Reviews

The only good films he ever made were Warriors and 48 Hours, and they both were good >>>in spite of Hill being so awful.<<<

This is a "thriller" that asks us to believe two redneck firefighters with a pea shooter could fight off a heavily armed professional gang of mobsters.

This is one of the earliest of that awful dub genre, the found footage film. Except the conceit is a character nicknamed "Video" (gee, how "clever") records everything a now ridiculously oversized camcorder the size of an army backpack. How stupid are we supposed to be to believe expert criminals tape themselves during attempted murder? The whole "talk to the camera" bit got old fast.

Avoid Hill except for those two good films he got attached to.

The premise of the film is that the Nazis altered modern music to make people more aggressive and win a war. Once that's established, this takes forever to get to the point.

Instead we get endless sidetracks. Music affects our emotions, it evokes memories, it supposedly can be used for healing. The first two are common knowledge, but the third is new age nonsense the filmmaker wastes so much time on.

And we get constant pauses. Constant set ups that take too long. Take them away and the film is half as long. I kept fast forwarding impatiently.

Finally, finally, we get back to the original premise. Sound being used as a weapon by militaries. By that time over an hour has passed.

And the whole premise was silly if you think about it. Maybe, maybe the Nazis ordered the tuning used by classical music changed. Most people don't listen to classical, and obviously the Nazis lost.

Should have been half as long.

That's typical of the sloppiness of the film. They thought no one would notice all those saguaro cactus? Or all the Mexican extras being passed off as Quechuas.

Probably the strangest is an Indian (as in from India) playing the main Quechua character. You remember the villain from INdiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? The white English guy who played an Egyptian in three Indiana Jones film is here too.

And Nancy Allen, as wooden as ever. Lazy casting. Plenty of dull parts of the film. You just want it to end. Bad direction , super slow pacing. There is a good story in here somewhere, but it's not in the film.

Some of the positive reviews say this is a light comedy. Far from it. There's a looooong sequence mocking Kennedy's assassination. Not funny. At least not the way Seinfeld does it.

And another loooong sequence mocking the January 6 Coup. Not funny. At least not the way Seinfeld does it.

There are funny ways to tackle these events, or any other horrifying events. Seinfeld isn't the one to do it. It comes across as mocking the dead, the murdered.

It also has a lot of references to US pop culture early 60s. If you aren't that old, you won't get them. And I am that old. I get them. They just aren't funny the way Seinfeld does them.

Proof that Seinfeld was never the funny one. Larry David carried him.

ETA: Glad to see the strong reactions to my review, both the angry downvotes and the more than I expected number of upvotes. All the paid bots and Seinfeld's fanboys can't hide how badly this film bombed with both critics and the public.

Do not see this if you are at all sensitive to human suffering. Do not see it before you sleep. It is nightmarish in its unflinching depiction of atrocities. Children tortured, piles of bodies, people starved to death, executions in vivid detail.

Obviously this is incredibly important to see and understand, the level of inhumanity inherent in genocide. But again, be warned the films of the camps will leave you shaken for hours after.

Once the Holocaust itself and the trials are no longer the subject, the series is very interesting and admirably detailed. Highly recommended, but with caution.

I remember this mostly for being the butt of a lot of jokes when it came out. That ridiculous melodramatic moment when Sally Field rants the title, "Not Without My Daughter!!!" When that appeared in previews, no one took it seriously. Letterman's late show mocked it to uproarious laughter.

And there were plenty who found to be Muslim bashing and Persian bashing. I finally decided to see this and I see why.

Some compared this film to Midnight Express. That's another film that demonizes an entire people. There are no Turks in the film, only Armenians. The writer, a young Oliver Stone, later apologized for the racism in Midnight Express.

There's not a single Iranian in the film. Alfred Molina, a Spaniard who grew up in England, does a pretty awful attempt at an accent. Not believable. On top of that, Sally Field did some surprisingly bad acting, esp for an Oscar winner. She very much deserved her Golden Raspberry nomination for Worst Actress.

This movie did so much damage and spreading hatred. Maz Jobrani said "Many of my friends pretended to be Italian." Reza Aslan said the film led Americans to fear all Iranian men were abusive toward women. Porochista Khakpour calls Daughter "a horror movie about Iran," in which "Iranians were Freddy Krueger."

A very bad mostly false film that made many lives worse.

You compare it to nonsense like Stallone's recent jailbreak films, Fox TV's ridiculous prison break series, or even Clint Eastwood's old Alcatraz film, they all come up short in comparison to this.

It's the true story of a mass breakout of political prisoners under the fascist dictatorship of Chile. The closest US film to this is The Great Escape, the true story of Allied POWs escaping a Nazi prison camp.

