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Reviews
The Unbelievers (2013)
Engrossing and inspiring.
I saw a test screening of this movie at Arizona State University, and it's possible there may be slight changes before the official release. However there is little or nothing I would want to see changed. It's a very well put together movie, fast paced and engrossing. When it was over, I was very surprised that 90 minutes had elapsed - it seemed like less than an hour.
From a brief description, it might sound very boring - Dawkins and Krauss criss-crossing the world, giving speeches at atheist conferences, debating religious apologists and so on. But the film is very well edited and has a very fast-paced feel, as well as capturing human moments like Richard Dawkins nodding off to sleep on a train, or sitting in a hotel room holding a phone to his ear, frustratedly trying to get a word in edgewise as an unseen person on the other end lectures him on morality.
Most of all, this film captures the passion and intensity of two men at the top of their respective scientific fields, who are awed by the beauty and complexity of nature and have an almost messianic zeal to share that beauty and awe - so much more satisfying and inspiring in my opinion than the petty just-so stories of religion - with the general public.
You also get the sense that atheism is a movement whose time has finally come. Even in religion-saturated America, more and more people are coming out of the closet and connecting with each other, turning up at atheism conferences in large numbers though so far ignored by the media.
But this is not as much of a religion-bashing film as you might expect. It's basically an intimate portrait of two friends with a shared passion for knowledge, who are driven to share that knowledge with the world. As such, any viewer can enjoy this movie.
Zombie Apocalypse (2011)
The "Plan 9 from Outer Space" of zombie movies
"Zombie Apocalypse" is so bad, it goes far beyond "so bad it's good", and becomes bad again.
Where to start? Well, for one thing, the special effects were incredibly cheap and cheesy. When a car is supposed to be on fire, all you see is a half-hearted attempt at badly superimposing some CGI flames. When a zombie gets hit by a bullet in the head, sometimes there is a slight spatter of blood, other times the head suddenly vanishes, and in either case the blood splatter is so obviously CGI, it insults your intelligence.
On the positive side, Lesley-Ann Brandt provides some eye candy, which however is more than counteracted by Ving Rhames. The attempt to interject some romance between them made me gag. I almost didn't make it to the end of the movie, but the movie did sort of redeem itself in a perverse way with the Zombie Tiger - one of the most hilariously awful monsters ever seen on big or small screen.
You might enjoy this movie if you like watching really bad movies and can provide your own MST3K-style commentary. Or perhaps you could play a drinking game and take a shot every time someone's head disappears. Whatever you do, don't take this movie seriously or you will be disappointed.
Chill Factor (1999)
Dumb, dumber, dumbest
This is a total paint-by-numbers job that is devoid of brains, originality or believability. Every element of it has already been done to death many times over. Interracial male bonding buddy movie? Check. Road movie? Check. Rogue military bad guys? Check. Pseudo-scientific BS? Check.
I really can't imagine what Cuba Gooding was doing in this throwaway effort when he can have his pick of roles. Especially playing second fiddle to Skeet Ulrich, who was reasonably good in the TV series Jericho but is not exactly an A-lister. And Gooding's role was annoyingly formulaic as the hyper, wise-cracking black guy. The bad guys, the country sheriff etc. were likewise straight from central casting.
There was a fairly good chase scene, but I'm glad I didn't pay money to watch this movie.
Yu Ming Is Ainm Dom (2003)
Is grá liom Yu Ming!
My only complaint about this movie is that it is too short! It is a little gem, and you don't have to speak Irish to enjoy it. But if you are familiar with situation in Ireland, where the language is rapidly dying out and most people don't speak a word of it, even after spending years in school learning it - in fact many people have a violent antipathy toward it - the film will be all the richer for you.
Anyway, Daniel Wu's performance is comedy gold. I was in stitches when he did his impression of Robert De Niro speaking Irish. I also liked the perky but clueless Australian hostel attendant.
