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zintar2001
Reviews
Gojira tai Mosura tai Mekagojira: Tôkyô S.O.S. (2003)
Disappointing
WARNING, SPOILERS BELOW.
Like many Godzilla fans here in NYC, I just saw this movie, along with several Godzilla movies of the past 15 years, at the Film Forum's all-too-short Godzilla festival. I have to admit I was pretty disappointed with it, along with many of the other movies like its predecessor Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla. They all seem to have pretty much the same story: Godzilla or another monster appears in an exciting pre-titles teaser (like in the Bond movies), then there's the title, and then about an hour of boring stuff where we meet the same stock characters over and over and all they discuss is how to kill Godzilla, then they build a super weapon to defeat Godzilla, who appears to wreck Tokyo for the 87th time for no apparent reason, there's a routine monster battle during which the "angst-filled" hero (or more likely heroine) comes through to save the day, although we all know Godzilla isn't dead or won't stay away from Tokyo for long. Ho-hum.
I have to agree with a fellow contributor that it's not enough to just show Godzilla being angry and "evil" to make it a good movie. We've seen so many monster on the loose movies that just to show Godzilla being a destructive force of nature is getting tiresome. At least in Godzilla vs Megaguirus and Godzilla 2000 (my two favorites so far of the post-Godzilla 1985 movies), they at least try to give reasons for Godzilla's appearances. And Godzilla 2000 succeeds in showing a character who not only carries on Dr Yemane's wish that Godzilla be studied, but succeeds in doing so! Compare that with the succeeding movies, where it's just the military vs Godzilla. I also agree that the movies glamorize the military--perhaps they've been too much influenced by video games, the army hardware certainly looks like it's all from an Xbox game--but I just can't get involved with watching the same story over and over.
Don't get me wrong, I did like parts of the movies, the best parts being the teasers, and it's always a bit of fun watching giant monsters wrecking cities. And especially in this movie I liked them bringing back the old Dr Chujo from the first Mothra movie. But in the end it's just a rehash of past movies with some newer high-tech weaponry. And what's with Mothra??? I keep reading how Mothra is the second favorite kaiju after Godzilla, so why do the filmmakers treat her (him? it?) the way they do in these new movies??? It was really sad to see Mothra's fate in this movie and in All Out Attack, another impressive and exciting but ultimately disappointing giant monster flick with a routine monster-on-the-loose plot.
Another problem with both movies is the premise, which concerns the efforts of the military and scientists to construct a giant robot Godzilla to fight the real Godzilla, only they will build the robot around the skeleton of the original Godzilla, which was recovered from the sea of Japan. Aside from the technical problems (surely the bones would have decayed in the salt water after all these decades, or become too fragile to handle and bring to the surface), the movies, for all their efforts to be faithful to the first movie, disregard one of its most famous scenes, which is when Godzilla is destroyed by the Oxygen Destroyer, and all of him dissolves, including his bones! So much for being faithful to the original material.
Call me weird, but I prefer the earlier movies to these newer ones. Not so much because Godzilla becomes a hero, although after seeing these newer movies I actually like seeing Godzilla as a hero defending the Earth from dangers from space, but also because they were a lot more creative in terms of plot and character. Look at Godzilla vs the Sea Monster and Son of Godzilla, two movies most fans consider the worst, but are among my personal favorites. There are more plot elements in those two movies than in all the movies of the past 10 years combined (maybe I'm exaggerating because I still haven't seen a few of them). It's always fun to see a Godzilla movie, but for me, Godzilla and his ilk have become such fascinating and appealing characters I would like to see him do more than just act like a 5 year old brat stomping on sand castles.
Lucky Lady (1975)
I've only seen it back in 76, and enjoyed it
I still remember seeing this movie, way back in 1976, at the Fortway theater in Brooklyn, NY. It was a second run theater that showed double features, usually movies that were originally released 6 months earlier, for only $2.00 (ahh those were the days). Lucky Lady played on a double bill with Sky Riders, which starred James Coburn, Susannah York and Robert Culp. I was around 13 at the time, and had a little idea of what Sky Riders was about, no idea of the story to Lucky Lady, though I know it received poor reviews. I have to admit I enjoyed them both, but had a grand time watching Lucky Lady. It seemed a bit episodic, and the humor at times was kinda dumb, but I got to like the characters, even the minor ones like Robbie Benson as their "first mate," Michael Hordern as the old captain, and even Geoffrey Lewis as the zealous but loony Coast Guard captain out to sink any bootleggers he comes across. But the villains really stole the show, especially John Hillerman as the machine-gun toting main villain.