Similar in many ways, meticulous details, many strong characters and performances, slow build, and a nail biting finale where you root for them to succeed. It's the best escape film made in perhaps forty years.

If you praise vets, people will give it high uncritical marks. Somehow this is rated higher than Saving Private Ryan though it's not nearly as powerful. Ryan leaves you shaken for hours after seeing it. Instead BOB is like watching a fair TV drama.

But it's only 17% accurate. That's according to Tom Hanks who co produced this. The most accurate part is the actual vets speaking at the start of each episode.

What's missing? The many Black soldiers who were part of D Day. Because of segregation they were many of the support troops. But you don't see a single one.

The British and Canadian troops who did most of the fighting, 60% at D Day, taking 3 beaches to 2 by Americans.

Mexicans were not segregated and were part of otherwise all white units. Natives also. They do show a real life Colville Indian vet in this. Portrayed by an English actor, fair skin and brown hair. Seriously? Who is dumb enough to believe that?

Spielberg, who has a serious case of wannabe-ism and always shows whites in the most positive light in all his films. Even in Schindler's List, where he focused on a white German in a Holocaust story. He chose to whitewash the story of D Day, and for that he was heavily criticized by civil rights groups.

ETA: Glad to see the strong reaction to my review. Tell's me I hit a nerve and they don't like to think they fell for a whitewashed version of D Day.

Hard charging and entertaining, but if you stop to think you'll never stop realizing just how wrong this film is. Only for those who don't want little things like truthfulness, or an educator to actually treat kids well, to get in the way of things like revenge and bluster posing as tough love.

In real life the school actually did not get any better at all. Not one bit. Joe Clark was fired for a school pageant where students appeared nearly nude. He was already on his way out for being a loudmouthed bully, firing teachers without cause, alienating parents actually trying to do good.

Some people loved the headline chaser. But most hated him for throwing out over 300 kids over things as minor as being tardy. And the dropout rate at the school actually shot up. Obviously no one loves being shouted at through a bullhorn and threatened being beaten up with a baseball bat.

The film also falsely shows him as a civil rights activist. Actually he was an army sergeant. And his failure at the school was so bad it was taken over by the state a year later.

The man went from a Soul Train line dancer to TV fame. The musical sequences with him dancing were the only thing entertaining in the whole vapid cliched unfunny series.

It goes to show what people will accept when they are unhappy not seeing themselves on screen. Even something as awful and pathetic as this series seems good to them and gets ludicrously praised.

There wasn't a single funny joke the entire run of the show. It would die a quick death these days, but back then with so little competition it kept going for three seasons.

Shouldn't it tell you something that no one from the series was ever heard from again? Unlike Good Times where the main actors were skilled comedic and drama actors with long careers before and after, and the show tackled many serious issues thoughtfully and with good writing.

Fast forward to the dance scenes and skip the rest.

Bay City Rollers fans were mostly 12 to 14 year old girls. They were big for all of two years before the fad surrounding them died. In the US their heyday was even shorter, under a year. Today no one remembers them except for a single hit, Saturday Night.

Abd watching this, you see why. I struggled to remember a single song 5 minutes after hearing it. There was nothing remotely glam about them except wearing matching outfits.

I struggled to see why they appealed to young girls. Most of them are neither handsome nor cute. That's the power of a publicity machine to sell them as that.

So what was Krofft thinking throwing this show together after the band's popularity dropped? Most of it has xero to do with the band. The segments that are mostly have the band lip syncing to later poorer songs.

For the skits, they can't act and have no comedy skills, no surprise. But they have zero charisma also for a band that once enchanted so many.

If you're a Krofft fan, the Krofft segments might appeal to you. Everyone else will find this dull and former Rollers fans will be disillusioned.

Take away the nostalgia of childhood and what do you have?

A show introduced by a kids show producer's idea of a glam rock band. Basically slap dayglo colors and wigs on everything and have them do weak songs ten steps below junk like the Bay City Rollers.

Shows with a dollar 98 budget filmed with the bright painful lights of a daytime talk show. Sets that would make Ed Wood laugh at as too cheap. Plots that seem to have been written while on LSD.

I remember hating Speed Buggy as dull and unfunny. Hating Dr Shrinker as over the top, even to a 9 year old. Laughing at the ridiculous plots of Electra Woman and mostly watching it because Dyna Girl looked hot in tights. When adolescence began she was still a fantasy and the only good thing in those awful shows.

Sometimes offensive, such as praising Hitler as a prophet. There is not a single episode in this that does not deliberately lie, lie repeatedly, and lie loud. The show even admits it repeatedly with their phony disclaimers.

