I live in Japan and watch a lot of Japanese films. Like anywhere there are the gems and the dregs. Unfortunately, this falls into the latter. It is shallow, pretentious and shot through with amateurism, from the none existent cinematography, to the flat dull performances. Chara should stick to singing, and this is probably Asano's worst performance on screen I've ever seen. This is more evident if you don't need to rely on the subtitles, as the original dialog comes across as hollow and flat in the native tongue. The concept is interesting and original, but that doesn't mean anything if the execution is lacking. Another point worth mentioning is that this is NOT a short film, it clocks in a just over an hour, a little longer in the original Japanese version (72 minutes) and I think this is it's biggest problem, it stretches an already thin concept beyond breaking point. Disappointing from Shunji Iwai, who is on of the more talented directors from Japan. Though to be fair, this is a relatively early piece, and his later works are much more confident in style and content. One for the fans only I think.


This was one of the worst films I have seen in a while.

I really think that I or any student could have written or filmed this movie, as long as you have some pretty faces to use as 'characters'. The movie attempts to portray the main actors as actually having mental visions of another human affecting their lives, ala A Beautiful Mind, in the first part of the film. Only toward the very end was this menacing vision revisited. In the rest of the movie, we see the main character happily and mindlessly drifting from neighborhood to neighborhood ending up at the ocean. An occasional reference to the meaning of life or the belief or even existence of GOD is supposed to lend this movie some credence.. a lame attempt.

This is the state of Japanese Film making and acting,(in 1996 I know), and you wonder why Chinese actors were used in Memoirs of a Geisha! LOL


With it's (usually) strong actors, bright locale/festival backdrop, plot twists, and array of gadgets, I thought this up-close heist film would have much more punch than it did.

The problems are simple- Characters and direction. With the exception of the always lit powder-keg Klaus Kinski, the rest of the cast handle their roles with a collect-a-paycheck style of blandness. The same goes for the the overall feel of the movie. There are many obvious points in the film that should be tension-filled, but somehow, they elicit virtually no reaction. Maybe it's the long stretches of empty talk and predictability between them that causes it.

At best, "Grand Slam" will barely pass as a rental when the other choices are few, which is too bad because it showed many traces of potential, but never capitalized on any of them.


I rented the movie based on several recommendations that it was a superb (perhaps the best) heist movie, including Roger Ebert's remarks in his review of The Score. I found the movie pace lagged a lot in the middle, and I found the events after the in-bank theft scene unpleasant (the movie as a whole was darker than I had expected). The main theft scene was well-done, and the technical wizardry of the thieves quite impressive (particularly given the 1967 production date). I liked a few of the characters, the heist scene, and that was about it. Several of the characters were eminently dislikable, the Rio culture scenes were irritating, and the movie lacked two things vital to a heist caper: a very tight plot, and a likable cast of characters who make you root for them to succeed. Without giving too much away, there was one plot element in the last third of the movie that I found too deus-ex-machina for my liking. Rent *Sneakers* instead, or read any of Donald Westlake's superb Dortmunder heist novels, for the good stuff.


Did anybody fall for this in 1967? In that year I was eight years old, and I already hated this kind of crap. I would have been yelling at the screen. I yelled at the screen last night.

Perhaps this was the first heist film that used laser beams in a vault as an obstacle to thieves, but why did they do it so badly? The laser beams, which criss-cross the vault like a spider web, are done in an ostensibly clever way: translucent tubing filled with light. But when the thieves climb over the beams with a fancy telescoping ladder rig we can clearly see the laser beams sagging! Not just a little, either. Worse, we can see a connection point where two pieces of tubing were joined. It's a friggin' close-up! This kind of sloppy craftsmanship really takes you out of the film.

It gets worse. The safe is rigged with a delicate noise detector. The sound of a cigarette lighter is enough to set it off. The solution? Lift the entire safe with pneumatic lifts, stick on little wheels, soundproof the wheels with shaving cream (I kid you not), and push the safe ten feet away from the sound detectors. Then start drilling those titanium doors. Then blow it with nitro glycerin. Then silently push the safe back up the ramp and into the vault (more shaving cream), disconnect the pneumatic lines, cart away your seventy-five pounds of equipment, and close the vault door. All without making as much sound as a Zippo.

