Reviews

"The Ring" is a remake of "Ringu" in the most strict sense of the word. The story lines are almost identical. It's been a while since i placed close attention to the Japanese version, but a lot of its shots & angles seem to have been copied as well.

This sounds like a miserably failed nephew of Gus Van Sant's "Psycho 1998", but where a bloody shower was no recipe for quality, "The Ring" maintains a degree of tension throughout which elevates it above the original. Perhaps it accomplishes this mainly because of the Americanized (familiar) thrills & storytelling and the polished look of the production. However I also find the background on the murder of the psychic girl to be more comprehensible. Her nature seems less predictable, which leaves room for a few last-minute plot twists. Agreed, in retrospective most of them are in line with "Ringu" again, but i'd assumed at that point we'd be taking a different path. Another nice altering was the cursed videotape itself: the images were closer related to the psychic girl's past, and with all the technical research involved, it plays a bigger part, lol. Viewed in a darkened television room on my own, this movie gave me genuine shivers. Few can claim that.

This is the only Batman who came around late enough for me to go see it in theaters. Afterwards, my company cursed me straight to the inferno for having them dragged to such a brainless kid's movie. Even at the time, i couldn't blame them entirely.

The Batman series had passed the revue in chronological order so i was well aware of the profound cleavage between the first two installments and the rest of the quadrilogy. The first two Batman movies marked themselves by a dark atmosphere and the importance of the Batman/Wayne duality , which, through themes as vengeance and love, provided much of the human element. From there the screenwriters and set designers injected an incredible amount of cheese instead. The villains became even more colourful, while the superhero himself lightened up his appearance with an arsenal of groovy tools and by putting nipples on his rubber suit.

All of this reached its climax in "Batman and Robin", which pretty much explains why the greater part of humanity condemns it. The X-ray eyes of the B movie addict, however, can see the good within the bad, so here goes.

the GOOD

Although they defy every first principle of architecture, gravity and related laws of nature, the decors of Gotham City are a visual feast. I have a weakness for antique sculpture so giant Greek studs rising in between the skyscrapers as the background for a car chase were a treat (**). The best things about this movie relate jointly to the actors rather than their characters. Clooney is indeed the best actor in the series to portray the philanthropic Bruce Wayne ( but Micheael Keaton remains the baddest Batman on the block) & lovely Uma Thurman just can't do anything wrong as long as she gets an attitude to toy with (Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill).

The award, however, goes to Michael Gough, whose Alfred gets his greatest role here, compatible with Desmond Llewelyn's Q in "Licence to Kill". We all knew they'd change the focus to a secondary character eventually, but the shift is perfectly integrated into the story, not in the least by the arrival of Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl.(nice close-up on her rubber butt, by the way)

the BAD

Almost everything else. The action is everything but captivating. This actually goes for the consistency and pace of the movie as a whole. Surely it follows the routine of creating, deploying and defeating villains but still the whole process is no more than a string of scenes, with occasional sparks of entertainment. Did i mention the suits look ludicrous ?

The whole concept behind reflecting the skies of the opposite hemisphere through the use of satellites can impossibly make sense: to make matters worse, the defrosting of Gotham ... it just won't happen. Using solar rays would a) take more than five seconds to melt the amount of use surrounding a skyscraper b) it'd either cause a giant flood or clouds of steam, both lethal to the little frozen people in the streets. But given that this movie takes it very loose with the concept of freezing and states of aggregation, leave it be.

