jrphelan Reviews

Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)

Kill Bill - a major disappointment. All style, no substance.

[7/10 · 20 October 2003]

Kill Bill did not live up to its promise. Interestingly, preceding the movie I saw previews for Lord of the Ring: The King Returns and Matrix Revolutions. Both films rely heavily on film technique, martial arts/fighting, and violence. The difference between Kill Bill, and LOTR and Matrix, is that Kill Bill has no substance and invokes no emotional resonance with me. LOTR and Matrix in contrast, tell a compelling story on multi-levels.

Unfortunately Kill Bill is all flash, all technique, all form (borrowed and copied), and no story that resonates with the audience. I felt nothing on walking out of the movie. I never got involved with any character. I sat back and watched the movie noting and appreciating its technique, music, and staged fights. More importantly, I felt sad that Tarentino's considerable talents are wasted on copying and inflating the martial arts form instead of using that form to tell a compelling story. Kill Bill is that classic movie – style over substance. Maybe Q. Tarentino Is not interested in stories with emotional content. Maybe he is just interested in the technique of telling a story.

Seabiscuit (2003)

A major disappointment! Incompetent director ruins a great story.

[6/10 · 2 August 2003]

My rating: **1/2 out of *****. I almost walked out of this movie several times during the first hour, as I was bored. I did not read the book before seeing the movie so I would not have any expectations. Maybe I should have, as the movie leaves so many unanswered questions. This film is a major disappointment for me. I had looked forward to seeing this movie after hearing all the hype and the great story. The story of Seabiscuit and the men around him has all the ingredients of a great movie. Unfortunately Gary Ross, the director and script writer, screws everything up, except the casting, which is great. The music is inappropriate and irritating. The editing is lousy. The cinematography swamps the story and is uninspired. The script is mawkish and portentous. I felt like I was watching a comic book. All the scenes are short and framed and beautiful, like pages in a comic book. Is this a documentary of the depression a la Ken Burns TV projects? An epic film a la Dances With Wolves? A human story of three wounded men who find redemption? Or a story of a mistreated and badly trained horse who finally wins? Gary Ross attempts to combine all these stories into one movie. He consistently chokes off emotional climaxes leaving me teased and frustrated. And the ending is uninspired and maddening. Mildly recommended, after all it is a great story and the lead characters are great. I watched Michelangelo Antonioni's Red Desert that evening. What a difference - a director who knows how to use the camera, set scenes, camera angles, who creates deep complex characters, and knows how to use color in a film...and this film is from 1964!

Beyond the Clouds (1995)

That rare film - visual poetry combined with serene reflection on life and love.

[8/10 · 5 July 2003]

I was stunned by this film. I have been renting Antonioni's films/rediscovering them, and this film showed me the climax and fruits of his 50 years of directing. What an eye for setting, color, and detail! I have never seen such visual beauty and poetry filmed before. I had to stop after the first story and hold back the tears. Yes, beauty moves me, like it moved Keats to write Ode on a Grecian Urn. This movie is made for the mature, emotionally and intellectually, audience. Those hoping to see physical action and soap opera will be disappointed. I will have to see this film several times before I can truly appreciate it and judge it. This film should be required viewing for all cinematographers and directors.

Possibly a truly great film, on the order of Kurosawa's Dreams.

Adaptation. (2002)

First half great, second half embarrassing

[7/10 · 11 January 2003]

As a writer I loved the first half of this movie. Great opening! The movie kept me guessing, surprised, and delighted till it took a sudden turn into mediocrity and melodrama. Did the writer get drunk and couldn't finish the script? Decide to satirize his own movie? Or just cop out and decide to supply a standard cliche violent ending????? You decide...I did, and I should have stuck to my decision to walk out of the movie when Meryl Streep pulls a gun out.....too bad...could have been a wonderful movie, now it's just another loser...