In the introduction of each episode, the narrator states, "We will neither refute, nor endorse, these theories; merely, present the evidence." Despite this claim, prophecies are often exaggerated or presented incorrectly. The series was full of misleading nonsense supported by vague, unattributed weasel phrases such as "some think that", "many believe that", and "scholars suggest that."

The worst is the 2012 hoax, pulled off by white con artists and cult leaders, and denounced repeatedly by actual Mayas. The actual Mayan calendar actually goes to almost the year 4000, and only discusses what happens to Mayas.

Almost as bad was showing Da Vinci's paintings of a flood from the Bible, and pretending it was predicting a flood in the future.

And the Rapture nonsense is not in the Bible. It's from some American fundamentalists in the 1850s.

The series manages to drag out 20 minutes to 40-45 minute episodes again and again.

And most of these cons are frankly penny ante. A woman being conned by her supposed friend of "thousands" of dollars. A con man posing as a doctor.

And of course the music festival that was so poorly run everyone has heard about it.

Part of the con is on the viewer for sitting through this. Take my advice and don't do it.

The only worthwhile episode is on a man posing as a Saudi prince. Even that runs for about ten minutes too long. I kept fast forwarding.

The worst person in this series is not Goldberg. The worst is the vapid talking head they have posing as a journalist in every episode who adds nothing but annoyance.

If you've ever been to a scary out of control concert, this film captures that perfectly.

Sorry to see the victim of the Hell's Angel smeared here repeatedly in the reviews by those who, amazingly, take the word of the oh so credible Hell's Angels gang.

In actual truth, 18 year old teen Meredith Hunter was at Altamont with his white girlfriend. The county where the concert was held was notoriously racist, so Hunter brought a small .22 pistol for self defense.

The Hell's Angels repeatedly beat members of the crowd. This including Hunter, who was beaten by four gang members. That's in the film. His having a white girl by his side enraged gang members. The Hell's Angles then and now are notorious as a racist gang that loves wearing swastikas and attacking Blacks unprovoked.

Both witness accounts and the film do show Hunter pointed his gun to scare off the gang. Then he was attacked from behind, stabbed in the back five times, to death, and stomped on repeatedly by more gang members once he was down.

In spite of the racism of the time and in the county, it took a jury 18 hours to rule the gang members killed him "in self defense." Usually when a jury rules in self defense it's very fast, less than an hour.

His mother asked that the speedway be turned into a memorial park so no more deaths happen there. The county refused, though it did ban further concerts.

And the murderer? He wound up drowning to death years later under suspicious circumstances.

To his credit, Mick Jagger and the other Stones never blame the murder victim, just show shock and horror this happened.

Dark of the Sun was written by a white South African and Rhodesian writer who wrote dozens of books defending apartheid. When criticized, his response was, "That's just the way the world is."

Jim Brown was a huge symbol and favorite of the Black Power movement. Best known before this for The Dirty Dozen , he appeared in half a dozens Blaxploitation favorites right after this. And his shabby role in this may be why.

Brown is the token in this, the sole African in the film that's not shown as a mindless primitive raping, murdering, and looting while covered in paint and throwing spears. This is one of the most racist films I've ever seen.

Mixed with this film are the characters of a literal Nazi and an African president, a thinly veiled version of Patrice Lumumba. But IRL Lumumba was a naive idealist murdered by European colonialists and an African puppet ruler, here he's shown as power hungry and money hungry.

The action is so so, other than the racist depictions of Africans showing them literally howling for blood and the chance to rape.

How anyone could find this thrilling or fun is beyond me.

"Based on a true story," but leaving out so much to make all those involved look better.

It made headlines nationwide, a San Antonio cop who was not a vigilante, but a serial killer. Vigilante means killing criminals, and most assume it's revenge for murder. This murderer killed anyone he assumed was a criminal, usually over petty crimes. A kid stealing car stereos. A streetwalker. A guy buying drugs. Not a dealer among them. Not a murderer.

And then he threatened to kill the DA. And the mayor. And the chief of police. And they all knew about his killings and did nothing until he threatened them.

Three police chiefs were fired for refusing to do anything. All of this is left out.

Plus they even try to make the serial killer sympathetic instead of the psycho he was.

Good in its technical aspects but the story is so misleading.

It was ridiculous enough when 65 year old Liam Neeson asked us to believe he could beat up men a third his age in the garbage Taken series. And Stallone himself mocked the whole idea with his Expendables series.

But that's over the top 80s action series no one takes seriously including the stars themselves. Gangster films have always sold the believability, from the original Scarface in the 30s, Bonnie and Clyde, newer Scarface, Godfather I and II, Goodfellas, Sopranos.

