Change Your Image
lordzardoz
Reviews
The Andromeda Strain (2008)
Good, but could have been better
This review does contain spoilers.
The miniseries is a reasonably effective modernization of the original novel. Additions to the original plot have mixed success. The notion that Andromeda is an alien bio-weapon had potential. But there were too many secondary conflicts added. Tying in time travel (through the wormhole that the Scoop satellite collided with) is not so bad. Adding a pro environmental message (deep sea mining by a mining consortium that wiped out a deep sea bacteria which could cure / neutralize Andromeda) is just a bit much. But also having sinister people within the military that wanted to keep Andromeda as a bio weapon? The story is best served by making Andromeda scary, and treating the story as a disaster / horror movie. Shifting the focus towards a vaguely anti-government / anti-corporate tone simply dilutes and distracts from the primary story.
Breach (2007)
Interesting plot, but slow and plodding
This will contain spoilers.
This is one of those movies that I would have to say is a reasonably good movie, but one I did not especially enjoy. The point of tension in this movie was to be about the main character being found out about his boss. The villain was an interesting take. A religious to the point of irritating man who is overly self important, but one that does not seem especially dangerous. Also one that did not seem especially interesting.
Quite simply, it was played too straight. The movie would have been better served if the villain had given a sense that he knew his underling was on to him. It would have been better served if the villain had managed to escape in the end despite being found out. Heck, the movie would have been better served if something actually interesting happened on screen.
The plot and concept are solid. The acting is up to par. However, in the end, the movie is basically pretty boring and uninteresting. There are much better espionage based movies available.
END COMMUNICATION
Sicko (2007)
Biased Propaganda sure, but it has a point
This comment may contain spoilers about certain observations made by the film Sicko.
I am Canadian, so whatever damning commentary this film has is not really directed at me. And yeah, the movie did put the best possible face on socialized health care. The Canadian system is not perfect. If you need immediate care, your going to be taken care of. You do not have to pay for it either. But if you have something that 'wont kill you' immediately, (ie, a bad knee), you can end up waiting a long time for it. But I think that our system is better than the American system. I may have to wait, but I am pretty sure I will get it.
The real question that this movie puts to a US viewer is should be this: Is socialized health care something worth paying for? I would answer yes. And anything worth having is worth paying for.
In France, their citizens want to have days off, paid day care, free health care, and free / cheap education. In the U.S, people in general want to have more money.
Who do you trust more with your life? An insurance company trying to maximize its profits? Or a Government trying to keep its costs down? At least with the government, you could vote someone out of office.
END COMMUNICATION
1408 (2007)
An uncommon sort of horror movie
There are plenty of horror movies that have come out recently, that rely on people being tortured in a gory and messy manner. Go back a bit further, and its easy to find all sorts of blood baths. It is much harder to find a movie that simply relies on tension and creating a sense of terror and unease.
There is something very Lovecraftian about this movies approach. There is no monster, and no murderer. Just one 'very f*cking evil room', to quote the hotel manager. And once the clock starts to run, the main character is subjected to a relentless assault on his mind. This movie creates a palpable sense of malevolence and does so without an on screen villain.
The movie is very entertaining without resorting to the same sort of tricks that most horror movies rely on, and for that alone it is well worth watching.
Dnevnoy dozor (2006)
Entertaining, but hard to follow
The number rating I gave this title. Out of a possible Ten, I would actually rate it as 'Y'. As in, the Letter 'Y'.
This movie has some of the most impressive visuals of any movie I have ever seen. It has a supernatural storyline that has great potential. It has some very funny moments in it, and some decent action.
Unfortunately, this movie is gratuitously surreal. A good example is the Parrot. At a late point in the movie, the master of the Dark ones sends a henchmen after the hero. The henchmen is a parrot that morphs into a human. OK. Why the hell is this guy a parrot? And why did he have a plastic toy car that became real? At the birthday party near the end of the movie, why does the crowd clap and cheer after every muttered half sentence from our injured hero? There is a lot of stuff that happens in this movie where you never quite know why the things that happen are happening. This may be due to many factors. Maybe because its subtitled. Maybe because its the 2nd part of a trilogy where I never saw the first part. But I think it is because there is a lot of stuff that happens on screen that is not really relevant to the plot.
Despite these flaws, this movie is absolutely worth watching, simply for the stunning visuals. I enjoyed this movie, but it really feels like a 3 hour movie compressed into 2 hours.
END COMMUNICATION
Slither (2006)
A highly entertaining movie.
This is a movie that I greatly enjoyed. But like many other movies I enjoy, it is one where you will probably know if you will like it long before you see it.
And now spoilers.
