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theevilartist1
Reviews
Ghost Rider (2007)
Could the Rider Be Burnedout Before His Next Outing?
So I went to see long awaited film adaptation of Ghost Rider. I can't say that I was excited about it. I did want to see this movie but I wanted to see Hannibal Rising more but you know how it is with popular vote plus we had a six year old with us. The movie goes off of the premise that Mephisto, a.k.a. the Devil, made a pact with some town that ended in the townspeople turning on each other. So the Rider of the era is sent to retrieve the contract made between the people and Mephisto. However this backfires and the Rider makes off with it supposedly "outrunning the Devil". Fast forward to Johnny and dear old dad performing in their stunt show. Dad has cancer, Johnny makes deal with the Devil, dad is saved but dies the same day from an accident, throw in the whole subplot of young lovers running away together and you pretty much got the first 20 minutes of the movie.
Now Johnny is now famous for his stunts and so on and so forth, Roxanne reappears in his life but he can't fully connect with her because Mephisto has returned to call on Johnny to hunt down his son Blackheart. Blackheart wants to the contract to supposedly help him take over the world and he's using the Hidden to help him.
Okay now that I'm done with plot let's get down to the movie. First off the starts okay but the whole young lovers thing was well...lame. Then you add in the fact that the main villains don't transform into their true selves at any point in the movie. The Hidden are easily defeated in mere seconds and the dialog is just terrible. This movie should have been darker and should have done away with some of the terrible humor. I gotta say with the humor I was very unimpressed. Also take the fact that Blackheart is the worst thing to come out of hell since Mephisto and he's rarely does anything that can be considered terrifying. Look Blackheart is supposed to be huge and almost undefeated heck even GR had an extremely hard time fighting him. However in this movie Blackheart is defeated with little effort. All of the battles in this film are anti-climactic. I kept waiting for the big final showdown and it didn't come. Plus the Rider is not limited to the darkness. The Rider and Blaze are two separate beings and the Rider takes over pretty much whenever it wants. Blaze is rarely even aware of when this happens.
The Penance Stare, while impressive, was overdone in this movie. It's not supposed to kill the target but doom them to a life of pain and misery equivalent to the pain they've caused others. Cage is a good actor no doubt but he was miscast in this. What really did this movie in was the rating. PG-13 is good for superhero fair such as X-Men and Spiderman but with subject matter like this it should have been R but no they once again had to sellout and make to where the kids could see it. Question is how many children born after the early nineties are going to be old enough to even know who Ghost Rider is? It's not like he's one of the most publicized heroes around. This should have been done for the viewers who were old enough to vote. It should have been dark. Eva Mendes, who is always stunning, was just that and only that in this movie. With the bad dialog she was forced to play the stereotypical D.I.D. In short the movie was just way too rushed.
Now that the criticisms are out of the way time to get on to the positives. The special effects were fair. Ghost Rider was rendered nicely and the Hidden were okay but Blackheart was not impressive at all. All they did was turn him blue and give him red eyes and that's it. The flame effects were cool. I like how they gave the impression of speed and the extreme heat the rider gives off. Plus the bike was excellent and the chains were believable. Not to mention Ghost Rider's voice would scare the crap out of me were he real. That roar of his is flesh melting and I like the strange sense of insanity that he possesses. Another good thing was the insertion of the precursor to Blaze's Ghost Rider Carter Slade, who was released in his own comics years before Ghost Rider's comics began being released. This of course at most is only an inside thing since anyone who hasn't read the comics most likely won't know it. I really liked his Ghost Rider form. Too bad however towards the ending it gets a bit preachy with the constant references to heaven and what not and with lines like "He may have my soul but he doesn't have my spirit." which was hokey at best. Also the scene where Rider gives the cops the finger as he rides off. The only real eye-catchers are all the building scenes that depict the Rider riding around on them on his bike, and the prison scene. Other than that the others are pretty average. For the most part this movie is just supposed to be cheap fun to go to when you've got some time to kill. You shouldn't be expecting too much since these movies are only designed to showcase how far we've gotten in special effects and that's really all that can be said. So if you just want to be entertained for a few bucks go see Ghost Rider. It's fun but that's all it is. P.S. With every superhero action film the last few second of footage are supposed to showoff the abilities of the hero. It happened with Spiderman and other Marvel films. So all things considered this too was a disappointment.
