fraserstewart Reviews

No Country for Old Men (2007)

Too many plot holes to be good.

[1/10 · 22 January 2008]

My vote of awful may be a little exaggerated, but I can tell you when this film ended, the audience literally groaned. The story is about some guy who we don't know happening upon a drug deal that went horribly wrong then finding $2 million in cash and taking it.

This guy who we find out is called Lewellen (I don't know how to spell it sorry), suddenly grows a conscience and decide to help a dying drug dealer by bringing back water, almost getting himself killed in the process. I honestly as I watched, did not understand why he went back, it was only after we left that my wife explained that he went to take that water to that poor drug dealer.

Next we meet our bad guy, a man who has been arrested, escapes and can continue to kill literally dozens of people, even having shoot outs in hotels and main streets, without anyone either caring or phoning the police. This sort of thing must be perfectly normal in Texas, because at one point you have one guy firing a shotgun on the street and no one could care less, let alone phone the police.

There's the Sheriff, who's "trying" to help the "good guy", but couldn't really care. I mean wtf was he doing all day apart from lazing about reading the paper. Apart from anything else he's got a psycho running lose and like 10 dead Mexicans as well as two dead police officers. You'd think he'd be quite busy, but he's really not.

Anyway our bad guy is hunting the thief for the money, and then in steps Woody Harrelson who you assume is going to save the day, but gets shot within five minutes. Honestly even after he was shot I thought he was faking it and would come back and help our "hero", I honestly couldn't believe it. Then they have both hero and wife murdered off camera, and again you honestly cannot believe that it happened.

The worst thing of all though is the ending, you keep thinking that the bad guy will get caught, but no he gets away, after killing like 1 million people, and the film closes with our Sheriff who's done jack anyway talking about some dreams he had. I was literally astounded by this film, it started off well, but just when you were waiting for something to happen, like a showdown between psycho and thief, nothing happened. If you want to waste your money go watch this, otherwise pick something else.

Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)

Dear God No.

[1/10 · 10 December 2007]

This movie was crap, and I really mean crap. What was Lucas thinking having Anakin as a little boy? I remember the stories that Obi-wan told about how he first met Anakin to Luke during the original trilogy.

"When I first knew him, your father was already a great pilot, but I was amazed at how strongly the force was with him. I took it upon myself to train him as a Jedi." To me, I imagined a young man, probably an army officer in some sort of air force, meeting a 40-50 year old Obi-wan, who is a proper Jedi NOT A LEARNER. Obi-wan befriends then offers to teach the young man about the force, much like he did with Luke, only the young man is much more aggressive than Luke was. Why have such an obvious plot contradiction? Then there is my biggest beef, remember the line that Obi-wan gives Luke in A New Hope? When he sees Luke with R2D2 and C3P0, what does he say? "I don't remember ever owning a droid." Yet R2D2 saved his life in this film and C3P0 was supposedly built by Anakin skywalker! WTF!!! Do you not think that Obi-wan would remember that? Maybe he's getting senile in his old age? Another thing in Empire Strikes Back Obi-wan clearly states that Yoda was his master. Remember how he persuades Yoda to teach Luke all about the Force? "Was I any different when you taught me?" Of course it's perfectly conceivable that Obi-wan had more than one master, but it's made perfectly obvious in this film that Qui-Gonn was his ONLY master. Jesus, George didn't you watch the first three films? I've explored the plot contradictions that destroyed what could have been an amazing series of films, but that isn't the only thing that destroyed it. The acting was wooden and rubbish, Yoda saying everything backwards, (which he didn't do in either Empire Strikes back or ROTJ), gets horribly boring and annoying after a while. However the lightsaber fight at the end was reasonable, which is why this film gets 2 stars instead of 1.

This film is unforgivably bad, what's worse is that nobody can sense the force within Palpatine (even though he is a Sith Lord). God I could go on and on, but please just save yourself and the memories of one of the greatest film trilogies ever made, I mean the unmolested, unraped, untouched, virgin original trilogy.

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (2005)

Yet Another Bad Film

[1/10 · 24 August 2007]

I've played through FF7 twice now and collected everything that is possible to collect in the game and I know the story intimately and so watching this wasn't all that confusing for me. However this is a film not a game, and thinking about it from your average movie goers perspective, it is extremely confusing. The plot of the original game was confusing and this really made it even worse.

Visually the film is stunning, the animation is brilliant. However as someone who played the game, they seem to have abilities that I wasn't aware of from the game. For example, being able to jump massive heights, cut through concrete with their swords and so on.