Gangster comedies always suck, and this one is no exception. Stop or My Mom Will Shoot. Johnny Dangerously. Harlem Nights. All embarrassingly bad.

It's not remotely believable that Stallone could beat up men half his age two or three at a time. Tulsa has half a million people, some of them scary rednecks and bikers. Their grandparents burned down Black Wall Street.

If you believe a 78 year old can outfight them all, you probably are also dumb enough to believe those photoshopped images of Donald Trump's bloated old face cropped onto the body of Stallone in the first Rocky movie.

Seriously, that's the actual premise of this. A Black man persecutes a white suburban professional for marrying a Black woman. Some of Jackson's roles seem to be deliberate pandering to the most far out, obscure, and unlikely of fears y the more paranoid whites.

Acceptance of interracial couples has been high for decades, and when it is criticized, it's usually by members of that minority group for "selling out" and "abandoning your own." Spike Lee covered this much better in Jungle Fever, and certainly more believably.

But in this "thriller" the Black man happens to be a cop. So he threatens, bullies, is the bad neighbor, even frames you on drug charges, and then finally...well, read the other reviews complaining about the bad ending....

At best unintentionally funny. Some compare this to Pacific Heights, another "thriller" that's just unrealistic yuppie paranoia.

There's a single funny moment in the entire 90 minutes of this airheaded brainless braindead unfunny pile of schlock.

Lemmy of Motorhead has a surprise cameo where he admits to being a nerd. "Aye used ta play dee ac-cord-yun!" he yells from the crowd. It takes you by surprise and you laugh.

There are zero other laughs. None. Not even remotely funny. You feel yourself losing IQ points the longer you watch.

It's no surprise Adam Sandler is unfunny. He was for about five minutes while still on SNL and has made some of the worst films of all time ever since.

Frasier has been an OK bland action star and that's it, except for one recent drama.

How did they manage to waste Buscemi and Montegna?

Not until his awful attempt at a rap career was it more obvious that Nick Cannon is utterly without talent. He nearly ruins the film and you keep hoping someone punches this obnoxious little spit.

But the terrible cliched script is even worse. It's utterly out of touch with reality imagining band camp is like marine corps basic training. And so many lines ripped off from Rocky...

Obviously we are here to see dancing and hear music. On that it does not disappoint. You are far better off fast forwarding to those scenes and skipping the irritating often unintentionally funny rest. Do that and you will thank me.

It was only in the context of truly awful television in the 80s that LA Law seemed as good as it was hailed. Earlier or later, it wouldn't have gotten as much acclaim.

There were other and better famous shows about lawyers, from Perry Mason to Lincoln Lawyer. Some like The Good Wife and Good Fight are far far superior. As drama, the series was sometimes pedestrian.

And then there were the truly awful unbelievable storylines. The love story between Hamline and Dey was laugh out loud ridiculous. He stalked her, and she fell for him though she was engaged. Suuuuure...

The courtroom drama was generally pretty good. The lawyer love lives, often silly...and why would anyone care about pretty people whining their lives were hard?

This is the Plan Nine of sports films, badly made in literally every aspect. Bad and incredibly predictable script. Bad acting, small town dinner theater level bad. And boring, boring, boring.

Look at the reviews and you'll see a huge disconnect between most of them and most ratings. This film has a low rating for good reason. It bombed when it came out for good reason. That's in spite of deliberate international casting and stunt casting of sports stars who can't act.

If you're not a soccer (excuse me, "football" LOL!) fan, this will bore, bore, boooore you. And the playing scenes are not even ten minutes.

That's right, fans are so starved for a "good" film about their sport, they'll highly rate it just for the seven minutes out of nearly two hours they sat through.

As for the film as a prison break film, yes, the film did lie about what happened in real history. No escape. The team was shot right after the match. Unlike the real life Great Escape, their sacrifice did nothing, didn't hurt the German war effort.

You watch these forty minute episodes and find maybe five minutes worth of anything in them. Lots of fluff and filler, lots of the hoaxers presenting their lies and made to seem far more plausible than they deserve.

Case in point, the alien autopsy fraud that fooled no one and was widely mocked before it even aired. Here grainy black and white footage of an obvious Halloween alien dummy costing all of ten bucks mixed with some chunks of scraps from a butcher is presented as "amazing" and "clever" and having "everyone going wow, could it be true?"

Hidden in the 40 minutes is a single man calling it out as ridiculous. On all other sides you have a comedian, a pop psychologist, and a celebrity agent as "experts."

If you're bored enough, fast forward to the couple minutes worth viewing.