I caught 2:37 at the AFI Fest in Los Angeles. It's a very well shot first film (though the DV format begins to show itself in outside scenes), and I'm sure it has good intentions of showing us the "dark side" of high school - in other words every side of high school. But the filmmaker doesn't have the talent to write or direct up to the premise's promise. There are several characters, but none of them are any more than what the plot requires them to be. There's no depth to these caricatures beyond the machinations of "I am troubled teen X, I have Y problem." The perceived roles of men and women in this story are phenomenally troublesome.

Let's start with the men. You have the stoner kid who's gay, the jock who's also gay, the boy who rapes his sister, and Mr. Peepants. As the stereotype requires, all gay men must be sexually unfulfilled and violent toward women and themselves. Naturally (or unnaturally as the stereotype assumes), the two gay male characters beat up women, Peepants, and themselves. I'd be perfectly fine with these characterizations if the stereotypes were turned on their heads, or if the characters somehow transcended them. Yet neither took place, and that's all there is to these characters' stories.

Next, the ladies. One young woman wants to be a bulimic housewife, another is the pregnant rapee of the sister-raping brother, and there's the girl who kills herself (I'll get to that later). Again, I don't think there's a requirement of political correctness for filmmakers (I'd be out of a job were that the case), but I do think that it's only justified if there's more to that character or story. If that archetype were being used to reveal something about character other than "I'm a teenager and life sucks," I'd be happy as a clam. But nothing new is revealed! Nothing is subverted, or changed, or sublimated.

Finally, the girl who kills herself. This is blunt and HIGHLY sloppy storytelling. We're supposed to sit through 5 minutes of a girl violently killing herself who we've seen for maybe 30 seconds through the whole film? We've followed all these other stories for an hour and a half, and now we're invited to torture ourselves for a character that isn't part of the story? It's cheap, exploitative, and sloppy. Despite the millions of crappy indie films that came before this, you have to EARN something like that. You can't simply purchase it on credit. So this suicide happens, we get wrap-ups from the characters that go similarly nowhere but down, and the film ends. What have I learned? I already knew high school sucked - been there, done that. I already knew people have stereotypical views of gay men and young women. I already knew that kids with disabilities are mocked.

What else is there, then? Smoke, mirrors, and some really nice views of leaves. Oh, and the nastiest deus ex machina I've seen in a while.


I couldn't relate to this film. I'm surprised that people are lauding it for being so 'realistic'. How many people at your school were victim to incest? How many closet homosexual jocks were there? How many quiet people that you never noticed committed suicide? Hmmm. OK you wouldn't know even if their were. But really these are explosive problems which many us never deal with. And yet there are so many teenagers with subtle problems which could have been explored. But hey, where's the 'entertainment' in that?

With regards to the girl who committed suicide - I found this to be exploitative. I actually think MANY people in High School at some stage feel invisible, ignored and unwanted. But what possesses someone to violently commit suicide on just another day of being ignored and unnoticed? The filmmaker decided this girl would suicide to make the film more provocative. And the graphic nature of the suicide to make it even more provocative. I didn't buy it as a real life scenario.

And the problems of the other students I didn't fully relate to. Bullying is explored but that's been done to death, we all know it goes on and it truly is a matter of resolve within that person. Closet homosexuality? Pfft, another cliché gets rolled out. Thats the thing really, too many clichés. I guessed the ending at the start. There was a predictable unpredictability if that makes sense. You've got all these characters with explosive problems, and one with apparently none. And I thought, what is the point of this character unless she's the unsuspecting suicide victim? And surely enough..

One thing I will say, and it is the saving grace of the film, is that it does NOT glamourise suicide. The suicide is very graphic and heart-breaking to watch. It is a powerful scene (regardless of how contrived it is)and one that dismisses suicide as the easy option. But the film is really not very imaginative and used stereotypes.

Not bad but certainly not groundbreaking OR worthy of a 17-minute standing ovation at Cannes???


Honestly, Mr. Thalluri.... if you do a drama movie in a high-school setting following a bunch of teenagers through a school day and if you mess up the time-frame and jump back and forth... if you do that, you can't use the exact same visual story telling device of "Elephant" which is using a camera that is passing of from one character to the next and having scenes shown 3 times from different angles. You just can't do that because this is such a blunt rip off its hard to believe anyone gave this more than a 5 rating.

Where "Elephant" (which was released 3 years prior to this movie) uses school shootings (or to be exact the Columbine shooting) as the focal point for its script 2:37 uses teen suicide and seeing the reviews the shock value of that subject worked. Its the same slow story telling, a lot of dramatic piano music all leading to a finale you know from the beginning. At least the characters look like they tried hard to be somewhat different in that department. So you got a untypical gay guy who looks acts like a stoner/skater, a hunky lover-boy who can't deal with his gay side, brother and sister from a rich family who both got their very own problems and here comes the nose dive.

You also get a spoiled bulimic chick and one of the most ridiculous characters ever... a guy with medical conditions who wets his pants because of "2 urethra syndrome" who actually never heard of the invention of diapers but rather pisses his pants in the classroom and then change into new clothes and does so EVERY DAY! WOW, as hard as this movie tries to be realistic this is the most absurd thing I have ever heard. He gets beaten up on the toilet and is obviously ashamed of it but doesn't wipe the blood of his nose when going through the whole school with wet pants and a bleeding nose. Thats new-age realism directly leading to "the twist" and final character who turns out to be the suicide victim...

After watching the "very realistic" life of teenagers (one day including, incest-rape, teen pregnancy, bulimia, parental pressure for grades and appearance and the gay subject mentioned before, kind of like your "very realistic" daily soap... trying hard to be) we watch a girl die we met once in the beginning of this movie and who has no reason but that the guy she had a crush on left the room when she was talking to him (in a thoughtful piano playing sequence BTW, seen that somewhere before??). And it gets even better... before slitting her wrist in a painful long scene of "Yes" and "No" she asks 2-urethra-guy if he is OK, constantly smiling and then she cuts her wrist with scissors in a school toilet.

Now you got a movie that is a total rip-off of Elephant, fails with some really sloppy story telling (the whole rape-incest thing was pretty unbelievable too by the way) and people call this a shocker.

What the heck is going on?? Is all it takes to take some pseudo-dramatic music, boring story telling and adding a shock subject on top and people think there is a major deep message here?? I think Elephant is way overrated already but that movie was the original while this here is an obvious rip-off failing on many more levels. I have never ever seen a more brazen stealing of a whole movie concept in my life... and believe me I watched a hundred of horror movies so I know how low you can go there. This is a total let down in all departments... its nor realistic, its stolen, its damn slow and by all means I wonder whats more useless... another romantic suicide (many give this point to the movie which makes me wonder if they only watch Romeo+Juliet all day long because there is dozens of movies which deal with the subject in a clear non-romantic and MORE REALISTIC way) or this ridiculous set up... Come on! I am still trying to work out if 2-urethra-guy or the suicide itself is more unrealistic and ridiculous.


I don't understand what is hard hitting about this movie! I don't understand why high school kids should watch this! I don't understand why this should have made me think about anything in the slightest!

*Spoiler*

When the un-noticed girl is on her way to commit suicide, was I the only person cheering her on? The cliché'd classical music, long tracking shots, melancholy emotion of the film by that stage had me in reversal to what was intended. I would have only been happy if she walked into the room and the entire cast was in there with her holding scissors to slit their wrists up.

Why?

Cause I went to high school.... and frankly im sick to death of seeing movie after movie in Australia with teenagers in it being solely based on terrible clichés. I've been waiting ages for a younger person to write a movie that im able to relate to and this stereotype driven piece of emo garbage is what I got instead. It was like a dark version of heartbreak high that needed a predictable ending.

Why are all teenagers in Aussie dramas depressed or have really weird problems that just aren't plausibly told?

On the plus side, this was funnier then 'Blurred'. And I needed a good laugh.


It is fascinating how this title manages to slip by the average viewer as something new and groundbreaking (quoting some of the comments). Murali K. Thalluri must have thought by himself: "Oh, great! Elephant ... What a fantastic movie! I'll try hard to do exactly the same movie and see if anyone notices!", sadly enough, he even failed with his outrageous idea. The movie turns out a complete failure. Considering that it tries hard to catch the brilliance of Gus Van Sants "Elephant", it makes it look even more ridiculous - a most embarrassing faux pas for a film director.

The movie starts off with the suicide of a student in the schools bathroom. This scene, already, shows the awkward acting skills of each one involved in this scene. You don't buy a single word they say. In carries on, interrupted by short interview-styled bits of the kids who "live on their marry lives" with each bit rather distressing in its plain stupidity on the basis of each worthless monologue. Thalluri means to introduce the characters this way, to give a kind of fast-as-junk-food insight look into their hearts ... and fails once again. Not five minutes later, Thalluri ultimately screams at the audience "Yes, people! I stole this movie and for some curious reason, I am proud of it!" by taking Gus Van Sants most unmistakable narrative style from "Elephant": He shot scenes twice to let the viewer follow each character involved in a scene on his particular way and role in a school situation. Hm, doesn't this seem awfully familiar? To me, this certain level of very forgiving tolerance had been infringed right there to a point at which I couldn't stand this dreadful movie any more. Shame on you, Murali K. Thalluri, I say! I am especially surprised that "2:37" has reached the official selections in Cannes as of 2006, whereas everyone must have certainly remembered "Elephant" (2003) at the very same Film Festival just a few years ago! So, how in the name of the lord did this most disgraceful rip-off end up being shown there? I find myself absolutely puzzled by this mistake.

Directors like Thalluri use the ignorance of audiences who aren't (and cannot completely be) aware of every independent film out there. As Elephant has little to do with mainstream cinema (although it is without a doubt a masterpiece), few people notice that the story as told in "2:37" had been told before! How that is possible at a Film Festival of such importance as attributed to Cannes, I cannot say. It is sad and shameful that such things are passed on and hardly anyone sees the true fraud in it.