A word on the villains. The idea behind Freeze is as old as cinema, namely the scientist who's turned into an evil overlord with a noble yet personal goal by some misfortune, usually involving loved ones. To take effect this type of villain requires not only a constant display of an uneasy balance between his thirst for revenge and his humanity, but also a loved one, a cause, that the spectator gives a damn about. Freeze lacks both. Especially his spouse leaves me indifferent as she has no more to work with than a doll and some home videos. Luckily it's STILL Schwarzenegger in a kind of role he'll never reprise, with a funny one-liner (no i'm not giving it away) As long as we have Arnold, we're happy. Poison Ivy would've been great had she preserved more emotion (read: paranoia) concerning Mother Earth after her transformation, but her destructive side is too dominant, except at her very last scene. The seductive element isn't as effective as it could've been with Thurman, either.

the UGLY

The most obvious source of your general amazement was the observatory. The inside can host approximately hundred people and a giant space telescope weighing an equal amount of tons, minimum. Yet the whole building is shaped as a bowl in the hands of an knelled Atlas-like statue. I kept asking myself "hmm...how are you supposed to get up there ? A connection inside the statue would take a long walk.". Furthermore the list could be endless, as distinguishing the Bad from the Ugly is hard in this movie. Freeze's suit, Freeze's minions, Freeze's transportation fridge, the doctor who transforms Bane and Ivy, the festivities at the diamond auction, the dialog between Batgirl-to-be & a holograph of Alfred (note: he sure knew her measurements when he made her a suit that "fits her size") ...

**a special mentioning of the scale on which Gotham is build. The comparison between a human, an observatory, a statue and the surrounding building leads to the inevitable conclusion that the city reaches heights of almost a mile. Fritz Lang might like it, as there is an unmistakable echo of "Metropolis" in this urban fantasy.

In conclusion: don't ask yourself to many questions, focus on what works and you'll make it through the Galaxy of "Batman & Robin". . How many times do i have to keep saying that anyway ? In the case of Batman, i'm sadly not in the position yet to write a more in-depth retrospective comment on the series as a whole. From where i stand, "Batman begins" goes back to the grim roots. To be continued.

Let me start by saying that judging Star Wars is a though call. One half of humanity would gladly see you digested by the pit-monster from episode VI if you dare to say one bad thing about it? apart from "the dialog will never live up to Shakespeare". The other half would like to see the first half digested for maintaining their support to a mindless superficial franchise.

THE GOOD Attack of the Clones (AOTC) stands somewhere in the middle between the original trilogy and the 21st century-styled colourful look of The Phantom Menace (TPM). It succeeds rather well in combining the polished tabloids of modern CGI with the grim atmosphere of the seventies. Whereas TPM relied too much on weak humour and philosophical talk, AOTC has largely reduced the intentional laughs to the traditional buddy comedy between 3CPO and R2D2 and replaced it with a number of solid action scenes. In chronological order: an entertaining high-speed chase through the higher levels of Coruscant, a showoff between Obi-WAn and the bounty hunter which nicely combines light sabers and conventional laser weapons, a composite battle between Jedi/clones & droids & a classic showdown between the villain and the primary heroes of the play.

The "Jedi battle" deserves a special mentioning as it continues the gradual display of Jedi fighting power throughout the series. We started off with the senior Obi-Wan and the unexperienced Luke Skywalker. The Only one to reveal a glimpse of a trained Jedi's fighting skills was Darth Vader, but he couldn't release his full potential without depriving the audience of good guys, hehe. TPM gave us the first combat between healthy, well-trained Jedi. AOTC takes it one step further. Although some think politics are out of place in Star WArs, AOTC does manage to put the rise of the Empire more clearly with a minimal amount of senatorial dispute. Besides, the movie as a whole establishes more connections to the later events of the original trilogy than TPM, which got me stuck on the discovery of Anakin. Especially smooth is the use of cloning to explain why the Empire prefers men over robots to do its dirty work, just because the techniques weren't advanced enough to orchestrate massive droid armies.

THE BAD The dialog and the acting, although that last part is hard to deliver with some class when you're talking to blue screens all the time. Which brings up the concept of CGI overkill. Landscapes, ships and aliens look beautiful, but when you add a single "real" element in the form of a human actor, it always makes me feel like they're humiliated fossils in a computer world. The problem with these complaints is you can't fix them: actors are needed to add something to the graphics, Force philosophy lines will always sound forced, whereas theatrical conversation would look silly.