This film was co-produced by Spanish, German, and Italian film companies. Is it possible that in an audience of, say, 100 Spaniards or Germans or Italians, no one made a huge PUK-SSHHH! sound when those air hoses were disconnected? Maybe not. Maybe they were better at suspending disbelief than an eight-year-old American.

Compare this to the new gold standard for technical competence in that era of film-making, "2001: A Space Odyssey." Although history has unspooled very differently than as predicted in "2001" (no cities on the moon, no manned exploration of other planets), those cinematic predictions were very carefully executed. The craftsmanship was exquisite. If the Americans and British who made "2001" had been as clumsy as the hacks who made "Grand Slam," there never would have been any discussion about the religious or spiritual meaning of that bizarre last act. Those questions were discussed very seriously in the late 60's (and still are) because "2001" was a believable world where our powers of disbelief remained suspended for 2 1/2 hours.

Now, of course "Grand Slam" is just a heist movie. It's doesn't have any deep pretensions. Does that excuse its technical shoddiness? Of course not. Even a frothy story needs to keep us within the walls of the story, so that we can be lied to convincingly. When fundamental facts are ignored, the movie is over. The Confederate army can't wear blue. You can't drive to Australia. And laser beams can't sag.

Maybe this is why the United States was the technological powerhouse of the world in the 1960's. We cared about getting it right. And we still do. Even bad American movies are produced with a technical brilliance that outstrips the stupidity of the above-the-line talent. And web sites like MovieMistakes.com help keep our standards from flagging.

Maybe "Grand Slam" deserves credit for inspiring better films, such as "The Italian Job" two years later. Perhaps you can insist that "Ocean's Twelve" owes its dancing laser beams to "Grand Slam." But at least in "The Italian Job" when things blow up they go BOOM!, and in "Ocean's Twelve" the laser beams don't sag.


What you can say about this movie is that it was not directed by Zhang Yimou who did (if I'm not mistaken) Raise the Red Lantern and Ju Dou which were excellent movies. This is similar -- but inferior -- to Zhang's work. Gong Li, the lead actress, is less sensual than usual, the story is convoluted and complicated, the ending is exactly like that of every other movie I've seen in which Gong Li is the lead, and the story strains credibility.

 The lead male character, Zhong, is sort of a Chinese Tom Cruise. The women all love him, despite the fact that he's a louse. He suffers horribly because they suffer because of their love for him. Nobody suffers as much as Gong Li. Tragic ending predictable. The photography was good. That's about all.


I rented this movie because it sounded sexy and hot. It was ..mmmm... well made period drama WITH NO SKIN!!! Now the depiction of love and longing and the moral struggle was nicely (albeit slowly) depicted, lack of sex on screen made it very...lame.


Hi.. I just finished watching invasion a few days back, i saw the show on DVD, and to tell the truth i was expecting an excellent series after reading all those positive reviews, but i was quit disappointed with it, it wasn't good at all, in fact most episodes were boring. No wonder it has been canceled, because it had no potential of getting any better soon and was really really boring and unoriginal.

* some spoilers* First of all, i thought the whole idea of the show was unoriginal and we've seen this idea in many many movies and TV shows ( examples include invasion of the body snatchers and the faculty ) actually it was very very similar to the movie the faculty, same idea with the whole aliens and their preference to water ! The episodes were very slowly progressing, at many times boring, nothing really happens ! one episode, someone falls into the water, he comes back changed, people are uncomfortable with that change. THEN, next episode another person falls in the water, comes back and the cycle continues, nothing new really happens in the first few episodes. The final episodes weren't that good either and very predictable, actually the whole show was predictable, i mean i knew where it was going from the start, ( people changing and being taken over by aliens, more and more join in and eventually aliens want to take over the world,hmmmmm, i didn't see that coming ?! )

I'm not sure why fans like this show and keep asking for it to come back, if it were for me i wouldn't watch a second season of this show, and I'm glad there isn't another season, because it really sucked ! There are several other shows that are far more superior to this boring show, ( examples include : x-files, millennium, miracles, 24, lost and battle star galactic )


OK, I know there is so many young American actors and they need somewhere to learn to act, or to be employed............... but this TV show called Invasion is more than a silly -stupid -boring -childish. Another American family drama but with Aliens inside........ But how those writers are stupid that is amusing... to whom you try to sell this stupidity? Aliens in sub marines, in lake in river in the houses in the abandoned sea ships...

