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This opens with the company credits informing us it`s by World International Network . I knew I`d seen this company credit before but couldn`t remember where , but knew it was at the start of a really bad movie I`d seen so I seriously thought about changing channels , only thing was I`d seen every film on the other channels which is one of the problems of being an IMDB reviewer . What the hell I thought it won`t really matter if WANTED is good or bad because I`ll still be able to review it for this site.<br /><br />As I expected WANTED wasn`t all that good . It`s a plot I`d seen so many times ( Too many times ) before involving a fugitive on the run , a bit like THE INCREDIBLE HULK TV series without the shirt ripping . Jimmy crosses the mob in an entirely contrived way and goes on the run and in an entirely contrived manner finds himself working at a catholic reform school . Have you noticed an oft used description in the last sentence ? " Entirely contrived " is the answer . Let me repeat for the hard of thinking that this is an entirely contrived film where everything relies on coincidence . Another problem I had was the reform school run by the church - it`s far too compassionate and kind , I`m led to believe these type of establishments make Alcatraz look like a country club , I`m saying this is a fact but when the head priest looks like the spitting image of Donald Rumsfeld you do feel there`s a large amount of sugar coating going on .<br /><br />To be honest despite the ridiculous plot twists etc WANTED isn`t really a bad thriller though it`s a terribly good one either . I never really had the urge to switch it off no matter how contrived it became which is an under hand compliment to the movie

Pretty terrible, but not entirely unwatchable. Another review mentioned "predictable" - and that's almost an understatement. You can make a game out of guessing what the next line will be. Every character is either stereotype or archetypical. The good guy in a bad situation, the struggle between older and younger priest on acceptance and discipline, the repressed, sexually/emotionally deprived woman returning to the small town after failing in the big city, engaged to the hotheaded, feeble minded beau from youth, the unredeemable bad guys, two "lost boys" looking for a sense of family - they're all here, and none of them with even the remotest spin of something new. From the first few minutes you can figure out exactly what will happen by film's end. The story isn't entirely lame, but direction, acting (even from a cast with some talent) everything is thrown together without skill. As to the storyline, we've all seen it before in a movie called "Sister Act." This is also one of those films where inattention to small details show up in an even more glaring light. (As example: the nurse and our hero drive into town but park several blocks away from their destinations (post office and hardware store) - yet both walk across empty parking lots for no apparent reason. Or the passage of morning to night during a scene that seemingly should occur in no more than half an hour. The movie is filled with that kind of stuff and then tags on an improbable denouement.

The most impressive thing about 'Anemic Cinema' is its title: an anagram which is very nearly also a palindrome. Unfortunately, it only works in American English, since in Britain 'anaemic' is spelt differently.<br /><br />I've always found the dilettante Man Ray and his artistic efforts to be deeply pretentious, and I've never understood why his work attracts so much attention. Apart from his Rayographs (which he invented by accident, and which are merely direct-contact photo prints), his one real contribution to culture seems to be that he was the first photographer to depict female nudity in a manner that was accepted as art rather than as porn. But surely this had to happen eventually, and there's no real reason why Ray deserves the credit. The critical reaction to Man Ray reminds me of the story about the Emperor's New Clothes.<br /><br />Back in the early 1960s, the second season of 'The Twilight Zone' opened each episode with a shot of revolving concentric circles in black and white. There's an image in 'Anemic Cinema' which is so similar, I wonder if 'Twilight Zone' borrowed it from this film. The main difference is that the revolving image here is a black and white spiral. Indeed, if ever there was any movie that deserves to be described as a spiral, this one is it. Throughout 'Anemic Cinema', we're treated(?) to shots of a revolving disc containing words (in French) moving in a spiral. The effect is vertiginous, and the texts -- about incest and Eskimos -- are nearly Dada in their meaninglessness. I did laugh at one clever sexual pun.<br /><br />The emperor is naked, folks, and this movie just barely rates 2 points out of 10. Au suivant!

It is real easy to toast, roast, flay, and otherwise burn this film for all of its abundant flaws. It was made by high school students and faculty and a whole community; it shows! Sure, I could examine the script which is just ridiculous. A monster created from the garbage of a growing Californian city starts eating garbage and taking garbage cans all over the city. Soon this huge beast with wings no less begins to destroy buildings and even plays the "beauty and the beast" act with a young high school girl. Fortunately for her there is a gang of guys, her former boyfriend nicknamed "The Penguin," and the town drunk out to help her. The direction is awful, the production values just dreadful, the acting non-existent, and the pace sluggish. The movie is hard to sit through - period. However, that being said, it is also a miracle of a film when you consider that this thing was crafted by an entire community. You can see all the collective effort from the actors, the actual mayor and actual firemen and policemen, to the area location shots used. I also was really amazed at all the local businesses credited at the film's end with helping to finance or contribute in some way to the film. When you look at the film from that perspective, it is indeed quite an achievement. I didn't know anything about it before I sat down and watched it. Now that I have found out something about it, I am impressed. But make no mistake - I have no...NO...desire to sit through it again.

I attended a screening of this film. Travolta came to do a Q & A after the film ended. It was a small screening room in Tribeca. Out of courtesy to him I did not walk out which I wanted to do. This is film-making at its worst. To start the script was poorly written. The writer writes in one voice. The dialogue was stilted and clichéd. How this writer/director got Scarlet Johansen, John Travolta and Lions Gate Entertainment to back her on this is the only brilliant thing she accomplished in this fiasco.<br /><br />I do in fact recommend this film to all aspiring screenwriters, directors and filmmakers. Because when you are told that you are wasting your time and it will be impossible for you to reach your goals. Hey...just look at this crap and say to yourself...if they can make this then anythings poosible.<br /><br />PS- Travolta did a great Q&A though...he was at ease, spoke freely and was a down to earth nice guy. The director/writer stood on the sidelines. When John tried to engage her in the conversation she stood back like a piece of wood and never joined in. I looked at her and I thought...how was this person able to successfully "pitch" to agents, studio execs, top talent ...when she can't open her mouth at a screening of her own film. The conclusion from a few of us in attendance was that she must have strong family connections in the business.<br /><br />After you watch this you should follow it with Guy Ritchie's zero star masterpiece "Swept Away" with the most unintentionally funny and worst performance by wife Madonna. She's so bad and looks so bad in this film I figure this was her his way of getting back at her for all the abuse he takes from her at home.

What a waste. John Travolta and Scarlett Johansen deserved better than this. To start at the beginning, JT was horribly miscast in the lead here. The role called for someone who could convince as a broken-down anti-hero, someone who could look haunted and defeated. Billy Bob Thornton would have fit the bill, or even Al Pacino, but JT is just too alive, and looks to be having too much fun. Also, surely someone who has been through the mill to the extent JT's character had would have suffered some physical effects? The character presented to the audience looked as if he could start as tight end for the Oakland Raiders. Scarlett faired little better role-wise. Where was the pain and conflict of what should surely have been troubling development? And as for the "plot" ... well, none of it makes sense. The characters leap from one frame of mind to another seemingly without cause - and certainly without explanation. The pace of the film also leaves something to be desired, namely, pace. This is a very slow film, not that I have anything against slow films, as long as they are heading somewhere. The pace only picks up towards the very end, when it shifts from a slow dirge to a frantic race to pack in as many tired clichés as possible. In this it succeeds - the only thing missing being something involving a small dog. 3 out of 10 for this one purely for Gabriel Macht's performance - he was the only member of the cast who was a) well cast and b) able to convince in his role. All in all, a terrible disappointment and a real waste of a couple of hours.

This overheated southern Gothic "mellerdramer" has a few decent moments --but is too often spoiled by a novice director piling cliché upon cliché, and a star who apparently decided to take it upon himself to turn the picture into his personal showcase, rather than allowing writer/director Gabel to update Inge or Williams as a sort of contemporary "Midnight Cowboy" meets "Lolita" tearjerker.<br /><br />Close your eyes, listen to the exaggerated southern accents, and try to decide if you're witnessing a feature film, or an acting class -- full of eager amateurs. <br /><br />Johansson is for once tolerable (i.e. less pouty than usual) -- though by no means good, Macht is decent, though a little too pretty-boy cute to be believed, and Travolta chews the scenery as never before (with the help of a decent editor and some directorial restraint, his performance might have been really touching; as it is, he -- and almost everyone else -- is too unlikable to ever move us past the point of boredom or revulsion). Kara Unger is perhaps best of all; had her role been developed beyond a few lines, she might have even found herself with a Best Supporting Actress nomination. <br /><br />Pic is almost saved by Leonard Cohen-style growling theme song, decent production design and locations, and continual reference to literary works (which has earned the otherwise standard screenplay reviews such as "poetic.") Also helpful are a few old pros in the cast like Sonny Shroyer, and perhaps most importantly, Soderbergh cameraman Elliot Davis -- whose fine work will no doubt be credited to the first-time director, who, ten or twenty years from now, may actually learn how to direct.<br /><br />But probably not.

I completely understand the historical significance of Rocketship X-M, but that doesn't make it a good movie. To begin with, the plot (or what there is of it) is dull and lifeless. Five astronauts blast off for the moon – they get knocked off course and end up on Mars (huh?) – cavemen-looking Martians throw rocks at them – they return to Earth and meet a fiery death – The End. Believe it or not, but this pithy plot description makes it sound much more interesting than it really is. To make matters worse, John Emery's character, Dr. Karl Eckstrom, feels it necessary to give long drawn out speeches on everything from the nature of man to the dangers of nuclear weapons. It's just a thrill-a-minute (sarcasm intended).<br /><br />Looking back at Rocketship X-M almost 60 years later, I would call the portrayal of women funny if it weren't all so sad and misguided. There are a number of examples I could cite, but there's one exchange of dialogue just after take-off between the male chauvinist pilot Floyd (played by the irritating, plastic-haired Lloyd Bridges) and Dr. Lisa Van Horn (the only female crewmember and the constant object of Floyd's often creepy attention) that illustrates the film's attitudes toward women quite nicely: <br /><br />• Floyd: "I've been wondering, how did a girl like you get mixed up in a thing like this in the first place." <br /><br />• Dr. Van Horn: "I suppose you think that women should only cook and sew and bear children." <br /><br />• Floyd: "Isn't that enough?" <br /><br />I think Floyd should have stayed behind with the cavemen!

I'm seeing a pattern here. If you see a movie on Mystery Science Theater 3000, chances are if you go to IMDb.com there will be hordes of lovers of the film, yet it was picked to be on that TV show because it was sooo bad. I'm sorry but I read a lot about Rocketship X-M as being some landmark sci fi film that stressed realism. Well if that is the case I could write for several paragraphs about how even with 1950's knowledge this movie is utterly flawed. Gravity might be the first obvious observation, or as MST3K did as a skit "selective gravity", also what about when they are plunging to their death and they are just standing there looking out of the window, um would'nt the ship being upside down effect that scene? I would like to think that they started with good intentions and that it ran over budget or something but I think this movie was just plain cheese as in the from under type. Just compare this to "When Worlds Collide" which was released in 1951 to see the true place where this movie ranks, there's no comparison. The movie gets a 2 or maybe 3 on its own, its not even funny to watch on its own. It gets about a 5 or 6 as a MST3K episode as there is no action or much to make fun of, just bad, bad, bad, oh did I mention, it's bad.

Let's face it, this is a pretty bad film.However if you go in ready to make fun of it you can survive the experience.Okay, you'll scream in agony a lot.African jungle fun in a dopey kind of way.<br /><br />Tom Conway (who spends most of the film wearing a funky chapeau) is using the local witch doctor and mad science to create a "perfect" being.It looks like a varmint that has been on a six week drunk and is in a sack dress.Ugly is being kind.But it won't kill for him because he's using a good girl as his subject.He needs a bad bad girl.<br /><br />Marla English and Lance Fuller are two petty crooks in search of African gold.Acting lessons for Ms English should have been at the top of the search list.She's a bad girl and lets everybody know it in a performance worthy of a junior high school play.Mike "Touch" Connors is the white guide English & Fuller con into leading the expedition.<br /><br />English & Conway finally meet and it is a match made in hell.She is the perfect subject to become his voodoo creature because she'll do anything (stress anything) to get what she wants.You will do anything to stop the agony of this movie at this point.<br /><br />What made this movie interesting for me was Conway wearing that funky tribal hat/headdress/floral piece!Still trying to figure out what kind of dead animal it was.Guess he thought if he pulled it down low enough over his eyes nobody would recognize him.<br /><br />Truly bad cinema.

According to most people I know that saw this film and to the reviews I've read this was supposed to be a hugely entertaining thriller that oh so needs to be seen by more people. I didn't expect this film to blow me away but I certainly didn't expect to find this movie mediocre at best, which is what it is.<br /><br />I'm no stranger to French films being both French and having studied them as a student so i'm aware of the clichés and corny plot twists that can go unnoticed by English/American audiences. There are some great French films that should have been given widespread international release but this isn't one of them.<br /><br />To begin with the plot is both far fetched, over complicated and too smart assed to be entertaining so you really feel every minute of its 2hr and 5min run time and by the time everything is finally revealed you are beyond caring. The main character himself is lacking any real charisma or even acting talent to keep your attention fixed mainly on him and his journey anytime close to the crap ending so by the time you've even considered swallowing the main plot twists it's begun to dawn on you that you've wasted your time! I actually remember switching off before the credits actually began to roll after the film's climactic reunion - that was the point in which I was sure I had almost completely wasted my time by the way.<br /><br />The film is not at all the worst thing i've seen but it seems completely overrated. For instance I read somewhere that it beats all the Bourne Identity films in terms of suspense or even that it has 'wall-to-wall tension'. I can safely say some people are hyping up this frankly dull movie.<br /><br />4/10 is a generously considerate rating for this film I feel, and since I have seen some complete and utter stinkers, I'll therefore save the 1s, 2s and 3s for them.

The fact that this movie is bargain basement quality is a real shame, but back in the 1940s, that was about the only type of film made for theaters catering to Black audiences due to segregation. So, while MGM, Warner and all the other big studios were making extremely polished films, tiny studios with shoestring budgets were left to muddle by with what they had. And from seeing this movie, it's obvious that a lot of energy went into making the film, even if it is a pretty lousy film aesthetically speaking. Some of the actors weren't particularly good (especially the French guy), the sets were minimal and the plot totally silly BUT the film also had some good music--of varying styles from Classical to Jazz to Rhythm and Blues. This is thanks to many talented but pretty much unrecognized Black performers.<br /><br />Now as for the plot, it was totally stupid and silly but still watchable in a kitschy way. I loved seeing Tim Moore ("Kingfish" from the AMOS 'N ANDY TV show) in drag, as he made the absolute ugliest woman in cinema history (this includes the Bride of Frankenstein and many others)--this is probably due to the fact that when NOT in drag, he was a pretty ugly but funny guy. If the man pretending to be a woman actually looked remotely like a woman, I doubt this movie would have worked as well. Seeing this ugly and rubber-faced man with a cheesy wig STILL being ardently sought after by three suitors was pretty funny.<br /><br />This isn't a great film but from a historical point of view, it's fascinating and excellent viewing for young adults to know what America was like for Blacks in this era. A very interesting and funny time capsule.

'Til There was You is one of the worst films we've ever seen. It fails in every respect. Jeanne Tripplehorn was better (as an actress...) in Waterworld. In comparison, this film is Dungworld. When a character stumbles once, or even twice, in the course of a film, one can understand it. But Jeanne's character falls, trips, stumbles so often that she might have a bit of Jerry Lewis in her. In her defence, each (prat?) fall was probably blocked, choreographed, and rehearsed. And rehearsed. Although this is bad enough for a film, the actors (Dylan McDermott and Jeanne Tripplehorn) seem to spend most of the plot going "out for a smoke" or trying to find a place to smoke. If the film was a diatribe on having no place to smoke- Ok - BUT, it isn't.<br /><br />However long this film runs, it is too long by 10 minutes past the running time.<br /><br />Oh, Jeanne Tripplehorn, ALMOST acts in a public forum meeting. You ALMOST see her break life into the character. Oh, it's ALMOST as convincing as her scene yelling at Michael Douglas in Basic Instinct--hmm, on second thought, not really.<br /><br />This is a film to avoid at all costs unless you need a cigarette and are trapped in nicotine addicts anonymous or forced to watch outtakes of HOOPER (Burt Reynolds). And even then, toss a coin or go to sleep.