2:37 is by all means solely commercial, worthless as an independent film and (on a certain level) rather a phoney parody of its obvious idol, "Elephant".


I'm sure some people will enjoy it, and find it powerful, or have some sort of personal connection with the characters and story, but from an unbiased stand point, it's not very well done. The film revolves around atypical angst-ridden teenagers, each one playing out a different stereotype making us believe this is what it's like to be a teenager. We get to see a bit of each teenager's lifestyle, but the entire project just came off as pretentious to me, whether it be the constant low angle shots of tree branches in the wind, or the black and white "interviews" with the students, there was nothing new or original showcased in this movie, and nothing I needed to see. Yes, it deals with some strong subject material, and the dramatic scenes are played and acted well, but the entire project seems unnecessary, especially when it seems almost an exact replica to Van Sant's "Elephant" (one dealing with suicide, the other with a school shooting). As I said, some people will probably enjoy this, and the director/writer clearly had some sort of inspiration to make this movie based on the death of a close one, so it's nice the movie was made with some heart in it, but I feel it's incredibly ineffective, and when dealing with material that can be so easily clichéd to do something original with it. I would not recommend this movie.


This movie made me think....of how I could write something about it without personally dissing the director and all the actors, who, as an Australian, I am proud of for actually getting out there and making a film.

But the movie itself? Let me tell you a story....

Found this DVD in my local rental shop yesterday and had vague recollections of the reviews at the time of cinema release here, so I thought I would give it a go.

For some reason, I decided to watch the 'special features' before I watched the actual movie, not something that I usually do. Turned the 'making of' off halfway through, as I'd had enough cringing at the 'aren't we so wonderful for putting together such a hard hitting film with such a raw script' attitude.

The movie? Ugh. Full of clichés and pathetic character development. The actors? Well done guys, you are Aussies and I applaud you. And, just like a footy team is only as good as the coach that directs them, you unfortunately did NOT have a great script to work with.

I felt that the movie actually trivialised so many of the subjects that it seemed to want to cover. I have seen many reviews here that refer to it as nothing more than a soap. Agreed.

Finally (and forgive me if I don't phrase this correctly), I was extremely disappointed that there were no optimistic overtones at all. Yes, we all know that life is full of hard stuff, and yes we know that things such as incest DO occur, but I really find it hard to applaud a movie that has not one piece of joy in it. I believe that a director has a responsibility to put it in there SOMEWHERE. Otherwise, the movie is all about THEM and THEIR feelings, they have created it for themselves, not for an audience.

Which I think is the basis of why this movie isn't so great. The special features mention that the director wrote the screenplay in a 36 hour sitting, the day after he himself tried to end his own life. Well, it may have been cathartic for him to do this, however the movie reeks of self-indulgence when you know the story behind why it was written. "I feel horrid, I'm going to write a movie about feeling horrid". (Note: I have read the interview with Andrew Urban, and understand WHY Thalluri needed to write something to help him through his own issues, but I believe there is a line in film that cannot be crossed - the line of making a movie purely for your own emotional needs, and I feel that this is what has unintentionally happened here)

By his own admission, the director had no technical experience at all, and sadly, this makes the movie come off looking like nothing more than a year twelve media project.

As for any recommendations that this movie should be studied at school, or that all teenagers should watch it - not sure there either. Because there is a VERY dangerous line at the end. I too have been in a place where I have thought that someone who no longer has to 'face life' is 'lucky', but as an adult, I do worry that this line could be influential on a young viewer that was in a vulnerable frame of mind. Might be in there to promote discussion, but again, it reflects no possibility of redemption or joy in this story as a whole. In fact, it almost indicates that there is more sadness to come.

I haven't seen Elephant, but I just might go find it, given all the comparisons here.

Nothing personal here guys, I do hope you can make another movie someday, and we all have to start out somewhere, so forgive me if I've been too harsh. I am glad that you are proud of what you created, which in the end is what life is all about. It's not a movie I would recommend though.

Oh, I DID like the way the time-frames often collided, thought that was an interesting way to film.

But the whole "Its the quiet ones you have to watch" - we already know that.


The time I wasted seeing this movie, I demand back! I felt sick afterward, but not because it touched me in any way. It's pretentious, trying to get the audience to feel bad for the people involved, but I couldn't care less. The characters are soulless and stupid. You don't get an explanation for some of the scenes and it doesn't leave any thoughts afterward to come up with your own explanation. All of the students in the movie has issues, but since you don't feel for them you don't believe their problems.

If I could write better in English I'd never stop. But I can't, so, I'll stop now.

Don't watch this.


I truly hate and despise this film and the filmmakers behind it.

Sure, I'm all for making a hard hitting and honest film about youth and youth culture.1987's "River's Edge" is an excellent example of a well-made teen drama. However, what I take exception to is the infantile, grubby and sensationalist approach that the makers of "2:37" took.

A prime example is how it raises so many issues and yet fails in any significant way to comment or reach a resolution on even one of them.

My other major problem with this film, apart from its complete plagiarism of Gus Van Sant's "Elephant" (surprised Van Sant didn't sue) is its 'bull loose in a china shop' attitude to quite delicate issues such as incest and particularly suicide.

In short, avoid this film like the plague and anything that this filmmaker ever is involved with subsequently. I've heard that his motivation for making "2:37" may or may not be based on lies. Having seen the substandard result, this doesn't surprise me in the slightest. This is a glorified student film exercise that has no place whatsoever being in a cinema or on DVD. Pure and simple.


This film is so copy-cat, cliché-ridden, clumsy, and laboured, I find it astounding that anyone could not feel cheated by the experience of sitting through it.

Here is the range of idiotic clichés, ridiculous psychologising, and simply unfeasible storytelling in this "hard hitting" representation of high school: The tough guy jock is really a homosexual. The A-student is unhappy because his father pushes him and somehow this causes him to commit incest. A teacher is mean to a student who wets his pants in class. A girl who is going out with the above-mentioned jock is really in love with him and "just wants a family".

Maybe the only saving grace is the student counsellor scenes which are vaguely interesting, but most of the devices in this film are so leaden that it beggars belief.

This film shows me no insight into teenagers and I will not be surprised when it bombs, especially with teenagers. The people who like this film seem to be parents worried about their teenagers, and boy are they barking up the wrong tree if they think this film will help with "understanding" teen issues. I mean, what is the moral of this film? "Hey guys, let's all look out for each other and hug each other" GIVE ME A BREAK. Anyone who thinks you can get through to a 14 year old with that kind of message needs to think back. In the 1980s we were watching Kentucky Fried Movie, Xtro, Porky's, Evil Dead, Terminator, etc. This film will fall on deaf ears.

2:37 is right up there with another Australian "indepedent" film, 'One Perfect Day,' which was as bad as this utter turkey of a film. Thank god no taxpayers money was spent on this boloney.

AVOID!!!!


There is nothing original,humane or insightful in this film. The acting is average, images are amateurish, the writing lacks subtlety and the scenes are very basic...something close to a soap.

In 2:37,a suicide is used to turn the film into a suspense drama. We watch, partly, because we want to know who dies. The various characters each have a problem, and the film shows how bad each problem is for them, but only as a way to get them each to a place where you think they might kill themselves. Despite the different points of view offered by the camera on the key events, there is NEVER another way of seeing the events themselves. So in 2:37, the arseholes are arseholes, the angels are angels. This is simple stuff.

Without this complexity, the film emerges as a voyeuristic tale of youth sex and violence. You hardly get to know the kids as much as the breasts, bodies and limps that the filmmaker passes off as characterisation.

In the end, if you know ANYTHING about film in the last 5 years, 2:37 is just an immature rip off of Elephant - not a meditation, not a progression. Yet while the filmmaker and distributor use the alleged suicide of a friend at every chance to give the film some legitimacy, they never talk about Gus Van Sant or Elephant. The positive posts on IMDb curiously avoid any mention of this, or simply don't value originality. If you do want something with heart and voice - avoid this piece of youth exploitation. I was surprised by the filmmakers age when I found out after seeing this film - I had assumed a 13 year old had made it. The Twenty Somethings I've always known are too busy trying to express something real in them to lift the work of an old man.


... Said the continuity announcer as TACTICAL ASSAULT was about to be broadcast . After seeing the first two minutes I started thinking Rutger might want to get a new agent . After seeing the next ten minutes I started thinking Rutger might want to retire thereby saving a potential audience from any more of his performances

Yup this is a truly terrible movie . I wasn't expecting much and why should I if the name Rutget Hauer appeared in the credits , but within seconds of the opening title credits that featured NATO warplanes with USSR markings bombing Bosnia I realised I was going to be force fed inedible turkey three months after Christmas .

The attention to detail is non existent . NATO planes carry USSR markings then were told Hauer's character spent six years in an Iraqi prison which would make the setting 1997 . What NATO were bombing the Serbs in 1997 ! I guess the producers didn't think the audience would have noticed this ridiculous inaccuracy but I know I did . The producers also probably hoped the audience wouldn't notice the lack of continuity such as dogfights with Iraqi jets that suddenly turned from Migs to F-4 Phantoms then back again but I did . Even stranger characters would take off in F-16s then when they arrive back at base there jet has changed into a Soviet built Mig

Oh and if you're expecting a dumb action movie you're only half right because it's dumb but most of the plot centres around a BASIC INSTINCT revenge plot . I'll give the producers some credit ( Maybe credit is too strong a word ) because after seeing plots featuring nannies from hell , policemen from hell , flat mates from hell we now have a fighter pilot from hell which means every single occupation of the 20th century has featured in a from hell type plot with perhaps TATICAL ASSUALT being the worst movie of the lot


It's as if the Stay-Puffed Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters had been reincarnated in Rutger Hauer's body and is taking revenge upon a rival's pregnant wife! If seeing an obese Hauer chase a very pregnant Isabel Glaser (imagine the spine-tingling thrills in that contest) sounds good to you, see this film! Seriously, if Hauer is what an Iraqi POW looks like after six years in prison, then hungry people everywhere should make a bee line to a jail in Baghdad. Overall "Tactical Assault" rates 2 stars instead of 1 because Mike Mitchell as Hawk is terrific. Mitchell burns up the screen as a NATO pilot until his plane is burned up itself (by an enemy missle), whereupon the film loses what little verve it had to begin with.