If is not aliens than a beasts or crocodile is... and of course the American studio lovely slender sophisticated voice patterns...

I wouldn't give you a penny for this child show. But my local TV it seams have buy this shi..

Sincerely, bu I would like the whole world see that this is plastic not a movie.


For a show which is all about an alien invasion, it was a very damp squid, which is more what the aliens turned out to be. There was lots of mystery, lots of intrigue about the lights in the water, but it just dragged on and on, nothing ever happened and after 12-15 episodes, it wasn't worth the bother. Look at Lost's example, over 2 seasons, more and more was revealed which posed more and more questions. In invasion there is just more and more questions about nothing. After 12 episodes there was little threat from any aliens, and there was still no sign of them. 'Invasion' is a bit of an exaggeration, more like 'we're coming to your planet but we won't do much, fiddle with a few people, lurk around in the water a bit on the whole you wont notice us' but probably a bit snappier so it fits in the TV listings.


This is another one of those small independent films that everyone says is great, but it really isnt. The story has been told before in several other better films. This film isnt even acted well, Gweyneth Paltrow is as annoying as ever in her slutty character. This film is just boring and a waste of time. Skip it. *1/2 out of ****.


I could not get past the scam where they were comping rooms for points accrued through "coin purchases." No casino has ever rated players that way. Also, what was Sydney's great professional gambling technique? Every time we saw him playing he was making high-risk and not very smart bets that failed to pay off.


I notice from other reviews here on IMDb that lots of people seemed to like this movie. Maybe I should have toughed it out for a little longer? I got eight minutes into this badly scripted, badly acted and badly directed bomb before I gave up and slipped a different DVD into my player.

My message to the Director: You have to give me a reason to stay with your movie beyond the first few minutes. You failed. If I had payed $10 to see this in a cinema I would have stayed longer but I saw it at home. Even when watching a DVD borrowed from the library I place a value on my time.


'Doctor Rhythm' is the worst film Bing Crosby ever starred in. Bing made this movie at his home studio Paramount during one of his best career arcs. The film has good production values, especially an impressive studio mock-up of Manhattan's Central Park. So, why is this film so painfully dull?

Part of the problem is down to a weak score. The best song here is the insipid 'This Is My Night to Dream'. The script is even worse. Ostensibly, this movie is based on O. Henry's story 'The Badge of Policeman O'Roon'. In that story, a fictional war hero clearly based on Theodore Roosevelt impersonates his friend O'Roon (a mounted police officer assigned to Central Park) when O'Roon is unable to fulfil his duties: the brief story ends with one of O. Henry's trademark coincidences. If Paramount had actually filmed that story (which had barely enough plot to sustain a feature-length film), the result would have been better than this mess. Instead, we have a weird plot in which Crosby is a white-coated medico who illegally substitutes for his policeman friend, foot patrolman Andy Devine. The trim-figured Crosby looks dapper in a patrolman's tunic, but the huge slobby Devine looks so different from Bing that it's difficult to imagine Crosby substituting for Devine. And where did Crosby's character find a police tunic that fits him so well? The opening scene of this movie -- an illicit midnight foot-race in Central Park -- is fast-moving and shows promise, but the film's all downhill from there. I blame screenwriter Jo Swerling, a man of little talent who nevertheless got his name onto several prestigious projects. Swerling is contractually credited as co-author of the great Broadway musical 'Guys and Dolls', but that theatre classic does not retain a single word of Swerling's original (and worthless) script.

The single worst problem with 'Dr Rhythm' is that someone at Paramount intended it to be a star vehicle for Bea Lillie, who only briefly appears alongside Bing in this movie. The Canadian-born Bea Lillie was married to a British peer and was often mistakenly assumed to be English. In the 1930s, Lillie was a huge star in Broadway musicals ... however, it's notable that she only starred in revues: shows with songs and skits but no plot. In the 1960s, Lillie played Madame Arcati in the Broadway musical 'High Spirits': this was her one and only success in a book musical. Lillie simply didn't have the acting ability to carry a narrative story. She starred in a semi-amusing silent, 'Exit Smiling', but most of her other film work is in supporting roles. I found her performance in 'Around the World in Eighty Days' deeply annoying.

