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From Hell (2001, Albert and Allen Hughes)
I had no idea Heather Graham was ever a lead in such a high profile project. I knew she was in From Hell, but she’s got a lot to do–and with an Irish accent. I suppose it’s the best performance I’ve ever seen her give, maybe because her character isn’t a twit and Graham tends… 📖
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Constantine (2005, Francis Lawrence)
Until the last minute, which introduces the idea Keanu Reeves is going to be narrating the film (which doesn’t start with him and has a number of scenes without him), I was going to say nice things about Constantine. I wasn’t even going to point out the son of the devil who’s coming to Earth… 📖
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Watchmen (2009, Zack Snyder), the director’s cut
This response will be double length. Well, double length minus ten words. Wait, twelve. No, fifteen. Well, you get the idea. Watchmen doesn’t get a double post because it’s good. It gets a double post because it is, as far as I can tell, the first utterly pretentious film from a filmmaker–Zack Snyder–who seems to… 📖
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The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003, Stephen Norrington)
There’s no doubt Stephen Norrington’s a lousy director but he’s not atrocious enough someone should retire from acting because he or she had to work with him–and Sean Connery didn’t even get the worst scenes in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It’s a stunt casting of Connery and, when compared to the source material–it’s no… 📖
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Wonderland (1999, Michael Winterbottom)
From a description–not even from a few minutes–Wonderland might appear to fit into (or create again) the British realism movement. It’s shot on video, natural lighting, natural make-up, no visible tripod shots, all hand-held, all very cinema verite. There’s no artificiality to it. Except the artificiality of being a filmed narrative. Wonderland even visibly bucks… 📖
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The Matrix Revolutions (2003, The Wachowskis)
I think The Matrix! Part Trois has to be better than the second one, if only because it’s not as terribly boring in its action sequences. The second one had that highway battle and it was bad and the Keanu Reeves versus a million Hugo Weavings and it was bad. Here, Keanu Reeves fights one… 📖
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Erskineville Kings (1999, Alan White)
Okay, so Marty Denniss is a playwright. Erskineville Kings makes some more sense. Not a lot more sense, but some. It’s a peculiar picture, a human drama with a lot of dialogue–it’s set over a day–and it’s all in a few indoor locations. But Denniss, the writer, emphasizes himself, the actor, as the protagonist, when… 📖
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The Island (2005, Michael Bay)
I know The Island bombed but I can’t believe anyone thought it wouldn’t. It’s incredible such a large budget was given essentially to a future movie–it takes place in 2015 or something, it’s never clear, but there’s a lot of future stuff–and I had no idea it was a future movie. Bay’s got future cars… 📖
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The Punisher (2004, Jonathan Hensleigh)
Considering Dolph Lundgren got famous playing a blond Russian and can definitely act better than Kevin Nash, who doesn’t even have any lines and is terrible, it’s telling Jonathan Hensleigh didn’t bring him back for a small role, an acknowledgment of the far superior 1989 Punisher adaptation. Whereas that film–and to some extent, the one… 📖
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Red Dragon (2002, Brett Ratner)
It’s hard to know what to think of Red Dragon. While it’s an adaptation of a novel, it’s also a remake of Manhunter, whether the film wants to acknowledge it or not. It’s got Danny Elfman doing the score, so it’s scary (though he does seem rather influenced by early 1990s Morricone) and director Ratner… 📖
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Angel of Death (2009, Paul Etheredge)
If you’re going to rip something off, I guess ripping off Jesus’ Son is the way to go. And it does have the best Doug Jones performance I’ve ever seen. But when the best performance in a film is the twenty-two year-old mob son (Jake Abel) there’s clearly something wrong. Angel of Death was serialized… 📖
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Battle Royale (2000, Fukasaku Kinji), the director’s cut
Battle Royale has to be seen to be believed. It shouldn’t work–a film about teenagers killing each other (under a government mandated law) played as a sweeping melodrama, but it does. It’s somehow brilliant, all thanks to director Fukasaku. The action takes place on this tropical island and Fukasaku fills it with beautiful shots and… 📖
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Paycheck (2003, John Woo)