I love Juan Piquer-Simón! He's my absolute favorite bad-movie director and, throughout his whole career, he incompetently tried to cash in on simply every successful contemporary trend in the horror and fantasy genres. After the big hit that was "Superman", J.P made his own and hilarious "Supersonic Man", he picked in on the violent slasher-movie madness with the insane "Pieces" and he really over-trumped himself with "The Return of E.T.", the unofficial and downright laughable sequel to Spielberg's SF-blockbuster. "The Rift" is obviously inspired by the series of profitable underwater monster movies like "The Abyss" and "Deepstar Six". From start to finish, you can amuse yourself by spotting all the stolen ideas and shameless rip-offs of these (and other) classics. When a completely new and fancy type of submarine vanishes near the deep Dannekin rift, a second mission with U-boat designer Wick Hayes on board is sent out to investigate what really happened to Siren One. In the dark depths of the ocean, the rescue mission discovers an underwater cavern where the government secretly experiments with mutant sea-creatures. The monsters are quite aggressive but there's also the danger of a government enemy among the crew members... "The Rift" is a forgettable film, but it nevertheless has some ingenious – though very dodgy – monster models. Fans of blood and gore won't complain, neither, as the beastly attacks are quite gruesome and merciless. The acting is very wooden although many of the cast names can definitely do better. It's advisable that you simply enjoy the clichés and gory effects in the "The Rift" because, if you start contemplating about the screenplay, you'll find that it makes absolutely no sense.

If you are like me and observed the original "Benji" phenomenon from afar, finally seeing the movie for the first time 30+ years later, you may be shocked to discover how truly awful it is, and more mystified than ever about its popularity back in 1974.<br /><br />My judgment is not entirely objective as I tend to have a favorable bias toward children's films and for that reason cut them considerable slack. On the other hand I have always hated this particular dog, a feature on the last couple seasons of "Petticoat Junction". Never a great show, the dog-less early episodes were at least a nice showcase of beautiful actresses and the introduction of the dog cut into their screen time.<br /><br />Benji is an 86-minute mega-dose of the dog, following him on several daily circuits through the town of McKinney, Texas. If this sounds boring you would be advised to give "Benji" a wide birth and to never let your remote control fall into the hands of a "Benji" fan (if there are still any out there). <br /><br />Unlike "My Dog Skip", "Monkey Business" or "Because of Winn-Dixie" the human actors in the cast are extremely weak. "Big Valley's" Peter Breck plays the standard stern father and just seems to embarrassed at the idea of appearing in something this lame. <br /><br />If one of your children (of any age) appears to be finding "Benji" entertaining you should consider cutting back on their medication.<br /><br />Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

This adorable dog (called various names during the film) is seemingly loved by the whole town...but he's alone. He is friends with two children (Cindy and Paul played astonishingly bad) but their father won't let them have a dog. Then Benji meets Tiffany--ANOTHER adorable dog. They (instantly) fall in love and it leads to a hysterical montage of the two of them frolicking in the grass, drinking from a fountain...in slow motion no less! Also Benji lives in the cleanest abandoned house I've ever seen. Then the two kids are kidnapped by the most inept, unfunniest kidnappers I've ever seen and--wouldn't you know it--they hide the brats in the exact house Benji lives in! <br /><br />WOW was this bad! A huge hit (for some reason) in 1974 which led to many sequels (which I will NOT see). The film is just terribly acted with "humor" so unfunny and badly done that you just stare at the TV in amazement. The film also has a song that is played NONSTOP during the movie--so much that you want to scream. It was inexplicably nominated for Best Song at the Oscars--it didn't win. Yeah--the dogs are adorable and much better than the human actors--but I need more than cute dogs to keep me interested.<br /><br />You might think I'm being a little hard on a kids film but I saw it with my 5 year old nephew. Within 20 minutes he was bored silly and basically stopped watching. I kept watching in hope that it would get better--it didn't. Really lousy--but VERY patient kids or dog lovers might like it.<br /><br />Note to parents: It's G rated but a dog is viciously kicked a few times. You don't see it--you just hear it and the dog survives but this might bother real young kids.

In The Ring, it was a videotape; a website was the problem in Feardotcom; the danger in Pulse came from computers; and Phone and One Missed Call featured—you guessed it—deadly phones. In Stay Alive, the piece of technology that causes all manner of problems is an online game: those who play it wind up dead soon afterwards. How clever!<br /><br />Directed by William Brent Bell (who?), and featuring an unimpressive cast of twenty-somethings that you might have seen before, but probably can't remember where or what the hell their names are, this is an extremely derivative piece of film-making aimed squarely at the PG-13 horror set; seasoned scary film watchers will no doubt find Stay Alive extremely tedious, highly predictable and not in the least bit frightening.<br /><br />The poorly developed plot follows a group of gamers with extremely daft names (October, Loomis, Phineus, Hutch, and Swink!?!) who attempt to unravel the mystery behind the deadly game before they too become victims. Eventually, they discover that it is the evil spirit of the legendary Countess Elizabeth Bathory who is killing anyone who dares to play, and that their only hope of survival is to continue with the game to the end.<br /><br />With a story as dumb as this, viewers should expect a film with loose ends aplenty, not one iota of logic (who made the game, how, and why is never explained), very little in the way of scares or gore, and a dumb closing scene to leave the door open for—God forbid—a sequel.

This movie was not very good in my opinion. While not a complete waste of an hour and a half (luckily I didn't have to pay $ for it), it just wasn't very scary. There were parts where I jumped and a few minimally violent/gory scenes, but overall only someone easily frightened would consider this movie scary.<br /><br />The overall writing and acting were very weak. The characters never evolved or grew as people. Even at the end, the lead guy, whatever his name was, didn't man up and had to be rescued from the fire at the last minute. The plot also had inconsistencies. The police officer who was killed was NOT murdered in the same way he died in the game. The girl October mentioned that in order to kill the evil demon lady you had to read something from the correct text. Funny how they never bothered to do that and still managed to escape. The Malcolm-in-the-Middle kid died in the game but didn't die "in real life." Also, making the game play by itself was very weak writing. It would have been okay for the brother's death, just to get them playing again. But you are supposed to play a video game and stay alive and 3 people die before you play again...why do you even need the game? If you like movies like the Ring and thing its scary and fun, watch this movie. If you know someone like that you can watch it with at laugh at, do it. If you like "horror" movies that make you laugh out loud and you have the opportunity to watch this movie for free, do it. Otherwise, stay far far away.

Stay Alive is a bland horror movie about a video game that kills people the same way they die inside the game. The friends that play this game soon figure this out, and then realise they must defeat the Blood Countess from the video game or accept their fates. We've had video tapes in The Ring, a deadly website in FearDotCom. Now it's onto video games. Stay Alive does some things well; the character development is quite a bit deeper than it usually would be in a horror movie. We really see into some of the characters feelings and past and get to know them all quite well, so the audience may gain some emotions for them. The film is also very suspenseful. Tense, unnerving moments are frequently played through the film, accompanied by unsettling, creepy music. There are plenty of jumps and jolts for the viewer. This can be ideal once or twice, but these false scares that Hollywood seems to enjoy overplaying in horror films nowadays, wears thin in Stay Alive. The camera will tend to provide sharp angles or quick flashes in order to give viewers a very quick glimpse of a demon or witch, and try to scare them with this sudden burst on the screen. Why? The gore is obviously very weak because of the film's certificate. The script to Stay Alive is very cheesy and quite laughable, and the characters tend to play it too melodramatically and confusingly. Also, clichés come in from every direction, for instance people wandering around on their own in search of a strange noise or if they have spotted a figure in the dark, they will go and investigate it. However the computer graphics used for the video game segments are rather impressive and look colourful and sharp, working well with the other parts of the film. But overall, there is just not enough to hold out on with this film. Stretching at just over a hundred minutes, it won't be a battle to Stay Alive, but rather, Stay Awake.

Daniel Auteuil's Bruno in Petites Couperes is a middle-aged model of his Pierre in Christian Vincent's La Separation of 10 years ago. In both films, youthful confidence in left-wing ideology and love (mutual metaphors) crumbles into paranoia - manifesting itself as trapped aggression in Pierre and desperately comic womanizing in the more recent Bruno.<br /><br />Unfortunately for Auteuil fans, the actor has become reliant on a uniform world-weariness (not unlike compatriot Johnny Hallyday in Leconte's recent l'Homme du Train). Acting it ain't, and becomes rather frustrating as the film progresses. Pascal Bonitzer doesn't help as the writer/director of the project. His sequencing of episodes overlaid with connecting symbolism fail to mask the film's lack of rhythm. I was particularly furious that the imposingly dramatic/romantic backdrops of Grenoble were made virtually redundant by a cameraman who was obviously shivering in the cold.<br /><br />Krisitn Scott Thomas almost rescues the show with her female counterpart to Bruno, Beatrice. She dramatizes the dizzying contradictions intended as Bruno in a character of increasing complexity to the point of becoming surreal. Bonitzer cannot sustain this though, and the flagging plot demands Beatrice to even out into another bourgeois mannequin. In doing so Bonitzer shows then denies Scott Thomas the Oscar cabinet.<br /><br />All the characters' submersion into the bourgeoisie may be a viable and indeed tragic outcome, but in this case it's a cop-out of a cadence (unlike the brutal, painful denouement of La Separation). A serious disappointment, 4/10.

I don't care what anyone says, this movie was crap. The only thing it had going for it was camera work which was very well done. As for the dialogue I have heard so many people talk about...it sucked too. Yes it was honest and true to life, but so what, I can hear anyone talk like that on the street, or in a fast food joint. What made the dialogue good in movies like Pulp Fiction, and Gosford Park was the fact that it is WRITTEN dialogue, that takes time to think through. Another thing was that the director should not have put himself in the picture. I believe that the male character could have been a lot stronger, but instead it seemed weak. In fact the movie seemed to revolve around the male character, and then he completely disappears in the last twenty minutes. The girl in the film I found completely repulsive, not in appearance, but in her needy needy ways. Saying she is in love with a guy, and actually getting jealous of him the next day, what a crock of crap. Final thing: the sound was terrible, and I hope it was only something that plagued my theater instead of actually being on the final cut of the film. There was a constant buzzing sound during several scenes and it was actually taking away from the talking going on. The one good thing again was Blood's job as the DP, but the actress that played the main guy's ex girlfriend did a very good job as well. These two things couldn't save an ultimately terrible movie, which I refuse to call a film.<br /><br /> 2/10

Cheaply-made, poorly acted, and unimaginatively directed, Flight to Mars still is entertaining despite what its has going against it. A flight to Mars is planned with five people(three older gentleman, Cameron Mitchell as a newspaperman, and one female scientist/obvious love interest)"manning' the ship. The spaceship gets there and finds that very human-like Martians live there and have technological advances that would make Earth blush. But all is not rosy in the subterranean cities of the Martians(here shown as some caves and a few rooms). The Martians are a dying planet and one faction wants the Earthlings to fix the ship only to take it away at the last moment and then mobilize for an attack on Earth and another faction wants to talk peace and see if they cannot persuade Earth to give them living space. The special effects here are pretty lame even for 50's sci-fi standards complete with slow-moving rocket ship, pastel/neon alien garb where the women wear shorts that would make many blush(except the men of course), and little less offered. Cameron Mitchell is the journalist and is affable if nothing else. Marguerite Chapman is beautiful in very short shorts but adds little acting range. The rest of the cast is filled with some older sci-fi veterans like Arthur Franz and Morris Ankrum doing serviceable jobs. This isn't a premiere sci-fi film from the Golden Age by any standard, but it is very watchable and zips by at fast pace.

If you're one of those people who doesn't really like Sci-fi because of their sometimes far-fetched ideas and surreal world perspectives, you better stay away as far as you can from Stuart Gordon's Space Truckers! It truly is an absurd space adventure, stuffed with eccentric characters, colorful kitsch and ludicrous plot-twists. In all honesty…I probably never would have cared for this film, if it wasn't for Gordon's name on the credits. This guy comes pretty close to being a genius in the horror genre, with undeniable milestones like ‘From Beyond' and ‘Re-Animator' on his résumé. Apparently, Stuart Gordon likes his humor as twisted as possible! He already went completely over the comedy-top once (with Re-Animator) but, with the slight difference that the bizarre humor was effective there. Something that isn't really the case for Space Truckers…most of the gags lead nowhere and the entirely exaggerated atmosphere only works in small doses. In the end, all that remains is an occasionally amusing but completely unnecessary mess. Dennis Hopper and Charles Dance (or at least a semi Charles Dance) are always a joy to look at and the still stunning Barbara Crampton has a small role near the end of the film. Crampton was Stuart Gordon's regular heroine in previous horror films. The story of Space Truckers is as silly as they come. Dennis Hopper plays the self-made loner who's fed up with his job. Who wouldn't be when you're transporting pigs across the galaxy for a company named Interpork? He sees his change to flee while bringing his muse to earth. They float into Space-pirates and find out their cargo is meant to wipe out half the universe! Stuart Gordon wisely returned to making horror again after this little escapade. Since Space Truckers, he already made the sublime `King of the Ants' and the absolutely brilliant `Dagon'

I will admit I didn't pay full attention to everything going on in this film, but to be honest, I don't think it would have mattered. Basically local councillor Sidney Fiddler (Sid James) persuades the incompetent Mayor Frederick Bumble (Kenneth Connor) of Firecombe to hold a beauty contest, to improve the town's image. They face opposition from women's liberationist Augusta Prodworthy (June Whitfield) trying to sabotage the contest, but they do have publicity agent Peter Potter (Bernard Bresslaw) and Palace Hotel owner Connie Philpotts (Joan Sims). Soon enough the young, beautiful wannabe models show up, including Hope Springs (Barbara Windsor), Paula Perkins (Valerie Leon), Dawn Brakes (Goldfinger's Margaret Nolan), Debra (Sally Geeson) and Ida Downs (EastEnders' Wendy Richard). When the girls have cat fights, it does draw away regular residents, but after quite a while of some plodding not that funny innuendos and William (Jack Douglas) having over-active twitches, it does finally reach the competition, and it's just afterwards I couldn't be bothered. Also starring Patsy Rowlands as Mildred Bumble, Peter Butterworth as Admiral, Joan Hickson as Mrs. Dukes, David Lodge as Police inspector, Angela Grant as Miss Bangor, Arnold Ridley as Councillor Pratt, Robin Askwith as Larry, Patricia Franklin as Rosemary, Jimmy Logan as Cecil Gaybody and Dad's Army's Bill Pertwee as Fire brigade chief, Charles Hawtrey had obviously quit the Carry Ons, but where's Kenneth Williams? I suppose seeing Babs and young, beautiful looking Pauline Fowler in bikinis, but for comedy value, this fails miserably, and the overuse of the swanny whistle just gets on your nerves. Pretty poor!

Now don't get me wrong, i love a good film and after watching The Thin Red Line (and loving it) I was eager to track down Terrence Malicks two earlier films, and, having just watched Days of Heaven, my enthusiasm to see Badlands has virtually disappeared.<br /><br />I have noted much rave about the beautiful photography, but i saw this film on a terribly old vhs tape which made it look pretty awful. All i can say is i hope the photography was superb, because it would have been one of the only things of interest in this film. Not since the Replacement Killers have i fallen asleep during a film. This film felt so long (and it wasn't!), the editing was choppy and disjointed, the storyline non-existent, the voice over was an incoherent ramble, the characters weakly developed, and the whole thing was uninvolving. I know that Malick was uncertain of how to do the film. He consequently shot a heck of a lot of footage then spent around two years editing in an attempt to piece it all together. This is very apparent on screen. Everything looks chopped up, every time a scene seemed to gain some momentum (or some character development) it would obtrusively cut to boring scenes of people doing boring things. It was as if someone had tried to cut together a story out of stock footage of people farming. The few good points are the music and the chase scene near the end, but those things are no where near enough to maintain interest. I would normally let a bad film pass by without being too vocal but when it is so highly over-rated something must be said.<br /><br />Maybe a farmer would like it...?