One complaint was that the final boat battle was a rip-off of the James Bond battles. Who cares, as long as it's done well--in fact Mr. Donen should have been approached to do some of the Bonds after this movie.
I may have seen the movie on tv shortly after its release. I don't remember if i liked it as much, seeing it on tv wasn't quite the same. I don't know if I would like it as much now either, but I would certainly be interested in seeing it on video. As another person commented, so much dreck is being released on DVD, I don't see why Lucky Lady shouldn't be made available. At least it tried to be a class act, which is more than you can say for many of today's releases.
Dead Again (1991)
Entertaining but not as good as Henry V
Whoa! I was pretty surprised by the comments on this movie, everyone either LOVED it or HATED it! I have to confess I fall somewhere in between. I remember enjoying it when I first saw it at the now-gone Loew's Oriental, a nice old-fashioned theater perfect for such an old fashioned movie. Although I found it not as impressive as Kenneth Branagh's Henry V, I still enjoyed it. The acting for the most part seemed a bit over the top, but that seemed to be in keeping with the rather far-fetched story. I didn't really try to second guess the story, so I didn't figure out the plot twists. And what it lacked in suspense it made up for with imaginative story elements. My biggest complaint was that it appeared that the screenwriter had watched Citizen Kane and Spellbound once too often.
I have just watched my laser disc version tonight for probably the second time, and although I still enjoyed it, I noticed some rather nit-picky plot points. Be warned--There may be some SPOILERS ahead!
When Mike Church finally meets with Gray Baker, and receives a "shocking revelation," it occurred to me that strangely enough, no one bother to ask earlier whatever happened to the housekeeper and her son! Also, Roman Strauss the composer finds his money running low, but he refuses to compose for movies, preferring to just write his opera. I figured him for a smart man and smart enough to know movies are where the money is--couldn't he just write his opera on the side and compose for movies for the money? It certainly would have put less strain on the marriage.
I must confess I enjoyed the performances. Mr. Branagh seemed to be having fun as both Church and Strauss, and it was refreshing to see a PI who was not a superman like the kind of characters Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger usually play. My feeling is that after the intensity of Henry V, Branagh wanted to play (and direct) something lighter. Emma Thompson as Margaret and "Grace" is both fetching and elegant as the former, and demure yet adorable as the latter. One of the better scenes involves Mike taking Grace on a little date where nothing goes right. It's one of the few scenes that's not played over the top and comes off rather charming.
I read in one comment that Derek Jacobi was considered for the part of Hannibal Lechter. I would have loved to see him play that part! His performance is bouncy and almost comic, yet in an instant he can become coldly sinister. He certainly fooled me until the end (the first time, anyway). I and liked how they worked in that little "I, Claudius" reference.
I could have done without the guy from Seinfeld, but I can see how they needed such a character to give the audience story elements. I did enjoy Robin Williams, whom I usually cannot stand, but here he departs from the kind of annoying "I'm better and funnier than everyone else" characters I usually see him play. In keeping with the outlandishness of the rest of the movie, Andy Garcia's reporter does his best to stand out as a Hunter S. Thompson type reporter. Too bad though we never see him at a typewriter. His old man scene is another ripoff from Citizen Kane, and he looks too much like an old Henry Winkler than an old Andy Garcia, but his smoking scene is a nice creepy touch.
On a technical level, the cinematography is a treat. It's lush and elegant in the black and white scenes, and, well, light and airy and not too obtrusive in the contemporary scenes. It's a little too dark and atmospheric in the antique shop, where the "hypno-therapy" sessions take place, but again it's in keeping with the "fantasy" element of the reincarnation theme.
Also in keeping with the "over the top" feel of the film is Patrick Doyle's music, exciting at times while other times it sounds too powerful for minor scenes. It does have a nice feel of excitement to it, and it would have been nice to see him work on the recent Bond films.
So overall, a fairly entertaining bit of fluff, which I at least didn't take too seriously. I was hoping though that Branagh would move on to more substantial material, but alas, he instead did Peter's Friends and the atrocious Francis Ford Coppola's--I mean Mary Shelly's Frankenstein.
Die Another Day (2002)
Hideous!
The worst Bond ever. I've never said that about any Bond, but this one was so insultingly bad I can think of no other words to describe it. While I give the producers credit for trying new directions, I take back the credit for failing miserably and constantly coming up with stupid elements.
There are so many things wrong, they've been mentioned elsewhere, but I will try to be brief and go over some of the idiocies.
***SOME SPOILERS AHEAD!***
1. The traditional gunbarrel. They finally got the music right, and they ruin the effect with that awful whizzing bullet! It looked like it was out of a Tom & Jerry cartoon!