*** In my opinion, Ewan Mc Gregor portrays the evolution of his character nicely (he's grown mature, but has a better understanding of a padawan's troublings than his own master) and Anakin ( sorry, i never memorized the guy) is competent by means of showing how he could transform into Vader at a later age: scared by his youth and the death of his mother, therefor less controlled in using his powers. By nature he does seem to have an inferiority complex and a short temper with attached disbelief in democracy.

THE UGLY In spite of the good links in AOTC, i fear Episode III will either display too many or too little events leading up to Episode IV. Samuel L. Jackson is waisted on Star Wars. He never gets to say anything besides simple lines or Force-gibberish a mediocre actor can handle sufficiently. I also pity Christopher Lee getting trapped in this, but then again, he brings his character to life.

Grading this wasn't easy, either. Take two points for never being as good as a 50's classic and one point for BAD/UGLY flaws.

I've seen the latest two installments in the Friday series and though they can't be considered as cinematic art, they entertained me enough to take a look at the original when it was broadcast. Having read many reviews on the original Friday the 13th i was able to acknowledge its strengths: the rubbed-based make-up by Tom "Dawn" Savini, the stalking camera movements (one year earlier than Hill Street Blues, which takes much credit for them) and of course the innovative killings. All of them have to be judged by the era in which the movie was made, because otherwise they don't elevate what is otherwise a dull movie. Tension is hard to find, a plot is obsolete. The characters stick in your mind as what they are: butcher meat. The identity of the killer is also more disappointing than surprising, but at least unusual. So what does a young man in the early 21st century has to thank this low-budget cult film for? Its consequences. Ten more Jason movies and a whole slasher genre from which to pick the best. That's why it gets a score over 3 Still, i think it's a shame this movie has aged so rapidly. There are other godfather movies who can stand for themselves decades later. This goes as far as the SF/android classic Metropolis ('26) and the silent Bram Stoker adaption Nosferatu ('22)...

Broadcast here as part of a series of giant monster flicks, SPIDERS had a mission. The giant monster genre knew a revival in the late nineties, but the quality of most releases varies from poor to absolutely zero. So, SPIDERS was supposed to represent the better half. I'm not sure whether it lives up to that task. The campy fun overcomes the flaws, but nevertheless it didn't strike me as above average. Now, usually I refuse to rap my comment around a synopsis, but this time it's the easiest way, since SPIDERS is divided in four neat acts, just like a play.

The events in Act I eventually lead to the basic situation of having a monster on the loose. A fictional space shuttle crashes due to a solar flame near a top secret military base, the kind where illegal aliens both dead and alive are given shelter and therefore appropriately named Area 21. The live video images of the shuttle crew are amateurish, the crash looks like a toy was thrown in front of the camera and the whole idea of aliens with New Jersey accents is never developed in its silliness.

Act II gives us the lead characters. Our semi-attractive heroine is a reporter who, together with her nerdy environmentalist companions, plans to sneak into Area 21 to inform the public on … whatever secrets hidden there. Then there's an MIB-like agent called Gary, who is precisely the kind of inhuman bastard a government needs to handle situations in the order of alien tourism and secret spaceships malfunctioning. I dug him; he reminded me of both the cop on DEUCE BIGALOW and the second lieutenant on TERMINATOR, which proves his Agent Smith act fails in the end. His assistant eventually switches sides and becomes the clumsy hero. The rest of the cast plays a mix of shallow doctors, nervous soldiers and brave yet helpless police officers most of whom are destined to the slaughter throughout the movie.

In the third act, the 30' spider is born out of the mouth (!) of a surviving astronaut, finishes off a scientist and escapes to the basements of the base. This scene has really good special effects, and the CGI preserves its quality throughout the whole hunt in the basement, which reminded me in particular of the cargo bay chase in JASON X. This part is about the best of the entire movie, with frozen Apollo 18 crew members, a Mexican standoff, an original monster disposal and 'Gary's best scene.