Transufômâ: Maikuron densetsu (2002)
Transformers Rest In Pieces
By the time I was born Transformers G1 was already almost to a close and the movie had come out just a couple of years previous. Needless to say I was born a little too late to catch Tranformers at the height of their hay day. Those born around the same time as me grew up primarily with Beast Wars and reruns of G1 which by that time had gone into syndication. Heck I even enjoyed Beast Machines to some extent. Sure it wasn't what its predecessor was but hell I enjoyed it more than this crap. Plus the toys were great fun! The main story follows three kids who somehow stumble upon an artifact that activates a small robot later to be revealed as a mini-con. This sends out a beam that summons the Autobots and their long time enemies the Decepticons to earth. By the time this show came out I was already a teenager and had long since pushed Transformers to the back of my memory. Then one day I turn on Fox/Kids, now spiraling into mediocrity, and saw Robots in Disguise. I was a fan of anime and I thought since when did this start being animated by the Japanese? I watched maybe one episode and was sickened to my stomach.
I thought okay maybe this is just a one time thing. I was wrong. Shortly after that ended Armada started coming on Toonami. I liked Toonami a lot back then only to once again discover another Transformers Anime series. From that day forth I vowed to never watch another Transformers episode again post Beast Machines. Once again this includes some annoying kids. Why the heck are they around don't they know its taking away from their toy sales? Plus they added in the concept of the mini-con. As it is now common practice to add the elements of collecting things and battling them in children's anime this is no different. Okay so why do I care if the Decepticons get the mini-cons why do I care if any of the Autobots die? Believe me you have no reason to care about any of these things. The animation quality is commonly found in the lesser anime like Pokemon and Yugi-Oh and what do ya know this show is pretty much like Pokemon with robots. Those kids I just kept wishing the Autobots or Decepticons would step on them cause I hated them so much! Every episode centers around them and their problems that just happen to involve robots. The Autobots serve more as devices to help them through their lives by teaching them things about themselves that they had deep within them. What does this mean? Boooooorrrriiiiiiiinnnnnnnng! They were supposed to be helping the Autobots instead of the Autobots helping them. It should have been all about the Autobot's conflict on earth and they just so happened to have humans helping in their fight.
No instead all conflicts are mostly resolved by those damn kids. The writing was terrible, the animation was terrible, and by anime standards this is just awful. If you are a true Transformers fan then stay away from this like the plague. I know some people don't like Beast Machines but come on folks it had way more merit than this.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
Another Lousy Adaptation
Okay first off I am a Harry Potter fan but first and foremost I am a movie fan. This said I gave what I believe was a fair grade. Let's start off as why this movie got a 2.
Now I could sit here and go on and on about how the movie isn't like the book but to be fair I will only go into this briefly. Like it's previous installments the movie has omitted some well known characters in the series Peeves still hasn't appeared in this movie nor has Cho, Harry's dream girl, so I was quite since Peeves adds the comedic effect and Harry's love for Cho adds a little more depth to his character. Then there's the typical character and plot change often seen in this particular series of films and the plot holes are numerous. Plus the character portrayal left much to be desired.
Now on to the aspects of the film. Like all the previous installments this film once again features a cast of well known British actors which, while they are some of my favorites, are way too many. A few unknowns would be welcome on the scene. The scenery has changed to give it a darker setting despite this fact it didn't help the film too much. Daniel Radcliff, as our heroic boy wizard, didn't really do too much for me in terms of his portrayal. Yes the boy does look like Harry as I and quite a few others imagined him, at least that's as close as the physical interpretation is going get. The acting on his part is lacking as always. I don't know it could just be me but he only seems to have a few expressions and he never seems to display the right emotion. Ron was good though I don't agree that he should be reduced to a sniveling coward so much. The kid needs to have some guts. Hermione yeah I think she did well enough. The others did what was and has become expected of their portrayals not much to say there. I however did not like Gary Oldman's portrayal of Sirius Black.
Look I know the guy has been in Azkaban for years but Sirius was a cool kind of guy who had not done what others thought he did. That's what was so special about Sirius even though the man spent years in a place where even the darkest wizards go insane not even the Dementors could get him because Sirius was without guilt. Instead in this movie what few times he's seen he's portrayed as borderline insane like he's just about to go over the edge. Not Mr. Oldman's best performance by a long shot. There was Thewlis' portrayal of Lupin. For the most part the man did a moderate portrayal of the werewolf/teacher. Then again his performance was one of the better ones of the film.