2. Bond takes the place of an arms dealer carrying diamonds. I think he was an arms dealer, it's never really clear just what was going on in that teaser. He opens a metal brief case, quite easily, not even a lock, and within is a small fortune in diamonds, loosely placed in open compartments. Give me a break! It's a wonder the courier or dealer or whatever got as far as he did, if he was in New York City he would have lost his diamonds in 10 seconds. When the producers mess up little plot points like this you gotta figure they will mess up major plot points as well.
3. In this high-tech era it would be a surprise if Bond's cover is not blown. Does he not believe in using disguises? He never figures someone might have already met the diamond man and know the difference.
4. The villain finds out Bond is a spy, so what does he do? He blows up Bond's helicopter! Stupid me, I would have shot the spy. Of course the villain always has to do dumb things so the hero has a chance to escape.
5. The hovercraft sequence was okay, if a little loud.
6. What's the big deal about Bond being captured? It's not the first time, but it's the first time he doesn't escape, which I find ridiculous. It would have made a great movie for Bond to escape from a communist prison camp, but no, they botched it. I mean, this is the man who was handcuffed to an atom bomb and locked into Fort Knox with a Korean judo expert trying to kill him, and he escaped that! Okay he got a little help there, but to think the resourceful Bond we've come to know in 40 years couldn't escape from any prison is unbelievable!
7. Apart from a scraggly beard and long messy hair, Bond is in pretty good shape for someone tortured for over a year. I would have expected him to look almost skeletal. Also, the scenes of Bond being tortured would have been more grim if they weren't shot as a music video.
So Bond can stop his heart, then suddenly jump up from his bed and assault two medics. It was done in Our Man Flint, but then it was done as a joke. Here it's also funny, but the humor is unintentional.
8. I was hoping to see Bond pull an escape on the bridge, but instead he is exchanged for another prisoner. The producers thought to surprise us, but instead they disappointed us.
9. The villains. They are awful. Much is made of Zao (Xio? Who Cares?) but he doesn't really do much except fight Bond. The worst he does is a terrorist act which takes place offscreen! I guess they just like his name, since it's mentioned every 10 seconds. Gustav Graves is just a boring re-tread of other villains, mainly Drax from the novel Moonraker. But it's ridiculous to assume he appeared from nowhere amassed a fortune and built a huge laser satellite within one year, and even worse, NO COUNTRY IS SUSPICIOUS OF HIM! At least Drax of the novel spent about 10 years in his rise to power, which created more plausibility.
***MAJOR SPOILER COMING UP***
When we find out who Graves really is, it makes even less sense. No way could he have made his way to Cuba, financed his new identity and then built his empire in one year, unless he got really lucky and made a pitstop to the US where he won the lottery.
10. The girls. Ugh! I sure didn't see any academy award winning actress on the screen in Halle Berry. Tell me she wasn't cast because of her popularity. Just what the hell was her character up to? Like another comment said, why was she after Zao/Xiao/Xiai/Eieio? If the US was after Xiao and interested in Graves, why were they so against Bond trying to find out more about Graves? Wouldn't cooperation be more sensible. In keeping with the incongruity of the movie, the Bond girl commits the most shocking killings, not Bond or the villains. She barely left an impresssion on me, and for all the hype is one of the flattest of all the Bond girls.
***ANOTHER MAJOR SPOILER COMING UP***
Rosamund Pike was actually much more appealing, and attractive, especially in the Bond mold, so much that I was hoping she was not going to be what I feared she would be, but I knew that was impossible simply by default. And what the hell's with all the Bond girls being government agents????
11. Plot. Plot? I read somewhere that the way they write a Bond script is to make a list of locations not yet used in a film and write the script around some of them. So we go from Korea to Cuba to England to Iceland and back to Korea mainly to have Bond be a globetrotter. The inclusion of bits and references to past movies only reminded me of how unoriginal this movie was and infuriated me more. I did catch the reference to Bond and the ornithology (Ian Fleming took the name James Bond from an ornithologist who wrote a bird guide), but it would have been nicer if more had been done with it instead of using it for a pointless Bond reference. The sequences in Cuba were ok, but I was starting to get bored by then. I guess that's why they had to blow up the DNA lab, which was a pretty preposterous idea to begin with. What happened to criminals going to cosmetic surgeons???
Then Bond goes to England to meet the villain in the funniest scene in the movie, the traditional competition match between Bond and villain. I assume from the music it was supposed to be serious but I never laughed so much since the last three stooges short I saw. And once we find out who Graves really is, why didn't he have Bond whacked ASAP?