Before I begin, a "little" correction: IMDb states that Richard Gere is 180 cm tall. Wrong! I passed by him 10 years ago, and he can't be an ant's a** bigger than 165. I'm 183, and he looked like a child next to me.<br /><br />Should have been called "Wheatlands"; an appropriate title to complement Malick's previous (and much better) movie "Badlands". This movie shows that not all directors have as their prime objective to entertain. In fact, some of them have as their main objective to show wheat in all its splendour.<br /><br />The movie is depressing and relatively uninvolving, with the obligatory tragic ending. Nothing more than an average and predictable love triangle drama, with the male two-thirds of the triangle not surviving the movie. Praised for its visual quality; while it does have that realistic 70s feel to it, there are limits to how spellbinding wheat fields can be. You can shoot them with 1500 mm cameras, for all I care, but they are still wheat fields.<br /><br />Gere, who at first seems miscast as some kind of lower-class factory-worker-turned-Wheatfield-worker, is quite solid, while Brooke Adams appears distant and cool for most of the movie, making one wonder just how much she loved either of the two hunks. But for those looking for a movie that displays all the glorious colours of a field of wheat, look no further: you've found your dream!<br /><br />If you're interested in reading my "biographies" of Richard Gere and other Hollywood intellectual heavyweights, contact me by e-mail.

I saw this with high expectations. Come on, it is Akshay Kumar, Govinda, and Paresh Rawal, who are all amazing at their comedy, I was really hoping for a laugh riot. Sadly, that is not what I got at all...<br /><br />Unfortunately, nothing in this movie really made me laugh out loud. There were times when I chuckled at one or two things, but nothing really made me laugh. In short, it was badly attempted comedy, and in a way, a bit of a Hera Pheri wannabe.<br /><br />Out of the three main guys, I think Paresh Rawal's role was the most powerful. It wasn't the biggest role, but it certainly stood out more than Govinda or Akshay. Their performances were okay I guess. Nothing special, just mediocre. Though Govinda stole the limelight from Akshay in more than a few scenes. Lara Dutta and Tanushree Dutta also make appearances in this film, and both of them were pretty bad. Lara's role did not move me, or make me laugh, and Tanushree Dutta's character just got on my nerves! The music seems to be the only good thing about Bhagam Bhag. My favourite song is "Tere Bin", followed by "Afreen", which I really liked. "Signal" and the title song "Bhagam Bhag" are also worth a listen.<br /><br />You either will like it or you won't. And judging by the poor comedy and lack of direction, I don't think you will.

I was all in awe of the film looking at the promos and went to watch it FDFS The film was horrible to say the least<br /><br />The first scene is good and till they go to London things are funny but slowly the pace slackens and they is nothing funny about it<br /><br />The Manoj Joshi subplot is funny at places but is unwanted and adds to the boredom<br /><br />The drugs part is funny especially the monologue of Govinda<br /><br />The film goes on and on aimlessly just like a small kid has written it<br /><br />The interval brings a twist in the story but by then i lost hope<br /><br />The second half starts okay but the way things are handled makes a mockery The entire Arbaaz- Jackie angle is half baked Also how come people don't identify them?<br /><br />The climax is quite funny though stupid<br /><br />Priyadarshan is not at all in his elements, from this film he started doing craps and his films got bad and bad Music is good, SIGNAL, TERE BIN stand out and AFREEN too Camera-work is good<br /><br />Akshay Kumar has white in his stubble and looks old but he acts well though this role he has done many times yet thanks to his natural comedy acting things look bearable Govinda looks out of shape, bad and his act except monologue is boring too surprising from Govinda seems too much pressure on him to comeback and Priyan fails to utilize him Paresh is okay in parts but overall just repeat act Manoj Joshi is funny at places Sharat Saxena is okay Shakti Kapoor is great Jackie Shroff looks overweight and acts in his sleep Arbaaz Khan is bad Lara Dutta shrieks to glory but fails to act

The original title always struck me as a rather overblown definition for a bunch of gun-toting saddle-tramps. Still; their screen presence was at least underscored by a top-quality group of actors to support Yul Brynner. Most were movie stars in their own right.<br /><br />However; this first sequel was a pale imitation, with a group now composed of largely B and C list players, who were more mediocre than magnificent. It was a similar set-up. Brynner's 'Chris' had to recruit yet another team of gun-toting saddle-tramps to sort out the Mexican peasants' problems again. Another tyrant was giving them grief.<br /><br />With the originality and freshness of the first movie now spent, this remake had little else to offer. The budget was evidently very limited. This was reflected not only in the cast, but also in the below-par script, which borrowed much from the earlier classic. It was also more than half an hour shorter than John Sturges' original. Yet we still had a reprise of the agonising and moralising that made even the first a little turgid at times. However, here there was no decent acting, action or location work to balance things up. Filmiing was less expansive. It failed to convey the broad sweep of landscapes that were a great part of the original.<br /><br />Generally; it just lacked imagination. The first movie had been a smash-hit, and this pedestrian sequel was evidently put together as quickly and cheaply as possible in order to cynically cash-in on former success. And it shows. There's very much a 'made for TV' feel about it.<br /><br />Not recommended.

This was such a terrible film, almost a comedy sketch of a noir film.The budget was low compared to a blockbuster, but still higher than most.But its where they've decided to cut costs that is totally weird.Some actors are at least competent, while others look like they just been dragged off the street.One of them being the lead actor, hes so very bad that i cringed when ever he said anything (he talks through the ENTIRE movie).Then there's the weird costume choices.At the start of the movie all characters are wearing 1930's clothes.They drive a classic car, but the background is a modern day windfarm thats blatantly state of the art.And the costumes and some settings continue to follow this 30's film noir theme.Then BAM in drives a brand new escalade with 24 inch rims....WTF.Same thing again when a guy has a night scope on his rifle, you get a shot down its sight.Hes aiming at a guy with an mp5 and tactical gear on.In a even stranger contrast the locations are brilliant, and seem to have cost more than the rest of the entire film.The camera shots/angles a very good, and show these locations brilliantly in the scenes.The director has a keen eye for a good looking single shot, but no idea how to do much else.<br /><br />People who should be shot for this film▼<br /><br />The writer The director The casting agent The costume designer<br /><br />People who should be tortured to death for their monotone, monotonous nails on chalk board voice.▼<br /><br />Anton Pardoe- the lead actor, writer, producer If you ever seen the movie Hostel, i wish that would happen to this guy, but he doesn't escape.

The sole reason for someone wanting to see this film would be because of John Leguizamo. I remember the previews, and it looked to be another second rate comedy. But the fact that Mr. Leguizamo starred, tried to redeem it. His name, how known it was at the time or not, tried to sell it.<br /><br />I was pretty disappointed with the performance of Leguizamo. His days on "House of Buggin'" (an "In Living Colour" clone), were his tip-top. There is a fine line between wackiness and idiocy, and we'll just say that Leguizamo crossed it tenfold. He looked like he was trying to be too outrageous and crazy for the camera. As a matter of fact, I'll say that he tried too hard. Madcap humor spilled over into stupidity, and the film was spoiled. I can't say I blamed him, if you were given this opportunity, you'd try as hard if you could, right? Your eagerness cost you dearly though Mr. Leguizamo...<br /><br />The Pest follows in the tradition of any comedy film, and plays the "race card", and more. No group is left out from being poked fun at. Blacks, Latinos, whites, Jews, Koreans, Germans, homosexuals, and the blind are among those singled out. Again here, things get too overboard, and too much tries to get spoofed in too little time. The resolution of the film takes all of five minutes to clear up and move back to normality.<br /><br />When you have a film, and you're going to bypass plot and reality for comedy's sake, just make sure it's funny, or all you have is 90 minutes of senseless film. Which would sum up Leguizamo's "Pest" quite nicely...

I actually joined this site simply to write in about this movie. I was sitting in my living room and this movie came on one of the local channels. I made it about an hour through before I simply had enough. Curious to see what the general movie-opinionated public thought of this movie, I looked it up on this site. I was absolutely shocked to see that there were an overwhelming amount of people that thought it was great. I needed to have my say, and here it is: This movie is absolute garbage. It was a chore to sit through. The "jokes" were uninspired rehashes from other, better shows and movies, and Leguizamo's manic portrayal of this obnoxious character should only appeal to age ten and below. That actually may be a stretch even for that age. I'm all for slapstick ridiculousness, but there isn't even the faintest hint of wit or cleverness. I have an idea, lets take bad uninspired obvious jokes and play them at twice the speed. Now that's funny. Ha. Ha.<br /><br />Movies that you should see that take silly humor and add comic timing and originality: The Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera, Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut,...and the list goes on. Don't lose an hour and a half of your life on unmemorable crap.<br /><br />By the way, I can only assume that the reason that David Bar Katz (the other writer) did VERY little in film after this movie is because he was instantly blacklisted. I'm actually impressed that Leguizamo was able to recover after this mess.

I want to say that I went to this movie with my expectations way too high. I thought it was going to be funny because it's the sequel to Bruce Almighty which was really funny and it stars Steve Carell who is an excellent comedic actor but boy, did it sucked.<br /><br />The movie is advertised as a sequel but it really has nothing to do with the original since the only people reprising their roles are Morgan Freeman and Steve Carell but Steve's character is completely different, he is no longer the jerk he was in the first one here he is a nice guy. The story is different and the actors are different and it's not funny.<br /><br />All the actors involved(Steve Carell, Morgan Freeman, Wanda Sykes, John Goodman, Ed Helms and even Jon Stewart in a very crappy cameo) have talent but none of them seems to use it and it looks that there in the movie just for the money.<br /><br />Now the plot is obviously shaped after Noah's story but there are so many wrong things with it, I don't know where to start. I guess the big problem is that in the everyone around Evan thinks that he is crazy despite all the things that are happening to him, he grows a huge white beard in two days, he gets help from animals from all around the world, he builds a giant arc in a few weeks, in real life people wouldn't be mocking these guy after that, they would be saying he is the new Noah.<br /><br />Also the special effects are good but what the hell is the greatest movie flood ever filmed doing in Evan Almighty? Did they really had to waste such good special effects as filler for this crappy movie.<br /><br />Jim Carrey seems to be a smart guy since he has stayed away of three of the worst sequels ever made, Son of the Mask, Dumb and Dumbered and now Evan Almighty.<br /><br />This was a giant disappointment and Tom Shyadac should be ashamed of himself.

I have seen three other movies that are worse than this one, "Plan 9 from Outerspace", "Side Hackers" and the dreaded "Blair Witch Project" There are so many technical errors in this movie that regardless of a decent plot the movie just isn't believable.<br /><br />Let's start with an AMTRAK train with no skirts or handrails between cars. The killer walks up behind his victim as she moves from car to car and just pushes her off the train.<br /><br />In one scene a killer sneaks into a woman's apartment. He wants to sneak up on the woman to kill her, so what does he do? He turns up her stereo! If I heard my stereo suddenly get louder I'd be concerned. He kills the women by throwing an electric hair curler into the tub. I was amazed to see that an electric hair curler with a five foot cord could be tossed ten feet and remain plugged in. Plus the apartment looked modern enough to have ground fault outlets in the bathroom and the victim was still electrocuted.<br /><br />The Boeing 747 is one of the most well known commercial airliners on the planet so this part really amazed me. First the cockpit was not even close to a real 747 and second it wasn't on the top deck of the plane. I watched in utter amazement as the pilot and co-pilot (Where was the flight engineer?) walked right past the spiral staircase and headed forward toward's the nose of the airplane.<br /><br />I was also amazed that bullets wouldn't penetrate an aluminum serving cart (good thing for our hero), or bathroom doors, but would penetrate the ceiling causing a fuel leak that exited through a small hole in the fuselage. Huh? Watching three guys lengthen a runway by 100 yards in less than a week was pretty amazing as well.<br /><br />I didn't check, was this a movie of the week or something? It was terrible.

In the only act of commonsense they have ever made, the NSW Film & Television Office refused to fund this film. The Producers kicked up a big stink & in a blaze of publicity took their production to Victoria. Apart from the lost work for technicians, NSW were lucky not to have been involved...<br /><br />The film fails on just about every level. The post modernism fails, the casting fails (what is Rose Byrne's character all about ? which 1 dimensional snarling nasty did Hugo Weaving channel ? what the hell is Pia Miranda's character doing?) and the story is a clichéd mess of contradictions. In fact, the story runs like a dragged out prelude rather than a complete plot line.<br /><br />It might have had a chance if the "pop culture meets depression" style was better thought out and executed. If the casting was quirkier, if the style was less serious ... if just about everything was different. <br /><br />Apart from the usual excellence in costume, design & cinematography (like most Australian films), the film is just a total miscue. <br /><br />At a reported budget in excess of $7m, "The Tender Hook" is a symptom of the malaise of the Australian film industry - the wrong people and the wrong projects are getting funded. Compare this mess with "Noise" (under $2m), or "Cedar Boys" (under $1m) and you get the idea. The tough, interesting films are struggling for funding and the flabby, overblown projects with name casts are getting the bucks.<br /><br />The funding bodies who invested in this deserve to go the same way as Hugo Weaving's character at the end of the film.

Watching this movie really surprised me. I have never found myself to stop watching a movie in its entirety because 3 dollars to rent a movie is a good amount of money and darn it, I should at least watch the whole thing and get my moneys worth. I made it through about 30 minutes of this absolutely crappy movie when I thought to myself, I am now a little more dumber after watching this movie. I can't believe that the director and actors in this movie actually had that low of respect for themselves to allow this to be released! <br /><br />There's nothing I can say that hasn't been said by the other reviewers, but even in the worst of films there are usually one or two decent performances...not in this piece of pathetic garbage. I've seen better acting in high school plays. Every, and I mean every 'actor' is bad beyond belief, and what's truly amazing is the uniformity of the badness...gosh, it must have been the director. Where did they get these people?<br /><br />This is possibly one of the worst horror movies I have ever seen. Although entertaining in places due to its laughable script and even weaker acting, and I use that term very loosely, it is unfortunate that this film was not consigned to B movie hell for all eternity. What could have been a good idea has been ruined by an ultra low budget, poor sound and effects and actors who probably earned their wings in children's television, and poor children's television at that. <br /><br />Please, STAY AWAY from this movie. Not even worth a minute of your time.

That's what me and my friends kept asking each other throughout this entire flick. We couldn't believe how stupid it was! I think somebody shot this on their camcorder at home and snuck it into the movie store and put it on the shelf as a joke to see if anybody would ever pick it up. Well, I guess the joke is on us.<br /><br />I guess I should have come to this website first and read all of the reviews it has gotten, every single one says this movie is HORRIBLE, STUPID, and on and on. And boy are they right! Although it did provide some pretty good laughs (me and my friends were pretty drunk) because it is so stupid. We just can't believe somebody was dumb enough to make such a crappy movie! I swear this had to be made in the 70's before they had good technology for movies and stuff because every scene looks really crappy, but when I looked on here it said it was made in 2001? What? It sure doesn't look like a movie that would be made today, but I guess that's what you get when you use a camcorder and shoot home movies using strobe lights and really fake looking lasers, and use real life people from your home town instead of actors or even aspiring actors. BTW-some of those chicks (or were they drag queens, we couldn't tell!) were so fugly, even my drunk horny college buddies wouldn't touch them with a 50-foot pole.<br /><br />So there's absolutely no appeal to this movie at all, bad acting, bad writing, bad directing, bad special effects, bad, bad, bad. Don't waste your time or money on this one, you'll be completely disappointed!