There's that repetitive score that was good in the first film but by now is heard in every single scene. Then there's the monotonous CGI effects that appear so frequently in this film series. Sure Buckbeak was well done and was one of the higher points of the film. This said the CG werewolf was not ferocious or threatening but instead seemed sickly and underfed. The Dementors would have struck fear in me if I was four years old and every other computer generated character looked oddly deformed in someway.
My list of dislikes could go further so time to rap it up. All around if this movie weren't based on a book series I might have liked it more. But since it is there isn't really much boosting it up. If you've read the books avoid this and all previous and future HP films. If you've seen the previous movies and liked them then I guess you'll be easier to please with this one.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
A Horror Great!
The quality of Nightmare on Elm St. has dropped in recent years, FvsJ you know what you did, so it is understandable that audiences today would have forgotten about what made Freddy well.. Freddy.
Let's travel back to the early eighties shall we. This was a time when many well known horror franchises were still in their infancy many of the greats started here. One day a horror film writer by the name of Wes Craven decided to pen a tale of revenge from beyond the grave. It was in this stroke of genius that Freddy Krueger was born.
The tale told the story of Fred "Freddy" Krueger who, for years, molested and murdered the local children with a glove that had blades fixed to the fingers. This went on for a number of years, that is until he was arrested. Having somehow gotten away with it, the parents of the neighborhood decided to take matters into their own hands and then one night found him where he took his victims and burned him alive. Flash forward a few years the children are now teenagers and living normal lives. The nightmare that was Freddy is only a vague memory in the town's past. That is until young Nancy starts having bad dreams and her peers start dying in their sleep. Freddy has returned to his old stomping grounds to continue his work. Now with the body count rising how will Nancy and her friends stop this maniac? One thing's for sure until they find a way they better not fall asleep.
A Nightmare on Elm St. was original in the fact that while most horror monsters and villains could be fought on the physical plain and were often confined to one area Freddy's range of attack was wide spread. Not only that but he was not confined to the limitations of the real world. He claimed dominion over the dream world and for the most part there was no way you could stand toe to toe with him even in your own dreams. You couldn't shoot him, you couldn't escape him, and you couldn't stop him. Another added factor to the creepiness was the fact that he could even appear in your own nightmares after the movie was over. This guy gave me nightmares for years and even now I get the occasional midnight fright. Plus the ending really got you to thinking as to whether they really got him in the first place.
If you want to see Freddy before his fight with Jason Voorhees check this film out it's a classic and you won't regret it. Plus there are no stupid CG effects around to screw up the experience.
Kenpuu Denki Berserk (1997)
A Good Watch
Checking this anime out of my local Blockbuster, I didn't know I had a gem in my hands. So I got home popped it in not expecting anything particularly special only to find that I was watching one of the most deep anime I have ever watched.
The story follows the exploits of rogue swordsman Guts. Based on the hit manga series from Japan the anime retells the origin story of how Guts got to where he is in the world. In it we see how he went from a lone wolf only interested in his own well being to a loyal, unflinching, protector of those close to him. We see his bouts with love and loyalty to his friends. It becomes apparent that this man deals with some pretty hard conflicts not entirely unlike our own. He isn't just some dumb brute capable of destroying entire armies but a man with a heart. It's truly heartbreaking when we find out the dark sinister plan in store for him and his comrades.
The story is solid if not a bit slow at times. Many themes discussed are the importance of friends and the dangers of too much ambition. I didn't give it a full ten because like I said the plot while solid can be sluggish a bit especially since the entire series, sans the first episode, is in a flashback and doesn't really scratch the surface of Berserk itself. The ending for those not familiar with Berserk is greatly different from the manga. The anime unlike the manga ends in an abrupt halt. The manga however extends many more volumes onward so if you don't like the ending of the anime don't worry you can just read the rest. The ending is only a small set back.
Since this anime came out back in the early 90's don't expect the cutting edge animation that we've come to expect today. However it does offer a refreshing look into pre Cowboy Bebop anime. The musical score, while not typically changing all that often, is well suited for this anime. If I had to point out any parallels connecting this anime to the anime of today I would say it's more like the granddaddy of the anime for Gungrave. The stories are similar in their themes and the pacing is the same. If you liked Gungrave you'll like this. Berserk is an anime that starts slow but I guarantee by the end you'll have some deep emotion for it one way or the other.
