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sean89928
Reviews
Harsh Times (2005)
Beyond great
Just saw this and it is fantastic! I have never seen a movie of this kind done this well. I feel like ringing Christian Bale and Freddy Rodriguez up personally to congratulate them.
This movie was out of this world good. They told this story to the end. No cop outs, no deviations. Bale was good but Freddy Rodriguez was perfect, out of this world.
Playing a psycho (Bale) is probably not that hard, but playing the psycho's friend requires a world of balance (in real life and acting), and Freddy had it just right, on the edge all the way.
How did i not hear about this movie? I was just lucky enough to be sitting in front of the telly when it came on, now i feel like i should have been prepared with tacos and coke. It was magnificent!
Gone Baby Gone (2007)
Great movie and then What....?!?
Why didn't they just call social services? seriously, 3 careers put at risk, of which 2 cops die and 1 goes to jail, 2 small time drug dealers are framed and shot, all so that they could place a girl in a better environment? why didn't they just call social services? They would have taken the daughter from the drug addict mother, and with some grease from the concerned cops, would have found a very good home for her.
seriously, all that twisting and turning, when they could have just made a phone call.
everything else was good. Acting, cinematography, intrigue, etc. but it just didn't add up.
seriously.
Vantage Point (2008)
like 24 but shorter
good points; moved quickly, had drama and tension, unfolded well.
poor points; the review titled (Intriguing Premise, Horribly Executed) stated 8 points where the movie didn't make sense. i agree whole-heartedly with 7 of them.
However it was still a good movie because it moved quickly and nothing was glaringly awful enough for you not to be able to overlook it in the interest of enjoying the film as a whole.
like 24, not all the ends were completely tying up but it moves well.
10 lines rule. jeez, you'd think in the interest of brevity IMDb would reduce the amount of lines you have to write. i only have a few points to make.
Eastern Promises (2007)
I don't know how it got a 7.9 rating
You have to be naive to believe this. Or you have to be incredibly generous to sit through and suffer the excruciatingly simple characters.
Viggo was quite good and it was his performance that got me from the 30 minute mark all the way to the 45 minute mark, before I couldn't stand it anymore and had to turn it off.
The English mother and daughter were bullet in the head material, but there was slim chance the director was going to do you that favour.
The Godfather character was just that, a two dimensional cliché right from the outset.
The dialogue was pathetic, although the exchanges in Russian didn't bother me at all, probably because it offered relief from having to listen to idiocy in English.
In the end I had to turn it off, it was ridiculous.
August Rush (2007)
No one came out looking good
Based on all the implausibilities i gave this a 3. Based on the fact that i managed to stay interested until the end i gave it a 6.
It is crap but it is watchable. I don't know if i've ever thought that about a movie before.
So in the end i plunked for a 4.5 score.
Story, orphan finds his parents who were unaware he was alive thru music. Kid ends up conducting the NY philharmonic 6 months after first learning to play music. cough cough......
bad but somehow i got to the end.
Other reviewers compared it to 'Oliver'. Oliver is classic, this story had to have been whipped up while micro-waving 2 minute noodles.
Lions for Lambs (2007)
Some of the ingredients but never rose
A movie based on 2 debates between Cruise and Streep (senator and reporter) and Redford and Hayes (professor and student).
Ultimately these two debates are based around responsibilities of being an American. Doing the right thing (Cruise and Redford) and questioning if it is the right thing (Streep and Hayes).
In essence, Cruise and Streep debate what is the right policy of government, and Redford and Hayes debate what is the right actions of individuals.
At 88 minutes it is too short to truly explore these questions, and much of the dialogue is hyperbole and rhetoric. It fails overall because of the weakness of the arguments although there are some good lines and points made, just too few to really do justice to the theme.
It left me with the feeling that it was trying to be intellectual but only just dragged itself above posturing. With perhaps 30 more minutes and a tighter script (much tighter) it could have been an excellent movie.
Redford and Streep's performances were weak which mirrored their characters i guess. Cruise was quite good and it was very interesting to see him share the limelight with other big names and he was definitely the pick of the actors. Hayes was OK.
A good movie to see if you are going to a restaurant afterwards as it serves as a good topic to explore, especially since the movie only went half way to accomplishing that itself.
JFK II: The Bush Connection (2003)
a bit of a hash really
pretty poor effort to cobble together a story that was told much better in the Costner movie. The narrator actually relies on a lot of that film as backup testimony for his statements, as well as using a simpsons episode to back up his statement that 'everyone knows nixon played a part in it'.
there was only one little clip that was new and interesting (where the security guys are told to stop running beside the car) but this could be from another completely different motorcade parade.
given that we can all now use video editing tools and are aware of the fun we can have with them, then there are some fairly big possible holes in this film that could have been taken out of context.
a pretty big hash of a movie, just watch jfk with costner in it again.