In 'Dr Rhythm', the banal plot and Bing's groaning are interrupted a couple of times so that Bea Lillie's specialities can get crowbarred into the movie. We see the routine in which she orders a double dozen double damask dinner napkins from a flustered shop clerk; Lillie had done this routine on Broadway but was careful never to perform it in Britain, where audiences knew that Lillie had stolen the routine from Cicely Courtneidge. We also get here another of Lillie's stage schticks: she is seen standing still on stage, wearing a formal gown that reaches to the floor, entirely concealing her feet. With much pomp, Lillie recites a dignified speech ... then she hikes up her skirt to reveal that she's wearing roller skates, and she skates merrily away. That's about as funny as this movie gets. It doesn't help that Lillie is physically unattractive. She looks like a cross between Norma Shearer and Jughead Jones. Mary Carlisle, Bing's love interest here, is blonde and pretty but dull as dishwater.

Bea Lillie simply didn't have enough material to carry a starring role in a feature film, but there's enough of her on offer here to seriously weaken 'Dr Rhythm' as a Bing Crosby vehicle. Usually, when an important stage performer makes a rare screen appearance, I commend the film for preserving the performer's act. In this case, 'Dr Rhythm' serves the useful function of proving that Bea Lillie wasn't very funny. I can't recommend this movie to anyone but Bing Crosby completists, for whom I'll rate it just 1 point out of 10.


I cannot find much to say about this movie. For a supposedly WB event Dick Powell/Ruby Keeler, it is very cheap looking as if all the money went into extravagant looking Bubsy Berkeley inspired number that is dull. Worse of all, it is not funny and the songwriting fail to deliver one memorable song (they all sound the same; heck they seem as though they were recycled from other Dick powell hits). This was the end of Dick powell, once this movie seriously underperformed. (I don't know if it bombed). The plot - what there is of it - has Uncle Cedric who is pulled in by a golddigger,Joan Blondell and is taken away from the focus of his business, by the golddigger who uses sex -it's implied - to make her a daughter and thus an inheritor. Dick Powell is the one brought in to look over the business and falls for his Uncle's secretary, Ruby Keeler -Dick and Ruby were married at the time - and snoop out the golddiggers. His relationship with this lower class girll who is also an upcoming fashion designer creates a scandal and you can figure out the rest. This film contains a lot of bad crooning and extremely ineffeciently displaying of ugly tap dancing. Dick Powell is much better in Hollywood Hotel. But avoid Cowboy in Brooklyn and Going places. It wouldn't be long before Dickie's contract was not renewed an d he left WB.


Randolph Scott is a former Confederate soldier and Joan Bennett plays a woman who refuses to admit when the Civil War is over in James Hogan's cattle rustling epic, which looks and feels in retrospect a lot like a B version of Howard Hawks' "Red River." There's a general lack of ambition here and the movie doesn't add up to much, just a formula picture that pretends to be somewhat more important than a singing cowboy picture.

Anytime Randolph Scott is wearing more makeup in the movie than Joan Bennett, that's a sign of trouble right there. Scott annoyed me to no end in this movie, and it's hard to believe he's the same man who became such a convincing western star in the 50s and 60s. The director is partly to blame, because he's always having Scott do these clownish double takes to the camera that really do not suit him. You shouldn't ask actors to do things that they really can't do. Joan Bennett is mis-cast because she feels too contemporary. Walter Brennan basically stole the movie and made a couple good scenes out of it. I wouldn't be surprised if Hawks did see the movie and figure he could do it better. The following year after this film, Brennan made a memorable appearance in Fritz Lang's "Fury," and shortly after that he began his memorable run of character performances for Hawks. So this film might if anything be somewhat important in terms of Brennan's filmography, since he basically proves here that he's even better than Gabby Hayes.

May Robson is also very amusing as "Granna", the ancient frontier woman who won't be left behind and who nurses a maternal affection for the aging Brennan character. Robert Cummings plays the rival love interest for Joan Bennett, a smarmy Confederate dead ender who dreams of leading rebel excursions from Mexico to reclaim Texas. B western regular Raymond Hatton also puts in a patented supporting performance as some kind of wilderness man to round up the rather generic but pleasant nature of the cast and film generally.