This movie is astonishingly poor. It was on television when I tuned in during an action scene and was chuckling away at the cheesy macho dialogue, waiting for Leslie Nielsen to appear. It took me a couple of minutes to realise that it wasn't actually a comedy, it was meant to be taken seriously. What has to be remembered is that somebody actually sat down and wrote this movie, and worse still - other people funded it and gave it the green light.

Rutger Hauer obviously doesn't read movie scripts before he signs up, either that or he has some seriously bad debts to pay.

Strangely, this film is so poor, that you find yourself staring at it, wondering how it actually got funded, and how a TV channel must have paid money for the rights to air it. The dialogue between hero and baddie whilst trying to shoot each other out of the sky is particularly painful, with dialogue sounding like it was generated by a Texas Intruments "Speak & Spell".

The Hollywood money machine at it's worst. Funny though.


My Caddy Limo was destroyed!!! Well, I had one just like it - Drove the hoi polloi and many of the Chosen Ones around Manhattan for a few years.

That was a whole lot more entertaining than this movie I can tell you. Lordy, what a bomb - as in RPG go boom. I also drove a lot more stars in my white Caddy than appeared in this dud of a flick.

Robert Patrick is a very serious actor and did a credible job with the nonsense he had to work with. Unfortunately, Rutger Hauer played his part like a red-nosed circus clown. If he couldn't take it serious why should his audience? The director should have kicked his butt off the set in the first hour of filming.

The dialog was written by 10 yr old's for 8 yrs old's. Surprised there wasn't a whole lot more cracking up on the sets. Oh well, I am a movie fanatic - ergo - you must take the bad to get to the good.


Well, this movie shows us that Mark Griffiths and producers think we all are idiots. If not how should we understand this:

American pilots take off on Mig-29s. Suddenly all aircrafts turn to F-16s. Ha, a magic! After an action... Migs land. The magic again!

Oh, did I mention that F-16s had Israel markings?

Another magic: obviously unarmed L-39 trainers are bombing enemies.

And more magic: while all movie is situated in Europe, we can see a desert in almost any flying scene.

Maybe the director wasted all his magic on things above, because action scenes are incredibly chaotic and also explosions look awfully as if pilots bombarded with molotovs.

OK, OK, this is a movie. I should write about its story... wait. A story? Yes there is SOME story in this film. And its horrible as well.


Well, you know... Rutger Hauer and Robert Patrick both are really good actors. But WTF with this movie? The story was lame and the script was just terrible. The poor actors didn't have material to work with!

The DVD cover invited you to a flight action flick. You would expect something like Top Gun... Huge disappointment! The flight action in this movie is so cheap that makes you puke. The aerial scenes are clearly taken from documentaries and some other footage sources, not made for this movie. And they didn't even care about the marks or the fighters models, taking for granted the audience will not notice it.

As I said the story was lame. With a little effort from the writer and director it could have been very interesting. In short, it seems a B-movie made in the 70's.

I feel very sorry for these actors who put their names here. They sure must be ashamed.


(Warning: Some spoilers ahead.)

What an incredibly crappy movie. It makes Iron Eagle 2 seem good.

The story is as follows: Captain Holiday (Rutger Hauer) gets shot down by his friend Banning (Robert Patrick) to stop him from shooting down a iraqi airliner filled with innocent civilians. Six years later Holiday returns to take his revenge. Among other things he, sitting in a tank, chases Banning (now a colonel) and his pregnant wife over a field. He manages to fire shells and drive the tank at the same time. After getting the tank blown up by a bazooka, he miraculously survives and steals a fighter jet. With it he shoots down a number of allied fighters before attacking the NATO headquarters in an attempt to kill Banning's wife.

An extra bonus is that major Baxter (who Holiday hangs in her office) has put the rank insignia on her right shoulder on backwards. Elegant.


Sorry to disagree with you, but I found the DKC series to be quite engaging. So much so that I invested in the SNES system and my own copies of the games. This is, mind you, almost ten years after the initial release of DKC 1. The graphics were ground-breaking for their time, the first vector graphics games for home systems. The music and characters are all memorable, and the games brought myself and my girlfriend dozens of hours of entertainment. True, the second game was better than the first, and the third was perhaps lacking the 'edge' of the second installment. But all three offered different play, and I enjoy them to this day. By the way, I'm old enough to remember when there were NO video games whatsoever (and TVs were black and white!).


*** Possable spoiler but probably not ***

The game is called donkey kong but donkey kong is not even in it

anymore! Diddy is gone aswell!

The 1st Donkey Kong Country was one of my two all time favorite

Super Nintendo games. (The other being Super Mario World)

The 2nd Donkey Kong at least had diddy kong and good levels,

although it felt more like a game based on pirates at times.

However this one is the worst of the lot! It does not have the feel of

the original or 2nd, The enemy's look stupid and the levels are

even worse. It does not look realistic anymore! I did not enjoy his game unlike the last two, the first had great

background music and the 2nd was not bad but the music in this

game is horrible!

It happens a lot these days that movies, shows and sometimes

video games that start out fantastic, end up with it being ruined by

a stupid sequel! I am sad to say I feel that donkey kong as a saga is not as good

now that it has Donkey Kong 3!

They should have left it at the original or MAYBE the 2nd one.


This is your typical junk comedy.

There are almost no laughs. No genuine moments. No memorable lines. No scenes where you think to yourself, "that was clever". Nothing. The plot is embarrassingly bad.

It's ugly to look at and boring as hell! There is no substance here. This movie has nothing. It doesn't matter if Farely was in this or not. A crap movie is a crap movie no matter who's involved.

Also, David Spade is a terribly unfunny comedian who plays the same lousy character in ever movie/TV show that he's in.

This movie was dead on arrival. There is no life here. No fun. No intelligence. There are plenty of other "dumb" comedies more enjoyable that this one. This film is just pathetic.

2/10


Most Lorne Michaels films seem to fail because they're essentially just extended versions of skits that barely managed to make people laugh in five-minute segments. "Tommy Boy" is a character right from "SNL" - a big fat lovable (in their opinion) goof who doesn't know anything.

David Spade gets the Thankless Overwhelmed Everyman role. He's paired with the Annoying Overweight Slob and they endure Miserable Misfortunes as they travel cross country to Save Daddy's Business.

The plot, for starters, is really faulty. The whole premise - daddy dies and rich stupid son has to save the family biz - can be traced back to just about any movie you want. Like any SNL style film it is reduced to a simple motivation - empty, shallow; just a reason to see a fat guy and a thin guy be "funny" together.

The movie's biggest "influence" is the 1987 comedy classic "Planes, Trains & Automobiles." That movie is great because the plot isn't stale and recycled. It's basic, yeah - a guy traveling home for Thanksgiving gets stuck with a slob. But it's real, dammit. It makes all the difference. The characters are real, the situations are far more real. "Tommy Boy" is pure slapstick and its ridiculous situations undermine the characters - we feel nothing for them, and we don't care about what's happening on-screen. "PTA" walked the careful line between outrageous and utterly believable and relate-able - "Tommy Boy" is simply absurd, with jokes like a simple deer-in-the-headlights turning into a crash turning into a struggle with a dead deer that really isn't dead, then awakens and wrecks their car.

The whole wrecked car thing is stolen completely from "PTA" and it's eerie how much stuff in this film actually does resemble the Steve Martin/John Candy movie.

Farley is simply way too obnoxious to find likable - I've never enjoyed watching him in any movies and this hasn't changed my mind. Spade's given very little to do, serving as the movie's most thankless character.

Dan Aykroyd is wasted as the Evil Baddie who plans to destroy Daddy's Business. The ending is a joke, and not in a "har-har funny" way. More like a "oh god are they serious?!" way.

Some people dig it, that's cool. But I just can't get into it, nor do I appreciate all the stuff it "borrows" from - not just counting "PT&A" - without any credit whatsoever.


Physical Evidence is one of those films that you want to like but really should be a lot better than it actually is. Developed as a sequel to Jagged Edge for Glenn Close and Robert Loggia, it gives the impression that all involved only made it while they were waiting for something better to come along. The premise is perfectly serviceable, it's mostly technically efficient if horribly uninspired with even Henry Mancini's musacky score surprisingly pleasant, but you can't help feeling that things would have turned out better if one of the leads had turned out to be the killer (as is rumoured was originally the case). As the opening scene of his little-seen, personally disastrous Heat (1986) showed, Reynolds has all the makings of a great screen villain. As is, there are few surprises and a feeling of half-hearted filming by numbers as it builds up a head of intertia as it ambles disinterestedly towards a less than grand will-this-do? finale.

Reynolds is fine, sailing through on charisma in what is clearly a star vehicle. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Theresa Russell. An impressive and fearless actress in husband Nic Roeg's films which allow her to delve into the darker side of human nature, she's trapped in a part that requires star quality rather than depth, and she ain't got it in spades. She doesn't fluff her lines or bump into the other actors, but that's about all that can be said in favour of her astonishingly stilted and often amateurish performance that lets the film down badly. Aside from Ned Beatty's prosecutor the supporting cast add only a slightly surreal presence in a Boston where everyone seems to have a badly disguised Canadian accent and the streets bear a startling resemblance to Toronto and Montreal.

Likewise, director Michael Crichton, who in Westworld, Coma and The First Great Train Robbery showed that he knew how to lean an audience to the edge of their seats, seems to handle the action in a purely perfunctory fashion - indeed, in one brief chase the shots don't even match and seem thrown together almost arbitrarily. The climax itself has no flair and is completely bereft of threat or danger, and many scenes are played for far less than they are worth. It's no great surprise that, aside from uncredited reshoots on The 13th Warrior, Crichton hasn't directed since.

