
Probably the best of the fan flicks
Firstly i apologise if this review is not as coherent as it could be, but this is the first I have reviewed anything, and I'm not spending hours tweaking my words etc.
NO Spoilers below Generally, this film is about the Borg collective making another attempt on the alpha quadrant 17 years after the return of voyager. Federation, Klingon and Romulan must form an alliance to combat the new Borg threat in order to resist assimilation, yet there is deception and a new threat emerges with the intent to annihilate all.
For me, it took nearly 1/2 an hour to understand what the plot line was - due to the fact of an extremely 'rushed' opening to the film which was preoccupied trying to force the action and suspense etc down my throat in order to try to grip the audience and enforce confidence that it will be action packed and enjoyable. Personally i found it a bit jumbled and was stumped as to what was going on. I've found is a common folly of fan flicks, no character interaction and no real introduction which is a big part of the real Star Trek. I imagine its done in fear of the audience thinking that as it is a fan flick that it will be boring. BUT ... About 20 minutes into it you begin to understand and the pieces do fit together very well.
For the most part, this film is the best fan production from the Star Trek universe. Albeit that it was essentially made from the game engines of primarily the Star Trek Elite Force games for interiors and characters, Starfleet Command III and Bridge Commander for the exteriors and ships. Despite the graphics being aged by todays standards, the director and produced i will admit they did a good job in piecing this together.
This was the only fan production i have ever enjoyed, which includes Star Trek : Of Gods and Men. I was very surprised and the thought involved and the action throughout.
However..
I have given this 4 / 10 for 3 reasons :
1 ) The speech splicing was reminiscent of a prank call sound board, very very very very VERY annoying when its gets 1 hour in.
2 ) It seems to have been compiled on a extremely weak and old computer, the frame rate goes right down to a flip book during action sequences.
3 ) Not as important as the above - Glitches. Planets, ships and star bases jump and judder around, which as far as i can remember did not happen in the games. Probably due to reason no 2.
If the three tiny points had been ironed out i would have given this 7/10. But frankly, how the makers of this let those points slip through the net is bewildering and beyond me. As an analogy, Michelangelo has just finished the Sistine chapel ceiling painting and decided to smear feaces on it....
But give it a try anyhow!