Not much else to say here. Hogan's direction is pedestrian and the story is somewhat interesting but very contrived. For instance, when the uber-annoying regional bureaucrat (Robert Barrat) is murdered rather obviously in the midst of a fray by Scott's trapping buddy (Hatton), the military officer in charge (Harvey Stephens) barely bothers to investigate and suddenly switches plans and agrees to help the ranchers. It's all tied up in such a way as to soothe the frayed nerves between the Southerners and the Northerners, as if this was some piece of propaganda delayed by some 60 odd years. There's a couple shoot-outs against Indians but nothing really invested with any drama or meaning. Violence in this movie is simply action, and not very good action. Basically the movie would suffice for Saturday morning but it seems to want to be at least a bit more than that, and fails.


hmmm... this is probably the worst movie I have ever seen. I don't understand why it has such a relatively high rating. Maybe some people think it funny because it is so bad... but even that is not possible with this 'movie' in my opinion. The best I can say about it is that it is a continuous stream of VERY silly jokes. Don't watch this!


this has GOT to be THE worst Dominican movie EVER MADE! .... it's even embarrassing to say that i'm Dominican and that THAT movie is Dominican too, i really think this movie had a bad star with one of THE worst posters i've seen in my life, it looked like it was done in Paint, by a 5 year-old!, then the trailer came and just confused me, us, even MORE, trying to make it see like it was a comedy, or a romantic movie, hell, even a drama and some horror they threw in!!!, but no, that wasn't enough, they HAD to release it and make a BIG fuzz about it, calling it ''great, spectacular, like nothing you've seen, the best Dominican movie ever!'' and that's just a couple of things that the actors themselves said!, the movie, it's just plain wrong, the acting could NOT be any more wrong, the editing does NOT even help the movie WHATSOEVER, i mean, seriously, i don't even know what the movie is about, AND I SAW IT!!!!, the lighting was poor and the whole love thing between Zoe and the priest was just so unbelievable (and i mean that in a BAD way), so, please, oh please, avoid this movie at ALL cost!!!!


An exercise in poor execution and poor writing, there is nothing special to this little film which has no plot, story, meaning or anything else other than toilet humor poorly executed. I do NOT recommend this movie to anyone who considers themselves as a thinking human being, its just a painful experience that has no sense, there is no way you can understand this movie, is just senseless in all ways.

Bad writing, bad directing, bad acting(some not all), bad editing, bad sound effects (cartoonish unfunny).

On the good part Zoe Zaldana is delicious in this, Freddy Beras is very funny, Sergio Carlo is OK, Anthony Alvarez is OK, And Koldo is very good! Also the cinematography is good, but thats about it.

Its a shame the waste of money and good talent that this "Director" did, a crying shame!


hello I'm from the Dominican republic and I saw that movie called : la malicing del padre car dona and my opinion is that movie is very bad movie ..the script is horrible the acting roles are bad very bad

that is the worst movie done in the Dominican republic that happen cause the director of this movie use people who use to work in the TV not people who really acting in movie or something like that..the movie is very boring..is an empty comedy without any history to tell this movie has a lot of technician errors...

this comedy cant make you laugh..may be cry for lost your money going to see this mess..please stop doing movie like this this is a shame for our country


The film has an identity problem. Is it an action flick or an adventure flick? Is it a film noir? Dialogue stilted. Action scenes out of the Saturday serials. And what about the title. There are almost no women in it. Vincent is great as an over blown actor. Not worth seeking out but if it is all that is on, it is fun to watch good actors try to make something of this. Not one of Howard's best efforts. Mitchem is Mitchem and Russel is almost not there. Plot is unbelievable. the evil German doctor would have been better played by Peter Lorie. Perhaps he was busy. This was the 1950's and stereotypes were the norm. A little more thought and they could have written something worthwhile. Too bad.


Film history recalls that everyone working on this film was either stoned or drunk. They therefore paid little attention to the script, and basically made it up as they went along.

The result is more coherent than you would expect. The first half is excellent noir, and Mitchum, Russell and Price are all enjoying themselves.


Robert Mitchum as Dan Milner does well here, as he most always does, despite a confused script that starts out as a gangster drama and, about 80% into the movie, with Cardigan's (Vincent Price) rescue effort, tries to become a comedy, with little success. In addition, there are a few too many absurdities in the plot (e.g, why would Milner, having escaped being dragged aboard Ferraro's yacht, then go back there on his own to put himself in a situation where he is outnumbered 15 to 1?). The villainy of Raymond Burr's Nick Ferraro borders on the cartoonish. And the purpose of the presence of Jim Backus's clownish Myron Winton is unclear.