I've seen about a half dozen of the low budget poverty row B westerns that Ken Maynard made in the 1930s, and I am consistently amazed at how poor an actor he was. How did he ever get to be a leading cowboy actor? They say that he could ride pretty well back in the silents, but he doesn't do anything particularly impressive in these later sound films. Still, maybe he got the leads because he was big and could ride.<br /><br />Phantom Rancher isn't as bad as some of the other Ken Maynard films I've seen, but it still isn't much. Some of the other characters refer to him a couple of times as a "young fella," where it appears to me that he's just as old as the other older actors.<br /><br />And if that's not silly enough, there's a rather significant script problem in this film. At one point, one of the characters makes a remark about how the phantom had prevented the poisoning of a well, something that hadn't happened yet. Just a couple of minutes later, we then see that particular scene. No, it wasn't a flashback. At first I thought perhaps that when Treeline Films was doing the DVD transfer, they might have reversed two of the reels. But in those days film reels contained approximately 11 minutes of film, and the whole reversal only took about 3 or 4 minutes tops. Everything else was in a logical order. So, it looks like that was a genuine continuity problem in the original film. Maybe that's one reason why Colony Pictures didn't last very long.

This movie earns its 3 for lousy writing, poor technical merit and continuity problems. Some people have given this movie a 10--and perhaps that is okay if you are simply scoring it for its fun factor. However, technically this is an inept movie serial from start to finish--produced by 3rd-rate writers, actors and crew. That really was true of nearly all the serials because they were meant as low-brow entertainment particularly aimed at the kids. And there's nothing wrong with that, but "high art" it ain't!! Spy Smasher earns a lower than average score compared to other serials because it is of even lower quality and has MAJOR continuity problems--even for a serial. It was common for a serial to have a "cliff hanger"--i.e., a moment at the end of the episode that looked as if the good guy dies but miraculously survives when the next episode began. BUT, in this film, it's much hokier and ridiculous. You would literally SEE the hero die in the last episode, but in the next, they re-shot the scene and showed he actually DIDN'T die (even though they clearly showed him buy the farm in the last one)! Again and again in SPY SMASHER he seems to die but in the next episode they show it from a different angle and he somehow avoided death--even if he fell 1500 feet into a river, fell into a buzz saw or whatever.<br /><br />Watch this movie not for its quality but either for a good laugh or to learn what it was like to go to the movies on Saturday mornings decades ago.

At last. Here's a movie that does as much for the reputations of the men of Greece and Russia as "Gigli" did for the those of Mr. Affleck and Ms. Lo. FROM THE EDGE OF THE CITY details the sad and sordid lives of some young Russian émigrés who live in and around Athens and spend their time burglarizing cars, getting laid, pimping woman émigrés and prostituting themselves ("But we're not gay because we don't do, you know.... And if we do, it's only once or twice. With the same guy.") There is hardly anything here you have not seen before and better; only the Athens locale adds a little novelty--even then there's but a scene or two that's scenic. Writer/director Constantine Giannaris ("3 Steps to Heaven") offer a relatively generic 95 minutes, in which the standout moments involve how stupid, sexist and (from the looks of things) pretty much irredeemable most of these guys are. (Interestingly, the gayer the guy, the more redeemable he appears.) What really rankles is the treatment of the women. Greek and Russian males would seem to give the Italians a run for their money regarding that famous madonna/whore complex. Has life in Greece improved much for women since the time of Plato and Socrates? One has to wonder.<br /><br />If I seem to be equating Russians and Greeks in this review, I apologize, but even the non-émigrés pictured here (the cab driver, for instance) are creeps. According to another review on this site, the film (a hit on its home turf) was actually submitted by Greece for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. What this says about the state of Greek movie-making, I hesitate to ponder.

Poor Shirley MacLaine tries hard to lend some gravitas to this mawkish, gag-inducing "feel-good" movie, but she's trampled by the run-away sentimentality of a film that's not the least bit grounded in reality.<br /><br />This was directed by Curtis Hanson? Did he have a lobotomy since we last heard from him? Hanson can do effective drama sprinkled with comedy, as evidenced by "Wonder Boys." So I don't know what happened to him here. This is the kind of movie that doesn't want to accept that life is messy and fussy, and that neat, tidy endings (however implausible they might be) might make for a nice closing shot, but come across as utterly phony if the people watching the film have been through anything remotely like what the characters in the film go through.<br /><br />My wife and I made a game of calling out the plot points before they occurred -- e.g. "the old man's going to teach her to read and then drop dead." Bingo! This is one of those movies where the characters give little speeches summarizing their emotional problems, making you wonder why they still have emotional problems if they're that aware of what's causing them. Toni Collette (a fine actress, by the way, and one of my favorites if not given a lot to work with here), gives a speech early on about why she buys so many shoes and never wears them, spelling out in flashing neon the film's awkward connecting motif. At that moment, I knew what I was in for, and the film was a downward spiral from there.<br /><br />Grade: C-

I saw this film shortly after watching Moonlight & Valentino with Elizabeth Perkins, Gwyneth Platrow, Whoopi Goldberg and Kathleen Turner. There are a lot of similarities between the two films. They both have great casts and good acting. They both have stock characters of sisters who are very different, an offensive stepmother, a woman friend/confidant, an emotionally unavailable father, a dead mother and a surprise lover. Both films have the characters experience life-changing realizations and both films suffer from a kind of 'love conquers all' sentimentality. They both add a little titillation with Cameron Diaz in black underwear and a partial back shot of Gwyneth Paltrow naked.<br /><br />Both films seem contrived, as if the writers of the works the films are based on did market research and said, "Ok, there's a market for stories about relationships between women, so I'm going to write about two sisters with an offensive stepmother…" In other words, instead of the drama emerging from the truth of the relationship, the relationship is invented to fit the dramatic situation. It seems forced, the characters don't seem real, the relationships are unbelievable.<br /><br />The resolution of the tensions between the characters is simplistic with simple apologies completely whisking away years of acrimony leaving everyone feeling warm and fuzzy ever after. It's just not real. Romantic fantasy.<br /><br />The characters in In Her Shoes are a little more overblown than Moonlight & Valentino, especially the stepmother part. Sydelle Feller is so evil that it is difficult to believe that the father would stay with her, or even marry her in the first place.<br /><br />If you liked Moonlight & Valentino you will probably like In Her Shoes as well. Enjoyable performances in both, in fact, the actors bring depth to their parts that goes way beyond the contrived sentimentality of the scripts.

'You're in the Navy Now' is painfully bad: very likely the worst movie Gary Cooper ever made. It's supposedly based on a true story, but the incident which inspired this film doesn't seem to have enough plot to sustain a feature-length script.<br /><br />I saw this movie on local television while I was house-sitting for my mother-in-law in Long Island, New York. There was a raging blizzard outside, and I was literally snowbound. If I'd been able to get out the door, I definitely would have stopped watching this movie.<br /><br />There are some interesting names in the supporting cast, notably Charles Bronson (under his original name), Lee Marvin, Harvey Lembeck, Jack Webb and Jack Warden. Forget it. Everybody stinks in this movie. Even the usually reliable Millard Mitchell is awful. Lee Marvin and Jack Warden are onscreen so briefly, there's no point in your watching for them.<br /><br />Gary Cooper plays an obscure naval officer who is assigned to command a ship which is powered by a new, experimental steam turbine: basically, the whole ship is a giant teakettle. Cooper realises that the assignment is not a prestigious one: if it were, it would have gone to a better officer.<br /><br />Cooper was a good actor in dramatic roles, but he simply had no ability for comedy. He made several bad comedies, and this one is his worst. Jane Greer has always bored me, and she bored me more than usual here. This ship went down with all hands, and sank without a trace. Have I mentioned that this movie stinks? I'll rate 'You're in the Navy Now' one point out of 10. Toot! Toot!

SLOOOOOOOW, tepid, poorly produced 70's schlocker made moore cowvincing because of today's headlines; nonetheless, this film is worthy stink-fodder because of uncowvincing acting, absent direction, and silly 70's clothing(sadly, the MooCow remembers when Adidas clothing was all the rage...). This has the same sort of feel to it that some better 70's sci-fi moovies accowmplished, namely "WestWorld" and "Logan's Run". While the premise interesting(rich people clone themselves to keep a ready supply of body parts to keep them alive theoretically forever), the film makes the mistake of saddling us with Richard(Tim Donnelly), a clone who is at once both boring and irritating. Hollow acting by Donnelly doesn't help, but fits right in with the rest of the cast. Even such B-illuminaries as Dick Sargent("Bewitched" tv series, "Ghost with 1,000,000 Eyes), Keenan Wynn("Dr. Strangelove", "The Dark", "Laserblast"), and Peter Graves("Beginning of the End", "Killers from Space", "It Conquered the World")provide only the moost tepid performances. Produced, directed, and edited by a bunch of nobodies, it's no surprise that "Clonus" fails to horrify anyone in the least, much less keep anyone's attention! Truth be told, there's nothing in the feeble flick that even schlock-fans would love - wanna see some realllly bad, funny 70's films, put on anything by Greydon Clark. "Clonus" is no bonus; the MooCow says even the MST3K-version is a yawner, so proceed at yer own risk! :=8P

If you really loved GWTW, you will find quite disappointing the story. Those who may think this is just about a romantic story and the south, will be probably satisfied with this decent TV production (altought I consider an important miscast the choice for Scarlett). But, let me say that considering the novel, nothing good could came out of this.<br /><br />I've read GWTW more than 20 times and I can really appreciate the adaptation Mrs. Mitchell did for the film. It took me some time to understand how good the ending was: Scarlett knew for sure she was going to recover Rhett, since she always got what she wanted. But there was no kiss in the end.<br /><br />Then Alexandra Ripley came to "fix" this by showing us exactly how perfect and mighty Scarlett could be, and of course, describing in detail how exactly she gets Rhett back even when she had an important affair with someone else (nothing could have been further from Mrs. Mitchell mind, I am sure).<br /><br />The story between these points is in my opinion just a long and boring ride made up to tie ends, showing off costumes and scenarios just to give us an obvious and totally unnecessary ending.<br /><br />If Margaret Mitchell could came to live again, she would die one more time at the very moment she'd find out what Scarlett became after GWTW.<br /><br />Sure it's not fair to compare this to the original but this is not GWTW fault. Isn't it? Is it any good if I don't compare it to the original? Maybe. Sorry to say I don't really care.<br /><br />I would expect little more compromise to continue someone else's (suberb) work, otherwise don't even try.

As everyone knows, nobody can play Scarlett O'Hara like Vivien Leigh, and nobody can play Rhett Butler like Clark Gable. All others pale in comparison, and Timothy Dalton and Joanne Whalley are no exceptions. One thing that I really couldn't get past was that Joanne has BROWN eyes. The green eyes were the most enhancing feature of Scarlett's good looks, and in this sequel she has been stripped of those.<br /><br />The movie, as well as the book, had several lulls in it. The new characters weren't all that memorable, and I found myself forgetting who was who. I felt as though her going to Ireland did absolutely nothing whatsoever. It could be that I'm only 11, but I saw no change in her attitude until the last say, 10 minutes when Rhett told her she had grown up. If Rhett hadn't told her that, I would have never guessed that there was any change in her attitude. She really loved Cat, her baby. She likes this child best because she had it with Rhett, her only loved husband. Still, if you've read Gone With The Wind, you would see that children make no difference in Scarlett's world. <br /><br />Quite frankly, it seemed to me like there was way too much going on without Rhett. All anybody cares about is whether or not Rhett and Scarlett get back together, and Scarlett took way too long to get to that. It is virtually nothing compared to Gone With The Wind, but then again what isn't? If you have read the novel, you will like that better than the movie.<br /><br />I would watch it, just because it is the sequel to Gone With The Wind, regardless of whether or not it's worthwhile. It may not satisfy you entirely, but it will get you some of the way there.

Only adding to the chorus of people who deemed this to be 'unredeemable' I will state the following without repeating the obvious FLAWS plainly stated by some of the other commentators: The "film" is shot on video (what type of camera I don't know) but the cameraman had it on AUTOFOCUS(!) all the time, so that any slight movement makes it go In and Out of focus. In many of the scenes the actors themselves go OUT of focus for their scenes. This alone screams "Amateur".<br /><br />I also noticed that out in the 'middle of the cornfield', you can hear the sound of the gasoline generator that is powering the lights ... loudly.<br /><br />Also what is with that single lighting source that follows (and many times 'leads' the actors) when they walk around. It looks like a newscaster with that 'on camera light' that follows the people around like a spotlight. There was no 'credit' for lighting design/DP and I know why. The 'filmmakers' saw no need to have someone who actually knew what they were doing lighting this picture (note I didn't say "film"). So be prepared for a SINGLE glaring spotlight as the sole source of 'cinematic lighting' for most of the movie. UGhhh!!!<br /><br />This is probably the most technically inept production I've ever seen commercially released. I "bought" this title because I like bad cinema. Usually it's so bad that you can laugh at it. This is just so bad that it's unwatchable. Plan Nine from Outer Space is "Citizen Kane" in comparison to this title.

What can be said about THIS? Truly one of the most mind-numbing experiences of my life. Your brain will attempt to shut-down as part of a primal impulse of self-preservation. I was left shattered from the experience of watching this 'film' and I took a good two hours to fully recover. This movie now joins Revenge of the Boogeyman and Zombiez as part of the hellish trinity of horror films. I certainly do not mean this distinction in a good way. I mean this in a terrible way. A terrible way.<br /><br />This film has no redeeming features. Everything is appalling. Artless camera-work endlessly presents us with the ugliest setting imaginable, i.e. lots of corn, lots of mud. The story is beyond stupid. The script is…was there a script? The villain is severely unscary and wears yellow wellington boots. The kids are annoying. The lead man is charisma-free. And it has the audacity to go on for 100 minutes. Utterly without merit on any level, this is akin to torture. Normally such a statement would be an exaggeration meant for comical effect. Not in this case. I'll even say it again – this is torture.<br /><br />At the end I was in a state of paralysis. This was brief thankfully. But once I recovered I decided I had to watch the 'Making Of' featurette. I had to understand. Maybe there would be a reasonable explanation for this atrocity. Was it all an elaborate joke? I watched the first 2 minutes of the 'Making Of' featurette and discovered that the writer/director was, to put it mildly, somewhat misguided. I also discovered that because I had taken time out to watch the first two minutes of the 'Making Of' featurette of Dark Harvest 2 that I was an idiot. Not a pleasant voyage of self-discovery. Life sucks.<br /><br />Highly unrecommended.

Thursday June 9, 9:15pm Egyptian Theater Saturday June 11, 2:00pm Uptown Theater<br /><br />Being loved and belonging is essential for most children. Those born to Vietnamese mothers and GI fathers often found neither. The Beautiful Country is the story of one such child, Binh, rejected by his rural village then struggling to find his American father. The film begins with green and wild country but descends into grimy sweaty ugliness and boredom. The considerable talents of Tim Roth and Temuera Morrison are wasted in pointless and ill conceived roles aboard the rusting freighter carrying Binh and is dying brother across the ocean with what appear to be stock shots of stormy seas. New York City offers slave labor and cliché characters. While very uneven from it's start the great curiosity of this film is the final segment. Nick Nolte is given top billing among the cast. I jokingly suggested he would probably be in the final scene only and was not far from the truth. As the journey brings Binh to Texas and his father the film takes on a serene and austere simplicity. A tenuous cohabitation knits these two men together into a family of father and son. The ninety odd minutes of garbage we have just watched is rewarded by a profound and subtle performance from Nolte as they slowly interact. The credits rolled and I was surprised to see the names of Badlands executive producer Edward Pressman and West Texas native Terrence Malick.