The biggest crime however that this film commits is the action. There was just far too much of it. There was no plot or character development, it was just fight scene, after fight scene. The worst thing however was Sephiroth coming back at the end, when he clearly dies at the end of the game.

As a visual FMV or CGI or whatever it is called it is brilliant. However as a film it is terrible, and does not run true to the game. This is not a film I would recommend, even for fans of the game, it is just not how I imagined they would be as characters, the way they fight everything, I just seems to contradict it all. That is why this film achieves only 4/10.

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)

The ruining of Star Wars is complete.

[1/10 · 14 August 2007]

This is quite possibly the worst film ever made in the history of film making. I have seen all six Star Wars films, I have fond memories of Star Wars as a child and now they are all ruined completely. I wonder if George Lucas even watched the first three films, because the number of plot contradictions is unbelievable.

The biggest one by far was Padame dying while giving birth to Luke and Leiah (sorry if my spelling is wrong). What was it she says to Luke in Return of the Jedi.

Luke: "Do you remember your mother, your real mother?" Leiah: "Only a little, she died when I was very young?" Now obviously a new born baby is very young, but there is a HUGE difference between dying when very young, and dying while giving birth. The other thing that annoys the hell out of me is Anakin. He just isn't believable as a character and as an "evil" person, or someone who becomes evil.

I can go on and on and on about this film, there is just so much to say. But honestly it is just a bad film, in the same way that a Lada was a bad car. You could write a review for the Lada describing all of it's faults, but really there is no need, in the same way there is no need to describe all of the faults with this film. It is just bad, there is no character development, no acting and most importantly no plot. This review is perhaps a little short, but honestly do not go and see this film, keep the memory of the good original (not digitally remastered, or with that stupid Anakin actor at the end) Star Wars films instead.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)

Who ruined Harry Potter?

[1/10 · 1 August 2007]

I have read and enjoyed all 7 Harry potter novels, and I watched and enjoyed the first 2 films, Azkaban and GOF were OK but not good. This however was awful, and when I say awful I really mean awful. I was genuinely on the verge of walking out of the theatre after about 30 minutes, the only reason I sat through this was because of my wife.

I will say that Dolores Umbridge and Sirius Black were really good. Harry Potter however was dreadful. Daniel Radcliffe seems to have forgotten how to act on his way through puberty. I mean he was excellent in the first two films so why was this so awful? He spent two hours literally panting and moaning, it was like he had been told to tense every muscle in his whole body and stay like that for every scene.

Then there was Dumbledore and trust me Michael Gambon cannot do Dumbledore. After Trelawny is fired and he tells Umbridge quite calmly that she can stay in the castle he then proceeds to shout at the students, "Don't you all have studying to do?", that was one of my biggest wtf moments.

Percy doesn't speak at all, and Malfoy has literally one line in the whole film. How about explaining that Umbridge was the one who set the Dementors on Harry in the first place, and then they actually changed how the Dementors looked, I mean film 3 got it spot on. Then there was just ridiculous stuff like a Dementor strangling Harry, so he stabs it in the eye with his wand? Then there was Fred and George leaving Hogwarts, the whole reason that they caused a big scene and commotion was so that Harry could use Umbridges fire in her office and find out about Sirius. How about Kreacher lying to Harry? How about revealing that Snape DID go and find out about Sirius and was merely pretending to be ignorant to Umbridge? My biggest disappointment however by far was the end fight scene's between the death eaters and the Order of the Phoenix, in particular Dumbledore and Voldemort. Bellatrix does not kill Sirius with the Avada Kedavra curse, she stuns him into one of those weird curtained doors, and then he disappears. The fight between Dumbledore and Voldemort was basically a giant light show where the cgi people were probably told "Go to town, let your imagination run wild".

How about Dumbledore taunting Voldemort by calling him Tom all the time, and avoiding his killing curses rather than fighting back? How about Dumbledore being shown to be far more powerful than Riddle and choosing for reasons that I can't remember now not to kill him? The other thing about Dumbledore as well is that he appears to dissaparate from Hogwarts which Hermione says repeatedly throughout the books is not possible.

I probably haven't covered everything, but these films definitely went downhill big time after Chamber of Secrets. You leave the cinema feeling like all you saw was lots of clips strung together, and that loads of things were missing, and it all happened in a massive rush, you don't get that sense of satisfaction that you should get after watching a good film. Whether you've read the book or not, I would say avoid at all costs, and if you haven't read the book, then buy the book and read it, it will give you infinitely more pleasure that the torture you have to suffer to watch this film.