The redeeming feature is Jane Russell. This is the first movie in which I have seen her, and the salivating adoration of thousands of American GI's in WWII is completely understandable. Just imagine if she could act!!


The first 30 to 40 minutes made me think this was a sleeper, better than what I had anticipated. It had me intrigued. Then it went "talky" - yak, yak yak. I kept waiting for something dramatic to happen.....anything! After 70 minutes, there was still nothing, and I gave up. I never found Jane Russell to be pretty enough to enjoy looking at, anyway.

Robert Mitchum was good and had a number of clever film-noir type lines. Vincent Price was supposed to play a fascinating far-out character (according to critics) but I didn't find him to be anybody entertaining, just stupid and boring.

As I said, this film had promise but......


As a real cinephile nothing upsets me more than a movie changing genres midway through, thankfully few directors are foolhardy enough to try this. The movie starts off as a pretty good noir, you get all the wisecracking, fast talk, seediness and violence that you want. Bob Mitchum is no Dick Powell in Fairwell my Lovely, or Ralph Meeker in Kiss Me Deadly; but he still manages to do a fairly good job. When the film moves scene to Morro's Lodge, south-of-the-border, the movie becomes a classic farce, and we get sheer comedy from Vincent Price dealing out all his favourite Shakesperianisms.

***** spoiler********

when the launch sank, and i saw it coming, my jaw just dropped, as well as my spirits, it was beyond ludicrous

***** end of spoiler********

If ever you want to see a true hijacking of a movie by an actor watch Vincent Price in His Kind of Woman. Its first rate comedy and very enjoyable, but you feel rather like a customer in a restaurant whose been presented with their main course and desert on the same place - nauseated. Cue Raymond Burr as mob boss Nick Ferraro, hopelessly trying to inject nastiness yet palpably unable to deflect the comic trajectory of Vincent Price.

***** spoiler ********

The scene where the mob are trying to inject Mitchum with brain-wiping drugs, when he is moments away from rescue is hilarious in a truly post-ironic manner. You really want to roll on the floor, the way the it drags on and on, how many times will Mitchum keep the needle away, will the scene last another half an hour??

***** end of spoiler ********

I suppose if you really like to laugh AT movies rather than WITH them then you've really got to get this. For myself I don't like to laugh at movies, i haven't really grasped camp aesthetic, and i don't really want to. I don't like to write negative reviews, so I'll end positively. If you really want to see a nice Mitchum noir, get hold of Angel Face, such a great movie. For hardcore noir enthusiasts the first half an hour is really worth viewing, then turn the TV off.


Peter did with BANG BOOM BANG a very good and very funny movie - maybe the best German comedy in a new-style ever. But in his second movie you can see, that there is no substance in his art and talent. Maybe it is the same problem of Thomas Jahn, the director of Knocking On Heavens Door - no ideas and no talent for really good scripts. The look and the coolness of the business is more interesting then a good script and really good ideas.

And there is also for Peter as for Thomas nothing more as a filmmaker then their very funny first movies.

It is a typical situation for the German movies. One or two movies are really good, the rest is nothing but nonsenses and overacting as a movie-maker. Peter seems to be a wanna-be (and who watched his audio-commentary to Bang Boom Bang knows the he is a notorious wanna-be). The typical amateur-movie-setting (the all-time-local-hero feeling in his movies) makes him a good director for his town and friends. But for a good movie it needs more the then privacy of a local-hero.

So it is a professional amateur-movie.


Peter's script doesn't know what it wants the be: a comedy, a drama, a mix between. The central character is not very likable, we dot care for his problems. And then again, the whole "Charity Golf Turnament" set up is so weak. The entire story lacks structure. It doesn't sparkle any interest. Peter tried obviously hard, actors are as usual all great, so is the cinematography, but when hardly anyone laughs at the Berlin premiere, which I attended, then you have a major problem at hands. The audience doesn't care, nor did the original distributer "Senator Film" who also happens to be a co-producer of the film. They didn't believe in the film so they put it on the market and newcomer 3L picked the film up. Terribly first weeks numbers; only some 27.000 people went to see the film on the weekend. Next time more luck Peter.


Let's face it , Qayamat is BAD . A supreme disaster . Worse , a complete ripoff of The Rock with unnecessary-yet-mandatory love interests and a truckload of songs all sounding the same . Harry Baweja has never been a good director and with this and Teesri Aankh , I have ceased to have any faith in him . Scriptwriter Suparn Verma was a Rediff.com critic and after you watch Qayamat you'll surely understand that critics don't necessarily make good filmmakers , and make horrible screenwriters .