Didn’t John Woo used to have a style? I mean, I know he had birds and he had the guns pointed at each other, but didn’t he have some style? He’s got no style in Paycheck, which ends up being one of the best movies John Badham never made. It’s a complete time waster, the… 📖
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Human Traffic (1999, Justin Kerrigan)
I mustn’t be the right audience for Human Traffic, seeing as how the only thing I found slightly amusing was The Terminator reference. I can’t remember why I had interest in seeing it–maybe because it came up when I was looking up Bill Hicks–and I do like John Simm. The problem with the film is… 📖
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Paperback Hero (1999, Antony J. Bowman)
A substantial portion–probably seventy percent–of Paperback Hero is solely about Hugh Jackman being charming. The rest, presumably, is about being a Claudia Karvan movie. But it’s really not. Karvan’s top-billed and she’s got, I guess, the bigger story, but Jackman’s the protagonist for the parts of the film where there’s a protagonist–the result is a… 📖
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G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009, Stephen Sommers)
It doesn’t surprise me there are people out there who like G.I. Joe. Not to be negative, but people are, by and large, not very intelligent. What surprises me is anyone who thought they were making a competent action picture. You’d think the success of Van Helsing would keep Sommers away from franchises or potential… 📖
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A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984, Wes Craven)
The best thing about A Nightmare on Elm Street is the font in the opening titles. It’s something sans serif and it’s slightly off and it looks good. To be fair to the movie’s reputation, I did jump twice, both times at the end; maybe because it was waking me up. As opposed to encouraging… 📖
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X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009, Gavin Hood)
One has to wonder if, had things worked out differently, Harrison Ford would have made a Han Solo prequel in the mid-1980s. I mean, he did reprise Bob Falfa. While the X-Men movies did make Hugh Jackman a star, they didn’t really make him the biggest star in the world. But X-Men Origins: Wolverine does… 📖
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X-Men: The Last Stand (2006, Brett Ratner)
Apparently all the X-Men movies needed was the vapidness of Brett Ratner. What’s strangest about his replacing of Singer is the mutation being a metaphor for homosexuality. Singer used it as a metaphor (poorly) for race in the first one. I don’t think there were any metaphors in the second one, but it works perfectly… 📖
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The Land That Time Forgot (2009, C. Thomas Howell)
It’s a Christian movie? Really? Okay…. I guess the dinosaurs confused that point. And I think there’s some gravity in there. Being a fan of the seventies adaptation, I thought I’d see this one too. It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever sat through. It’s relatively harmless, with far better acting than I was expecting.… 📖
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Three Days of the Condor (1975, Sydney Pollack)
The espionage genre has gotten so stupid over the last couple decades, it’s hard to even imagine how a mediocre entry could be good. Now, it’s watching the least worst. Three Days of the Condor is such a peculiar film, even though it’s wholly commercial–I mean, Dino De Laurentiis produced it. It’s not just a… 📖
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Dead Snow (2009, Tommy Wirkola)
I’m getting sick of running zombies. Did 28 Days Later… start the running zombies or was it the Dawn of the Dead remake? Whichever, it’s gotten to the point where it’s just too boring. Kind of like how bullet-time, by the second Matrix film, was already rote. Dead Snow is a concept zombie movie, with… 📖
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Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990, Tom Stoppard)
I’d heard of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, of course. I’d probably even meant to see it at one point, probably around the time of Branagh’s Hamlet, which is when I first got big into Shakespeare. But it was only available on VHS and I was already addicted to widescreen. Oddly, this viewing–at the wife’s… 📖
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Striking Distance (1993, Rowdy Herrington)
If it weren’t for the fantastic Brad Fiedel music (until the end credits) and the Pittsburgh locations (the city really is underutilized as a filming location, with Striking Distance taking fantastic advantage of its mix of urban, green and water), there’d be nothing to distinguish this one. It’s a B movie given a high profile… 📖
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Last Man Standing (1996, Walter Hill)