Its watchable enough in an 80s TV movie sort of way, even if it never lives up to the promise of its opening. Whether that's enough of a reason to see it is down to individual taste.


I got a kick out of Reynolds saying to his attorney, "look,I've done a lot of shi%ty thing in my life, but I never killed anyone." Obviously he forgot about his career which slid down hill after he started making stupid movies like 'Cannonball Run.' Physical Evidence was originally supposed to be a sequel to 'The Jagged Edge' that Glen Close sanely rejected. The verdict is in, avoid Physical Evidence.


This really is a film of two halves. The first detailing the lives and friendship of two boys (one a privileged Pashtun and the other a down-trodden Hazara) in late 70s Afghanistan before the invasion by the USSR works extremely well. The young actors turn in convincing performances and seeing Afghanistan as it once was throws the present situation there into stark relief.

The real problem comes when we move into the later phase of the story where we join the Pashtun as a man living in America. Ancient debts to his young friend lead him to return to his homeland and it is really at this point that things break down. The central adult character is clearly supposed to be sympathetic, but in fact comes across as wimpish and wallowing in self pity. It is hard to really care for him and one cannot help but feel that the really interesting story is the one we do not get to see - that of his boyhood friend.

Once he returns to Afghanistan the narrative becomes bogged down in a series of highly contrived coincidences. Most remarkably he manages to come across his childhood enemy after all these years almost immediately (even though he is not looking for him), despite the chaos that has since consumed the country. This enables him to confront past demons in a way that is simply too convenient to be credible. The resolution of the narrative is also run through with an awful, mawkish sentimentality which undermines any really serious points the film may be trying to make.

Although it is possible to start seeing characters and the abuses of their lives as symbols of a state which has been torn apart by world politics it is hard to really see this as a film which engages with any wider political discussion. Instead the narrative becomes reduced to one character's emotional journey of self discovery and healing. Unfortunately this character is so dull and wrapped up in himself that it is hard to really become engaged in his story, while opportunities to make a really interesting film about Afghanistan itself are wasted.


The Kite Runner began as one of those "important" films that most people fawn over because they are told that they should if they want to be among the elite and quickly descended into an idiotic film of absurdly outlandish proportions.

I've never read the book, and never felt the need because I honestly don't care. Sure I'm called uninformed for saying it but I truly have no interest whatsoever in just another "pull at your heartstrings, copy off of all other story lines to get emotion from the readers" novel, even if it is set in Afghanistan.

That said, I watched the movie. I heard good things about its beauty, and how touching it was and decided why not? As it turns out, there was a very good reason why not. Not only was the so called main character completely unsympathetic (I get it, he was young and this is a film about redemption but honestly he was horrible. I hated him and not in that good 'Anti-hero' way, he was just a dull, idiotic, self-absorbed character that I felt nothing towards) but the rest of the story was so completely absurd that I couldn't believe how everyone else was fawning over how beautiful it was, and how they cried and it moved them. I'm sorry, but I only feel moved by something that feels realistic, Sci-Fi has been known to move me, fantasy as well...but this? Please. This surpassed many other movies for pure absurdity! My biggest peeve, Hassan was Amir's brother...really? You sure you didn't just rip that off from a thousand other stories? Positive that that particular tidbit wasn't just added in to try to pull more tears out of your audiences (y'know the type of people who look for reasons to cry during a movie)? I was rolling my eyes when that "twist" was revealed knowing that it could only go downhill from there (not to mention flashing back to Star Wars "Amir, Hassan is your brother" "NOOOoo, that's not true, that's IMPOSSIBLE!") Oh, and it certainly did. Filled to the brim with cliché's and just plan dumb storytelling. Like "good guy miraculously escapes bad guy against all odds with help from spunky kid who despite being viciously sodomized and having no clue who you are is willing to help out with a conveniently placed weapon that holds special meaning to you". Ooh and don't forget the oh so idiotic "finally getting vengeance on the kid who teased you when you were little who, surprise surprise, has turned into a psychopathic adult" (trust me guys, I understand you like to live vicariously through movies but that'll never happen. You know that kid who teased you in high school...he's no terrorist, he's probably an accountant.)

Oh, and I must mention the CGI-tastic kites! I think those were on par with the "Matrix" movies and "Transformers" bravo you guys! BRAVO!

It seems this movie was just made for western audiences who need to a reason to care about the Middle East (hey an overly emotional friendship story will work!) This is one of the most shallow movies I've had the misfortune of seeing, it poses as deep well...but when you get right down to it, it's nothing special.

Unfortunately, the core of America's audience will do what they're told and follow the "It's about controversial material so it must be good!" way of thinking.


Honestly I am not THAT impressed by it, it's not a bad movie, but it's not great one either. There's a story to tell, but it's told in a very incoherent way which kinds of makes it loose it's full meaning and ability to intrigue. This movie could of been made in another way with an outstanding result, the story is just so interesting yet somehow I'm not intrigued when watching it.

It definitely isn't an amateur movie, rather the opposite and some of the scenes are really emotional. The actors and actresses does quite a good job and so does the director but there's just something so unfinished by the whole movie that I cant quite put my finger on. Perhaps if you had gotten to know the characters abit more, all the 'messiness' of the movie could of been better clarified and put more 'action' throughout it cause as it was, it became abit slow from time to time.


I watched this episode with high hopes after seeing it on so many people's "Favourite episodes" list. I'm not boasting in any way, but from the start, I realised they were in some sort of toybox/can, with the huge eye looking down on them, to the type of characters in there. Even though throughout the episode, the questions of "Who are we?", "Where are we?", "What's outside?" carry the suspense of the episode (which I unfortunately already figured out), I must say that different types of characters and the interaction between them did make the episode interesting enough. Although the twist of the story may have been harder to guess if ALL of them were (toy) soldiers.


"Five Characters in Search of an Exit" has to be one of the most boring "Zones" ever made. It was on Sci-Fi this morning, and, as usual, I changed the channel. I put it in my Top Five list of the worst "Zones" ever produced. Dull and predictable, and not worth watching. Serling worked this theme to death (earthlings in the hands of aliens, who often were giants), and in this particular version, it just doesn't work. Anyone who hasn't seen it before, will quickly figure it out. This is another Serling philosophical mood piece, perhaps paralleling the plight of those in prisoner of war or concentration camps, where the imprisoned may lose interest in finding out where they are or fighting their captors. William Windom, as the soldier who is the last to "drop in" is the only one curious to make the effort, and it doesn't take long to figure the outcome.


The Twilight Zone has achieved a certain mythology about it--much like Star Trek. That's because there are many devoted lovers of the show that no matter what think every episode was a winner. They are the ones who score each individual show a 10 and cannot objectively evaluate the show. Because of this, a while back I reviewed all the original Star Trek episodes (the good and the bad) because the overall ratings and reviews were just too positive. Now, it's time to do the same for The Twilight Zone.

Now I was very surprised when I saw reviews for this bland episode that described it as being "among the best" and gave it scores of 10. If this is the case, then why is it that everyone I know who has seen this episode hates it as much as I do? It's possible that me and my family and friends are all cranks but it's also possible this is yet another case of rabid fans rabidly inflating the rating on an average or below average episode.

The episode itself stars William Windom and others as various archetypes--a soldier, a dancer, etc. They are all stuck in a cylindrical room with no escape and only at the end do you realize the "shocking truth"--which isn't at all shocking and is in fact majorly lame. No, this is a badly written and unengaging episode. Yes, there were plenty of episodes of the series that deserved a 10, but few as undeserving as this one due to a shallow script and an unappealing resolution.


I saw this movie previewed before something else I rented a while back...and it looked decent. I've seen some good stuff from Full Moon video, and thought it was worth a shot... Unfortunately, this was not good stuff.

The story is about a possessed bed. A couple moves into a new apartment, discovers the bed, and odd things start happening. Odd things like the woman discovers kinky sex. And the man discovers kinky sex. And the woman draws pictures of kinky sex. And the man photographs kinky sex. And they both start having dreams about dead people having kinky sex. You'd think a movie with so much kinky sex would be good, right?

Well.... No. The problem is that this is supposed to be a scary movie, or at least a thriller, and it just doesn't deliver. There is little tension, no suspense, and no fear. Aside from some troubling dreams and visions, there really isn't anything for this couple to be worried about. The whole movie is basically the two of them having these visions and playing around in bed. Sure, you get a monster fight at the end...and some bloodshed...but nothing spectacular... There's only one murder, and one good scare, and that's it.

And the kinky sex? Don't get your hopes up (or anything else for that matter). Their idea of kinky sex is woman on top, fully clothed, trying to strangle her mate with a necktie. Not exactly my idea of a good time.


Karen and her boyfriend Jerry move into their new Los Angeles apartment.They discover an old brass bed that Karen takes a liking to,unfortunately it has a really sinister history involving kinky sex murders."Deathbed" tries to be a creepy supernatural tale,but fails miserably.The action is slow,the acting is nothing special and there is no suspense whatsoever.Even the sex scenes are lame.The climax is pretty gory and violent,so fans of splatter should be pleased.However the first hour of "Deathbed" is deadly dull and offers some tired horror movie conventions and cheap scares.Definitely one to avoid.My rating: 4 out of 10 and that's being generous.Watch "Re-Animator" or "Castle Freak" instead.


Rented this one by mistake thinking it was another film with the same title, and realizing that I had rented it some time before.

Quick plot line. A couple consisting of an artist and photographer rent a studio apartment in Los Angeles from Joe Estevez, still cursing the fact his brother Martin Sheen could actually ACT! They find a bed in a forgotten room, but the bed is haunted by a nasty looking serial killer from the 1930's and his last victim. Their ghosts inhabit the couple, first enhancing their sex life, but eventually becoming more menacing.

What ensues is cheap R-rated sex scenes, cheaper thrills and kind of a waste of time.


I mistakenly thought this was the 70's art film about the bed that eats people, which sounded interesting. It isn't. Interesting, I mean, let alone about a man-eating bed.