A holiday on a boat, a married couple, an angry waiter and a shipwreck is the reason to this films beginning.<br /><br />I like boobs. No question about that. But when the main character allies with whoever happens to have the most fish at the moment, mostly by having sex with them and playing the role of the constant victim, my anger just rises to a whole new level. Take two guys (a husband and another man), put a pure bombshell woman in the middle of them, ad a deserted island, subtract all her moral issues, ad a whole bunch of moral issues to the men and mix it in a big bowl of arguments, fish and a zippo lighter and you will come up with a piece of junk movie like this. <br /><br />The acting is, I would say, good. There are some bloopers but not many as far as i could see. The main female character makes me sick. This is due to her lack of moral values. The man with the most fish get's her attention. Even though one of them is her husband, she sees no problem with being unfaithful with (Manuel) the other man because "I must do it to survive". How can you justify having sex with another man for fish when your husband is 30feet away? And he won't even benefit from it? The female character has absolutely no problems to justify anything that she does. If she doesen't get approval for her actions, she's a victim.<br /><br />I recommend everyone to see this movie. This is the kind of movie that will make just about everything else you see this year a pleasant movie experience.

Time travel is theoretical, so I can give the script some leeway.<br /><br />I also understand the concept that by changing just one variable, you can potentially change the way history unfolded.<br /><br />What I cannot understand, however, is the way the change in time unfolded. We are subjected to a series of "timewaves" which progressively retrograde planetary evolution. While this is a convenient plot device, as it allows our heroes enough time to resolve the problem, it makes no sense whatsoever. Surely, if you change a variable, and that variable has significantly, or even completely, altered planetary evolution, then by the time you come "back to the future", the evolutionary process has already been established and there would be no need for waves? After all, why would a change that happened 65 million years ago need to wait until now to be effective? The fact that the moth was projected forward in time may give it some credibility, but the life of that moth 65 million years ago was significantly altered, ergo, any change to evolutionary history would have begun then, and not be dependent upon a return to our current time.<br /><br />To solve the problem, the team goes back in time to prevent the change in variable from ever happening. By doing this successfully, we see that the changes to evolution never happened, and that no-one even remembers the events! Surely, what works for the solution should work for the original change? I like a good rollicking sci fi adventure, but unless it is set "in a galaxy far far away" it needs to have at least some grounding in theoretical possibility to make it truly entertaining.<br /><br />Good premise, bad plot, reasonable acting and, in all fairness, just a twist on Jurassic Park.<br /><br />Not on my "watch again" list.

Ray Bradbury, run and hide! This tacky film version of his short story from the 1950s about time travel and the effect it might have on de-evolution is not well known from the theatrical run (did it have one?) and exists now as a DVD on the shelves released during a slow week.<br /><br />What looks to be a fancy sci-fi thriller form the opening scenes quickly fools us as the computer generated graphics are re-run unaltered throughout a film that is supposed to be about different 'trips' back in time where a major company sells macho guys in 2055 the chance to hunt dinosaurs by paying exorbitant fees to travel back in time to prehistoric jungles. One slip of the foot/butterfly while on one of these ventures and the course of evolution is altered with resultant time waves rolling over the planet changing everything to man-eating plants and beasties. Of course there is a pretty damsel who knows how to reverse the process and a hunky man to risk his life to act on her orders and everything is eventually OK.<br /><br />Yes, that is the story...and the most surprising fact about this poorly scripted, abysmally acted mess of a film is that it attracted some fine talent to portray the comic book flat characters. Edward Burns (all buff and hunky) is our hero du jour, Ben Kingsley is the requisite bad corporate guy sporting a ridiculous white wig, Catherine McCormack is the know-it-all woman creator, and Wilfried Hochholdinger as an evil one - all are superb actors and should have known better than to align with this flop. And the saddest thing is that for those who like this genre of sci-fi monster thrillers the creative department sold out with some of the corniest animation to hit the screen in a long time. A must miss. Grady Harp

Man, I went to this movie because of the great preview. It looked like it had a great story and nice special effects.<br /><br />Boy was I wrong. I wanted to walk out of the theater because of those horrible special effects. A cartoon dino, of cart board would do even a better job then this. The story was fine, if it would have been taken on by a big movie producer. Who would trow in some more money to make the effect more life like. The only thing I liked about this movie where the plants that pop up everywhere.<br /><br />Even worse where the cars, in one scene 2 characters walk along the street. If you watch those cars you'll see the following: Taxi, car, motorcycle, tri-pod, big bus. And about 4x in a row!<br /><br />And then there is the "butterfly death" that would set the whole "evolution changes" in to progress. If that guy didn't step on the butterfly, the next dino would have eaten it anyway! So that's absolute bull. Then, if you change something in the past, the future will be different in the same instant. Not in those "time waves" they made. But hey, if the future changed in a split second, the movie would be even worse, but more realistic though. This is just one of those movies you should see when you want to have a great laugh. I spend way to much money on this movie in the theater. And then they tell me this movie had $80 million dollar budget. WHERE DID ALL THAT MONEY GO????

(Synopsis) In the year 2055, the rich are able to travel back in time and hunt a live dinosaur for a huge price. Sonia Rand (Catherine McCormack) has developed a machine that can take people back in time. Charles Hatton (Ben Kingsley) has taken this technology and opened a business know as Time Safari. Anyone with the money can travel back millions of years and shoot a dinosaur. Dr. Travis Ryer (Edward Burns) leads his team together with the big game hunter on a floating walkway to a spot where they can kill the dinosaur. The trip protocol is that they must stay on the walkway and not disturb the land or anything creature around them. Unfortunately for the human race, one hunter steps on and kills a butterfly. This insignificant act causes major impacts to the earth's climate and creates new species of animal life. The course of evolution as we know it is now being changed by time waves. Travis and Sonia try to stop the changing process before it becomes permanent, and man becomes extinct.<br /><br />(Comment) The movie was a little slow and the concept of going back in time and changing things was a little overdone. The death of a single butterfly causing the tremendous changes in the world's atmosphere and evolution is simply ridiculous. They changed the skyline of Chicago to look modern, but the new cars of the future were silly looking. You can wait to see this fantasy on DVD. (Warner Brothers Pictures, Run time 1:43, Rated PG-13)(4/10)

I don't want to seem too much of a nitpicky spoilsport, but if the accidental death of a butterfly by a time traveler caused such an enormous change in the timeline, how could that be since the butterfly would have been incinerated by the pyroclastic blast of the erupting volcano anyway? And, how could time travelers keep going back to the same moments and not keep meeting up with their prior and later selves who were also at those same few minutes in the timeline? It seems there would have been quite a large crowd standing in front of that dinosaur charging.<br /><br />While i can accept the idea of a time wave, i seriously doubt the wave would have caused only a few changes. As the wave passed, all changes that would have happened, would have happened at once during the passage of that wave. So, scratch the idea of the city starting to become overgrown with jungle. And why jungle at all? The location of the city would have still been at the latitude and longitude it was before and would have had vegetation appropriate to its geographic place on Earth.<br /><br />And an endless list of other illogical inanities.<br /><br />Bwahahaha! This flick is a weird combination of some fairly decent production values and totally ridiculous plot holes and factual errors.<br /><br />Too bad. A terrific story idea that was botched up with silly science.<br /><br />Sigh... why, why, why, why? Why spend all that money on production and not even bother to proofread the screenplay to see if it made some sort of actual sense?

Well, for this abomination of a film, I wasn't expecting anything good. I find Steve Carell annoying, and Bruce Almighty was pretty good but there is absolutely no reason for it to have a sequel. Somehow, this film was even lower than my expectations, even when I didn't have any. <br /><br />Does anyone remember the Disney movie Noah with Tony Danza? Well, let's just say that Evan Almighty completely ripped it off in way too many ways for the movie to remain justifiable. Actually Evan Almighty was had the EXACT same plot outline as Noah, with the exception of a few technicalities, it was nothing but a carbon copy of a far-superior movie that was actually FUNNY. <br /><br />Another thing, did anyone get sick of Wanda Sykes' stupid, unfunny, redundant, one-liners that were literally in every single scene? It was completely ridiculous and just dragged the movie down more and more. <br /><br />Despite the fact that I basically had already seen the film ten years earlier(Noah), Evan Almighty has to be the most predictable movie I've ever seen. I figured out the entire movie from beginning to end within the first five minutes and eventually realized that it was ripping off Noah left and right. <br /><br />In conclusion, if you're a little bit unsure of whether or not you want to see Evan Almighty, and are already sick of Jonah Hill playing the same role in every single movie he's in, liked Bruce Almighty, and don't want to see a predictable, dry, unfunny movie with Steve Carell trying to act like Jim Carrey, then please, don't see this piece of garbage.

This film has an amazing cast. MGM took some of its finest character actors and starred them in a film with the usually adorable Margaret O'Brien. Lionel Barrymore, Edward Arnold and Lewis Stone star as three greedy old bachelors who live in the same home. While they have amassed a fortune over the years, they also have been selfish jerks. One of them has an idea to donate some property in order to buy themselves a good name (sort of like Carnegie) but it turns out the property they want to give away actually belongs to O'Brien. And, since she's an orphan, they volunteer to be her guardians so they can give HER property away and look like great philanthropists.<br /><br />There also is a goofy subplot involving fairies--led by the wonderful character actor Henry Davenport. And, since O'Brien is Irish (as evidenced by her outrageous accent), she and the little people make up much of the plot. Frankly, I absolutely hated this portion of the film and wished they'd just dropped it entirely. Instead, the story could STILL have been about sweet Margaret melting the mean old men's hearts--this would have worked. But...the "little people"?!? Sheesh! Overall, the actors try very, very hard but the silliness of the plot and the deadly earnest way they tried made me cringe. I noticed a lot of people liked this film--I guess I'm just an old grouch! I found the film horrible difficult to watch.

Extremely boring..I don't care how many avant-garde bones you have in your body, this baby sucks...and don't go and see it because I mentioned that, save it for Warhol's "Empire", it's far more entertaining!! I have seen other Duras films that were far better, so I am dumbfounded why this is considered a "Masterpiece". As an Art Historian, I have had to consider radical works by Marcel Duchamp, Chris Burden, and Damien Hurst, and in these artist I can still see artistic intent , even quality, and an entertaining aspect in the rendering of their art. As for "India Song" -it's not even soft-porn- Anias Nin was almost here - G-rated slide show of sex- and a voice-over that does not relate to the slide show / movie......pure crap and not even campy...sadly just a bore and a waste of 2 hours. To add insult to injury, the print I saw was faded and scratched to hell!!! (Harvard Film Archive), If I want to see "entertaining boring" I watch Bunuel!! Yes "India Song"- hold your head high to late modernism and be truly bored!! Watch a 70's porn film with all the good parts cut out and turn the sound down, you'll get "India Song" but with better cinematography and none of the annoying music or the screams of the Vice Consul!!!.

Lon Chaney Jr returns to lumber along as the mummy Kharis seeking his mate, Annanka whose soul now resides in the beautiful host of descendant Amina(Ramsay Ames). Andoheb, High Priest of Arkan(George Zucco)leaves Yousef Bey(John Carradine)in charge of Kharis to continue their evil-doing ways. Tom(Robert Lowery)must find a way to save his beloved Amina from certain future mummy terror.<br /><br />Routine, predictable entry in the Kharis series proves that nearly every film follows a specific format/formula. The city is threatened by a skulking, one-armed corpse masked in wrapping who seems to have been gifted with superhuman power to choke the life out of able-bodied men who are restrained with relative ease by a mere chokehold from Kharis. Frank Reicher, who saw Kharis in action..and knows a great deal about Egyptian history..in the previous film(The Mummy's Tomb), proves that anyone who happened to survive a previous encounter with the mummy is sure to die if he returns in the next flick. Well produced, but lacks originality that would set it apart from the other films in the series. Sadly, Carradine sleepwalks through his role as the evil Yousef Bey. Embarrassing script mistake has Kharis, who is known for donning a crippled, lame right arm, carrying an unconscious Amina with both arms for long distances with no ill effects. One aspect, the shocking climax where Tom's attempt at heroism doesn't go according to plan as Kharis holds his damsel-in-distress hostage, lifts the film from the doldrums slightly.

This movie is watchable, but nothing special. Four girls on a road trip to Vegas foolishly decide to pick up a hitchhiker (because he is cute). They all end up staying the night at a motel in the middle of nowhere, and the hitchhiker's psychotic issues with women become apparent.<br /><br />The characters are clichés--there is a married, responsible woman; a slutty party girl; an unsure bride-to-be; and a man-hater who just got dumped. The hitchhiker is genuinely nice until he goes crazy.<br /><br />There's not nearly enough gore, and way too much rape. I enjoy slasher horror/thrillers a lot, and this one did nothing for me. The ending was just as lame as the rest of the movie.<br /><br />On the positive side, the actors did a great job with that they had to work with. The dialogue isn't awful, and overall I was impressed with the cast, having never seen or heard of any of them before. And the plot wasn't out of the realm of possibility (although I really doubt any woman in this day and age would pick up a hitchhiker--no matter how attractive he is), so I wasn't groaning that things didn't make sense.<br /><br />Overall, "The Hitchhiker" was well-acted and made sense, but wasn't very interesting. There are a lot of better movies in the same genre that I would recommend over this one ("Rest Stop," "The Devil's Rejects," "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," even "The Hitcher" remake). Do yourself a favor and skip it unless you don't have any other options.

First, the current IMDb plot description seems to be misleading, the movie is about a group of girls who pick up a misogynistic hitchhiker, who plans to kill them all. They stop at a small motel, where he holds them hostage, but develops an intense attraction for one of the girls. Violence ensues.<br /><br />I picked this up by mistake thinking it was the other 2007 movie "The Hitcher". Not that The Hitcher is any better, and I was looking for a crummy movie to watch anyway, but this was almost unbearable at times. I think I could have vomited on a piece of paper and come up with a better plot than this.<br /><br />I can't even count how many movies I've seen with virtually the same storyline, so this was almost painfully predictable at times, but what really made it awful were a few scenes that ... well let me give an example. At one point a door is covered in (what is very obviously) blood, and two police officers, at the scene because of a 911 call, are looking at it from 30 feet away, see a man, also covered in blood, walk out of the door, agree that it looks suspicious, but decide to not investigate further.<br /><br />But, however ridiculous it may be, the movie was never boring, was well produced, directed, and acted, complete with good special effects, gratuitous nudity, and violence. I probably would not recommend actually spending 90 minutes of your life sitting down to watch this movie, but it turned out to be perfect to have on while I cleaned my basement. Also highly recommended for fans of crummy movies, and would be a good movie to watch with friends when you plan on doing more talking than watching.

The Russian space station 'Avna' with a crew of four Russians and two Americans is threatening to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere in a matter of days. Russia asks for NASA's help in rescuing the stranded crew and NASA scrambles the space shuttle Atlantis. The NSA also have an interest in the 'Prometheus', a prototype microwave power source being tested aboard 'Avna' and organise for one of their men to be placed on the mission.<br /><br />That's the plot. Onto less important things. The space station and the shuttle are the same, blatantly obvious models used in 'Fallout', 'Memorial Day' and 'Dark Breed' (and a handful of other films, I suspect). The model effects are so obvious throughout the entire movie and make the film look very 1960s. The sets are a little better but are far too '80s for what is supposedly a brand new station built by an American company (which later comes in as part of a conspiracy to destroy 'Avna' and the 'Prometheus' and claim the insurance. The script has a few good moments (including Yuri's farewell and the little spiel at the end) but is otherwise fairly bland and sub-standard. The acting is okay; the only real standout performance comes from Alex Veadov who offers up some of the film's better dialogue. Michael Dudikoff is, surprisingly, one of the best parts about this film. Ice-T is Ice-T. 'Nuff said. The film offers a few surprises, though, that I don't wish to spoil.<br /><br />Certainly one of the better low-grade, contemporary-set sci-fi films of the last six years, but not the best. The film is watchable but the special effects and plot will probably put a lot of viewers off. Rent the other 'Stranded' sci-fi film instead.