Plot : CBI Officer Akram Sheikh (Sunil Shetty) is after three dreaded Pakistani arms dealers - brothers Ali (Arbaaz Khan) and Abbas (Sanjay Kapoor) and their common moll Laila (Isha Koppikar) . After a botched arms deal , Ali-Abbas are left out in the cold with Akram closing in on them . They decide to steal a lethal virus from a top govt. lab where Gopal (Chunky Pandey) and Rahul (Ashish Chaudhary) are working . Then they take over the Elphinstone Jail and hold all terrorists as hostages . The location was used as a jail in the past , now it is a tourist spot . So convenient to lure unsuspecting visitors .

Only one man in history has escaped Elphinstone Jail , Rachit (Ajay Devgan) is his name . Akram Sheikh asks Rachit to lead him to the secret passage into the jail , that is located below sea level . Then we learn of Rachit's past , how his GF Sapna (Neha Dhupia) was killed and he was reduced to being a vegetable .

Rahul accompanies the commando squad since he knows how to diffuse the weapons . Thanks to the tipoff from a dishonest minister (Govind Namdeo) , the bad guys already know that the commandos are coming . They kill every commando on arrival , leaving Rachit and Rahul to complete the mission .

Honestly this has so many plot holes , I would run out of words . I am sick of this continual and stereotypical Pakistan-bashing . It's like, "We don't have any villains left , why not pick up the Pakistanis?" and the makers go ahead . And Sapna was killed in the first half , wasn't she? Then how come she was alive and kicking in the second Half???!! Basically Sapna wasn't needed , the screechy Sheetal (Riya Sen playing Rahul's GF) wasn't needed (In fact this entire movie wasn't needed :) ) . As far as the drool quotient goes , Neha Dhupia does an Ursula Andress in a baby pink bikini for a few seconds in the song "Dil Chura Liya" , otherwise she is fully clad all the time . Riya Sen has skimpier outfits and a seductive song "Yaar Pyaar Ho Gaya" with Ashish Chaudhary . Isha Koppikar doesn't offer much in that department , but ends up having comparatively more screen time .

The dialogues were cringe-inducing . Sample this, "Sapna Ko Main Kabhi Haqeeqat Nahin Banne Doonga" and "Police Ki Maar Ki Baat Hi Nirali , Goonga Bhi Gaaye Qawwali" :( . Performances were BAD : Ajay Devgan speaks very little (he knew this was going to be a waste) . Sunil Shetty , Arbaaz Khan , Sanjay Kapoor , Ashish Chaudhary are all horrible . The girls have nothing to do but flash their vital stats between alternately screeching and crying . This movie was talked about for its action scenes ; but they are very poorly copied from the likes of M:I , The Rock and others . And would Mr. Allan Amin tell me when will his obsession with slow-motion end? Songs are disappointing - Nadeem , Shravan and Sameer at their worst .

The only high point is the stylish camera-work by Sanjay F. Gupta . But how come this became a hit ?


Replace Sean with Ajay, Nicholas with Ashish (Awful replacement) and Michael Biehn with Sunil Shetty. The team that infiltrates the abandoned prison (Alcatraz in THE ROCK) is CBI task force instead of the Navy Seals. Additions: Laila (An overacting Isha) Sapna (Who is it?)and The Ever crying Neha Dhupia. End result: A messy remake of the Hollywood hit with Ajay Devgan making a Vain attempt to raise the the status of the movie. The Chief Minister of Maharashtra doesn't show any consideration about the hostages and giving 'Rachit' and 'Rahul' a chance to complete the mission. Why does Neha exist? Is Isha included only for her physical beauty? The quality of the movie does not matter with of without their existence in the movie. It is also an absurd time so show a villainous Pakistan when Indo-Pak diplomatic ties are underway. Better Luck Next time Ajay


Come on!! For god's sake! IF you cant think of an original idea, atleast make a decent remake!

