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bryan00009
Reviews
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001)
No, not buying it.
Woody shows he had long since run out of ideas and resorts to doing a corny take-off on an old genre film. This lavish production is nothing more than 1940s private eye shtick. Woody stands out like a sore thumb as a completely unbelievable investigator but he seems to think that jokes can only be told with his stammering, hyper-verbal, stand-up delivery -- and he's still egotistical enough to think only he could play the part. Huge amounts of money were obviously thrown into this, costumes, sets, period cars, etc., but the story has all the sophistication of an episode of the old Superman TV show. It all hinges on the absurd notion that people can be instantly hypnotized over the phone. A nine-year-old would roll their eyes at this today. No wonder no one on this continent will finance Woody's movies anymore. Oh, but Charlize Theron is luminous.
Hacks (1997)
The boring life of Brian
There's an old maxim that movies about making movies never work and that may very well apply to this one about making TV shows. It's the type of movie where the writer sat around struggling for ideas and said, "I know, I'll write a movie about a writer struggling for ideas." I don't want to sound too dismissive. There's a bit of fun living vicariously in the world of these creative types strolling the palm-lined streets and striving for inspiration, but it just doesn't go anywhere. For example, there is a Hitchcockian 'Rear Window'-type mystery set up at the beginning that is abandoned half way through the movie with no payoff, and even the little "twist" at the end seems arbitrary and added on just to wrap up the story. Despite the interesting cast, it all comes down to a group of middle-aged guys fighting for something of no consequence. It might be interesting to watch people running around a colorful milieu like Hollywood, but if they have nothing interesting to say and their struggle doesn't touch upon some universal themes or real emotions, why bother?