The rest of the movie is just routine Bond, only louder and flashier. And more stupid. Zao/Xaio chases Bond in a gadget-filled car, a cheat because there was no hint of this earlier. He finally gets Bond in a helpless position, and with all his rockets and guns, he decides to RAM BONDS CAR OFF A LEDGE! Nuff said, except that the villain gets his just desserts, which itself was anticlimactic. I thought there wasn't much point to an invisible car, didn't anyone hear an engine running outside the ice palace? And Bond should have died from hypothermia running around in the snow.
As for the villain's caper, why bother with clearing a minefield so your army can cross into another country when you have a weapon that can melt half of Iceland in minutes? And why didn't the Americans launch a barrage of missiles at Icarus, there's no way it could have locked onto all the missiles at once.
Sorry I can't comment on the climax, since I walked out of this atrocity when the military plane with non-bulletproof windows got hit with a bullet and depressurized (a bit lifted from goldfinger).
12. Special effects. Just watch when bond uses the parachute and makeshift sled to surf the tidal wave in Iceland and becomes a cartoon character. That's all I have to say about the effects.
And what's with those speeded up bits? This is a Bond movie, not a Mazda commercial!
14. Madonna and the music. There was music? All I heard were explosions and a little bit of the 007 theme. As for madonna, any bond movie that would sink low enough to feature her not only performing the title tune but "acting" in it as well is not worth the film it was shot on.
15. The regulars. Okay, i'm going to get into trouble now, but I CAN'T STAND Judi Dench as M. First, M stands for the character's initials, Admiral Miles Messervy, but some moron in the series decided it applies to any head of the British secret service. I never liked Judi Dench in the role, right from the start when she called him a male-chauvinist pig or something similar, back in Goldeneye. M is supposed to assign Bond a mission, not comment on his sex life or any other personal trait, so long as it doesn't interfere with the job. Her character got even worse in the last movie, when she confesses to acts which should have cost her her job, but sadly she gets more screen time than all the other M's combined. And why the hell doesn't she debrief Bond when they get him back? A little argument in the sick bay and that's all. Ugh! Oh I how miss Bernard Lee, and even Robert Brown!!!!
John Cleese as R. He gave a good performance, at least he knew enough to not take this nonsense seriously, but for me he ceased being funny ages ago. The whole "Q" sequence is so routine now I almost slept through it. And it came too late in the movie anyway. See THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN for a very different type of scene in Q branch.
What happened to Michael Kitchen, the guy who played Bill Tanner??? He was cool! And what about Joe Don Baker? Were they afraid he would steal the pic from Bond???
Samantha Bond is cute but on screen for what? 3 seconds?
Pierce Brosnan as Bond. Go ahead and let me have it, but I can't stand him as Bond. I'll admit he's a good actor, but he's too cocky, too much of a smartass and not very likable. He's also too trigger happy. I think he's racked up a bigger body count than all the other bonds combined. For all his "human" traits he appears to come off more invincible and perfect than Sean Connery, which is not the way Ian Fleming had written Bond. The more I watch him, the more even Roger Moore appears more human. In addition, it would seem to me an agent would not be sent out on a mission in which he has a personal score to settle, remember in GOLDFINGER, when the REAL M warns bond he is not on a personal vendetta but a mission, and if he can't treat it as one, coldly and objectively, he will be replaced? Certainly Bond is entitled to feelings WHEN ON THE JOB, but to start out going for revenge is not professional. (One of my favorite such bits is from, of all movies, OCTOPUSSY, when Bond confronts General Orloff and shows true anger when he figures out the plot to blow up a USAF base, killing thousands of innocent people in the process.) Fleming knew this, which is why he wrote YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE so that Bond's mission is just a mission until he discovers his target is Blofeld, the murderer of his wife. THEN he becomes the avenging angel of death.
Perhaps I should write my own book about Bond. I've gone on long enough, and so has the Bond series I once loved and enjoyed.
The Matrix (1999)
What's the Matrix? What's the Big Deal???
When this movie first came out I dismissed it as I am not much of a Keanu Reeves fan, and in addition it looked like yet another big empty special effects romp. I have only seen parts of the movie on cable tv, but with the overhyped sequel now in release I feel I had to comment on the original movie.
It's something about an alternate reality within a computer, right? Nothing new there, it's been done already with Tron. Dreamscape and Nightmare on Elm Street created alternate worlds within people's dreams, and in those two movies, like the Matrix, when you die in the dreams you die in real life. I guess I will give the filmmakers credit for trying to use science fiction literature for ideas, at least that's what some of the comments say, but most of what I saw was just a lot of long fancy action scenes. Okay, you can all hate me but I didn't care much for those flying kung fu fights, whatever else in the movie was science fiction those fight scenes certainly weren't. More on the action later.