About Schmidt (2002)

A shallow, well-made movie about a shallow man

[6/10 · 10 January 2003]

The movie takes sly digs, without overtly commenting on Schmidt's family and co-workers. Very true-to-life! Believe me, I've been there. Good cast of characters and actors. Nicholson overdoes the reined-in emotions of Schmidt, looking like a mad Buddha about to erupt. Unfortunately the movie never allows Schmidt to break out of his isolation, selfishness, and shallowness. Instead we get a sappy ending. Hard to feel sorry for, or to empathize with such a klutz and bore. The question is...is the director commenting on how difficult, impossible it is for a man to break out of his shallowness after a lifetime of being in a self-imposed prison? Or is the director just shallow himself, and thinks that Schmidt has "woken up?"

Antigone/Rites of Passion (1990)

A travesty!

[1/10 · 4 October 2002]

I could not stand more than 20 minutes of this travesty. The movie reminded me of a high school modern dance recital. After watching the movie for five minutes you realize that the dancers, yes dancers, go through the same movements over and over again. They aren't even good dancers. There are no actors, there is a voice-over telling what is going on as the `dancers' writhe. Sophocle's poetry is jettisoned for the voice over. Maybe the movie gets better, but I could not stand any more.

Minority Report (2002)

Another BAD movie from Spielberg who loses no opportunity to trivialize a movie.

[6/10 · 22 June 2002]

Think Tron and Blade Runner meet Minority Report. Steven Spielberg creates a Science Fiction film noir a la Blade Runner and Tron. Unfortunately, as always, Steven Spielberg has to trivialize and Hollywoodize the movie, leaching and bleaching the life, substance, and darkness out of it. This film is in the style of AI Artificial Intelligence, but better; unfortunately not good enough for me to recommend it. As always in a Spielberg movie, when he has the chance to add lowbrow humor to a scene, he does. After a while the cumulative effect of these cheap laughs and snickers (yes, the full movie house snickered to the visual gags), is to destroy the dramatic integrity of the movie. He should review Blade Runner, Dark City, and PI to see how a futuristic film noir can be made. As he has demonstrated in AI, and this movie, he does not know how to do it.

So much is wrong with this movie: the cinematography is bleached out so it looks like a comic book printed on cheap paper, the music score is derivative (he even used Beethoven!) and detracts from the movie, the acting is one dimensional with comic book style characters, and worst of all he tacks on a glowing pretty Hollywood happy ending at the last couple minutes of the movie. Sad, hard to believe he is considered one of the great film directors. I have yet to see a good movie of his, though I must confess I usually miss his movies knowing they tend to be sappy and lacking in substance. NOT recommended…unless you like Spielberg's style.

Spider-Man (2002)

First movie based on a comic book hero that has captured the cheapness and shallowness of the comics.

[6/10 · 22 May 2002]

This is the first movie made from a comic book that that has captured the cheapness and shallowness of comics. For the most part I found the movie boring and shallow and trite. It looked and sounded cheap, like the comics. Amazing that a movie that was so cheaply made (i.e. special effects) could be drawing so many crowds. Must be due to a lack of good summer films. Excellent main characters, good acting talent wasted on comic one dimensional roles. The thrill, flash, and glee in the comic book was left out of the movie. Too bad...

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

Movie should be renamed to MI - Mediocre Intelligence

[2/10 · 4 July 2001]

So what do you do when you are in over your head in a project and have no idea what to do???? What one does is fall back on what one knows, what one has done before, and what others have done before. One throws together a whole bunch of stuff trying to come up with an end product, hoping it will all come together and coalesce into something greater than the parts. That is what Steven Spielberg has done in AI (Artificial Intelligence), finishing a project started by the late great Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick's movies always had a cold clear intellect behind them. They had points to make and always dissected some aspect of humanity. What better subject to tackle then Artificial Intelligence? Human and robot interaction, computers with human intelligence and emotions??? But in Spielberg's hands, the movie became MI, Mediocre Intelligence. It was evident from the very beginning of the movie that Spielberg and his team did not have the intellectual depth to make this movie. This movie is filled with ideas and scenes from other movies such as Star Wars, Tommy, Close Encounters Of the Third Kind, etc etc. Not only that, the scenes were badly filmed, in a hazy style that did not fit the scene and the movie. The cinematography is mediocre. Adding insult to injury, the music score is by John Williams, and did not fit the movie. The music was so bad and inappropriate I sat there stunned, when I was not wincing from the movie itself. When one hears reviewers extol the special effects in the movie, one knows the movie has nothing else to offer. What surprised me, is that there were very few stunning, new, interesting special effects. The only memorable ones were of a few robots. And Spielberg made sure you noticed them by showing the same effect over and over and over again.