The basic premise of the movie is not as far-fetched as you might think. Some years ago I met a guy from a Caribbean island who now works as a chef in the Aran Islands and speaks fluent Irish. And with the booming Irish economy attracting people from all over the world, you can go into even the smallest village and are as likely to find yourself dealing with Ethiopians, Estonians and Ecuadorians (to mention just the E's) as with native-born Irish people.
Anyway, you can watch this movie for free on the web so if you are at all intrigued, do a google or youtube search and enjoy!
Ultraviolet (2006)
Minus twenty stars
This is truly the most godawful piece of tripe I've seen in years. The plot and the backstory make absolutely no sense, the characters are zero dimensional and you can't relate to them because you have no clue what their motivations are (neither did the scriptwriters, obviously) and the dialog is so bad it goes beyond "so bad it's good" and becomes bad again. And the idea that Milla Jovovich can waltz into a room packed with heavily armed security guards and kill every one of them without being hit by a single bullet is laughable. Then she goes into the next room where there are even more guards, this time armed with swords! LMAO.
Obviously this nonsense was based on some brain-dead shoot-em-up video game, well if that's your thing, then you'll have more fun playing the stupid game than watching this brain-rotting rubbish. Or if you're a 13-year-old boy then you can get your jollies watching Jovovich in skin-tight outfits. But if you have a functioning neuron in your brain, don't waste a penny or a second of your time on this Concentrated Recycled Animal Product.
Red Eye (2005)
This is the movie "Flightplan" wishes it had been.
My wife didn't want to see this movie, even though she loves Cillian Murphy, because she figured she wouldn't be able to watch anything by Wes Craven. She missed a terrific suspense movie. It's very Hitchcockian, not a horror movie but much more of a psychological thriller. The two leads put in excellent performances and have great chemistry. Cillian Murphy goes from charming and affable to stone cold killer in the twinkling of an eye, and Rachel McAdams is perfect as the vulnerable young woman who eventually proves stronger and more resilient than the bad guys.
The pacing, dialog and camera-work all add to the delicious atmosphere of tension and claustrophobia. Brian Cox is woefully underused in a minor role, but Jayma Mays is adorable and there are many other minor characters who turn out to be spunky and funny.
The only reason I don't give this movie ten stars is because of the annoyingly formulaic plot denouement, where a character who has been knocked out for the count suddenly reappears in full health at the crucial moment. However, all in all this is one of the more intelligent and suspenseful thrillers of recent years, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006)
Powerful, disturbing but flawed
Ken Loach takes a subject which has been done to death and manages to inject freshness and urgency to it. Yes, there is disturbing violence but it is historically accurate. The Black and Tans were the lowest dregs of the English prison system, violent psychopaths who were sent to wage a war of terror in Ireland because there was a shortage of regular troops after World War One. Given amnesty in return for going to Ireland, and hastily kitted out in mismatched uniforms which gave them their nickname, the Black and Tans marauded across Ireland raping and murdering at will and burning whole towns to the ground. If anything, Loach was restrained in his depiction.
The Irish resistance had no choice but to fight fire with fire. The scene where a young man is executed for giving information to the British is also disturbing but accurate. Then we see the Church siding first with the British and then with the Free State, and we see the Free State soldiers adopting British tactics and oppressing their own people - all very tragic and true to life. I can't help thinking that the Treaty - which the Brits wrote and then presented to the Irish with "Take it or leave it, and if you leave it we'll slaughter every last one of you" - was engineered to provoke a civil war in Ireland. There were so many clauses which served no purpose except to insult and humiliate the Irish. I also suspect the British were bluffing - much as they'd have liked to wage "immediate and terrible war" against Ireland, they didn't have the strength after WWI - but we'll never know.
That said, I don't agree that this is an anti-British or anti-Irish or anti-any other group film. The whole point of the film, it seems to me, is that war brutalizes, and turns brother against brother. This is a universal theme that anyone can relate to.