By the beginning of Act IV, the movie has little over a quarter left to find a way to resurrect the spider, have it start a rampage in the big city and give us a big heroic finale. It takes place on our heroine's campus, by the way First the XXL-spider bursts out of Gary ( I'm not spoiling anything, you will see it coming ), then chases a crowd of desperately random fleeing students, takes its first cop in a re-enactment of BEAST FROM 20.000 PHANTOMS and chases more people in the big city before the Heroic Twosome finishes it off with uranium grenades (?). Whatever gore made the first kills bearable is absent here, both the CGI ad puppet work on the spider don't work above the 10 feet perimeter and the Shootout Phrase 'suck on this, bitch !' is obsolete.

In conclusion, taste the quality in the line 'if you weren't one of them, I'd like you.'. There have been worse opening phrases to intimacy ( though the pace doesn't permit the heroes to be intimate ).

This teen slasher obviously lacks a decent amount of story, since i dropped in halfway & still managed to reconstruct the whole story ( not in the least because all of it was retold in the form of a confession that the Nerd is making to the Pretty Girlfriend ). Whatever. In spite of some good elements, it turned out to be a typical, ordinary member of the genre. In order to sit through it, these are the good elements : - Alexandra Holden - a girl being hung by use of a traffic light - a guy being crushed with a bowling ball - a cool killer outfit - a katana - Viking dart - a teacher handing us our comeuppance

I was willing to give this so-called masterpiece some credit whatever my impressions after a first screening would be. I thought I was in for some cheesy 70's eurogore. Having seen Argento's Phantom of the Opera, i supposed there was something i liked about Italian horror. It had some decent killings and ... let's say artistic photography, with original angles and beautiful colours. I also saw the Deep Red DVD picturing the mummified corpse found behind the wall in the abandoned mansion. I wasn't in for cheese. It had the same kind of photography and even some mediocre exciting scenes,but all in all, it was just tedious and painful to sit through. Guess one can't like everything considered a masterpiece / classic in one way or another.

King Arthur was one of those movies i loved instantly upon reading the online advertising before its American release - after which i completely forgot about it because it took almost a year to see that memory visualised in our theaters. Now what were my expectations ? A nice historical mix of Roman & Celtic cultural elements with a budget big enough to provide the 'major-battle' custom to every historic epic since the collisions in Ben Hur. They were fully forfilled and even came with several extra spices, such as the bold humorous dialogues between the knights, mostly regarding Bogs offspring, some beautiful panorama's ( especially of Hadrian's wall ) & an almost unrecognizable Guinevere in combat.

On a deeper level, King Arthur offers some clear but amusing references to Gladiator: not only might the leading man just have been Russell Crowe in that armour, he also swings his sword the same way as during the 'Hannibal reenactment fight' & as a first opponent during the major battle, takes out a Saxon carrying a long battle axe. But the one scene that really made my cinemaniac soul go emotional was the battle on the ice, with the cracking & the grasping of the pieces & such, ... it was pure Aleksandr Nevsky.

Now for the critical part. The portrayal of the peoples seemed rather accurate, the difference between the short Roman swords & the knight's Celtic types was a nice touch as well as the worldly affairs of the church and its members for the early period, ... but all the Roman footsoldiers carrying that 'Pax' or 'C-R-istos' sign on their shields to indicate the Empire has converted to Christianism is a doubtful element, especially because they are already shown when the time indicator is standing on 300 AD while Christianism wasn't recognized until 312 and declared official religion until 395. Plus, those men are referred to as auxiliaries, who mostly where foreigners with their own specific weapons and skills, not conscripts in a standard legionnaire suit. i hadn't checked on the origins of 5th century horsemen in Great Brittain or the actual timeline for the Saxon invasion, but i'm sure the crew came pretty close with their setting. Only that stupid "Rus !" yell i didn't get ... that was the name for 8th century Viking settlers in present Russia, what has that got to do with 5th century Brittain ?