Great actors, good filming, a potentially interesting plot, and what should have been good dialog. Nothing else is good about this movie. Perhaps the writer or director thought they could make a thought provoking film out of annoying characters who are as deep as a cup of coffee. <br /><br />Within 10 minutes I disliked the portrayal of Kim by Caroleen Feeney so much that it became a distraction. While Kim is supposed to be an unsympathetic character, I am not sure I was supposed to want to commit acts of physical violence upon her. The first (of many) bizarre things that happen is that Wes (David Strathairn) goes from "I am missing $50.00" to "She stole 50$" in about 3 seconds. It was quite implausible, since she (Kim) never had access to his wallet nor was she a master pickpocket-- there simply was no rational reason to suspect her. Most people have lost/misplaced money and assume just that... we LOST it. Same goes for Kim later. All very unrealistic behavior in what is supposed to be (I think) a look at real people. The character of Kim was, at minimum, suffering from a BiPolar disorder. Wes had huge inadequacy issues, Nancy was just boring, and Matt was delusional (particularly about music). I actually turned this off about 2/3 of the way through. However, to write a valid comment, I forced myself to turn it back on hoping that something would come together in this movie. No, sorry, it was still bad. Make it a point to miss this one.

Respected western auteur Budd Boetticher is woefully out of place with this choppy modern day cops and robbers story that suffers from a strong lack of emotional believability. Boetticher seems to have waived rehearsal time and settled for the first take as leads Joe Cotton and Rhonda Fleming put little effort into their roles, delivering lines flatly and without energy. <br /><br />Mild mannered employee Leon "Foggy" Poole works as an inside man on a bank job that goes bad and gets his wife killed in the process. He escapes from prison and immediately sets out to kill the wife of the detective who killed his. Hundreds of cops are mobilized to keep him from getting to the home of the intended who has been moved to another location but wouldn't you know in the films final moments we have Foggy trailing feet behind the victim (who thought somehow that taking a bus back to the house was a sound move) while a company of cops observe and bicker over what action to take. Sound preposterous? You should see it. It's all of that and more. <br /><br />Lucien Ballard's camera work does a decent job of bringing noir to the suburbs but the editing is lackadaisical and shapeless and it drains the film of its suspense and pace. As Poole, Wendell Corey is the best thing in the film managing to evoke great sympathy as he transitions from gentle soul to murderer. These attributes aside Killer uniformly fails in construction and execution making its message clear. Go Western old Budd.

There is nothing wrong with showing an old man falling in love with a young girl. Lolita did it. American Beauty did it.<br /><br />But. They did it subtly. They did not make it so apparent from the start that the director is gearing them up to make them fall in love with each other. Not as naturally as two people would (Age no bar) but forcing them to be around each other as if they were SUPPOSED to fall in love.<br /><br />All in all, there should have been chemistry. It would have solved the biggest problem. People with reservations against the subject would also have been engrossed and perhaps convinced. It would have become the perfect love story, no matter the impracticality.<br /><br />I found it difficult to believe Jia's character at times. What I found more difficult to understand, is why Vijay - a photographer and an artist, who seems serious - would have had an interest in a girl so frivolous. Unless he himself has some frivolousness hidden in himself, which did not come out at all.<br /><br />There is a lot of use of Dutch angles or angles in which the frame is tilted. It is generally used to show something unnatural or something that might lead to something that is not right. So RGV is himself calling the relationship unnatural.<br /><br />The camera angles, background score, editing, and even the juxtaposition of shots and symbology emphasises and overemphasises their relationship. Is the Indian audience so dumb that we need to be told something in 10 different ways for us to understand? Especially when the two of them were dancing together... it was apparent what was happening. What was the need of slowing the scene down with dramatic background music? I feel the subject was very well chosen. But Verma should not have made the film with the fact in mind constantly that this is a controversial subject. If it is, then handle it delicately, why don't you?

Everyone I know loves this movie, but I am afraid that I don't. I hated this film so much that I had to turn it off mid-film because of the repulsion. Way too much time is spent on weepiness and emotional bedlam, the point of the Bullock character being devastated by her divorce is jackhammered into the viewer's head excessively. Enough already!! And why didn't we hear more about her ex-husband? He is portrayed as nothing but a suit who comes by once in a while. Something must of made her want to marry him, what was it? What is it about him that makes her so devastated upon their divorce? More time could of been spent on that rather than yet one more shot of Bullock lying crumpled on the bedroom floor. The dialogue is stilted, cliched and terrible, much like one of those corny "ABC Afterschool Specials" or something. There is no imagination or creativity about anything in this film, it is all very predictable and therefore boring. This movie also goes into overdrive on the cutsiness factor, very stupid and not funny like it was supposed to be! This is just another one of those horribly done "I am woman, hear me roar" films, much like "Waiting To Exhale". If you want to see "I am woman, hear me roar" films that are truly entertaining, original and well-done, then see "Gas Food Lodging" or "Ruby in Paradise". Skip this crap!! I give "Hope Floats" 3/10.

It really amazed me to see that someone would take so much time to assess such a bad movie. The beginning (of the film) had some truth in it. The Partisan "AF" was started in 1943 when two communist pilots from the Croat Ustashi AF deserted, together with their observers, in Breguet 19 and Potez 33, respectively. The aircraft saw some action in strafing and hand-bombing, but didn't last very long. One crew was killed and the other survived, the pilot being killed later while flying a Spitfire Vc. The real Partisan squadrons were established when RAF detached two of its (Yugoslav) squadrons of Spitfire Vc and, Hurricane IIc , respectively, manned by Ex Yugoslav Royal Airforce pilots, and allotted them to Tito's forces on the Island of Vis. Even those were never engaged in air-to-air activities, but strictly for ground support. So the film was one giant cow manure, to put it mildly, and the lowest point for its, otherwise not at all bad, director. By some quirk of fate I was present on the filming of the last sequence of the movie, when dozens of German aircraft were destroyed (Yugoslav 522 trainers, used also in the flying sequences) on the Mostar military airport. The pyrotechnics were impressive, and the Scotch served lavishly by the film crew was even better. Otherwise, the film was a shameless lie was and frequently joked about by the contemporary audience.

The director infuses this film with false depth by repeating a gimmick throughout the film. EVERY single shot in this movie is 3 times longer than it needs to be. You could easily cut out 1.5 hours of this agonizingly long 2.5 hour film without eliminating: one word of dialogue, one image, one event, or bit of movement.<br /><br />This was one of the most gratuitous wastes of film I have ever seen. Other reviewers have called it pretentious, which is an understatement. L'Humanite is pseudo-intellectual trash designed to be anti-Hollywood so that the Cannes judges could assert their independence from the Oscars.<br /><br />The IMDb reviewer states: "Unlike Hollywood movies - which usually force the audience into overdrive - this forces the audience to slow down and look at some of life's tiniest and most mundane features in great detail." You would have to be catatonic to stare at some of these images this long and move as slowly at these characters. This isn't real life unless you are heavily medicated.<br /><br />Finally, I felt that Schotté's portrayal was a sad rip-off of Peter Sellers' masterful "Chauncy Gardner." He uses the same facial expressions and postures. He even gardens! In many respects there are parallels between these two movies. The main difference being that "Being There" moves along and doesn't rely on shock and gimmicks to create a meaningful experience while questioning various things we take for granted in life.

L'Humanité is a murder mystery. These movies tend to be popular,<br /><br />and the 6.9 rating it currently has suggests that it has been, too.<br /><br />Unfortunately, this movie has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.<br /><br />A few non-spoilers, for instance, include a 5-minute scene<br /><br />wherein the main character eats an apple. And another 3 minutes<br /><br />where he breathes.<br /><br />In case you were wondering, this is not, in fact, art. Neither is it a<br /><br />commentary on humanity, which from the title it seems it is trying<br /><br />to be. It is, in fact, boring. There are numerous attempts in this<br /><br />movie to say something about humanity. One might think to<br /><br />onesself, "How would I comment on humanity?" And the most<br /><br />obvious and boring answers will of course be sex, love, and death.<br /><br />Not that these options are uninteresting when done well - just that<br /><br />they are the canonical options. For sex, this movie does its best to<br /><br />make it unattractive and disgusting. In your first five minutes -<br /><br />hence this is not a spoiler - you will see the bloodied vagina of a<br /><br />murdered 11-year-old girl; it's a murder mystery, remember? Later<br /><br />on, a few people throw themselves at each other and have what<br /><br />the director would like us to believe is "raw" sex, but in reality it's<br /><br />contrived and overly symbolic - but worse yet, uninterestingly so.<br /><br />I enjoy being disturbed by movies. This movie showed me why:<br /><br />Disturbing movies usually show something inside of someone,<br /><br />their humanity, which they did not know existed and are a bit<br /><br />scared of. L'Humanité tried to do just this and failed, and I walked<br /><br />out of the theatre not disturbed, but disgusted, thinking that I had<br /><br />wasted my time in the theater, despite having seen the movie for<br /><br />free.

Steve Martin has always had my respect for being a very funny comedian and a pretty good actor, and I loved "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" and "Bowfinger" --- but "Bringing Down the House" definately isn't one of Martin's funniest works, and it doesn't even seem as if it's trying to be, which is just plain sad...<br /><br />I don't know; maybe I didn't like this movie because of the fact that I rented it along with "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" and "Phone Booth", both of which are excellent films, or maybe it's because I'm used to so much better from Martin, or maybe it's just because I'm in a frickin' bad mood today...Regardless, this film just wasn't very funny or entertaining, and I never managed more than a smile or a weak chuckle at the film's gags, which is really a shame, since the previews of this comedy were SO promising! I was expecting "Bringing Down the House" to be an all-out comedy bash, and I certainly expected more slapstick comedy and inter-racial laughs from Martin. Instead, we're 'treated' to seeing Queen Latifah jiggle all over the screen, trying to do her best with her totally uninspired character. The funniest thing in this clunker is Eugene Levy, but even he doesn't get the screen-time he deserves.<br /><br />I would've really liked to enjoy "Bringing Down the House", but I didn't and I'd find it very difficult to recommend it to anyone but the most die-hard Steve Martin fans. Skip this one and rent "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" instead...<br /><br />You'll have a much better time.

In this desperate and thoroughly silly attempt to keep Hammer's Dracula franchise alive despite having lost most of its power long time already, our legendary vampire is brought back to life in the swinging London of 1972. Exactly hundred years after he was destroyed by his archenemy Van Helsing, an occult disciple named Johnny Alucard (get it? get it?) gathers his flamboyant friends in an abandoned church, among them Van Helsing's great granddaughter Jessica, and performs a satanic ritual that resurrects Dracula in a haze of smoke. Dracula's only mission is to wreak havoc upon the entire Van Helsing lineage and fragile Jessica is the ideal victim to achieve this. This is probably the only 70's film that goes immensely over the top in trying to look like…a 70's film! Considering the previous six Dracula films were all set in the Victorian era, director Alan Gibson really wants to stress the fact we're in the 20th century now and thus he stuffs his film with insufferable hippie-characters, hideous 70's fashion trends and awful 70's music. Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing seem hopelessly lost in this setting and their performances regretfully show it. The opening sequence (a flashback) and the showdown climax are fairly enjoyable, but everything in between is painfully boring and the complete opposite of scary. The greatest elements in this series of films have always been Dracula's dark castles and the exhilarating coach races and, obviously, this installment lacks all of that. Luckily for the fans, Hammer Studios contemporary released other films revolving on vampires that are much better ("The Vampire Lovers", "Twins of Evil", "The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires"…). Not recommended.

The idea of bringing Dracula to contemporary times isn't bad--after all, it might revive the series a bit by injecting a new story element into a series that Hammer has all but exhausted in a long series of generally excellent movies. However, because the present day turned out to be the crappy early 1970s, the results were pretty silly and looked more like LOVE AT FIRST BITE (a deliberate comedy). Seeing Christopher Lee in a film filled with 70s hip lingo and electric guitar chords and laughable rock music just seemed beyond stupid. To make matters worse, the acting is much more over-the-top here--with an intense and silly performance by "Johnny Alucard". I also thought it was really funny that it took Van Helsing's grandson to notice that "Alucard" is "Dracula" spelled backwards--no one else figured this out for themselves! Wow, what cunning!! <br /><br />So because so much of the movie was bad, why did it still earn an almost respectable score of 4? Well, when the story came to the expected showdown between Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) and Drac (Christopher Lee), it was exciting and ended very well. Additionally, and I know this will sound very sexist, but if I had to watch a bad film, at least Stephanie Beacham's character wore some really nice outfits that revealed her ample...."talents", so to speak. So at least it was a pretty film to watch.<br /><br />By the way, the film ends with the phrase "may he rest in FINAL peace" at the end, though this was not the final Hammer Dracula film with Lee. He returned for "The Satanic Rites of Dracula" just a short time later and it was in many ways even worse than this dud of a monster film.

I just watched that movie, and was pretty disappointed. I didn't expect much to begin with as the premise of the movie doesn't suggest greatness anyway. Sadly, it doesn't even manage to deliver just as stupid entertainment. The main problem is probably the acting. While I've seen far worse actors in far worse movies, the story would require some people to act out as violent maniacs, some others as people caught a in really stressing predicament, and they fail to deliver that. Although I watched the German release I watched with the original audio, so it's definitely not just bad voice-overs or anything like that. Added to that, the German DVD release seems to be cut, the killings are all pretty much left out, meaning that except for a few semi-gory scenes closer to the end the German release doesn't deliver as a movie for "gore-hounds", either. Can't comment on that for other releases of course. The plot has some stupid moments thrown in here and there and the beginning is just hilarious (ever heard of a demon visiting a psychiatrist?). Too bad the movie takes itself far too seriously, if it was filmed as a horror-comedy and changed a bit here and there accordingly it might have worked better. The ending is just a huge disappointment.<br /><br />If you've got really nothing better to do and just can't stand the boredom anymore you might (and it's really a weak "might") consider this movie. If there's anything else available to watch or do: Pick that alternative.

"Quintet" is definitely not a film most people would find amusing or even interesting for that matter. There is no scene, dialog, acting or plot development that would light a spark. The icy world is one thing, but muddled plot is something you really can't bear. The characters are not only three-dimensional, they're not even one-dimensional, there is no emotion and there is no sense in anything that goes on. There is a world encased in ice, where nobody is doing any meaningful work, except playing Quintet, and the rules to the game are never even hinted. The homes are not heated, even there is electricity, but who and what produces it? There is wood, but there are no animals, except dogs, so where do clothes come from, or shoes for that matter, since, apparently there is no industry, and everybody is dressed as in 16th century Europe, which is in odd contrast to not so futuristic pavilion backdrop. The entire movie seams to be stuck inside Altman's imagination, and he never bothered to share his ideas or his vision with audience. Desolation or hopelessness have nothing to do with lack of appeal to this movie, the world of George Lucas's "THX1138" is no brighter place and characters are no more fun, but the story has it's path. In Quintet, there is no obvious or even hinted path, and in my opinion it doesn't even provoke thinking about the idea behind it all, as, for example, similar film, John Boorman's "Zardoz". It's not even done in Altman's unique style, so it doesn't appeal to his fans,either, and I'm one of them. All in all, Robert Altman had a dream, and he woke up without telling anybody what it meant, not even to him.

I supposed I was actually expecting a Bollywood remake of "The Fog", from the title, but this is actually more of a Bollywood remake of "I Know What You Did Last Summer", with some elements of "Scream", kind of, sort of, and not a very good one either. Apart from a couple very entertaining song & dance numbers, this is pretty terrible. It's obviously got a decent budget & yet it's wasted on reheated leftovers that weren't that tasty to begin with. A young woman is threatened by a creepy guy to not enter a beauty contest, because he wants his sister to win (she, thankfully, doesn't look as creepy as her brother), but she enters anyway and wins, and of course the creepy guy comes after her, and is killed, after which comes a rousing game of "hide the body". Of course, the body disappears and no one seems to know why, but someone knows, and they're waiting for the end to reveal a ridiculous plot twist. Interspersed with all this tired rehash are a few nifty dance numbers, especially the celebratory dance number at the party for Simran, the girl who won the beauty contest...it's highly colorful, it's well done & downright fun, and utterly wasted in this terrible film. I would much rather watch an old Ramsay brothers movie than this piece of crap, although someone has deemed that these don't need to be made available, for the most part, which is a crime in itself. But not as big of a crime as this film. I took one for the team watching this one, so take my advice, don't bother. 2 out of 10.