I didn't find the characters all that interesting, or else I would have wanted to watch the movie all the way through. I did find Hugo Weaving interesting as the main alien, villain, whatever. His stylized gestures and line delivery were both intriguing and a bit creepy. Laurence Fishburne basically just spouted exposition, and then get rescued by Keanu Reeves, and Carrie Ann-Moss just seemed to be there for the love interest aspect. Can't really say much about Keanu Reeves that hasn't been already said here, though i did like the comment about him playing a block of wood.
There were some interesting effects as Reeves makes the transformation for being placed into the matrix, or something, but like so many movies nowadays the emphasis seemed to be more on action, and lots of it, than on anything else. The low point for me in this movie was when Reeves has to rescue Fisburne from the aliens. Now, since he is in an imaginary world, he can summon up the most outlandish weapons and tools to help him in his task, like the stuff they used in the Mission Impossible tv series, or even better he can use cunning and wits to free Fishburne, but god forbid today's filmmakers fall back on anything that doesn't require CGI. Anyway, with a whole alternate universe at his disposal, what weapons does he choose? Machine guns, hand grenades, missile launchers and other conventional weapons. So all this high-faluting pseudo-philosophy is reduced to a high-tech rambo movie. At least in Tron the heroes used gadgets in keeping with the computer world in which they were trapped, and in the first Star Wars Luke Skywalker used The Force to help him destroy the Death Star!!!
Another thing about the kung fu scenes were that they were anticlimactic. Reeves defeats Weaving in the subway station, but then Weaving comes back in the next scene anyway, so bascially the whole scene was a big nothing!!!
Sorry to disappoint you folks but I didn't find anything in this movie to alter or challenge my world, or my perception of my world, except to show me how an overblown video game of a movie can be perceived as supreme greatness. Seen as a colorful action movie it's a decent time passer, but please do not call it the greatest science fiction movie ever or even one of the greatest. Before you do that, go and see 2001, the original Planet of the Apes, Forbidden Planet, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Village of the Damned, The Day the Earth Caught Fire, Quatermass and the Pit, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and especially The Man in the White Suit, a science fiction movie which depicts a technological change and its impact on society without one special effect! Hell, go and see Being There, a fantasy film with a greater perception of our world than the Matrix, and there's only one trick shot in the whole movie (sorry, you gotta see the pic to find out what it is).
One last closing comment. Yesterday I was listening to the morning radio, and the announcer was all excited about the opening of Matrix Reloaded. He commented on the 14 minute chase scene and the 1,000 special effects in the film, as if that makes the movie great. I found it so sad that today's public is so jaded that they can only rate a movie by the quantity of its technical achievements. Besides, what's so great about a 14 minute car chase? Did they run out of story that they had to pad out the movie with an extended action scene? I would probably lose interest after about 4 or 5 minutes anyway. You want longer? Watch one of those real tv cop chase shows!
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)
Better than Phantom Menace but not by much
Contains Spoilers!!! I remember when the first 3 Star Wars movies came out, reading several times that George Lucas intended them to be the middle 3 films of a 9 film series. The next 3 films would deal with events before "A New Hope" and the last 3 would cover what happens after "Return of the Jedi." When "Phantom Menace" came out I then heard he never said that--i guess it was just a rumor--and only wanted to do the original 3 movies. Considering the troubles he went through just to get a studio to produce "Star Wars" it makes sense. The script was turned down by every major studio in Hollywood, and only bought by 20th Century Fox because of the success they had with the Planet of the Apes movies, and also because the studio head, David Ladd, was a big fan of both "American Graffiti" and science fiction (he later formed his own studio which produced "Outland" and "Blade Runner").
Now after having seen both recent Star Wars movies, it's easy to see another reason why Lucas didn't want to do any more movies. He's had a difficult task ahead of him, which was to flesh out events and characters that were actually better left just mentioned in the original Star Wars movie. For instance, Governor Tarkin's few lines about the "Imperial Senate" went so much further in evoking images of a ruling body than any computer graphics could accomplish in the new movies. Unfortunately not only today's filmmakers but also much of today's video game oriented audiences seem to be in love with visual effects, especially BIGGER and MORE effects, so that is what we have dominating genre movies as a whole (witness the latest Bond atrocity, Die Another Day).
Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy good effects, but i find myself being bored by, say, an aircar chase through a crowded sky that goes on for 10 minutes. Used to be a scene like that would be the climax of a movie, now they come every 15 minutes. I know this sounds like a cliche, but if i don't care about the characters or the story i won't be impressed by the effects. Which was how I felt during "Phantom Menace." I found the action scenes, such as the pod race, incredibly boring and predictable, because I found the characters boring and the story less than compelling. Unfortunately this continues with "Attack of the Clones."