I assume Stuart Gordon put his name on this in the same spirit that Lloyd Kaufman puts "Troma" on just about anything that's been shot with a video camera, in the interest of building up a franchise library. Little more can be said about this opus other than the running time is less than 90 minutes. It is, of course, about a bed that is haunted by the spirit of a man, or something, that once killed a woman with a wig and long false eyelashes. Along the way we get **a five minute opening credit sequence (is the one for "Lawrence Of Arabia" even as long?) **a murderer with Marylin Manson contacts who kills using the same technique as the troll in "Cat's Eye" **demonstrations of a sexual practice Michael Hutchence may have employed **a preview of what Emilio Estevez will soon look and act like **soft core porn even Cinemax would pass on **manbutt and one topless scene **a wacky (or is it "whack"-ee?) ending involving unintentionally hilarious hammer hits and leftover strawberry pie (well, it looked that way to me) **and a rudimentary surprise ending apros pos of nothing much. It's like the screenwriter even fell asleep on the "Deathbed" before finishing the last draft.

It's not scary, it's not sexy, it's shot on hi-def video and doesn't look bad but doesn't look good either, the acting is just good enough to not be bad enough to be fun and so is everything else. No one would probably have even seen or heard of it unless it was on a disc with another movie, the modern day "double feature." I wasn't paying attention for parts of it so I may have missed something. But for some reason I doubt it. Rating: PASS


Where do I begin, its one of the most frustrating movies I've seen because it makes a lot of sense in terms of the point but it comes off as seriously stupid. A movie about a ghost inhabited bed?? The first 2 minutes of the movie shows a black and white flashback of a weird looking fat dude going dominatrix on a Fabienne from Pulp Fiction lookalike contest winner and strangles her with his tie. This is supposed to set up how the bed factors into the story. Still though, if you wanted an opening to keep people interested or send them away early, having a strangulation is the way to do it. Fast forward to the present day, a married couple moves into an apartment with a friendly landlord and begins unpacking their things, so far everything's normal. Then one night while doing the hippity dippity on a single mattress, they realize they need a bed frame. This is where things get fishy, why didn't they bring or buy a g*d damn bed frame before they got there? We learn that the door leading to the attic where the first 2 minutes took place doesn't open but then once the couple realizes they need a bed frame, the door magically opens. They go up to the attic and discover the old bed frame and decide to bring it downstairs and their lovemaking days are saved...or so they thought. The rest of the movie centers around the both of them being haunted by the bedframe. The female is an artist so she starts drawing up the ghoulish images she dreams about and the male is a photographer so he starts having his models act as if they're bring tortured or tied up.(one of which has gray hair and appears over 50 years old, yuck) The female grows increasingly scared and she discovers the house she lives in was once a haven for serial killings and murders which bring about the end to the movie. They find the friendly landlord murdered (which makes no sense since ghosts need to take a human form to kill) and decide to get the hell out of dodge. While packing up, the husband moronically goes up into the attic where he is possessed by the crazy fat dude and the female bashes his skull in before the cops show up and take her to a mental ward where she kills some dude trying to hit on her.

Well if you've read this far you have to be thinking one thing.......WHY THE HELL DIDN'T THEY JUST THROW THE BEDFRAME OUT THE WINDOW???? Seriously, they never said anything about the actual house being haunted, just the bed....so why not get rid of the damn thing and move on? That's why the movie is so frustrating because it actually is a good plot and the actors follow suit accordingly but there are more holes in it than Sonny Corleone at a toll booth. The couple did try to leave town as upposed to every other movie that has the ol "oh lets give this place a chance honey" scheme going, so props to that. Still though, me and my buddy who watched the movie kept saying every 5 minutes....why didn't they just throw the bed out? Especially once they learned it was haunted would have been a good time to set it on fire or something.

All in all its a near-watchable movie with plenty of porno like bed scenes and a believable plot (to an extent) but the solution is so simple you're scratching your head by the end of the movie wondering how stupid can the married couple be? The highlight of the movie is when the husband tells the 50 year old model to spread her legs and his assistant tells him that he can't shoot her like that.

4 out of 10 (a low budget porno The Man Show would love)


Made it through the first half an hour and deserved a medal for getting that far. Lots of excuses for scantily clad women but no real plot to speak of emerged in that time. What sounded like a good idea for a movie was badly executed.


The plot seemed to be interesting, but this film is a great dissapointment. Bad actors, a camera moving like in the hands of an amateur. If there was C-movies, this would be a perfect example. A plus for a nice DVD cover though and a great looking female actor.


Unless you're interested in seeing 2 hours worth of scenic mountain footage featuring hysterical characters, lots of histrionics and cheap 70s gore (not much of it either), I would advise to avoid this movie. It is long winded, overlong and has a rather annoying amateurish feel to it. Masterpiece? No, an average thriller, shot in an average fashion, in a gorgeous Italian landscape.

I'm a huge fan of slow paced 1970 movies, when there is a plot to delight and entertain you. In this case, it didn't work out for me. The plot is trite, interlaced with superficial and stereotypical characters, backed by hilarious angry mobs and your typical Italian widow dressed all in black, sobbing.

If you are not acquainted and familiar with the Italy country side, the movie might be worth seeing as the scenery itself is spectacular and rather breathtaking. This movie isn't however, nothing out of the ordinary, there are much better Italian horror flicks than this. Not much else than a yawn fest. 5/10


Try as I might, I just simply couldn't get into this one. Perhaps it was the washed out tones; perhaps it was the drawn-out approach--I'm not really sure, but though this was by no means a "bad" movie, I didn't really find it to be very much of an "effective" movie (words that I understand are so much more arbitrary than their common uses).

So, basically, the deal here is that a series of adolescent boys' deaths sets off an investigation and anxiety in a small provincial town, triggering a witch hunt. What do the boys' death have to do with the mysterious, sexy woman who has appeared in town? Is the crazy hermit woman involved? Is it voodoo? The story is a mixture of crime drama and horror as the various townspeople are all suspect and corpses keep appearing while bloody violence ensues.

Good enough, but to me, most of it fell a little flat. Oh, it had it's moments... the one boy walking in on a beautiful naked seductress was pretty good, and the scene where the fathers beat the hermit was a bitter commentary (even if the effects themselves failed, considering her skin seemed to peel off as if they were whipping her with red-hot irons).

My biggest issue was the ending. I've already put spoiler tags on this review, but BE WARNED, HERE'S THE BIG SPOILER: I don't believe it. I don't believe that a priest could convince himself to kill young boys for becoming sexually aware without some hint of that psychosis appearing earlier, with other boys, with a history, or some other personal affect. The movie didn't really earn its ending. END SPOILERS.

Nonetheless, Fulci is a big name and I'm more than certain there's an audience out there for this. I definitely need to check out more that he's done, because this may have been a poor introduction. Most Italian giallo is hit-or-miss anyway, so I'm waiting to see what else this guy can do before writing him off.

--PolarisDiB


A frustrating documentary. Louis Kahn's son, who saw his father only minimally during his childhood because he was a member of just one of the three separate families his father had created, takes on the task of trying to learn more about his father through an exploration of his architecture and his life. It sounds like a great idea for a documentary, but it ends up flat and uninteresting.

Sadly, the basic problem is that Kahn's son, Nathaniel, is not just one of the film's protagonists --- he is also director, writer, producer, interviewer and narrator. Nathaniel seems both too inexperienced and possibly too close to the material to function well in any of these roles. Further, while he seems like a nice enough guy, he doesn't have much screen presence, so the fact that he is the only constant in the film becomes wearing.

Nathaniel also comes across as an unprepared and amateurish interviewer --- there are several points where an interviewee makes an interesting or provocative statement and the camera cuts to a shot of Nathaniel offering little more than a blank stare and a sort of timid "uh-huh," as if he's a little panicked that he's going to have to come up with something to say in response. At times, I felt embarrassed watching people who might have had truly interesting things to say about Kahn (or at least better things to do with their time) seeming to realize that they were in the hands of an interviewer who was going to rely on them to direct the conversation.

Nathaniel's dual role as both documentarian and lost son seem to do more to hurt the film than help. One senses that some of the interviewees are a little reluctant to really open up about negative aspects of Kahn's personality and career, presumably because it's not clear from Nathaniel whether he's looking to dig into the truth or simply wants to hear nice stories about his Dad -- preferably ones that will confirm his hope that his Dad really did care more for Nathaniel and his mother than seems likely. His passive approach as an interviewer may stem directly from this conflict. The only person Nathaniel does push is his own mother, but those conversations tend to feel a little like bad teen drama (Aren't you ANGRY, Mom?") and don't offer much in terms of helping us (or Nathaniel) understand Kahn or the loyalty he evoked from those around him.

What the film desperately lacks is shaping by an experienced and independent hand, not to exclude Nathaniel, but to balance his subjectivity and inexperience. An independent director could have stood away from the material, given more thought to what the interviewees could contribute and, one hopes, cut out those portions of the documentary process that just don't work, such as the weird segment with the guy who claims to have see Kahn die (which made it look as if Nathaniel was just being taken in by some loony) or the entire bit about hooking up with Kahn's first cousin, who had nothing to add about Kahn or Nathaniel. Too many times Nathaniel makes us watch him standing in or near a Kahn building buttonholing strangers to tell them that his father was the designer. (Ahhh huh. Thaaat's nice, sir. UmmI gotta go now.) I understand why these things might be important to Nathaniel and that showing the documentary process is sometimes interesting, but this is one of those examples of when a documentary can be TOO personal.

As an aside, I thought the score written for the film was great! (But, one of the oddest moments in the entire thing for me was when, during the tour of the Kimball Art Museum, the voice-over quotes Kahn as making a comparison between architecture and Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. The music being played at the same time? Beethoven's NINTH Symphony. A mistake? A miscue? Who knows? It did make me laugh.)

Kahn was a great architect and it's clear that he was an unusual human being and had an intriguing life story. There's definitely a good documentary to be made about him. One is sympathetic to Nathaniel's search for the father he didn't know, but I'm not sure whether THAT is an interesting story. Neither works so well in this film.