The film is not without faults. Cillian Murphy does a very authentic West Cork accent (but then he's from Cork City, though that's in the east of the county) and so do several of the other fighters, but some of the "locals" (especially Orla Fitzgerald) have strong Dublin accents which are jarringly out of place.
The biggest flaw is that the ending is weak and anti-climactic. It seems like Loach was trying too hard to make his point, and he does so in a heavy-handed and not very believable way - and then the movie suddenly ends. It was a disappointing ending to an otherwise gripping film.
On the whole, however, this is a very powerful film that is well worth seeing. Those who dismiss it out of hand (sight unseen) as a propaganda film are totally missing the point.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
Rushed and disappointing
I found this movie very disappointing and the weakest in the series so far. The exposition is very rushed and jerky, as if the director was checking plot points off a list and dashing through them as quickly as possible. Also, very annoyingly, he doesn't trust you to notice something he wants you to notice and has to beat you over the head with it, whether it's the Harry-Cho-Ginny triangle or a simple detail like Luna Lovegood being barefoot in the forest. Speaking of which, Evanna Lynch's performance was disappointing - Luna came across as more smug and self-satisfied than dreamy and unself-conscious like she should have been.
The other characters are predictable - Ron is clueless, Hermione is bossy and know-it-all etc. The only character showing any growth is Neville, and to a lesser extent Fred and George. Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge is the only real bright spot.
In his rush to get to the end, the director gives us none of what gave the book its characteristic flavor. None of Harry's inner turmoil is depicted - his awkward relationship with Cho, his growing alienation from Dumbledore etc. - and in particular the pivotal death of an important character is treated in a very offhand way. And although the climactic battle had dazzling special effects, there was no real heart in it - it hadn't been built up to with any sense of tension and overwhelming odds, and when it happened, it was just another plot point to be ticked off.
I suspect anyone who has not read the books will come away from this movie very confused, and not ready for the next episode. Considering the rich material he had to work with, the director really dropped the ball.
Flightplan (2005)
Please stow your brain in the overhead compartment before viewing!
As an avionics software engineer, the most enjoyable part of this movie for me was seeing how many things the filmmakers got wrong. I burst out laughing when I saw the "avionics computers" in the plane - a circle of Cray supercomputers sitting in a vast cavernous open space behind the nose cone. In reality, avionics computers are small, ruggedized embedded systems distributed around the plane.
Apart from that, there are so many plot holes it's hard to keep count. When we finally learn that there is a conspiracy involving two people on the plane, it's clear that there's no way these two people could have manipulated events on the plane so precisely, let alone back at the airport where the child's passenger record retroactively vanishes from the system while a record of her death enters police computers. Other posters have listed some of the many other plot holes so I won't flog a dead horse.
I like Jodie Foster but she doesn't have much to work with here, and her character isn't very sympathetic. There is one brief moment when the plane has made an emergency landing and Sarsgaard is about to step off, when Forster realizes what is going on, and they both have to play a battle of wits with each other without giving the game away to the crew who are standing around - that's when you get a brief flash of how this might have been an interesting psychological thriller in the hands of a more skilled writer. But then we quickly get back to the realm of ridiculous nonsensical action, culminating in Foster getting a hero's welcome from the other passengers and police when a minute before, everyone was convinced she was a psycho.
All in all, only worth watching if it comes up on cable TV and you have nothing else to do for 2 hours.
Chavez: Inside the Coup (2003)
Gripping and fascinating
Even though we know how the story ends, this is a gripping fly-on-the-wall film that plays almost like a political thriller. During the calm before the storm, we meet Hugo Chavez as a charismatic, larger than life man who has an unbreakable connection with the mestizos who make up 80% of the population but have previously been shut out of Venezuela's political process and its oil wealth. He seems as devoted to them as they are to him. He travels the country at a hectic pace, reaching out to the campesinos, addressing huge crowds, hugging and kissing ordinary people, accepting letters on scraps of paper, and hearing pleas for help. The people are excited that one of their number has made it to the highest office in the land. There is an electric sense of hope and optimism that change for the better is coming to the festering barrios.