Several attempts to assassinate Senator Amidala from the Planet Naboo result in her being protected by young Annakin Skywalker, Jedi in training, and in Obi-wan Kenobi, Jedi turned detective, being sent off to find out why. He never really does find out, but his investigation leads him to a lot of much bigger issues, much of which I found hard to follow. Well at least I found the Kenobi scenes interesting because he is keeping some sort of plot going. Sadly the Annakin/Amidala romance is right out of a Harlequin romance, and bogs the movie down. Hayden Christensen has a rather large task in portraying someone who will be the most evil man in the galaxy, unfortunately he fails to rise to the occasion. He seems to have been cast because he looks like he came from a popular boy band so as to get teens into the theater. The only time I found him or his character interesting was when he goes off to save his mother, and succumbs to his hatred toward her killers. But even that segment is brought in from out of nowhere and quickly dropped. I must confess the only thing that kept my interest in those "romance" scenes was amazement at how beautiful Natalie Portman had become. Unfortunately she shatters the illusion of a brainy resourceful beauty by telling Annakin they can leave Tatooine and rescue Obi-wan Kenobi (see below) before the other Jedi can arrive there, forgetting they have hyper-drive ships.
Getting back to Detective Kenobi...he goes after a certain bounty hunter named Jango Fett, the trail leads him to a planet which received an order for a gazillion clones from a previous Jedi Knight, he meets Jango, chases him to another planet where there is a cool chase through an asteroid field, then discovers a factory where a gazillion robots are being made (yes, there are lots and lots of clones and robots in this movie), then gets captured by the villains behind the whole thing (which he could have avoided by first LEAVING the planet then contacting Yoda). Okay, now we've got TOO much plot! I agree with another reader, who was the Jedi who placed the order, why all of a sudden do we leave there and discover a planet with a huge self-run factory churning out robot armies? Most mysterious of all is just why Jango Fett is doing all this. Why use yourself to clone millions of soldiers, ordered by a Jedi knight, to be used by Senate, then fly off to hook up with the villains, who are planning to overthrow the Senate? Before any of his motives are explained, he's killed off in the climax. Great.
And talk about overkill. I will admit I did slightly enjoy the scene with the monsters sent out in the arena to kill our heroes, but it seemed too much of a ripoff of "Starship Troopers," and besides we've got two Jedi fighting off essentially mindless creatures, so there wasn't much suspense as to how it would turn out. Then like the cavalry coming to the rescue, all the Jedi in the universe arrive to fight off the robots. I guess the villains learned from the first movie not to have a central power source for the robots, since the jedi have to fight them off and destroy them one at a time. This interminable sequence is just too jumbled to be exciting, and makes no sense since the Jedi should have used their powers to stop the robots in a more efficient manner. I was also a bit shocked that the the junior jedi knights that Yoda was training were involved in the battle, and they all seemed to have been killed! I'm surprised no critic or anyone else for that matter made mention of this.
I almost forgot R2-D2 and C-3P0, but then again they were so badly used it would have been just as well to forget them. R2 is his (its?) usual resourceful self, but it makes no sense that now he can fly, yet R2 can't fly in the first three movies, which take place AFTER this one. Another continuity flaw is that we see 3P0 working on Luke Skywalker's great uncle's farm, and we also meet Owen Lars and his wife. Yet in "A New Hope" "Uncle" Owen not only buys 3P0 but acts as though he sees him for the first time. I guess being out in the desert so long he lost some of his memory! And I am getting tired of seeing the poor robot constantly being dismembered for the sake of cheap jokes, which really weren't very funny anyway. Surely after all this time Mr. Lucas could have come up with more material for such an engaging character.
Of all the cast, Ewan MacGregor managed to make the most impression on me, mainly because he at least is given something to do to move the plot. What i found most amazing is how he is starting to resemble and sound like Kenneth Branagh, who Mr Lucas originally wanted to play the young Obi-wan. A lot of people liked Yoda, but he didn't make too much of an impression on me. But I must admit my main reason to see the movie was because the great Christopher Lee was in it, fortunately playing the villain. I agree with one reader who said his character had the depth of wall paper, but I was so thrilled to see Mr. Lee back on the big screen I didn't care. He could read the yellow pages and steal the picture, which is basically what he did. Honestly I thought there were too many villains and they were all brought in too late in the movie (more overkill). Having Christopher Lee play the lone villain, and brought in earlier in the movie, would have been more than enough.