Some ugly weirdo who had three families, cheated on and neglected all of them, built ugly useless buildings all over which are now unappreciated and crumbling. His bastard half-Jew son runs around interviewing random Jewish senile people who we care nothing about and shows his dreadful narrating and writing skills while tragic piano music plays. This goes on for almost two boring hours and amounts to nothing.

All you shallow hippie people who watch these stupid documentaries, eating salads and yogurt, think all this crap is so important. It's not. Save the whales. No one cares.


I love documentaries. The Andy Goldsworthy doc was great.I looked forward to this one - but was very disappointed. I knew of Kahn and was intrigued by the idea of his lonely death in a Penn Station men's room. There must be a story here, I mistakenly believed.The only story here is of sadly deluded women who had affairs with an ugly little famous married man. In the absence of anything like an explanation for this guy's horrible behavior, we're given endlessly repeated clips of Kahn walking around and painfully long - supposedly contemplative - shots of his soulless buildings.Actually, some of the buildings are interesting but the thrust of the film asks us to think about the guy himself. The overwrought soundtrack references an emotional tug that is entirely absent from the film. Kahn's apparent gifts do not excuse his behavior or martyr his mistresses. This film seems to want to give Kahn the great artiste's free pass and thus make the director and his mother sympathetic figures - I don't buy it.


Although the figures are higher in proportion to other areas of society, I don't object to the extremely high salaries for many of today's entertainers and athletes.

A-Rod, LeBron or Brady all have deals either well with 8 figures, or the low-9 area. Ray Romano and Jerry Seinfeld could actually become billionaires from their shows, huge residuals and fees they currently demand. Even their cast members, and all of the "Friends" group reached near or over 7 figures per episode. Letterman's earnings for one show could solve most people's financial problems, and a week or two's take care of many for life.

But all of these are based upon sound supply/demand principals, and the financial benefits they bring to their employers. And all perform their crafts ably.

But then comes along someone like Rachel Ray, who reaches a level of earnings far beyond any apparent level of talent or skill. I find her shrill, annoying, and with a forced "perkiness" that's as phony as the proverbial "3-dollar bill."

A friend of mine is responsible for special meetings, events and convention plans for her firm and its affiliates. One of the major talent sources has hundreds of clients available from the $5-10K level, to a handful who get $200K and up per appearance. (This area includes Trump, Seinfeld, Lance Armstrong, Robin Williams, and, no kidding, Larry the Cable Guy.)

There are a greater number in the $100,001 - 200,000 range; list included the likes of Bill Cosby, Steve Martin and even cable guy Larry's benefactor, Jeff Foxworthy.

This category includes Rachael Ray. I suppose I have to admit there may be sufficient demand for her "talent" and offerings to justify her talk show and there may be some out there who'll pay more than $100K, + first class air, hotel suite, all expenses and limos door-to-door, for just a couple of hours of her whiny prattle at their organization's event.

I just can't figure how-in-the-hell this could be possible.


Here is a rundown of a typical Rachael Ray Show:

1. The awful theme song begins to play, and Rachael descends wearing her Snapcrotch outfit in this bizarre cargo elevator. 2. She begins running around screaming and/or insulting the audience, then yells at them sit down. 3. An awkward monologue.

(The next are in any order) 4. A segment tooting Rachael's own horn (i.e. "I Lost 500 Pounds with Rach's Recipes, "Rachael Ray Saved my Life," "Rachael's Fashion Tips.") 5. A totally useless D.I.Y. tip (i.e. how to engrave words into casserole dishes, how to use your washing machine as a salad spinner, how to build a tube of lipstick with a light on it.) 6. The unleashing of horrible recipe on the unsuspecting audience (reaction shots of first bites are never shown). 7. A celebrity guest with an awkward interview, followed by some obviously scripted questions from the audience. 8. A person who gets help from one of Rachael's cronies (i.e. the I say yes to everything woman, the I own nothing but overalls lady, and the I can't find time to put on makeup housewife). What would they do without you Rachael. *gasp*

Reasons that this show should be avoided like the plague: 1. Fakeness: Rachael Ray claims that entire show is unscripted. Many people who have attended tapings of the show have claimed that the entire show is scripted. Many of these same people have also mentioned that there is even a very strict dress code for the show.

2. Her show jumps around too much: Where as Oprah, who is the highest rated talk show host of all time has a definite theme for her show, Rachael's jumps around like an ADHD soda child on crack. Her show averages perhaps 10, short, worthless segments a show. On second you will be getting fashion tips from Kojo, and the next Rachael will be making gross stuffed "Spanish" peppers with manchego cheese, and the next their will be a giant anaconda up on stage, and the next, well you get the picture.

3. Rachael is a poor host with bad ideas: Aside from her grating personality, Rachael's hosting ability is terrible, at best. Her questions for her celebrity guests are poor, and often times not even relevant to the interview, and her segments are unappealing and offer little educational, or humorous value.

In conclusion, you need not waste your time with this schlock. It will be canceled soon anyways.


it seems like if you are going to post here it going to be a 10 star rating ,nobody ever seems to dislike anything ,well i am honest, some don't like that but here we go, rachel ray show is just plain awful.!!!!!!, this show reminds me of the snl character linda whatever if she had a cooking -whatever show.i must say i liked rachel on the food network on $35-$40 a day but i am sorry she does not have enough life experience to make her interesting day in and day out,give me ham on the street, anthony bourdain , interesting folks,but most of all i find her annoying, she actually told a member of the studio audience to "shut up" yes in a kidding way but shut up is shut up, and who cares about her pet stories, sorry rachel you been cancelled!!!!


It's hard to believe that oprah winfrey produced this piece of junk, the show couldn't even hold a candle to cooking shows of the past, including emeril lagasse, rachael ray is the most annoying talk show and cooking show host in TV history, not since ainsley harriott has had a terrible cooking show host I've watched, at least ainsley harriott has some good moments and some style, this one has no style at all, she's terrible as host, the kitchen looks atrocious, the writing is horrible, the teleplay is over the top and the opening credits are so bad, it makes me sick. Now I Enjoy cooking shows that had a cool sense of style, but this has absolutely none of that

This is one of the worst TV of the year.


I guess only a selected number of audience members really had any interest in watching how a male hustler in New York operates but I'd be willing to bet that even these brave souls were turned off by the irritating patchwork technique and deliberately muffled sound recording on display here; the fact that these inherent 'defects' were a direct result of the film's low-budget/underground/experimental nature is, I'd say, beside the point. Anyway, for those so inclined, the film features extensive male nudity and Joe Dallesandro, understandably, became an underground  and gay  icon!

The episodic structure showing the day-to-day routine of the hustler protagonist offers a couple of mildly interesting scenes: his meeting with (and eventually posing for) an eccentric elderly artist; the one where Dallesandro expresses his views on his unusual line of work and delineates his particular modus operandi to a couple of prospective 'colleagues' including perhaps the unlikeliest of hustlers  a bespectacled nerd! Perhaps mercifully, the film ran for only 89 minutes against the IMDb's claim that its complete length is 105 (but the latter could well be a mistake)!

I had watched a few other of Warhol's 'movies' and this one is decidedly not as satisfying as the most tolerable example I've run into yet, BAD (1977), and only slightly better than the likes of MY HUSTLER (1965) which were mostly a strain to sit through. The fact that this was only the first part of a trilogy did not augur well but, as the saying goes, you gotta to do what you gotta do and the other two 'chapters' had to follow in quick succession...

Despite my generally negative reaction to it, FLESH is nevertheless still valuable as a 1960s time capsule and as a prototype of the Underground scene of that era, both cinematically and in real life. For the record, an image of Dallesandro from this film adorns the sleeve of The Smiths' self-titled 1984 debut album and transsexual Candy Darling (who appears here rather unremarkably) was immortalized in "Candy Says", the opening track of The Velvet Underground's eponymous 1969 album. Although the latter band is my all-time favorite, and one of the reasons for this is that, through their sheerly unique and ground-breaking music, they described a lifestyle so utterly different from my own, this is truly a case where I'd much rather experience something aurally instead of visually!


Technically abominable (with audible "pops" between scenes)and awesomely amateurish, "Flesh" requires a lot of patience to sit through and will probably turn off most viewers; but the dialogue rings amazingly true and Joe Dallesandro, who exposes his body in almost every scene, also gives an utterly convincing performance. A curio, to be sure, but the more polished "Trash", made two years later, is a definite step forward. I suggest you watch that instead. (*1/2)


Although there is very little plot and whatever exists is just all improvisational, still it was a good start from a new director with no previous financial back up and also a smart move from Andy Warhol to make his cimematic productions more marketable and viewer-friendly. In any case this story of a street hustler relies too much on showing Joe buck naked (almost all the time!). And the creative use of a flashy editing really wears off after the hundredth time and the cutting off the dialog thing gets really annoying half-way. This would have been a much more entertaining or even dramatic if they made a documentary of the daily of an actual male prostitute or hustler, instead of letting the actors make up some nonesensical plot and dialog of their own.


Although not a big Coen brothers fan, I am an admirer of their dark humor films like 'Fargo' and 'Miller's Crossing.' I have been much less impressed by their other comic mode, goofy-camp (or is that Camp Goofy?) Unfortunately, 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?' falls into the latter category and isn't even as good as 'The Big Lebowski' or 'The Hudsucker Proxy.'

'O Brother' is basically an episodic series of in-jokes without much point, and not all that much humor or cleverness either. As most reviewers have noted, the film's plot is very loosely  and, as far as I could tell, quite arbitrarily  based on The Odyssey. Its main character, Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney), is an 'adventurer' like his Homeric namesake and has as his 'real' goal the return home to prevent the marriage of his wife Penny to a suitor. Of course, we don't discover that this is what the Clooney/Ulysses character really wants until long after we've stopped caring. And what does Homer have to do with "Cool Hand Luke" chain gangs, Ku Klux Klan meetings a la "Indiana Jones" cult gatherings, a disbarred lawyer's vocabulary, a talent for blue-grass country music singing, an association with Baby Face Nelson, a Clark Gable lookalike hairdo, and other random and sundry character traits and encounters? I leave that for others to discern.