So what does the movie AI boil done to??? What was the main focus of the movie???? It's a young boys search for his mother's love….granted the young boy is a robot, but the movie still boils down to that same old schmaltz….Mommy, Mommy, I love You!!!! Please love me!!! Where are you???? So what can I praise in this movie? Only the acting of Haley and Jude Law. They did the best they could with the awful script they were given. Haley gives a sustained perfect performance, quite amazing for his age. The last part of the movie where David is trying to find his mother and become a real boy went on and on forever, interrupted now and then with a syrupy voice over reminiscent of a Disney movie. When the movie finally ends, and the credits started rolling, all I could do was hissss when Steven Spielberg's name was shown. There is so much that could have been done on the subject of AI and robot/human interaction. One only has to read the Robot series of novels and stories by Isaac Asimov. Is Steven surrounded by nothing but yes men? Did no one have the guts to tell him he was making a real stinker? I sat there in the theater embarrassed for him. How could he have made such a bad movie, and especially one given to him by Stanley Kubrick?????

Moulin Rouge! (2001)

Run for your soul! Glitz and MTV flash triumphs over story and substance in this frenetic mess of a music video movie!

[2/10 · 7 June 2001]

How can I describe the movie Moulin Rouge? Glittery multi colored cotton candy? a huge flashy cubic zirconia diamond? hallucinations of a drunken drag queen who has taken too many bad drugs? Yes, all those! The movie was one long series of glitzy shouting melodramatic climaxes interspersed now and then with some soap opera dialogue. Acting??? No room for it. Plot???? trashy remake of La Boheme (speaking of La Boheme, if you want to see a tragic love story set to music, see the opera La Boheme….avoid Moulin Rouge). In short Moulin Rouge is a triumph of glitzy style over substance. Special effects, fancy camera work, and choppy editing run amuck! On top of that the singers whisper their lyrics then shout them, one gets frazzled by all the razzle-dazzle. When the cliché climax finally came, I was so benumbed by all the frenetic scenes that instead of shouting: More! More! (for a good movie), I beseeched Hollywood: Less! Less!!!!.

Moulin Rouge reflects our pop culture, where special effects and over the top screaming singing has replaced substance and intelligence and genuine emotions. It says, it you scream loud enough and make it flashy enough, they will come, and buy…. All in all a total disaster…so much talent, clever sets, numbers, camera work, editing, good actors,…and all the director could come up with is a 110 minute MTV music video, and a bad one at that. If you like music videos, then you may like this movie. you will be safe, there is no substance to it. Just eat that glistening spun sugar and go for the ride!

The Cell (2000)

Preposterous Serial Killer copycat movie badly conceived and filmed

[5/10 · 6 June 2001]

Who can believe this serial killer???? Has an underground cell complete with glass cell with an automated water system in the middle of agricultural fields? Must have cost a fortune to build, and the builders didn't think something was wrong??? And who implanted the hooks in the killer's back????? Wouldn't they report him to the police? Hollywood shock value idiotic tale. Unfortunately overwhelms the interesting tale of mind melding.....another good idea "hollywoodized" into schlock!

Battlefield Earth (2000)

Why did no one yell STOP!!!! Lets rethink this movie...