In conclusion, some okay acting, a confusing plot hampered by a corny romantic subplot but kept moving by a bit of detective work and some nifty action scenes, a beautiful but not very resourceful heroine and an appearance by one of the screen's great but underrated movie legends, all combine to make a loud and colorful time at the movies but little more. Mr. Lucas would have done better to stick to his word when he said he never intended to make more Star Wars movies, but then he wouldn't have had the chance to make a few more hundred million dollars, which is what movies are really all about.
Die Another Day (2002)
Hideous!
The worst Bond ever. I've never said that about any Bond, but this one was so insultingly bad I can think of no other words to describe it. While I give the producers credit for trying new directions, I take back the credit for failing miserably and constantly coming up with stupid elements.
There are so many things wrong, they've been mentioned elsewhere, but I will try to be brief and go over some of the idiocies.
***SOME SPOILERS AHEAD!***
1. The traditional gunbarrel. They finally got the music right, and they ruin the effect with that awful whizzing bullet! It looked like it was out of a Tom & Jerry cartoon!
2. Bond takes the place of an arms dealer carrying diamonds. I think he was an arms dealer, it's never really clear just what was going on in that teaser. He opens a metal brief case, quite easily, not even a lock, and within is a small fortune in diamonds, loosely placed in open compartments. Give me a break! It's a wonder the courier or dealer or whatever got as far as he did, if he was in New York City he would have lost his diamonds in 10 seconds. When the producers mess up little plot points like this you gotta figure they will mess up major plot points as well.
3. In this high-tech era it would be a surprise if Bond's cover is not blown. Does he not believe in using disguises? He never figures someone might have already met the diamond man and know the difference.
4. The villain finds out Bond is a spy, so what does he do? He blows up Bond's helicopter! Stupid me, I would have shot the spy. Of course the villain always has to do dumb things so the hero has a chance to escape.
5. The hovercraft sequence was okay, if a little loud.
6. What's the big deal about Bond being captured? It's not the first time, but it's the first time he doesn't escape, which I find ridiculous. It would have made a great movie for Bond to escape from a communist prison camp, but no, they botched it. I mean, this is the man who was handcuffed to an atom bomb and locked into Fort Knox with a Korean judo expert trying to kill him, and he escaped that! Okay he got a little help there, but to think the resourceful Bond we've come to know in 40 years couldn't escape from any prison is unbelievable!
7. Apart from a scraggly beard and long messy hair, Bond is in pretty good shape for someone tortured for over a year. I would have expected him to look almost skeletal. Also, the scenes of Bond being tortured would have been more grim if they weren't shot as a music video.
So Bond can stop his heart, then suddenly jump up from his bed and assault two medics. It was done in Our Man Flint, but then it was done as a joke. Here it's also funny, but the humor is unintentional.
8. I was hoping to see Bond pull an escape on the bridge, but instead he is exchanged for another prisoner. The producers thought to surprise us, but instead they disappointed us.
9. The villains. They are awful. Much is made of Zao (Xio? Who Cares?) but he doesn't really do much except fight Bond. The worst he does is a terrorist act which takes place offscreen! I guess they just like his name, since it's mentioned every 10 seconds. Gustav Graves is just a boring re-tread of other villains, mainly Drax from the novel Moonraker. But it's ridiculous to assume he appeared from nowhere amassed a fortune and built a huge laser satellite within one year, and even worse, NO COUNTRY IS SUSPICIOUS OF HIM! At least Drax of the novel spent about 10 years in his rise to power, which created more plausibility.
***MAJOR SPOILER COMING UP***
When we find out who Graves really is, it makes even less sense. No way could he have made his way to Cuba, financed his new identity and then built his empire in one year, unless he got really lucky and made a pitstop to the US where he won the lottery.
10. The girls. Ugh! I sure didn't see any academy award winning actress on the screen in Halle Berry. Tell me she wasn't cast because of her popularity. Just what the hell was her character up to? Like another comment said, why was she after Zao/Xiao/Xiai/Eieio? If the US was after Xiao and interested in Graves, why were they so against Bond trying to find out more about Graves? Wouldn't cooperation be more sensible. In keeping with the incongruity of the movie, the Bond girl commits the most shocking killings, not Bond or the villains. She barely left an impresssion on me, and for all the hype is one of the flattest of all the Bond girls.
***ANOTHER MAJOR SPOILER COMING UP***
Rosamund Pike was actually much more appealing, and attractive, especially in the Bond mold, so much that I was hoping she was not going to be what I feared she would be, but I knew that was impossible simply by default. And what the hell's with all the Bond girls being government agents????
