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Star Trek (2009)
Star Trek RIP
So Captain Kirk is now basically nothing more than a juvenile delinquent who got lucky? So Spock and Uhura are getting it on all over the Enterprise, even though she was apparently a student of his at the academy? Is Checkov now nothing but a clown? Has the Star Trek universe become nothing more than an endless feedback loop of journeys from future to past? Where were all of Starfleet's humanistic ideals--The ones that have inspired fans for generations? I got to the end of this movie and I didn't really care to see more adventures with these people. They looked like a bunch of LA mall rats running around unsupervised on Daddy's starship.
I did think it was cool that they got Mike Tyson to play the Romulan commander. Who knew he could act?
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
A Bloody Mess
I love "Sweeney Todd" the Broadway show. But what a relentless, grim, slog this movie is.
Where to begin? Johnny Depp looks like Cruella De Ville, and sings like David Bowie. He is completely miscast. An overrated actor if there ever was one. Helena Bohnam Carter fares slightly better, but can barely carry a tune. Both look too young for their roles.
Many scenes contain whispered or otherwise unintelligible dialogue. Other scenes are terribly under lit.
The movie has no tempo, no shape. The pacing is leaden. The staging is pedestrian, even during the musical numbers. You keep waiting for them to take off, but they just plod along to their lead footed conclusion.
By stripping out half the score, Burton has taken away the context, the irony, and the dark humor of the Broadway show. What we are left with is a docu-psycho-drama...with music! In the Broadway show, Sweeney gets up off the floor at the end and admonishes the audience to "attend" his tale. In the movie, there is no such relief. All we are left with is a perverse, depressing, bloody pieta...fade to black.
Oh, and the blood---! It's horrific, and no amount of apologizing or explaining on behalf of the production team can excuse it. This is beyond "over-the-top," it's gratuitous, even pornographic. Only for the very strongest of stomachs.
The audience I saw the movie with greeted the credits in absolute silence. Then we all glumly shuffled out of the theater, feeling like we needed a shower.
Who is this movie for? People who like musicals will hate the blood. People who like slasher flicks will hate the music. People who like Sondheim will hate the reduced score and the inadequate singing voices. And the teeny boppers who like Johnny Depp will be traumatized for life.
It's a movie for nobody. Stay away. Rent the DVD of the Broadway show.
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
Mildly Disappointing
I am one of those pathological Bush haters.
But I was mildly disappointed by this film. I didn't think that the obnoxious tone was necessary. In fact, I think it undermined the credibility of the film.
I mean, the Bush administration is so thoroughly corrupt and criminal that all you have to do is roll the tape of them spinning out their lies, and then stand back. They incriminate themselves!
Moore does a little of this, but not enough, in his film. The sequences in which he indulges in his snarky attitude are more numerous, and extremely tedious.
This movie is not quite the knockout punch that the hype makes it out to be. A shame, really. A wasted opportunity.
The Door in the Floor (2004)
Preposterous
Spoilers--
I had the same problem with this movie that I have with John Irving's novels. I never believe that the people he writes about would act the way he says they do.
I never believed the people in this movie for a second. Do real people actually grieve this way? I doubt it.
Jeff Bridges character was the most interesting, and he threw himself into it. A manipulative, rutting rogue. The quintessential anti-hero. A shame that the rest of the movie wasn't up to his performance.
It's hard to tell if Kim Basinger was actually acting. All she was given to do in the movie was to be catatonic with grief.
Jon Foster, the young boy, was good, but was given impossible situations to play. He engages in utterly joyless sex with Kim Basinger, and the audience is asked to believe that he falls in love with her. (During one excruciatingly bad seen she weeps while they are doing it!) The question burns on--Why can't anyone actually enjoy sex in American movies???
In real life the boy would be traumatized by spending a summer with these people! Instead this is presented as a fond memory, a "formative experience".
Not very good.
The Passion of the Christ (2004)
Mel's Christ Complex
Ignore the fundamentalist shills raving about this movie.
This movie is not religion, it is pathology. It reveals nothing about the nature of the Christ. Rather, it reveals everything about the sick and twisted imaginings of its delusional director.
Mel, here's a clue--check out the Epistles of St. Paul. Paul states unequivocally that it is not the crucifixion, but the RESURRECTION that makes the difference in Christianity.
Thousands of people were brutally executed by the Romans (and not just Christians, either.) Each is deserving of our compassion and pity. But there was only one who went through the resurrection.
Mel, you have even stated in interviews that you believe your own wife is going to hell because she is Episcopalian! What kind of man are you? What kind of religion is it you think you belong to?
How is it that, in our society, all these religious whack-jobs get rich, and then feel compelled to use their wealth to spread their narrow-minded, sadistic religious opinions--and label it "truth"?
Please, folks--if you have any self-respect, if you have any love for true Christianity, AVOID THIS MOVIE. Do not support Mel's megalomania. Do not support the theology presented in this movie. It's not even worth the five minutes' water cooler conversation you'll get out of it.