[2/10 · 14 March 2001]

Imagine you are a young teenage boy in the 1950's. your only escape from the boredom of school and your parents was to go to the movie matinees on Saturday. With just enough money to buy popcorn and some candy. And every week you couldn't wait to see the latest episode of Buck Rogers, Rocketman, etc. Mankind was doomed! Unless Buck Rogers could fight off the evil space invaders! Do you miss those days? Those movie serials? The simplicity of good and evil where good always triumphs???? Well I got the movie for you! John Travolta decided to resurrect one of L Ron Hubbard's old science fiction books from that era. Bring it to life with modern effects, sets, and all the glitz that Hollywood and lots of money can produce! And he even stars in it, with another great actor, Forest Whitaker! It doesn't get better then this for all us teen age males pining for those golden years of the 1950's!!!!!!! Oh…..one problem, not a major problem, he forgot to update the story….make it believable…., make it entertaining…., make it………….watchable. Imagine a marriage of Buck Rogers and John Travolta. A Buck Rogers movie updated with the latest technology, but the story/plot the same. This is how bad this movie is. I kept waiting for someone to interrupt the movie(like a Woody Allen movie) yelling CUT! This stinks! We got to throw it out and redo it! No such luck, the movie just keeps grinding away getting more and more insane and unbelievable as it groans to its finish: the one lone woman kissing the hero while all the men cheer, the evil guy imprisoned, the evil home planet destroyed, mankind saved from the Psychlos, who by the way, look like Klingons with dreadnaughts! What can one say? One can only shake one's head in disbelief that they made this movie, spent all that money, forever embarrassed themselves. What is the lesson to be learned here? Pride goeth before a fall comes to mind, or just because you are a great actor does not mean you are a great director/movie maker, that old science fiction should stay just that, old!

Unfortunately this movie is not so bad that it qualifies for a fun campy bad movie, the kind one can sit around and laugh at. Though it almost qualifies. The only saving grace is that the acting is good, the sets are good.

All the Pretty Horses (2000)

Western Soap Opera with Overblown background and Music Score.Racist Too!

[2/10 · 29 December 2000]

Golden American Texas boy comes to Mexico to show ignorant backward Mexicans how to be cowboys. How I loved the scene where the ignorant Mexican bunk hand does a shuffle dance for Matt Damon!!!! Racism hasn't gone out of style, it has just moved south!!!!! I had to walk out of the movie due to its cliche soap opera bad acted script. The only thing good about the movie was the scenery! Avoid at all costs!

Unbreakable (2000)

Where's the Beef????? too much technique, too little story

[7/10 · 28 December 2000]

Maybe M. Night Shyamalan has just discovered comic book super heros. He wants us to believe that David Duncan has never realized that he has never been sick, has never been injured while everybody else has been. And he has never questioned this???? I dont think so. Also, he can "see" what will happen to people when he bumps into them...and has never thought about it until Elijah tells him he is a super hero? Dont think so. but if you like moody atmospheric movies coupled with great technique, see this movie. Another one like The Sixth Sense. Next time lets hope M. Night Shyamalan finds a better more believable story to match his considerable talent.

The Contender (2000)

Incredible Bad Propaganda Movie

[1/10 · 7 December 2000]

The film irritated me from the opening scenes. Badly filmed, cut, written, etc. The only saving grace was Gary Oldman. This is a MESSAGE movie...Conservative Republicans BAD, Liberal Democrats GOOD!. Sadly I agree with the principles espoused in the movie. But I do not have to be hit over the head by a contrived unbelievable script to get the message. It was like viewing a WWII propaganda Movie. Or the old movie "Reefer Madness". What a debacle!

Nurse Betty (2000)

Too much unnecessary violence. ruined good story

[5/10 · 16 October 2000]

I liked the story about Nurse Betty. But the opening and closing with the graphic violence was unnecessary and ruined the movie for me. The romance/fantasy of Nurse Betty was charming and interesting. The premise of someone getting shocked into a fantasy world and reacting from her fantasies was a great idea, and could have made a good movie if the violence did not get in the way. The ending was totally preposterous and violent, ruined the ending. Chris Rock's character was grating and boring. Can not recommend the movie.