The allusion to Preston Sturges' 'Sullivan's Travels' in 'O Brother's' title is equally pointless. Yes, viewers familiar with the Sturges minor screwball comedy classic might find it mildly rewarding to recognize the title of the socially conscious Depression movie Sullivan abandons Hollywood and comedy hoping to make. And they might even be mildly amused by a couple of shot/scene riffs (e.g. hopping freight cars, and the chain gang shuffle into view a movie). But so what? The Coen brothers don't seem to have anything to add to the art-for-art's-sake versus moral high seriousness critical debate about the function of art. They obviously fall into the former school, but that doesn't seem to motivate the reference in the slightest. Is it an homage? If so, why make it? I like post-modern pop culture reference and textual play as much as the next person, but it's a lot nicer when it amounts to something at least tonally, if not thematically, consistent  and not just an arbitrary concoction.

This screenplay is simply a silly mess. The only consistent, and consistently pleasing, element is the folk/country music soundtrack. It doesn't have much to do with Homer or Preston Sturges, but, considering the rest of the film, that's probably a good thing. On the other hand, I'd recommend using the price of admission on the soundtrack CD.


Earnest effort which achieves some success to adapt the classic Odyssey story to a '30's nostalgia period piece. The adventurers this time are escaped convicts, wandering about the Depression afflicted South bungling their way into trouble.

The greatest strength of the film is the wonderful music soundtrack, effectively evoking not only the era that this is set in, but the spiritual references that run rampant in the film. Besides its value to the tone of the movie, the music is just plain fun to listen to.

What cripples the film is that the characters really aren't that likable. In a comedy, you need that element in order to have fun along with them in their misadventures. Instead, we have a bunch of selfish, arrogant, soulless, mean spirited nobodies who really have no positive points at all. They're not imposing enough to make you hate them either, so it's hard to relate to them at all. They're offered up as clowns, but like people who put clown makeup on and march in parades, they just aren't funny.

Like the story that inspired it, the movie takes these guys on an "odyssey," encountering a variety of symbolic (some even mystical) characters. Everybody is stamped with offensive stereotypes, the operative word being "stupid." People are mocked right and left, and consequently, no one is left being particularly interesting or appealing. The movie doesn't like its own characters, and it doesn't let you like them, either.

Riverside baptisms, beautiful sirens, stolen cars, fistfights, radio preachers, people being whipped with sticks; all are thrown at you in disjointed fashion. Some evoke a few laughs, others confuse or bore you. I did laugh when a nerdy guy beat the snot out of an especially obnoxious lead character. But there were a lot more pointlessly gratuitous scenes; an example: some '30's Dillinger-type guy strafes cows with a tommy-gun. Comedy? Symbolism? No; just mindless violence, which detracts from the intellectual nature of the original source material this story draws upon.

Other adaptations of the Odyssey are much better. Unless you're a George Clooney fan, rent something else. But buy the soundtrack CD; the music is great.


Some people think of Sweden in a negative way: too neat, too clean, too serious, too organized and too Northern. A people tortured by their own religious fate and history, sometimes leading to depression and compulsive heavy-handedness. This need not be a problem for a filmmaker, as for example the late Bergman has shown us what can be cinematic possible under these conditions. Bergman used his identity as a starting point and did not explicitly comment on this identity as such.

Andersson however does the reverse: He comments only on this identity hereby dissecting his people to the bone: In his world Sweden is equivalent for hell on earth. But he does not take this any further and for me this is just not art but merely annotation. Despite the exceptional amount of time it took to make this filmmaker has serious limitations he clearly cannot step out of.

Compared to his previous movie Sånger från andra våningen / Songs from the Second Floor, there is also not much progress to be observed. The intention was that this was more accessible, but the difference is minimal and the few scenes that try to please a larger audience aren't the best in the movie. The same absurdism and minimalism also still apply, there is the one-shot camera position and the (lack of) action in front of this shot. Yes, the stills are well done, some of the scenes actually work and the coloring and positioning is amazing. But does that make an interesting movie? Thinking in a negative way, this is cinema taken a step backwards.

Andersson's background as a maker of commercials shines through in the elaborate setup, but I find his movies about as empty as those commercials. There is a message about mankind, but it is trivial and without much depth.


You the living? OK I think I am an intelligent, educated, liberal and really into films. I really like and have a great sense of humour. I was under the impression this was a bleakly painful comedy. They got paid for making this, petrol was used, electricity burnt, food was consumed, sets built........why? I blame the current state of the world on this film and all those people associated with it, I will even include us the viewing public. We are all to blame and deserve whatever coming. Its not funny, not much happens, everyone it seems is bored or boring. There are no conversations, communication is minimal. There is no plot as far as I am aware. I have in fact just lost 89 point something minutes of my life. I will never ever get that time back. The only message I have come away with is perhaps life is too short to sit around watching movies of people doing not much......and then you die!


i stopped this movie at 48 minutes and change... i don't know...maybe it's because i'm not Swedish...or french(the cannes commenter)...or any of those OTHER sleepy places from which the previous reviewers held forth... born and raised in NY. lived near san francisco for a quarter of a century. and now Holland. i love a good independent film as much as the next movie enthusiast... but this, in a word, isn't funny. see? now THAT's funny...that you're thinking that i made a mistake. i said, 'in a word' but then said, 'isn't funny'... nope. no mistake. if this is your type of humor, i'd say you haven't really had much of a life... consider your appreciation of this film a symptom... and PLEASE don't EVER write another review...i have a tendency to believe them when they're unanimous. even if there only were about 3 reviews before mine...i figured i might ACtually be able to save someone ELSE the boredom...the anticipation of laughter that never materializes... i DID smile once or twice, though... when i started the movie...and when i stopped it. that should be 10 lines.


If you're a kid liking fairy tale "real life" adventures, see it. If you're a youth liking kids movies, why not see it? :) If you're a parent going to see a movie with your kids, you're WAY better of opting for the squirrel!

The start of this film was a bit funny, and set some good premises for the happenings to take place. But after the kind of funny introduction of characters, settings and potential conflicts, the story turned out kinda dull. When more or less the same things happen for the third and fourth time, the word "predictable" repeatedly comes to mind just like parts of a dented LP or those commercials you really hate. And the culmination of the plot... *oh sigh*... poor, poor, poor!


May be I don't get it right. I mean the movie. It does not make me happy or whatever has to do . Maybe because of my mood. Anyhow this one is a simple family movie with kids for actors. Just admit that - all movies of that kind cannot pass the barrier of 4 out of 10 never mind who is playing in the movie(example Antonio Banderas was playing in that kind of movies... two or three of them cant remember the exact count). I got bored. I almost fall asleep just because the topic is so cliché and the actor play was so predictable. But I am sure that my kid will love this movie when he grows up... Hey Im not a monster I found some hilarious or good moments in the movie. The owls in the movie were sooooo cute. The trick with the painted police car windows and the hits that the kid received in the head by a golf ball...


I will give it this: it tried. It did try to make it good and even got Luke Wilson involved. Luke Wilson is good, but he can only do so much. He can't make up for the fact that the story was very flawed and the characters were underdeveloped.

The running "gag" with the bully was asinine. He was never funny and I got tired of the gag really fast. And the barefooted kid bit was kind of weak too. He hitchhiked to Florida? Yeah OK.

The movie felt like an average kiddie film at times with this underlining mantra: adults stupid, kids smart. And that bit gets tiresome.

But the only moments that were funny was the police cart Wilson drove around when he lost his squad car. I loved that little cart, especially when Wilson turned on the sirens. But, other than that, nothing else was worth my time. "D-"


Yes, I had the misfortune of watching this film when I was younger at a friends house as his mother was a teacher and she wanted to screen the movie and see if there were any inappropriate scenes that a parent might object to. Well other than the unfunny jokes I think this one was in the clear, well the unfunny jokes and the strange scene where the look a like Ernest hits on a girl. So yes, Ernest gets thrown in jail thanks to a look a like and proceeds to try to escape and there is other stuff to it like him becoming magnetized at one point, shooting electricity, and in a very painful to watch finale flying. There are a couple of jokes, but nothing to much to mention except for the gun carved from soap...I think that is the only scene me or my friend's mother laughed out loud at. This and camp are the only two Ernest movies I have ever seen and from what I have seen in them I am not going to track down the other films. Ernest was good in small doses, but a movie is just to much even when it is as short as this one. I figure though the films made money, mainly because all you need is Varney and a location and a theme and you have your movie.


And again, I find myself in the minority.

I didn't like this one. This is the ONLY Varney work I haven't embraced, including Knowhutimean. Slam Dunk Ernest rates the credit for being the worst of the line, but this is a clear competitor for that dubious title.

This work is too rough, and too base to be lovable. Lovability was one of Ernest's key components, and this element was completely lost herein. Unfortunately, most think this is the best of the line, but if you loved the essence of what made Ernest, Ernest, you will realize to what I refer about fifteen minutes into this work. It was too blatantly base to be fun.

It rates a 3.5/10 from...

the Fiend :.


Opulent sets and sumptuous costumes well photographed by Theodor Sparkuhl, and a good (not great) performance by Jannings as Henry cannot overcome poor writing and static camera-work. Henny Porten chews the scenery as Anne.

It's all very beautiful; but it's all surface and no depth. The melodramatic tale of a woman wronged made it a hit in America where the expressionistic "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" flopped in the same year (1920), proving that what is popular is not what endures. Lubitsch would be remembered for his lively comedies, not sterile spectacles like this.