Blade: Trinity (2004)
Bad Ending To An Otherwise Successful Series
Alright first off gotta say the first two Blade films were well done no question about that. I honestly can say however that I had no high hopes for the last installment. When I learned that the main villain would be Dracula my head almost flew off my shoulders in rage.
To start off the character portrayal. Wesley Snipes is always a good Blade but didn't get to do what he did best in the last two films. Whistler what to say about Whistler? Well lets face it after his return in the second film I felt it kind of dumb to kill him off in this one by means much weaker than the last time. Plus Whistler is supposed to be hardened by years of fighting the undead yet he's taken out quickly by human police officers. Hannibal King, for those unfamiliar with the character, is supposed to be a loner and not a comedian. I like Ryan Reynolds don't get me wrong but he was out of place here. Hannibal in the comics was almost as mysterious as Blade himself. Abigail should never have been in this movie at all since she causes continuity problems no matter what reason you give for her existence. This was the wrong movie to introduce the Nightstalkers since Blade, who in the comics was the Nightstalker's youngest member, is older than the lot of them and has been at it for years. Dracula as the villain well how do I put this? it's cliché. Dracula is like the number one villain you go to when you can't come up with a better one. Dominic Purcell as Dracula not the best choice. He's good in all his other stuff but not here. As for all the other subordinate vampires well yeah didn't really give a crap about them plus why the heck was Triple H here!?
Next the Storyline. So Blade, after apparently being watched by the human element that supposedly doesn't know he exists, is caught after killing a human in a set up. The Night stalkers save him from whatever...blah blah blah plot to resurrect the first vampire blah blah blah virus blah blah freaking blah. Yeah needless to say the storyline bites(no play on words intended). It sounds like it was thrown together to get this turkey out of the oven.
The action scenes. By this stage of the game such action scenes are pretty cookie cutter regular. You could see these moves in almost any action film prior to it. Why Abigail wears a stupid ipod while fighting is well..stupid. I mean you are hunting the most dangerous thing on the streets at night and you are listening to music instead of your surroundings. Either this girl is very stupid or she really is the best vamp hunter around. Hannibal gets his butt beat every time he enters battle this definitely shouldn't happen since Hannibal is supposed to be one of the very best there is. But no this movie has reduced him to a wise cracking idiot. The fight between Blade and Dracula was anti climactic. It didn't leave me feeling that a great evil has just been vanquished. Wesley your movies are top notch but not even you could have made this rotten egg any less of a stinker. What happened man what happened?
The Dialogue. Yeah it was terrible too. Blade is the strong silent type. He isn't supposed to be the I've been doing this longer than you so I'm better than you type. He would be above such things since his only goal is to destroy all vampire existence that's his number one motive in life. Instead of telling the Nightstalkers they are in over their head he would have just suddenly left since he has no reason to associate with them. If they want to go get killed then let them do it just as long as they stay out of his way and don't draw too much attention they are just rookies he doesn't need. Dracula his dialogue would have best been put to roars and screeches since it didn't really add much plot wise. The supposed baddie vamps were lame. Dracula said that they were mere shadows of their former selves. He was right. They are nothing but a group of stereotypical pretty boy and girl vamps incapable of taking over a city much less subjugate an entire race supposedly weaker than it but hey that's what vamp movies these days are about. Yep that's right the eye candy. Their dialogue reflected this. There was no menacing tone in their voices. It sounded like they did it just for the sake of it. Think Paris Hilton if she was a vamp and there you go. Ryan Reynolds' comments were genuinely funny but once again out of place in this film. Biel's character actually delivered them pretty well considering the fact that the character was of no real importance in any of the story. Basically she was just there so the creators could say that there was a Whistler all throughout this movie too. Though she didn't have as much grit as her dear old daddy.
All in all this movie is your average example of a once shining example of good cinema for its genre going down the tubes and what's worse is it's the final movie. Then again that's kind of a good thing. When you think about it. I don't recommend this film and there are better films to waste your time with. Might I suggest Van Wilder for those of you who are Ryan Reynolds's fans he's definitely in his element there.