Minority Report (2002)
Claustrophobia and Nausea
These were my two strongest responses to this movie. In fact, I had to leave the movie before it was over. The black-market eye replacement sequence was just too much for me, especially followed the mad scramble for the "old" eyes. Ugh!
This movie is a mess. There were some interesting ideas and visuals in the first half, but they were completely abandoned as the movie became just another Tom Cruise action flick.
Boring, dark, humorless--and why is Tom Cruise famous, anyway?
The Matrix (1999)
A Computer Geeks Wet Dream
Computer nerd finds secret to the universe, gets buff, gets guns, gets violent, gets babe in bondage leather. The producers of this movie really knew the demographic they were aiming for.
This was a boring, brutal, assaultive movie--shameless in its manipulation of the audience. The violence done to Neo's body (the mechanical spider thing in his intestines, the socket in the back of his head), and then the violence he commits against others in the movie, were extremely unsettling. There was a clever idea at the core of this movie, but after being pummeled over the head by the various "special" effects, I couldn't have cared less whether or not Neo saved the world. I just wanted to get out of the theater, and into the fresh air and sunlight.
Avoid this--unless you enjoy nightmares.
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)
Darth Lucas
In the original "Star Wars" trilogy, Darth Vader was a man who had to wear a mechanical suit in order to survive. He had given in to the Dark Side of the Force, and lost contact with humanity.
Something similar could be said of George Lucas. Over time, he has become encased in technology, and has completely lost touch with his beating human heart. He has given into the Dark Side of Hollywood movie-making, and is now both smug and defiant about that fact when he is interviewed. There seems to be little hope of winning him back to our side.
This movie is even worse than "Phantom Menace". I was actually embarrassed for Lucas. How could a man with his instincts allow such a noisy travesty to be shown in public? The audience in the theater with me was laughing uproariously AT the movie--and definitely not WITH it. I cringed for the man who is trashing his own legacy.
Chase scenes to nowhere, amateurish wooden acting, execrable dialogue, unbearable "love" scenes, pointless action sequences. Everyone stranded, gasping for air and life, in a galaxy far, far away.
I was tremendously embarrassed for Natalie Portman, who was forced to all but bear her breasts in the last portion of the movie. Shame on you, Darth Lucas!! Exploiting this young woman's body for your nefarious purposes! You bloated, deluded, dirty old man!!
Save your money. Do not give in to the Dark Side. Spend the time you have left over renting the videos of the original trilogy. Throw this movie onto a one-way garbage scow into hyperspace.
--GM
The Postman (1997)
A Noble Failure
The main problem with this movie is that nobody writes letters anymore. Even in 1997, when this movie was released, e-mail and the internet had overtaken letter writing as a form of communication. Thus the whole premise is flawed. The idea that at some undefined point in the near, post-apocalyptic, future people will be writing letters again, and having them delivered by the US Post Office seems silly to us now. Scenes of Costner's character sitting in the mail truck, reading through letters full of homey news and kitchen gossip simply don't ring true. It would have been more realistic if he had come across heaps of junk mail and credit card offers. At least then there would have been some satire.
But the movie has its heart in the right place. It's big, sweeping, beautifully filmed. And there are some affecting scenes. But Costner's vanity gets in the way of establishing the Postman as a real character. Hero? Anti-hero? Darned if I can tell.
American Beauty (1999)
American Icky
Every decade seems to have its movie about angst in the suburbs. Ho hum. This is an oscar-worthy idea? Why would anyone make a movie about unsavory, unsympathetic, (not to mention unrealistic) characters who ultimately get what they deserve? What's more, why would anybody pay to see such a movie? I wish I hadn't. I felt like I needed a shower afterward to get this "film" off me.
The fact that this movie won "Best Picture" is a sad comment on the state of our popular culture. "The Insider", a far superior film, was robbed!!
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Hyperbole
Who are these strange people? What do they want? What is this Ring?
These are the questions I kept asking myself as the action in "The Fellowship of the Ring" kept hurtling forward at light speed. I read the books (in the late '70s) as a freshman in high school. And still, I had no idea what was motivating all these unusual people onscreen, except that we kept being told how evil the ring is.
I couldn't understand half of what the characters were saying, especially Ian McKellan. I didn't know half of the characters names, or why they chose to join this fellowship. There were scenes filmed in a style more suited to video games than Tolkien. All those swoopy camera moves made me ill.
Ian Mckellan could have been a fine Gandalf, if he didn't mumble half of his lines. Elijah Wood looked too girly. Boromir and Aragorn looked too much alike. ALL of the relationships were missing. The plot was the equivalent of Judy and Mickey saying, "Hey, I have an idea! Let's put on a quest!"
One of the most overrated movies of the year. It will not stand the test of time. The only way to account for the hyperbolic reviews on this page is to imagine that the Tolkien fans are out in force. Forget the movie--READ THE BOOKS.