How many monster tree movies can you see in a lifetime?Well I'll go out on a limb and say one.This movie is better watched late at night,with a 12 pack of beer, the sound off and you and your friends making up the dialogue.<br /><br />On a Pacific Island a young man is sentenced to death for consorting with the "evil Americans".(Seems his loving wife has been sleeping with the witch doctor and they set him up to die so the doc' can be king).Well he vows to come back and wreak revenge.<br /><br />Before you can shake a stick the goofy natives run to the American scientists' hut screaming"Tobanga come!"<br /><br />It seems the young corpse has done just that as Tobanga, the walking tree monster. Yes his revenge is terrible (and so is this movie).It seems that these natives cannot run from a lumbering tree so he tosses them in quicksand,rolls them down hills etc.Pretty soon the new king wants to trade his woman or kingdom for an axe or a chainsaw.<br /><br />General problems with this movie are numerous. The comedy relief is an obnoxious woman with a Cockney accent (like this movie needs comedy).You want her to die upon her first appearance.The leading lady is whiny.The leading man is a boor.The acting is wooden (pun intended).The dialogue is stiff and lumbering.The natives have Brooklyn accents.The monster suit is pure giggles.<br /><br />While this is a bad movie it still is fun to watch.It gets a 3 on unintentional laughs alone.Your dog may rate it just a bit higher but only if the tree wasn't mobile.

I really don't know why I agreed to watch this movie, but like a complete fool I did and for that I deserve to be shot! I had seen the original Killjoy, well I say I have seen it.... I started watching it but found it that bad that I ended up watching it in 4x speed to get it over with and get rid of the annoying dialogue, but I said I would watch it and I did even if it was in 4x speed.<br /><br />To cut a long story short Killjoy 2 kicks off where Killjoy left off. By this i don't mean the plot, I mean the complete and total bag of dirt known as acting and cheapness. I have nothing against low budget movies, in fact I kinda enjoy them, they are something different from Mega budget blockbusters, but this film is just terrible! The acting is diabolical and the script... well i think you could of given Stevie Wonder a pen and paper, and he would of produced something much better! This movie is just annoying, not to mention the annoying laugh the clown has which is so obviously dubbed! I didn't make it through this movie anyway, about three quarters of the way through it was time to turn it off and throw it through the window. It may of been a rip off to buy as a DVD but as a frisbee it was a mega bargain! <br /><br />Please for the love of mankind itself DO NOT watch this muck, it is possibly the worst thing I have ever seen and considering some of the muck I've seen thats saying a lot! <br /><br />My rating on this movie would be.... Nailgun to the head/10

I've tried to watch this film 3 or 4 times, but I just can't get past the fact that everything about it is just awful. I'm sure it was a courageous move by somebody to cast Jack Palance as the protagonist, but there is not one single fiber of my being that believes that he could act at all, much less act against type.<br /><br />Yes, I understand that Clifford Odets was a brilliant author, but it's not evident here. This odd and forced mish-mash of 50's hipster dialog seems to obfuscate any genuine meaning, which explains why none of the actors, even the good ones (Steiger, Ida Lupino, Shelly Winters, Everett Sloane) seems to know how to deliver their lines - it's as though they don't understand the meaning of what they are saying. And in the meantime, Wendell Corey and Palance stage a terrific contest to see who can be more stone-faced.<br /><br />The direction is amateurish and completely overwrought. The physical interaction between the characters is as stilted as the dialog.<br /><br />And can we discuss that hideous set? It's so busy, ugly and contrived that it adds to the robotic, disconnected quality of the characters, the dialog and the portrayals.<br /><br />This film seems to suck the energy right out of me. It looks like everybody took an overdose of Valium each morning when they arrived on the set. It takes a pretty lousy movie to make Rod Steiger and Shelly Winters look bad, but this one succeeds.<br /><br />I can see that it might have been effective as a play on or off Broadway, where intellectuals and beats could have congratulated themselves for appreciating the power of the plot and the artsy flourishes of the pseudo-hip dialog.

The Big Knife, a movie about the dark side of the Hollywood motion picture industry, is ironically far more like a filmed play than a film itself. Apart from a few very brief expository scenes, all of the action takes place in the living room of the film's hero, played by Jack Palance. He's a movie actor who wants out of his contract with his studio because of the lack of redeeming qualities in the films they put out. His on again, off again wife (Ida Lupino) is also fed up with the studio, not to mention her husband's philandering ways. Unfortunately for them both, the head of the studio (Rod Steiger) is a real bastard. He has blackmail material to force the increasingly tortured actor to sign a new contract. But it's only a matter of time before he pushes the man too far.<br /><br />This film is not, I repeat NOT, a film noir. Rather, it's an exceptionally theatrical sitting-room melodrama. The plot proceeds at a snail's pace, and is so intricate and confusing that it is in violent disharmony with the static setting and carefully contrived blocking of the actual scenes. The acting is overwrought in the extreme, and veers sharply between out and out histrionics and softer, but no less unsubtle, soliloquies that are obviously meant to be poignant but come across as pretentious twaddle, especially in the hands of the woefully miscast Palance. Aldrich was obviously going all out for a stylized "something" here, but I doubt even he knew what it was, and certainly the audience never does.<br /><br />I think the main lesson here is that films and plays are very different mediums. What might have worked in a play did not come across as even remotely natural or plausible on film. The result? A big waste of time. There's little to enjoy here.

After Matt Dillon's phenomenal performance in CRASH, most will probably rush to pick up a copy of FACTOTUM to see if Dillon is for real or simply got a lucky rebound from a great script.<br /><br />Well, Factotum certainly has its moments, but the plainness of ...everything will most likely turn viewers off. However nothing should be taken away from Dillon. His performance is wonderful and full of excellent deadpan humor, proving he's a solid actor with significant chops; it's just a shame about the directing and script.<br /><br />The story is about Henry "Hank" Chinaski (Dillon) and his refusal to conform to anything resembling normalcy. He quits or gets fired from jobs in mere minutes, only to find himself back in a dreary pub meeting even drearier women while trying to write a nonconformist novel. We never really know what the novel is about except that it involves "everything" (cancer, movies, you, me).<br /><br />Skipping from workplace to workplace and constantly returning to Jan (Lili Taylor, THE HAUNTING), a loser girlfriend who's just as dispiriting as himself, Hank tries vainly to discover what his life is supposed to hold for him. Whether he ever learns what that is is up for interpretation. Some may say that he never does, while others might argue that his life is simply a path to obscurity.<br /><br />Regardless, there's not much substance to Factotum even with Matt Dillon's fine performance. The story meanders through Hank's life without much thought given as to where to take the audience. And that's a shame. Dillon's performance would've shone even brighter if given a decent script.

Another stinker from the PM Entertainment group, and thankfully one of their last.<br /><br />'Firetrap' is effectively a very low budgeted remake of 'The Towering Inferno' I don't mind Low budget B Movies as long as some effort is put into them - there is no effort whatsoever in 'Firetrap' is stars Dean'Superman'Cain, who is an absolutely terrible actor, seriously he has all the acting abilities of a porn star, but he turns out to be the best actor here and that's saying something, the rest are just a bunch of no hopers given the boot from various daytime soaps. The special FX are just rubbish, shots showing the burning building from the ground are among the worst I've ever seen, the fire looks like someone scribbled an orange pen at the front of the camera. on top of that there is not one character you actually root for - you hate everyone and hope they all die well before the 90 minutes are up.<br /><br />The script is embarrassing - The red herring's are signposted well in advance, someone else has mentioned this but 'The scene where the janitor fights off a blazing fire engulfing the building with his broom....hilarious, or same janitor going into a room marked 'Hazardous Material', Were these scenes supposed to be tongue-in-cheek? somehow I doubt it<br /><br />The one good point and only one good point was there was a fair bit of action in amongst the daytime soap dramatics which kept my attention, but so little care was given to everything in the film, I can't recommend it - Watch 'The Towering Inferno' instead<br /><br />3/10

Ok let's start with saying that when a dutch movie is bad, it's REALLY BAD. Rarely something with a little bit of quality comes along(Lek, Karakter) here in holland but not often. Costa! is about 4 girls going to Spain to go on vacation, party, get drunk, get laid (u know the drill). It's also about the world of Clubbers or Proppers. Pro's who're trying to lure the crowd into their club.<br /><br />I'm not sure how long it took to write the script, but i suspect somewhere between 15 minutes and 20 minutes because you're watching a bunch of random scenes for 90 minutes long. Nothing, and i mean nothing is believable in this movie. It's almost too riduculous for words what happens with the storyline. Suddenly the movie transforms into a sort of karate action thing. With a one-on-one fight with 'the bad guy in black' and cliche car chase scenes trough a watertank-car (can it be more cheesy). Also the words character-development and casting are unfamiliar to the makers.<br /><br />After having seen "Traffic" 3 days before this, i fell from sheer brilliance, from a piece of art to this. This is film-making at it's saddest. And don't start about low budget. Because even with a low budget you could write a better script. It almost seems that the film-makers were too busy partying themselves to make a decent movie.<br /><br />Anyway the chicks in the water at the end made it up a little bit, but for the rest of it, don't waste your money on such garbage.

The combination of Dan Haggerty (Elves) and Linda Blair (Exorcist) is enough to make any horror fan excited about this movie. And once you see the cover art to this film of a frozen zombie coming out of their cryogenic chamber, you'll think you were in B-Movie Horror Heaven. At least that's the way I approached this film. But boy, was I in for a shock<br /><br />I love horror movies. I love B-Movies as well. Nothing makes my day more than a cheesy little film about zombies, monsters, murderers, that sort of thing. But to say that this movie was lacking, is an understatement. This movie was pure trash. You'd think the zombies would look somewhat like what the cover-art of the box displays, but instead, you get actors with masks that are clearly sold at any Halloween display counter. Furthermore, the script is beyond pitiful. Our main character, Joseph, suffers the loss of his wife and son and seeks solace in the warm-hearted Mary, played by Blair. Not once do you see any sign of sadness or discomfort on the part of Joseph's character. Instead, we see the head of the cryogenic labs, a man named Dr. Miller, eager to get the dead bodies and experiment with their organs. There is no emotion or anything to make you believe you should give a damn about anyone in this film.<br /><br />All and all, very disappointing. All the elements to make a great horror film were there. You had your zombies, your decent actors, and your story. But the lack of good writing and little if any sense of direction screwed this one up royally. Overall, 4 out of 10

Directed by the same Jin Ishimoto that put Neoedision and flixer.com (a once promising online film community) temporarily out of business and off the net because of his directorial style and method of filmmaking on his next film GIRL'S BEST FRIEND.<br /><br />THE HOLE suffers from this "look at me, I am a filmmaker" style of filmmaking that is becoming the near standard in today's hollywood, to the detriment of content.<br /><br />THE HOLE actually starts out with a unique concept but that concept and the promise of captivating content soon is destroyed by the "look at me" directorial style of filmmaking.<br /><br />There are some funny moments that still shine through the pretense but it is a painful short to watch.<br /><br />How sad it is when the new breed of "filmmakers" choose not to be a servant to the story but rather try and dominant on and off screen. Heck, they don't care, as long as they get their studio deal, house on the beach and a new car, content and presentation are secondary issues.<br /><br />The real sad part of all this is Hollywood embraces the "look at me" attitude so much that the whole aesthetic of filmmaking is changing. Rather than present a story in a straightforward way that puts the story first, today's directors are getting "experimental" i.e. "look at me".<br /><br />Is it me or am I the only one that was really put off by Sena's opening minutes of SWORDFISH. That movie went on to rise above Sena's directorial attempts at "look at me" filmmaking, Unfortunately this short film by Mr. Ishimoto does not.<br /><br />3 out of 10 rating from Elec Tv.

Yet another TV show becomes a movie. Steve {The Office} Carell plays dimwitted agent Maxwell Smart in a movie that's so bad, it makes the worst movie you ever saw become the second worst movie you ever saw. The seventh rate story- if you can call it that has a megalomaniac trying to take over the world. It is so unfunny, it is absolutely pathetic. About the only thing Anne Hathaway does as agent 99 is look good-she seems incapable of doing anything else. Bill Murray has the fine sense to limit his screen time to about 90 seconds, and a few faces from the TV series turn up in very small roles. Movie is supposed to be part thriller and part action film. It is neither. Even though I really was not a fan of the TV series, at least it was light years ahead of this piece of -hit. All this does is drag it through the dirt and cheapen whatever good memories we had of it. Thank God Don Adams is not here to see it. Keep it up Hollywood! Keep making crappy movies like this and keep sendin 'em to the multiplexes on a weekly basis. No wonder the film industry is going down the tubes. This movie is so rotten, it's NOT even good for laughs. If this movie were a newspaper, it could be used to line the bottom of a bird cage. There is absolutely no reason to see this movie. A root canal is more enjoyable than this.! Rating- zero minus five stars. Unless you are a Masochist, STAY AWAY. Better still, do what the title says- Get Smart and save your nine bucks. You will be able to buy about 2 gallons of gas with it. Put it in your car and be thankful you did not waste it going to a multiplex to see this bomb!

This is truly abysmal. I just got a copy of "Disco Beaver From Outer Space" after hearing good things about it, and I have to say, this was just so incredibly unfunny and bad, it will leave you numb and mystified how this ever got made.<br /><br />I mean, what was it? Is it that this is typical late 70's humor? I don't think so. This is just so bad, and believe me, I don't mean "so bad it's good" either. This is a collection of extremely unfunny skits as if you are watching cable TV. Sure enough, this was an HBO program, and to think this may have been considered groundbreaking is scary.<br /><br />There is one somewhat pretty girl in it, and there is some old NHL footage of the NY Islanders hockey team, which is fun to see even though I am a lifelong NY Rangers fan. But they even mess that up, as they try to get some humor out of two hockey players scuffling on the ice as if they are "dancing" and, even worse, reverse the videotape of two hockey players fighting to make it look like they are having sex. Oh, how funny! In one slight bit of cleverness, there is an interview a hockey player named "Chico" who resembles NY Islander goalie Chico Resch, but they even blow this by having him wear a Rangers jersey! Well, maybe that was intentional, who knows.<br /><br />The bottom line is, "Disco Beaver" is just so blatantly horrible, so unbelievably bad, you will definitely feel cheated after watching this and wasting almost an hour of your life. You'll wonder what possibly made the makers of this garbage think they had something funny here, and you'll also wonder why these skits can't even come close to the worst Saturday Night Night slop. Incredible. Just incredible.

I saw and have the original 1959 black and white that stars Shelley Winters and Millie Perkins and no matter how many times I watch it, I can't help but not to cry.<br /><br />This version was (obviously) a set, like the 1959 was, but there were so many mistakes in layout. Spiral staircase? Items that did not exist in that time period existed in the film. Doris Roberts, sad to say CANNOT play drama, she a comedic actress and that will not change. James Coco was a horrible Mr. Van Daan and Mr. Dussel resembled a college professor of mine rather then the dentist he was supposed to play. In the original film, Anne walked the "gauntlet" to go to Peter's room, that seemed to take her more then a minute. In this crappy remake, it took her under 10 seconds. The first reviewer was correct... This remake is just that, a remake. What was the director thinking casting comedic actors in a drama role like that. I'm sorry but James Coco cannot play drama. Max.. Schell was better in Deep Impact then this movie. The cranky Mrs. Frank was just that cranky, I couldn't stand her. Referencing and comparing to the 1959 version, I like her better, she did a better job of being the overwhelming mother. Out of 10 stars, I give this remake 3. Don't waste your time, get the 1959 version and a box of Kleenex.