The one thing that just stinks is whatever is preserved from the Arthurian legend apart from the name Artorius - naming the whole gang after the knights was cheap, the Merlin character a hasty solution to the question of making what out of the medieval wizard & i could have done without Lancelot looking at the bathing Guinevere, since nothing further happens.

So for once my '8' voting is fully logical : take one point for the Arthurian elements & one for the historical flaws. BUt as long as there isn't an entire flock of Arthurian movies set in this transition period this remains by my judgment the finest Arthur movie ever, outranking Merlin, Excalibur, and Robert Taylor matinees like Prince Valiant.

i recall seeing the last half of FDTD 2 once. I recall it was a mix of action sequences involving cross-like objects and the camera sticking out of vampires' burned corpses. I happened to watch this second half a second time the other day and it is still the same. Those unusual camera angels are nice, but it gets boring after the twentieth time. Nevertheless, FDTD 2 is a lot of fun, especially for those who have seen the original, to whom this will also be especially disappointing. Therefor, it is best to watch the trilogy as separate installments using the same basic idea. The personal twists in this episode include an empty chair with a vampire in it seen in a computer screen, a genuine bloodbath, the bloody consequences of a SWAT decapitation, an adorable crucifix and the magical powers of an ambulance door. Give it a watch, get some candy beforehand and let it be. Only B-movie buffs should buy this.

I caught this movie one sunny sunday afternoon ( why do people always watch tv on dreary ones, i wonder ) with the intent of giving it some glances while doing something else. The plot, as amusing as it may be, seemed too weak to sit through doing nothing. I was right. The modern presentation of the underworld is just silly, the characters as flat as roadkill & the ending particularly weak because it had but to string the twists together. Some points make this watchable : Robert Towsend(though he's most hindered by his lines), the metamorpfosis tricks played on the Kid, and the joke during the end credits - predictable within 4 seconds of course, but still a nice effort.

I find myself often intrigued by some vague piece of information about a movie's plot or ten seconds of footage & after the first viewing, my interest has been proven to be right once again : i thought i'd dig it, and i dug it. So was the case with Bedazzled, reading a rather spoiling review in a magazine when it was running its first week in theaters. (Allthough it wasn't until its DVD release that i sat down & giggled )

The 7-wishes-in-exchange-for-the-soul plot immediately offers more possibilities to build a comedy on than, for instance, the classic triple feature used in every Aladdin movie. First of all, the number is greater and second, its not as much about wishes than it is about interpreting them & filling up the holes with satanic twists. The whole premise takes but a small quarter to develop, followed by the series of acts, strung together by the enthusiastic yet stylish performance of lovely Liz Hurley, in which we get some minor storyline development. That is where i locate my sole grief : i didn't really want to see Brendan Fraser get smart & apply the contract rules towards a truly 'happy' ending. Hurley was likable enough to let her win. But what are you going to do about it ? America requires it.

For those who demand a critical note of weak points, i took a step back and noted some. One, Brendan Fraser is by no means necessary to this movie, even if he does a decent job playing the nerd. It just requires someone capable of playing the nerd. For instance Tom Hanks could have done it back in his Dragnet days. Two, not all portrayals of Frasers wishes are that good, the 'emotional man' being the most tedious yet luckily also the shortest of them all, possibly cause that two-word formula wasn't much to work with in the first place. Then again, it is nicely fitted between the strong Columbia opening & the basketball fantasy ( pay attention to that appealing instrumental piece we all know from the Full Monty's dress rehearsal, 'na-na-na-nah HEY na-na-na-nah' ). Three, that stupid hamburger-&-a-large-coke joke was far too predictable not to look stupid in the whole of the comedy.

All in all, what have we got ? good story, good interpretation, rocking female lead and all that put together cleverly enough to cover the major weaknesses. Highly enjoyable, though owning the DVD would not be among my wishes - i would require several hundreds like that.

