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SalutToi
Reviews
Heavy Metal (1981)
old fart
I saw it 20 years ago and liked it. I was 15. It was fun because it was a cartoon with violence, gore, aliens getting high and naked chicks with big boobs. I saw it again this year and I thought it sucked. First of all, there has been a lot of adult cartoons in the past 20 years so the shock effect just wasn't there. It is also very uneven. It is basically a collection of 10 minutes not-really-related sketches put together by different persons, and it shows. The animation quality of many of the sketches is below the average Saturday morning cartoon. Pretty bad. 3/10.
Steal This Movie (2000)
Pro left-wing but good
I prefer when documentary-type of movies tell a story without taking sides. Unfortunately Steal This Movie is (like me) a pro-left-wing movie. It tells the biased but pretty faithful story of left-wing icon Abbie Hoffman. Nothing new under the sun but still pretty powerful. The hippie revolution was more than just sex-drug-and-rock'n-roll. 7/10.
The War Zone (1999)
Ugly but powerful
This is not a family movie. This is also not your average American child-abusers-bashing type of movie. Usually, in movies about incest, the father is a violent nothing-to-like-about-him type of guy. In The War Zone the father is actually a caring and "loving" father but with a twisted idea about acceptable sexual behaviors. The pace is very slow and nothing is totally black or totally white in this movie. The characters are really deep and twisted and the acting is top-class. The problem with this movie is that it is too good and because of its subject-matter it translates into an unpleasant experience. 7/10.
Tank Girl (1995)
For Spice Girls fans
I really don't see what this movie has to offer unless you are a 13 year old Spice Girls fan totally into that "girl-power" thing. The whole movie is about the clothes, make-up and weird haircut of the lead actress. No deadly situation can stop her from delivering yet another cool one-liner and she always look her "best" (3 inches of fresh make-up and a new wardrobe) even after spending days crawling in a desert. The use of very long samples from hip-back-then rock bands and the very long cartoon intermissions totally kill the little momentum the movie has going. The story and acting are as pathetic as the "special effects" (you can clearly see the cables in the back of the jumping half-human creatures). Worst than Battlefield Earth. 2/10.
Alien (1979)
THE classic of the genre
Over 20 years ago this movie defined the sci-fi/horror genre. It also created the darker futuristic vision where spaceships are not lighten like a Christmas tree and run by 1000 clean-cut well-behaved look-alikes. It amazes me to see that after more than 20 years and despite numerous (too many) attempts, nobody has managed to match it. This is still a really scary movie with a vision of the future that still fascinates me. This movie is to the sci-fi/horror genre what 2001 is to pure science-fiction or The Exorcist to pure horror.
The Fast and the Furious (2001)
MTV
It's a movie about a bunch of cool dudes wearing cool clothes and cool haircut and driving cool cars. The camera work and sound editing is also meant to be cool throwing way too much of everything at the audience. And if this was not already enough coolnest, here comes the cool music. The flavor-of-the-week soundtrack is a mix of all the teenager cool hip-hop and cool new-metal hits. It's loud and constant. It's sometimes hard to hear the actors deliver their cool one-liners. The entire thing looks like a cross between a car ad and a sexy MTV mega-hits video. I guess I'm just not cool enough. 3/10.
Chocolat (2000)
Overrated
Cute but pretentious. I couldn't care or believe any of the main characters. Could it be because this is one of those so-called "girl movie", I don't know. I can't believe the number of good reviews it got. Worst movie to be nominated for an Oscar. 4/10.
Dark Days (2000)
The way a documentary should be
What I really liked of this documentary is that it does not take side. It lets the characters tell us their story without trying to make us feel sorry for the them like most documentaries about poor people try to do. Some of the characters were forced into that situation by events outside of their control while some want to be there and are happy about their situation. Some others do not really realize that there are alternatives. Weird stuff. Would never have thought that this could be true. 7/10.
The Haunting (1999)
An oxymoron movie
Very good special effects and the house design is amazing. Ok acting. Story starts with an interesting premise but turns out to be a typical haunting house story. The main problem is that this is a PG-13 horror movie. An oxymoron if you ask me. How can you have an horror movie without horror, without scares, without gore, without any content not suitable for children? What's next? An action movie without violence? If at least this was one of those light comedy-horror movie. But no, it wants to be a straight horror flick. It felt like a TBS edited movie. 5/10 because the visuals makes it almost worth the watch.
Armageddon (1998)
Insulting
I'm a huge fan of sci-fi movies but I found my Waterloo. I don't expect all sci-fi movies to be 100% scientifically accurate and have believable characters but there's a limit! Armageddon is an insult to my intelligence and I hated that MTV type of editing with extreme close-ups and a camera that cannot stay still for more that 0.1 sec. The characters are two-dimentional in a very annoying way. Really, really bad. I actually found it worst than Battlefield Earth. 2/10.