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Reviews
Shutter (2008)
Missing something
The movie starts out slowly and never really does pick up momentum. The plot centers on a young American couple that travel to Japan for their honeymoon, while on the way to their cabin they hit a young woman who gets up and disappears from the road. When Ben (the husband) gets an opportunity to shoot a fashion spread, Jane (the wife) starts wandering around Tokyo seeing the form of the girl she hit everywhere. As the movie progresses Ben's secrets from the past come out to haunt the young couple until the rather surprising end. While the plot of this story was interesting, the development was poorly executed. The acting was average, but the script never really fleshed out any of the characters and one was left with a feeling of apathy when the end credits rolled. Most of the movies in this day and age seem too long to me, but this one might have benefited if the producers would have added something to the story. At only 85 minutes the story just never took off the ground. I always know a good thriller/horror when I can't sleep after watching it and the night I watched this movie I slept straight through without a single image floating through my head. It was a good attempt at a scary movie but fell well short.
Zoey 101 (2005)
Should be cancelled!
I watched this show as a screening to see if it was appropriate for my children to watch. While there wasn't anything exactly offensive about it, I don't think it is interesting enough to hold their interest for any length of time. The writing was horrible with little or no plot direction. Also, the acting was some of the worst that I have seen in a very long time. I felt like I was watching the first play practice for a grade school show. These children are supposed to be professionals, but they look like they failed the first semester of acting classes. These are harsh words for children, but lets face it the show got off the ground strictly on the last name Spears.
Poirot: Five Little Pigs (2003)
Well done with a couple of notable exceptions
This was a very well done adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel with a few notable exceptions. First, Ms. Christie never resorted to cheap tawdry sex in her books, just the suggestion of improper behavior. I was therefore a little disappointed that the makers of this film saw the need to throw in a bedroom scene between Elsa and Amyas. The other major letdown was the fact the Philip Blake was a homosexual. In the book the reason for the hatred that Philip felt toward Caroline Crale was because he was in fact very attracted to her. This was a major change as far as I was concerned to the storyline and one that I didn't really deem necessary. There is also the very end with Carla pointing a revolver at the real murderer of her father. That again was not in the book and again didn't fit in with the storyline. For avid Agatha Christie fans, they would realize at once that it was a dramatization from a screenwriter trying desperately to do a better job than Ms. Christie herself.
I enjoy this series immensely, I just wish that the folks that do the adaptations would stick to Ms. Christie's style and writing a little more and avoid the needless sex and violence that this generation seems to enjoy so much.
Cold Creek Manor (2003)
Predictable and disjointed
This movie had a lot of potential to be a really great film. Unfortunately, it did not live up to that potential. It was disjointed and never really flowed. The scenes seemed to be slapped together at random.
There were never any plot twists or unpredictable happenings. The basic plot was a family of city-slickers that move to the country, the sheriff sounds like a hick, her sister is a tramp and the former owner of the families new home is a psychotic ex-con. The climax of the movie occurs during (surprise, surprise) a storm with the phone lines dead.
Never at any point of this movie did we think the killer was anybody other than Dale Massie, former owner and resident psycho.
This movie was disappointing, but definitely not the worst movie I have ever seen. The ending was creepy, even if it could be seen coming from a mile away.
Final rating 4 out of 10.