I'll probably have to explain my comment summary a little for those people not living in Flanders, i'd say over 99.9 % of mankind. The so-called Battle of the Golden Spurs, dated the 11th of June 1302, was one of the armed conflicts between the king of France and his landlord, the Count of Flanders. Discussing the principles of early 14th-century feudalism at length would take us too far : let's just state that at numerous occasions, both parties would stress respectively their power & independence on the edge of a sword.

19th century novelist Hendrik Conscience turned this battle into a symbol of oppression of the Flemish people, telling a heroic and passionate story how the nobility & craftsmen from all over the land joined forces against twice as many opponents, simply stating : if we each kill two of them, there is no problem to speak of. Thanks to their courage, the muddy Groeningenkouter stream which hindered the French cavalry enormously & the mystical yet inspiring appearance of the captured nobleman Robert de Bethune as a knight dressed in golden armour, Flanders triumphed. (I will save you all that happened before, it's basically more patriotic heroism and more bloodshed in a black versus white portrayal that makes "the Patriot" look subtle.)

Conscience was one of the founding fathers of the so-called Flemish movement, pleading for recognition and respect for the Flemish language & culture in a Belgium that was dominated by French. Now, effective nationalism needs a heroic tale, and besides a short period of kicking the Spanish invaders, there was little to choose from. It is what you get when you are part of various empires for seven hundred years. In that perspective, De Leeuw van Vlaenderen is quite enjoyable, plus it kills a few hours.

Now, about the movie. It is very ambitious. It has Jan Decleir, our best actor ever in one of his best roles ever(as popular hero & resistance leader Jan Breydel - for the Americans : he always has that sarcastic Jack Nicholson thing going )a unique amount of genuine medieval locations & the best ... whatever. It does not have any French dialogue, while it's the second language in these parts for Christ's sake, and in either case we have very skilled actors in the French part of the country. It does not have great views; the historical settings are so tied up inside modern city centers the camera wringles itself to keep the cars out, though probably spotted some nevertheless. It does not have decent special effects, even for the mid-eighties, simultaneously with all that Friday the 13th-like gore : maybe arrows don't give up much blood in some places of the human body, but swords surely do. The acting feels rather artificial. And most of all, you cannot fake 90.000 men fighting a ferocious battle with about 1000 clowns running around on a field, leaving 5 yards minimum in between when not fighting or being dead. The shortage of manpower & effects screwing up the battle really screws up any credit one would have been willing to give the rest of the film. And if even Conscience did not consider the golden knight equals divine intervention in an empty harness to be credible, why should we ?

All together : if i might have 150 million dollars and some SFX crews to do a faithful adaption with some disembowlings this time.

The overall reaction to Monster Man seems to be something like : a cheesy horror comedy that borrows a lot or too much from numerous classics & therefor only manages to entertain a younger audience. Now, i myself am not an expert on the horror genre and still have to get acquaintanced with many of its greatest achievements but i did experience a high concentration of Joy Ride here. Apart from that, this is a highly enjoyable horror comedy, especially for lovers of what i like to call highway-and-desert thrillers. For a horror movie, this one also had quite a happy ending. Not just good, but really happy.

Yet, in order not to encourage doubting viewers too much, here are some negative points : the number of splattering on-screen killings could have been much higher & the final twists in the plotline come too fast & too late.

This is a direct-to-video production with corresponding production values and acting. Well, the mayhem about the stadium looks almost as good as a big-budget disaster movie. Usually the subject of time travel offers infinite possibilities that are mostly mutilated by a weak script, but Thrill Seekers (yes, USA title or not, i get it on cable by that title) offers an intelligent story with plenty of intelligent twists - telling more would spoil the surprise. The atmosphere is also good, though the music has little merit in that : Tourists visiting disaster areas & war zones exist, sadly enough, but the emotionlessness that comes with it does not show until you have seen this. The best part is, it lives up to an expectation few time travel movies can develop to : in the end, the plot comes together. The sole major turn-off : Casper van Dien with a beard. He has this i-want-back-to-shark-attack look glued to his eyes.