Before Last Man Standing came out–when it was, presumably, going to be a hit because Willis was on one of his career upswings–I remember seeing Walter Hill say this film, his film, was going to improve on the source material (that source material being Kurosawa’s Yojimbo). Hill borrows more liberally from the first remake of… 📖
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Kate & Leopold (2001, James Mangold)
I unintentionally watched the Roger Ebert cut of Kate & Leopold. I originally saw it at a sneak preview with the plot intact. Ebert saw it around the same time and threatened to complain or whatever if they didn’t cut it. It works all right, but the original cut is available on DVD. I thought… 📖
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Thick as Thieves (2009, Mimi Leder)
Maybe ten years ago, Thick as Thieves wouldn’t be a direct-to-DVD release (it’s actually a hit, which is kind of scary). Ten years ago, Mimi Leder hadn’t bombed out with Pay It Forward, Antonio Banderas movies–most of them–were still opening in theaters. Morgan Freeman usually gets even a limited release out of his more vanity… 📖
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The Matrix Reloaded (2003, The Wachowskis)
The Wachowskis get to do whatever they want with The Matrix Reloaded so they do this bombastic, pseudo-intellectual sequel and they’re totally bored with it. It’s very obviously not what they want to be doing with their time. They got about as much mileage out of the Matrix as they could in the first one… 📖
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The Vampire Bat (1933, Frank R. Strayer)
It’s hard not to be, at least, somewhat impressed with The Vampire Bat, if only because it came out in 1933 as a knockoff Universal horror picture. Except at this point, there’d only been Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy. The Vampire Bat brilliantly resembles a Universal horror picture in every way but the filmmaking. There’s… 📖
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The Mummy’s Hand (1940, Christy Cabanne)
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen this film. There’s no discernible reason for it to be called The Mummy’s Hand. I can only guess it has to do with the way they cut the trailer, maybe having the hand come out as a shocker. It’s not a traditional Universal horror film; it’s one… 📖
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The Matrix (1999, The Wachowskis)
I have this vivid memory of seeing The Matrix in the theater. When the agents, dressed in their black suits, got out of the car, everyone groaned–they thought it was a Men in Black reference. Of course, the thing about The Matrix is it fakes being wholly original. One of the nice things about being… 📖
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Friday the 13th (2009, Marcus Nispel), the extended version
I don’t know what I was expecting from Friday the 13th, but whatever it was, I didn’t get it. It’s not particularly gory, it’s not at all scary, it’s not stupid enough to be funny; I do understand why producer Michael Bay walked on it due to the level of sex. It’s like they traded… 📖
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Killshot (2008, John Madden)
It’s hard to say whether Killshot falls apart because of the filmmakers or because of the source material. Killshot changes its mind about what to deliver every three minutes. The script can’t decide on a main character–is it Mickey Rourke’s hit man or is it Diane Lane’s woman in distress or is it Thomas Jane’s… 📖
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Impulse (1990, Sondra Locke)
Impulse is somewhat interesting as a piece of pseudo-feminist filmmaking. Not to suggest Locke’s a poser. It’s just her intentions can’t compete with her script. The script appears to have come from two actors turned writers. Leigh Chapman seems to have been brought in to female-up the script. There are some really nice little moments,… 📖
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X2 (2003, Bryan Singer)
X-Men 2–sorry, X2–is one of the worst movies I’ve ever sat through, if not the worst. Singer does a lousy job on X2. It looks like it was filmed in Canada on a restricted budget; it looks goofy and cheap. The story is idiotic and the script is terrible. There’s no good split between the… 📖
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Horsemen (2009, Jonas Åkerlund)
Horsemen went direct-to-video with Dennis Quaid and Zhang Ziyi. It’s surprising because it’s a Platinum Dunes production–the guys who remade Friday the 13th; I thought Michael Bay would have a firmer distribution deal. The director, Jonas Åkerlund, is fine. With a better script, he might have made a better movie. Horsemen would have been more… 📖
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Twister (1996, Jan de Bont)
At some point during Twister, I remembered Jack N. Green shot it–he shot a bunch of Clint Eastwood’s nineties pictures. So, Twister looks great. Jan de Bont’s a fine director, he knows how to shoot Panavision. It’s really a lousy movie, a lousy summer action movie. It’s a perfect roller coaster movie in terms of… 📖