But not everyone is happy with the situation. The pure-blood Castillian Spaniard elite who are a small minority but previously controlled all the wealth are full of bitterness and resentment. One of the most unintentionally hilarious moments in the film is when an Ann Coulter lookalike, at a residents' meeting in an exclusive gated community, complains of the mestizos, "they have no concept of struggle or sacrifice." Minutes later, a speaker tells the meeting to "beware of your domestic servants - they could be Chavez supporters." Duh! Of course they are.
In a late night interview alone with the film crew, Chavez reveals something of his soul as he tells the story of his grandfather. He can be a sensitive, poetic person, though with an impish, even clownish, sense of humor (like we saw when he addressed the UN and called Bush the devil.)
Then the storm starts to gather force as the coup organizers call for a mass protest and cynically manipulate their supporters into changing the route at the last minute and marching on the presidential palace, knowing it is surrounded by Chavez supporters and violence is inevitable.
Another element of the plot falls into place as snipers on rooftops begin to fire on the Chavez supporters, some of whom fire back. The local equivalent of Fox News shows this return fire and claims that Chavez supporters are massacring protesters. Then the camera pulls back and reveals that there are no protesters - the street is empty! The protesters took a different route. Needless to say the footage of the empty street was edited out by the rabidly anti-Chavez private TV stations (who had been airing a constant barrage of propaganda calling Chavez mentally ill and sexually fixated on Fidel Castro.) Immediately after the coup, we see the ringleaders and their media propaganda masters openly bragging on TV about how they had manipulated the situation with reckless disregard for the lives of supporters and opponents alike.
The filmmakers continue to be at the heart of this chaotic, fast-changing situation as the military coup surrounds the palace and threatens to bomb it. Chavez eventually surrenders to avoid bloodshed but refuses to resign and is whisked away to an offshore island where a plane awaits to take him - where? The US? How can the remaining cabinet members avoid arrest and defeat this heavily armed conspiracy of right-wing generals and ultra-wealthy businessmen who are closely linked to the Bush administration? Watch the movie and find out!
If your only knowledge of Hugo Chavez and Venezuela is from the US media, then you know nothing. He is not an "unelected tyrant" and does not "rule by decree" - he is enormously popular, having been elected and re-elected several times with over 60% of the vote (something George Bush Junior has never achieved) and the devotion he inspires in ordinary Venezuelan people is ultimately the reason why the coup fails.
This is an extraordinary film about an extraordinary man in an extraordinary situation. The skill of the filmmakers is in being unobtrusive and letting the story unfold through the voices of Venezuelans at every level from the barrio to the presidential palace, the tumultuous scenes, the chaos and confusion out of which a coherent whole emerges that is tense, riveting and moving. Not to be missed!
Screwback (2004)
So-so
There's not a whole lot of plot in this movie, nothing much is explained, it just seems to aim for a general hard-boiled noir feel. Which it does more or less, but it seems kind of pointless. It just feels like they were too lazy to put a story together, or make you care about the characters. And now IMDb is telling me I can't submit this comment until it is at least ten lines long, but it hardly seems worth bothering about. Oh well, let me just conclude by saying that if you're up late at night flipping through the cable channels, and nothing else is on, you might as well kill ten minutes by watching this thing. But it's not worth going out of your way to watch.
Snakes on a Plane (2006)
Awesome!
Anyone looking for great cinematic art here, you deserve your disappointment. This is quite simply the cheesiest movie ever, a movie that revels, nay wallows in its cheesiness. And that's what makes it so motherf#$%in' awesome! Indiana Jones meets Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Once those snakes get loose, it's a non-stop roller coaster ride that is gloriously over the top but never for a second takes itself seriously. You'll laugh, you'll scream, you'll gag, you'll pee your pants, and you'll walk out of the cinema totally drained, but making plans to drag your friends to it so your can see it again. And as for Samuel Jackson - he is DA MAN!! See you at the next showing!