11. Plot. Plot? I read somewhere that the way they write a Bond script is to make a list of locations not yet used in a film and write the script around some of them. So we go from Korea to Cuba to England to Iceland and back to Korea mainly to have Bond be a globetrotter. The inclusion of bits and references to past movies only reminded me of how unoriginal this movie was and infuriated me more. I did catch the reference to Bond and the ornithology (Ian Fleming took the name James Bond from an ornithologist who wrote a bird guide), but it would have been nicer if more had been done with it instead of using it for a pointless Bond reference. The sequences in Cuba were ok, but I was starting to get bored by then. I guess that's why they had to blow up the DNA lab, which was a pretty preposterous idea to begin with. What happened to criminals going to cosmetic surgeons???
Then Bond goes to England to meet the villain in the funniest scene in the movie, the traditional competition match between Bond and villain. I assume from the music it was supposed to be serious but I never laughed so much since the last three stooges short I saw. And once we find out who Graves really is, why didn't he have Bond whacked ASAP?
The rest of the movie is just routine Bond, only louder and flashier. And more stupid. Zao/Xaio chases Bond in a gadget-filled car, a cheat because there was no hint of this earlier. He finally gets Bond in a helpless position, and with all his rockets and guns, he decides to RAM BONDS CAR OFF A LEDGE! Nuff said, except that the villain gets his just desserts, which itself was anticlimactic. I thought there wasn't much point to an invisible car, didn't anyone hear an engine running outside the ice palace? And Bond should have died from hypothermia running around in the snow.
As for the villain's caper, why bother with clearing a minefield so your army can cross into another country when you have a weapon that can melt half of Iceland in minutes? And why didn't the Americans launch a barrage of missiles at Icarus, there's no way it could have locked onto all the missiles at once.
Sorry I can't comment on the climax, since I walked out of this atrocity when the military plane with non-bulletproof windows got hit with a bullet and depressurized (a bit lifted from goldfinger).
12. Special effects. Just watch when bond uses the parachute and makeshift sled to surf the tidal wave in Iceland and becomes a cartoon character. That's all I have to say about the effects.
And what's with those speeded up bits? This is a Bond movie, not a Mazda commercial!
14. Madonna and the music. There was music? All I heard were explosions and a little bit of the 007 theme. As for madonna, any bond movie that would sink low enough to feature her not only performing the title tune but "acting" in it as well is not worth the film it was shot on.
15. The regulars. Okay, i'm going to get into trouble now, but I CAN'T STAND Judi Dench as M. First, M stands for the character's initials, Admiral Miles Messervy, but some moron in the series decided it applies to any head of the British secret service. I never liked Judi Dench in the role, right from the start when she called him a male-chauvinist pig or something similar, back in Goldeneye. M is supposed to assign Bond a mission, not comment on his sex life or any other personal trait, so long as it doesn't interfere with the job. Her character got even worse in the last movie, when she confesses to acts which should have cost her her job, but sadly she gets more screen time than all the other M's combined. And why the hell doesn't she debrief Bond when they get him back? A little argument in the sick bay and that's all. Ugh! Oh I how miss Bernard Lee, and even Robert Brown!!!!
John Cleese as R. He gave a good performance, at least he knew enough to not take this nonsense seriously, but for me he ceased being funny ages ago. The whole "Q" sequence is so routine now I almost slept through it. And it came too late in the movie anyway. See THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN for a very different type of scene in Q branch.
What happened to Michael Kitchen, the guy who played Bill Tanner??? He was cool! And what about Joe Don Baker? Were they afraid he would steal the pic from Bond???
Samantha Bond is cute but on screen for what? 3 seconds?
Pierce Brosnan as Bond. Go ahead and let me have it, but I can't stand him as Bond. I'll admit he's a good actor, but he's too cocky, too much of a smartass and not very likable. He's also too trigger happy. I think he's racked up a bigger body count than all the other bonds combined. For all his "human" traits he appears to come off more invincible and perfect than Sean Connery, which is not the way Ian Fleming had written Bond. The more I watch him, the more even Roger Moore appears more human. In addition, it would seem to me an agent would not be sent out on a mission in which he has a personal score to settle, remember in GOLDFINGER, when the REAL M warns bond he is not on a personal vendetta but a mission, and if he can't treat it as one, coldly and objectively, he will be replaced? Certainly Bond is entitled to feelings WHEN ON THE JOB, but to start out going for revenge is not professional. (One of my favorite such bits is from, of all movies, OCTOPUSSY, when Bond confronts General Orloff and shows true anger when he figures out the plot to blow up a USAF base, killing thousands of innocent people in the process.) Fleming knew this, which is why he wrote YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE so that Bond's mission is just a mission until he discovers his target is Blofeld, the murderer of his wife. THEN he becomes the avenging angel of death.
Perhaps I should write my own book about Bond. I've gone on long enough, and so has the Bond series I once loved and enjoyed.