The premise of the movie is hardly academy award material. The plot is based on an alien life form that crashes to earth in a small town. The meteor cracks open, and someone is infested, and soon you have plenty of slugs that turn people into zombies. There is also a secondary plot where the main character and his love interest, but pretty much every movie has that sort of thing.
The good parts of this movie deliver though. The slugs and monsters look great. The movie also has one of the better evisceration deaths in any movie that I have ever seen. The dialog is funny. The town setting is surprisingly believable, with plenty of convincing ugly people to act as slug fodder. And by ugly people, I mean convincing ugly. Most movies will have either typical generic good looking people, or over the top grotesquelyugly. Slither has the sort of Ugly people you would run into on the street.
There is not a whole lot that is purely original in this movie, and its not going to win any awards, but it is certainly a great movie to just sit down and watch and enjoy.
END COMMUNICATION
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
An excellent film for those with a thick skin
This is one of the funniest movies I have ever seen. I have seldom laughed as often or as hard when watching any movie. The humor is inspired, subversive, and twisted.
Spoilers to follow reveal specific gags in the movie.
While this movie is funny, be warned that there is plenty in this movie that can offend people. This is probably the first movie to make a joke that combines anti semitism and the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks. The humor covers such topics as anti-semitism, mocking the mentally handicapped, incest, rape, a number of jokes targeted against women, the conservative US, religion, homosexuality, masturbation, and the people of Khazakstan.
But if your likely to be OK with all of that, you will possibly hurt yourself laughing. The jokes push the clueless foreigner stereotype to extremes that I have not heard of in any other movie.
END COMMUNICATION
The Departed (2006)
A great crime movie.
The Spoilers herein will pretty much give away the entire movie. Most of it can be inferred from the previews, but I will indeed wreck the ending for you.
This is a movie that is very good, but is not one that I am not sure how well I liked it, which essentially means that its probably not one I would watch a second time.
On the plus side, its has great acting, dialog, and very memorable characters. Damon and DiCaprio are both put in a very strong performance. And Jack Nicholson is very entertaining in his role, as is Mark Whalberg. The plot is interesting too. You have a mole in the police department trying to identify the under cover agent in the crime lords gang, while the agent in the gang tries to find the mole.
But the story in and of its self is not that interesting to me, mostly because it feels like it does not really resolve its story line. By the end of the movie, all the principle characters end up dead, but there is not climactic gun fight. The undercover agent is very suddenly shot in the head, and then those who were in a position to expose the Mole are also shot dead. And then finally the Mole is in turn shot by one of the officers who quit the force when the Mole demanded access to the undercover agents in the wake of the death of the head of the under cover department. While the ending does fit the circumstances quite nicely, the is just not that satisfying and ending. Rather then resolving the character plot lines, everyone is just shot, and the truth is never really revealed. I would have preferred to see either the Mole or the Agent survive.
Its hard to have a worthwhile ending, I think, when both the hero and the villain of the story end up dead and no one around them ends up knowing exactly why. I don't mind that the Mole gets killed at the end, but the ending would have been so much better if there were some on screen element explaining exactly why the ex-cop who killed him did so. For all the audience knows, he was murdered in cold blood out of a grudge having nothing to do with the central conflict of the story.
END COMMUNICATION
Man of the Year (2006)
A good, if flawed movie
Spoilers contained here in reveal the general nature of the plot, though not specifics.
This movie suffers from the same problem as the Hulk, though in a different way. They did not make the kind of movie that the audience was expecting. Instead of 'Hulk Smash', you got a lot of drama. Here, instead of a Comedian as president, you got a funny political thriller.
They could have made it more to what the audience expected. A Jon Stewart clone wins the presidency cleanly and hilarity ensues. Instead, they made a movie about how a flaw in an electronic voting system gave the election to a Jon Stewart clone.
Now, I suppose that the plot is somewhat more credible due to the way they presented it, but given the premise, they don't need to be that plausible. They could have made this a movie about how President Dobbs had to work against the entrenched interests who would not want him in power, the perception that he is not fit for the job, and how he was also entirely overwhelmed by the job he now has.
Instead you get a very good comedy thrown in with a mediocre thriller. The result is an OK movie that is worth watching as a renter.
END COMMUNICATION
Jackass Number Two (2006)
Jackass number Two delivers exactly what we all hoped for and were afraid of
The sequel is exactly what you will expect it to be. And it is good enough that everyone who would have wanted to watch this should leave it happy.
This is not a movie that will win an Academy award. But it does take what made the Jackass TV show and original movie a success, and it turns it up a notch. It is funnier, more brutal, and more disgusting than the original. And I loved every minute of it.
The original had a few notorious stunts, and there is at least one stunt that this movie will be remembered for. You will wince, cringe, look away, and laugh very, very hard.
In any event, you probably do not need to read this review, or any others, to know if you will like this movie, unless you have never heard of Jackass.