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jeremiah-39
Reviews
The Man from Earth (2007)
Mediocre philosophy, packaged in a mediocre film with a lackluster ending
First off, let me say that, after watching this movie, I am fairly surprised to see that it has an 8 out of 10 rating here on IMDb. It started out slowly and was had to follow at times. Shortly after the beginning, once the plot and characters were fairly established, the film was somewhat interesting to me. There were some interesting intellectual points made in the dialog between the characters; certainly not things that I think about or talk about in the average day--and I suspect I am not alone in that--and so watching this movie was somewhat thought-provoking and interesting for me at times. I got the idea about a third of the way through the movie that the writer was interested in promoting an atheistic/agnostic viewpoint, at least as a subtext of the film. Then, about two-thirds in, the 14,000 year old main character drops the bomb: he is/was Jesus Christ. In the film, the character resists sharing that information, and only does so when pressed. But, it is clear that the writer of the film is/was at the time of writing a non-believer (or why would he have written this film?) and is interested in proclaiming that belief through this work of fiction. Just now, as I type this review, it strikes me that even the title of the film, "The Man from Earth", is clearly, after watching the movie, anti-Christian; that is, the title clearly implies that Jesus Christ was only a "Man from Earth", not God from heaven. I'm not sure why the writer didn't title the film, "The man from Earth", (lower case 'm') for a bit of pseudo-clever subtle emphasis of the apparent main thrust of his writing. From the point at which the title character revealed that he was allegedly the one called Jesus Christ during that part of his 14,000 year life, I kind of tuned out, but I didn't turn it off, because I thought the ending must be somehow particularly good for the movie to receive such high reviews here. Well, I was wrong. The movie puttered out slowly, just like it began. As I mentioned above, there is some dialog here and there that many would find interesting. And, if you dislike Christianity or Christians or you have an atheistic/agnostic world view, then you may well find this film overall somewhat enjoyable. However, I feel that this film was mediocre at best, and your time would be much better spent--whether your aim is entertainment or intellectual stimulation--on some activity other than watching this movie.
Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
This is not a good movie. Rent something else.
The first 45 minutes or so of this movie were *alright*. Then it got pretty boring, and I stopped paying attention and started thinking about more exciting things...like tax accounting and paint drying.
OK, but seriously...I thoroughly enjoyed Gladiator; it was an entertaining movie (I say this just to give you a frame of reference).
Kingdom of Heaven was NOT anywhere near as entertaining as Gladiator.
OK, let me give you one example of something that annoyed me. The prince or king character (I can't remember which) who had leprosy. This character was about as idiotic and annoying as the disfigured, mask-wearing character in "Hannibal", another disappointing Ridley-produced movie, though not as bad as this one is. I'm not hating on Ridley Scott...I'm just hating on this movie, because it just wasn't very enjoyable to watch.
I recommend that you find another movie to rent, and don't waste your time or money on this one.
Cool World (1992)
This is the worst movie I have ever seen
When I saw this movie in the theater in 1992, about 3/4 of the way through the movie I left the movie theater in disgust of the utter awfulness and almost total lack of any entertainment value of this movie...
...I think that is the only time that I have ever left a movie early (i.e. I *don't* do that...except for Cool World).
This movie was painful to watch. It became the benchmark of badness (not bad good, bad bad), against which I evaluated all other bad movies that I have seen over the years. For several years after seeing the movie, when something sick and wrong came up in conversation, I often thought of Cool World.
Do yourself a favor, and do NOT see this movie.