Spiderman was one of the first comic books to initiate a change in the genre: in spite of being a very well made superhero comic book this is the first series ever that added a real psychological depth to the main character, had complex moral issue, round characters and also highlighted social and political issues. in other words: Spiderman was the comic book's coming of age. This TV series lacks all of those components. It's just a straightforward good buy / bad guy TV series suffering from obvious budgetary rerstraints that make the action scene moderately exciting. Spiderman nylon webbing is about as convincing as the cardboard rocks in Star trek. Nicholas Hammond is way too old for the role at that point in time. I think he was well into his thirties wheras Spider,man was really teenager at the time. For some unfathomable reason the writers also changed names and deleted important characters from the comic book which again just resulted in the tension between characters basically disappearing.


I was excited at the concept of my favorite comic book hero being on television... and sorely disappointed at the end result.

The only "amazing" thing was the wall crawling (despite the visibility of the cable). I didn't think Nick Hammond was Peter Parker... and he was visibly of a different build than the guy who did the stunts in the spider suit. You could tell they were two different actors.

Granted, I can also spot in the modern Spider-Man movies when I am looking at Tobey Macguire and when I am looking at CGI. But that is from a trained eye and experience working with CGI. Still, the 70's version could have been better despite lack of Special FX.

The webs were hokey and looked like ropes that seemed to wrap around things rather than stick to them. And what was up with giving him a spider mobile to ride around in. Hello? He's the web slinger people.

Sorry... didn't mean to get so worked up, but our beloved wall crawler deserved better.


There are many so-called anti-war/anti-govt. policy films around now which start off as a mea culpa and end with 'our poor boys are getting hell out there so let the world sympathise with them, it's not their fault' - kind of stuff. I was half afraid that this would be another in that style even if it treated another subject/aspect of the same subject. I nearly didn't go and see it; for that matter, I almost did not write this review. What did we get here? An Egyptian gets taken off to a secret off-shore torture centre, on U.S. orders, but it is another Egyptian who has to do the torturing, not an American: 'see, we Americans have clean hands,' and the Egyptians are a bad lot anyway so let them harm their own. Oh, and the goody had to be an American with a conscience: indeed many Americans have them, but here the concept was misplaced. Yes, we all know it is called Extraordinary Rendition and it began in Clinton's time and it is now used for reasons well beyond control. Otherwise it was very hackneyed and nervous about really condemning the U.S. for being party to torture; as if the makers were afraid to go the whole way for fear of being slanged as unpatriotic or whatever (take a look at the message board! Anyone apologising gets a faceful of heavy verbal artillery). Torture is a terrible thing, whether one is guilty or not; in the 18th Century, FrederickII, King of Prussia, abolished it for convicted murderers - though I must say, a life sentence for a child molester is far less than what I want to see. All right, what about torture? This film did not really bring out its horror and hopelessness enough. When you are under torture,(now come the capitals for emphasis, I am not shouting) YOU WILL SAY ANYTHING, EVEN IF IT IS NOT TRUE, EVEN IF YOU HAVE NOT DONE THE THING YOU ARE ACCUSED OF, IN THE VAIN HOPE THAT IF YOU SAY AMEN TO WHATEVER THEY ARE PEDDLING, IT WILL STOP. IT DOES NOT, BUT YOU NEVER LEARN AND YOU KEEP ON SAYING THAT YOU DID WHATEVER IT IS THEY SAY YOU DID, THO' YOU DID'NT. Another thing the film did not bring out enough was that TORTURE IS EXCEEDINGLY, INDESCRIBABLY HUMILIATING, AND THAT FEELING STAYS WITH YOU YOUR WHOLE LIFE. It somehow changes people inside. How do I know all that? Don't ask.

Re-edit: two things: the Arabic that was used in the film was not the Egyptian dialect. It's sort of worse than setting a film in New Zealand with locals as the characters and everyone has American accents. Also, the dreadful little preacher who was inciting his ignorant audience to violence was telling them things unknown to that religion, which should have been brought out. Nor was it anywhere explained that any nincompoop can become a mullah/imam; he doesn't need any special qualifications, and that is a hiatus which needs to be put right: many are acceptable because of their fundamentalist views and tne U.S.A.'s great ally, Saudi Arabia, finances so many of them. Many thanks for this space.


The movie is powerful as a political statement about extraordinary rendition, torture and the politics of the war on terror. Others have already commented on these and other aspects of the movie. My review may contain spoilers, so if you haven't seen the movie, you may not want to read beyond this point.

Several questions are raised by this movie. First of all, was the protagonist guilty or not? There is no satisfying explanation for why the NSA decided to have him picked up and rendered in the first place. Is there an innocent explanation for why he got phone calls from what the NSA thinks is a terrorist? If there is, the movie does not seem to give one and that made the whole movie quite unsatisfying to me. It is all well and good to make statements about whether torture is right or wrong, but first prove to me that they tortured the wrong person, then we will take it to the next step.

If the protagonist was guilty, then what was achieved by releasing him? Perhaps, we was well-trained to resist up to a certain point and then pretend to break down and give answers that can be proved wrong with a little research, thus tending to lead the torturers to believe that they had tortured an innocent man into confessing without actually being guilty. However, there is nothing in the movie that proves he is guilty either.

The various other loose ends out there are: 1. So, a rogue CIA agent has him released and flown back home. What prevents the NSA from picking him up again? A little publicity in the Washington Post? Please give me a break here... If a senator is not willing to put his neck on the line to intervene on his behalf, what does Corinne Whitman have to fear? 2. If the NSA has been tracking what phone numbers are being called by whom, why couldn't they listen in on some of the calls to figure out whether anything underhanded is being discussed? 3. The plot is even more stupid anyways. Any criminal with more than a dozen brain cells would transact his criminal business on an anonymous prepaid cell phone line, not on one that can be traced back to him and his house.

The whole movie revolves around tugging at the viewers' heart strings by showing graphic and gratuitous scenes of torture. But when you think about it with any more depth, there is nothing of substance in this movie, only plenty of unanswered questions and the feeling of "what, that is it?!!!" at the end of the movie.


I was very willing to give Rendition the benefit of the doubt when it came to all the negative press I had read concerning it. Even about three-quarters of the way through, I still thought it was jumbled and a bit incoherent, but otherwise a solid tale reaching its conclusion. And then the bottom fell out. Not wanting to necessarily ruin the film for anyone, but the conclusion flips everything you held to be fact about what and when things have been happening on its headfor no particular reason whatsoever except to maybe tell the world, yeah I'm cool, and I know it. I love a good twist, I love a good ah-ha moment, but only when it is relevant to the story at hand. The complete misguidance on the part of the filmmakers serves no purpose on the overall tale, timelines didn't need to be parallel and they didn't need to be separated by a week. All the revelation did was destroy any merit I was about to give director Gavin Hood and screenwriter Kelley Sane, which may be a good thing, because looking back, it wasn't really as solid a movie as I initially was going to blindly give it credit for.

It is an admirable thing to try and get the term rendition out into the film-going public's consciousness, but it needed a story that delved deeper into the connotations and politics involved, rather than gloss over those issues for a tale of a woman in distress over her husband's disappearance and the angst-filled rebellion of a daughter against her "interrogator" father. I understand that the bottom-line film attendee needs a human quality to grasp onto and for that reason I don't fault it for going that route. My only qualm is that we don't get enough of what the title says we should be getting. Instead we are shown numerous plot lines, all confusingly brought to the forefront before being sent back into the nether regions of our consciousness, never to be returned to. So much is going on that you forget what you are supposed to be caring for, the wife? the interrogator? the CIA agent? the victim? the senator? the Middle Eastern daughter and her zealot boyfriend? At the end I really just gave up and let the film take me where it would, which ended up being someone totally different than what it first laid out.

Everything that occurs happens as the result of a bomb explosion. This bomb is at the center of every story thread and finally ends up being so innocuous that you can't believe how huge the waves it spread were. The old butterfly wings flapping quote is in full effect, because one boy's mission for revenge ends up destroying the lives of so many. Whether by death, destruction, physical and emotional abuse, or career suicide; no one really escapes unscathed. However, at the end of the day, only the story about the man who has been excised to Egypt for torture is really interesting. We are led to believe he is unequivocally innocent from the start, yet he is waterboarded, electrocuted, etc. in order to extract any information he might have. When those in power include a man with no compassion or reason to stop until something is spilled, (whether true or not), and an observer without the guts to partake or stop it, the situation lends itself some intrigue as to how it could possibly end. The three actors involved all are the best parts of the film and prove once more that the movie should have concerned itself with them for the entirety.

I don't want to belittle people like Reese Witherspoon, (the victim's wife), or her Senate employed ex, played by Peter Sarsgaard, because they actual do a good job with what they are given. Even Meryl Streep, her kooky accent, and Alan Arkin don't detract too much. However, it is the trio of Jake Gyllenhaal's CIA agent, Yigal Naor's interrogator, and Omar Metwally's victim that truly shine. Naor is brilliant as the Egyptian trying to stay sharp as a razor during working hours yet compassionate and worry-filled as a father attempting to locate his daughter. This man is brutal, but he is because that is what his occupation calls for and why he is relied upon to find answers. Metwally never gives a false second during the pain and suffering inflicted upon him. Whether he is lying or truly knows nothing about the terrorist who has been calling his cell phone, we totally buy into his plight and desperately wait to see how the situation turns out. As for Gyllenhaal, someone who seems to have one performance recycled throughout his career with varying degrees of success, he finds a part that suits him. The demons entering his soul throughout the ordeal he is forced to be a part of wear on his body and mind, causing both ambivalence and a need to intervene. The two feelings wrestle with each other until he makes a final decision, and his stoic, boyish demeanor suit that battle perfectly.

It is just too bad that the one plot line working never finds itself as the main focal point, despite being the namesake of the film. With all the clutter around the edges, we as an audience get bounced around too much, lulled into a sense of time and sequence, and then slapped in the face as it all unravels in more of a laugh on us then a, "bet you didn't see that coming." I felt cheated and unfortunately that is the lasting effect I have taken from the movie. Had it been more straightforward I might have enjoyed myself more, but as is, one can still take some positives from the severely flawed whole.