Ik know it is impossible to keep all details of a book in a movie. But this movie has changed nearly everything without any reason. Furthermore many changes have made the story illogical. A few examples: 1) in the movie "Paul Renauld" really meets Poriot before he dies (in the book Poirot only gets a letter), telling him he is afraid to be killed. This is completely stupid because if Renaulds plan would have succeeded, Poirot would have known that the dead man would not have been Renauld.(Poirot was in the morgue when Mrs Renauld identified the victim). 2) The movie has "combined" two persons into one! "Cinderella" has been removed by the movie. The girl Hastings falls in love with and the ex-girlfriend of Jack Renauld are one person in the movie! Why for god's sake? 3)Hastings finds the victims cause he is such a bad golf player. Totally unfunny and stupid. 4) The movie tells secrets much too early (for example at the very beginning). So you know things you shouldn't know. 5) The murderer gets shot at the end by a person who doesn't exists in the book. Perhaps because the person ("cinderella") who stops the murderer does not exists in the movie. 6)The book is very complex. The movie takes only about 90 minutes. Sure it is difficult to include all the necessary details but it is impossible if you include stupid things which were not in the book and have no meaning (e.g. bicycle race).

This is a by-the-numbers horror film starring Richard Crenna and Joanna Pettet as a psychologist duo who purchase and old mansion and invite a small crew of friends and patients to help clean the place up. Unbeknownst to them, the mansion harbors a cellar door - the gateway to hell. If you are in the mood for a clichéd horror film, then look no further, but if you want something inventive, then this little film won't appeal to you.<br /><br />VIOLENCE: $$$ (Rather subdued, albeit the scene where a guy cuts his hand with a saw - rather gruesome mind you. Fans of inventive deaths scenes will not like this as every character seems to be electrocuted in some fashion).<br /><br />NUDITY: $ (Nothing to speak of. Mary Louise Weller adds the good looks but her character was underdeveloped).<br /><br />STORY: $$ (Cliched, but view-worthy nonetheless. This offers nothing new to the genre but the casting of Victor Buono - who is about as menacing as a department store Santa - seems to have attracted a few viewers).<br /><br />ACTING: $$ (The best performances are by Crenna and Pettet with the other actors simply "phoning-in" their roles. The screenwriter fails to develop any characters outside Pettet's character and seemed to have forgotten about Mary Louise Weller (Animal House) who disappears for about twenty minutes and only resurfaces to be electrocuted like everyone else in boring fashion).

I am ashamed of myself that I actually went to the theatre to watch this movie when it was first released. While I suppose its thinly veiled depiction of the Aristotle Onassis and Jackie Kennedy story is well enough done, it's a movie that should never have been made in the first place; hence, my low rating.<br /><br />The film chronicles the tale of a wealthy Greek business shark called Theo Tomasis, who woos and wins the lovely young widow, Liz Cassidy, of a slain American President. Sound familiar? Yes, everything except the names.<br /><br />The cast is not to be faulted. Anthony Quinn plays the Greek tycoon to perfection, and at least it's some consolation, having just read that Ari himself requested Quinn for the role. Jacqueline Bisset is of course beautiful and sophisticated in the part of (for all intents and purposes) Jackie, and James Franciscus has the all American good looks of the President.<br /><br />I haven't seen this movie since it came out, nor do I wish to see it again. I seem to recall a fair bit of bad language and some general crudeness. Otherwise, I suppose it's a sensational and supposedly intimate glimpse into the jet setting lives of the rich and famous, frolicking aboard their yachts, beaches, pools etc. Yes, the scenery of the Greek islands is spectacular, the best part of the movie.<br /><br />Of its type, it's okay, I suppose. There are no end of TV movies about the Kennedys, which I confess to occasionally tuning in to, and not to my credit. This is basically just another. Far better to allow Aristotle and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis to rest in peace.

I suspect this board will soon be full of comments from over-emotional people praising "Dear John" as a "pearl" and a "rollercoaster ride" and all the other vacuous words this film's target audience typically employs.<br /><br />I am most definitely not this film's target audience, but I do not dislike romantic dramas either, as long as they are well made, so here is my objective take on the flick.<br /><br />It is not good.<br /><br />It's not a bad movie either. But the plot meanders, development stagnates where it should've been moving forward (right around the middle, to be precise), and as for the ending...it almost felt as if they had run out of ideas so they suddenly said, "Hey, let's just film a last scene real quick, put some sentimental string soundtrack over it, and end it that way." Even Amanda Seyfried's beauty could not save this. Channing Tatum too gave a good performance, but you can only do so much with a flawed script.<br /><br />Speaking of the music, it is unbearably predictably and kitchy. From the smokey voiced, irritatingly high-pitched female folk singer schtick (surely chosen to appeal to the majority of college-age girls that will go see this movie) to the overused "shimmering strings and piano" combo, it only annoys anyone paying more attention to the film as a whole rather than to his own "feelings." The film has a good beginning and the major conflict that launches us into the second act were all promising. So was part of the second act itself, as the story unfolded. Then the film just dropped the ball. Beyond that, I'd have to give spoilers.<br /><br />"Dear John" is not a bad movie, but it doesn't work as it should either. If you want to see a truly moving film about prolonged love waiting to be reunited, go watch "Notebook," which was truly superb.

This film was a Mexican made horror film from the late 60s. It's not that good, but really not so bad either. There is plenty of schlock and it is padded pretty heavily with nudity and violence, but it had a plot and at least tried to keep to it (even if the plot was the same damn Frankenstein inspired "don't tamper in God's domain" b-movie fare). There was some padding mixed in with the female wrestling, but it was made in Mexico and wrestling does seem to be popular in Mexico.<br /><br />The plot is that a doctor wants to save his son, who is dying from leukemia. The other doctors have given no hope for the poor guy, but dad has the idea of transplanting a gorilla's heart for his son's to save his life (I don't know, I'm a lawyer not a doctor). The transplant works, but sonny-boy ends up becoming a man-ape who terrorizes nude women and kills anyone who gets in his path. There's also a subplot involving a cop and his girlfriend who is a wrestler (this really didn't add too much, but if they wanted to throw in some masked female wrestlers here's a good reason to do so).<br /><br />The film was kind of cheap, but not too bad for a b-movie of the day. The plot was basically just recycled and there were a few things that weren't tied in that well. However, this film is kind of fun in its own way (I don't know why, maybe because it's a Mexican horror film and sticks out in my normal bad movie diet). I guess it may be because it's a mix and mash of some very weird things.<br /><br />Watch it if you like cheesy foreign films, nudity, and female wrestlers.

I rented this movie because Elijah Wood has done some good work and I thought this might be an overlooked treasure. It was not a treasure. I don't know if this was straight to video, but it should have been straight to the dump.<br /><br />Elijah Wood fans will like the fact that he appears shirtless in a much-too-brief shower scene. But, no sane person would like this script. Imagine Memento played by teen actors, but ten times more confusing and a hundred times less plausible. Case in point: Janeane Garofalo plays a caring psychologist (apparently `keeping the chain of mediocrity alive').<br /><br />As if false memories syndromes and mind-over-matter medicine weren't hokey enough, the movie also hinges on one of those unexplained psychic twin bonds that keep the plot moving and the audience baffled. This same twin bond creates a few too many contrived love scenes between Wood's character and the girl from She's All That, who plays the saintly sister of Wood's angry cancer-victim friend.<br /><br />Adding to the triteness of this screenplay, Wood's other friends are a mentally challenged cancer victim and Kidney, a young black boy afflicted with a mysterious kidney disease. Kidney's dying wish comes true when Dr. Garofalo gives him his own Walkman. This character's hackneyed function in the story is matched by his on-again, off-again relationship to walking. Usually bound to a wheelchair, Kidney has several inexplicable scenes showing him pushing others around in it.<br /><br />Kindey's characterization may be one small detail, but it is indicative of this film's many other flaws. The Bumblebee Flies Anyway is definitely bumbling, but it never flies.

Five years after the US Civil War, western folk are more concerned with the age old war between homesteaders and cattle ranchers. The cattlemen herd their wares, from Texas to the trail town of Abilene, Kansas. There, the cowboys find not only big money, but also big confrontation, with homesteaders. Tall in the saddle Marshal Randolph Scott (as Dan Mitchell) tries to keep peace in the town. Mr. Scott has experience mediating between trail hands and saloon patrons. He also juggles the town's finest looking women: sexy saloon singer Ann Dvorak (as Rita) and pretty church lady Rhonda Fleming (as Sherry). Boozy county Sheriff Edgar Buchanan (as Bravo Trimble) offers more comic relief than sharp-shooting assistance.<br /><br />"Abilene Town" begins with some promising symbolism and contrast: gunshots interrupt Scott and Ms. Fleming singing a hymn in Church; then, the camera switches to Ms. Dvorak sexily singing her saloon number, which causes a man to fire his gun in pleasure. After that, it really becomes quite a standard western; it is somehow duller than it should be, but not quite awful. Young Lloyd Bridges appears as one of the homesteaders. Dvorak's leggy costume is the film's greatest asset; in it, she is a real mover. <br /><br />**** Abilene Town (1/11/46) Edwin L. Marin ~ Randolph Scott, Ann Dvorak, Edgar Buchanan

1st watched 12/26/2008 -(Dir-Eugene Levy): Corny comedy murder mystery with very few laughs. The movie appears to be based on an earlier Italian movie according to the credits but was re-written by two fairly popular American romantic comedy writers. But this one by Charles Shyer & Nancy Meyers does not cut it compared to their other efforts. The story is about a couple of down-and-out traveling Americans, played by Richard Lewis and Sean Young, who stumble upon a lost dog and hope to make a fortune in reward money after seeing an ad in the paper for the dachsund's return. Upon trying to return it, they see a hand sticking out of a garage door at the lady's residence that they believe is attached to the rest of the dead body of the woman who is supposed to give them the money. They freak out and instead of contacting the police and telling them the truth they make out like runaways from the scene expecting to be framed for the murder. The other characters in the film are met on a train prior to this and hang around a Monte Carlo gambling resort doing various things to be pulled into the story. The other cast members include character actors John Candy, James Belushi, Cybill Shepherd, George Hamilton and others. After the police find out about the death, they start questioning the main characters and, of course, they have to work thru their goofy lies to figure out what really happened. None of the character actors mentioned earlier can bring this movie out of it's mediocre state despite some funny moments mostly provided by the Belushi/Shepherd couple. This isn't a horrible movie, it just isn't that good. There are plenty of average movies out there and this is just another one for the pile. Try it, maybe you'll like it, probably you won't.

What a terrible movie this was! I made it about 50 minutes into it and started skipping chapters until the end. The plot is nothing special, and the dialog from the movie deviates from the main story so much that your head will explode out of rage. Many useless minutes wasted just listening to characters jabber on about something irrelevant to the plot, AND/OR something that could said in a shorter amount of time. The camera work is shaky, and grainy. It seemed Mr. Milligan needed to take his finger off of the zoom button! I noticed also that at some points during this movie it seemed that Andy was having seizures, and would uncontrollably shake the camera. The splices between scenes were jumpy and didn't flow. The murder scenes were nothing special - incredibly, and laughably fake. Barely any gore, as the title suggests. This movie runs about 1 hour 20 minutes and the murder scenes take up about 1 minute TOTAL of the whole movie - if that. What a wretched piece of garbage this movie was. Andy Milligan is in fact probably one of the worst directors to plague mankind with his talentless directing, and camera-work. Usually, I can make it through really bad horror movies, and laugh about it later. BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS, however, I can't. I am just angry I wasted an hour and a half of my life watching this (what I wouldn't do to gain it back). Take my suggestion, and DO NOT see this movie unless you plan on falling asleep. TERRIBLE.

You know the story of "Sweeney Todd" now, most likely thanks to Tim Burton's recent movie. You probably don't know it though, from this take on the old tale from Andy Milligan-that notorious sleaze merchant that gave Al Adamson and Ted V. Mikels a run for their money.<br /><br />It had to happen eventually. In my years of watching horror and exploitation from the 60's to the 80's, I'm finally reviewing an Andy Milligan movie. You see, from 1964 to 1990, Andy gave us many an exploitation and horror movie-none of which was any good, and barely watchable. "The Bloodthirsty Butchers" is no exception.<br /><br />There is dialog and well, there is talk, and that's one of the things you will find here-lots and lots of talk. The movie reaches almost "Manos The Hands of Fate" levels at times, as you wait tirelessly for something to happen. While I love cheap looking gore effects, the violence is too few and far between, and in spite of it's reputation, the "breast" scene isn't that shocking. <br /><br />I love cheap and sleazy exploitation as much as the next trash cinema devotee, but "Bloodthirsty Butchers" is the kind of bad that MST3K would tear apart mercilessly. Sadly, Milligan would die of AIDS in 1991, and if there is any movie of his I'd say I sort of like, it would be the delirious "The Ghastly Ones." This is no "Ghastly Ones" though-it's just bad.

As I write this user-comment, Tim Burton's interpretation of the Sweeney Todd tale is making big money at the box office and the film even earned a couple of Oscar nominations if I'm not mistaken. I haven't seen it yet, but I sincerely hope Burton didn't look for inspiration and/or stylish trademarks in good old Andy Milligan's "Bloodthirsty Butchers". Yes, even though the title distinctively mentions butchers, the main characters in the plot are a barber (the infamous Sweeney Todd) and a female baker. Together they form a vile alliance where he kills the customers in his shop and she processes the bodies into her famous London meat pies. In other words, an Andy Milligan premise at his most typical, derivative, delirious and amateurish. I think the IMDb rating for this film speaks for itself. Although the actual story definitely isn't the worst I've ever seen, Milligan somehow inexplicably attracts sheer ineptitude. The production is one gigantic mess, with an incoherent narrative structure, truly hideous photography, poor lighting, lousy acting and directing, laughable gore and zilch tension or atmosphere. More than half of the footage is pure padding and words fail to describe how BORING the film is, even with a running time of a mere 80 minutes. Ed Wood, Ted V. Mikels and Bruno Mattei; you guys need not fear as none other than Andy Milligan is – hands down – the worst director ever, but I don't think he cared. Maybe if you dispose of a really high level of tolerance, "Bloodthirsty Butchers" is worth one viewing.

The name of Bad Company's greatest hits album is called "10 From 6". You could have just turned up this album and cut the sound on this movie. Most of the songs played in the movie were from this album. I guess oldsters during the 1970s were probably tired of all the period pieces made then about the 1930s and 1940s. That's how I feel about movies made about the 1970s. The characters in the movie looked like they were auditioning for Danny Terrio. Why is it that movies have to exaggerate the 1970s. The only good period piece I liked was "Freaks and Geeks". They cut that television show. It was exactly like things were in high school when I was there back circa 1980. I was old enough to remember the 70s and no small town was like this. It was totally youth dominated. There were no reactionaries talking about the hippies and about the inner city of Philly. That was more the 70s that I remember as a kid. This movie was very dull and cheesy. At times, I was falling asleep. I don't know why an actor who was acting during the 70s, appeared in this one. He was probably trying to lend it some credibility. Walken didn't even show up until the second half. I guess the only true thing about the movie was the "baby boomers" were/are a spoiled lot. All the kids in the movie were spoiled brats. I don't know what they had against their father.

<br /><br />I used to like some of the Hollywood action blockbusters of the 80s. They had icons such as Arnie and Sly but I think the action movie in the '90s has plummeted to new depths. The worst of these, I believe, was Armageddon.<br /><br />The plot is shamelessly contrived and pulls off the worst cliches as it seeks to excite viewers. The melodrama is so cringingly saccharine and awful that you actually cannot wait for Bruce Willis to disappear from the screen. Liv Tyler, who had acted admirably in several fine independent features directed by such masters as Bernardo Bertolucci and Robert Altman, regrettably decided to jump onto the commercial bandwagon. This movie symbolises the new Hollywood aesthetic of grand special effects and precious little good dialogue or authentic melodrama. That is the norm these days and I begin to wonder if there is a role in Hollywood for screenwriters. It seems as though they just employ hacks and committees to write the facile scripts. The rest they leave to technology. There is not a single piece of grand, heartfelt human emotion in Armageddon. It just feels empty and bland. I can think of only one good aspect of this movie and that involves Liv Tyler's dad who doesn't even make an appearance in the film. Steven Tyler's band Aerosmith provide a theme song for the movie - a ballad that really soars and at least tugs at the heartstrings a little when the end credits come up.<br /><br />I weep for Western civilization if people like this predictable, cumbersome movie. It stands for shallowness, lethargy, and a decline in the human intellect. I would even prefer to watch the eighth Friday the 13th.