Only good(being overly generous) thing in this movie is Ajay Devgan. Rest of the cast is idiotic. So is the action. It seems like Ajay Devgan gets a rocket up his butt whenever a bomb explodes nearby!

my rating 3/10. Why three 4 for Devgan's acting + 2 for Neha Dhupia's body + 1 riya sen's exposure + 2 overall things - 6 for Sanjay Kapoor and Arbaaz khan


George Zucco's archaeologist character has a major problem at the beginning of the 1946 cheapie "The Flying Serpent." He had recently discovered Montezuma's treasure horde in an Aztec cave in New Mexico, and now fears that the locals might start to get snoopy. Good thing he's also found Quetzalcoatl, the legendary Aztec serpent/bird god, and has learned that the creature will track down and kill whoever is in unwitting possession of one of its feathers. Thus, pretty soon, Zucco is planting Q plumage left and right, sitting back and enjoying the carnage... Anyway, this 57-minute film is minimally fun, and Zucco is always interesting to watch, but the picture is unfortunately done in by supercheap production values, a tediously talkative screenplay, occasional goofball humor, and the simple fact that we never get a solid, steady look at Quetzalcoatl itself. Worse, the film's resolution is asinine and inane, with Zucco behaving uncharacteristically stupid and contrary to common sense. Matters aren't helped by the badly damaged film print offered to us on the Image DVD that I just watched, with problematic sound, to boot. Many other viewers have noted the similarity between this picture and another PRC effort, "The Devil Bat," a Bela Lugosi vehicle released five years earlier. In that film, Bela had lured his flying killer to the intended victim by using a special shaving lotion; here, those darn feathers have been substituted. Bottom line: I would have to say that "The Flying Serpent" is a movie for George Zucco completists only, if such an animal exists. Other viewers who are interested in a film featuring the feathered serpent god alive and well in the 20th century would probably be better advised to seek out Larry Cohen's 1982 film "Q."


What's the only reason to watch this besides George Zucco's scenery chewing? Why it's watching a pathetic feathery prop on a string cause fear and death in its search all of its feathers. Basically this is a loose remake of DEVIL BAT with Zucco replacing Bela Lugosi as the madman.


This cheapie PRC production is pretty much a re-working of the same studio's 1941 THE DEVIL BAT, only it's got George Zucco and a killer bird instead of Bela Lugosi and his lethal monster bat. Zucco is a professor who's discovered Montezuma's treasure and aims to protect it for himself by unleashing the mythological half-reptile "Quetzalcoatl" (it's funny hearing Zucco personally addressing his flying feathered serpent as such) to dispatch his enemies.

Unfortunately, this is nowhere near as much fun as its predecessor. Still, there are some pretty neat attack scenes of the soaring creature flapping through the air to latch onto its victims' throats.


"Witness the Resurrection"-Alien:Resurrection (1997)

"Herbie's back in a Brand new movie!"-The Love Bug (1997)

The tag lines of the worst movies of '97...with the same meaning.

The first thing what I want to say, I am A REALLY BIG FAN of Herbie 'cause I was grow up on his films, I loved the jokes the tricks, the music and the characters-even the evil ones-and I'll love the "Herbie Movies" as long as I live.

But NOT THIS waste of celluloid. This movie is stupid, pesky, and bad as "Alien:Resurrection".

Why? Because the story is VERY stupid, the characters are simply idiots-professor Stumpfel(?!)-and the theme music is pesky, just like in "Alien:Resurrection".

And the worst thing in the whole movie: Horace, The Evil Twin of Herbie. Laughably Stupid. Just like the "Newborn-Alien" in "Alien:Resurrection".

And, the genesis of Herbie. Stupid! I mean who's idea was , Herbie was build by a German SCIENTIST, AND HE HAS GOT HIS "SOUL" FROM THE PHOTOGRAPH OF STUMPFEL'S GIRLFRIEND, WHAT FALLED INTO THE MELTING-POT?! BAD! And of course they've needed to build-again Herbie, It's the synonym of cloning Ripley, ain't? And the music, the music, the music, where is the good old "Herbie Theme" by George Bruns? Now We get only a corny, pesky, SILLY, BAD music. And where are the good old characters like Tennessee Steinmetz(Buddy Hackett) or Wheely Applegate(Don Knotts) or anybody from the original stuff?

THE ORIGINAL IS ALWAYS THE BEST!

So, if you are a Herbie-fan,or you just like Herbie movies, watch the old ones.

1/10- STUPID plot; BAD music; BAD characters.


I've heard (positive things) about Arturo Ripstein before, but this is his first film I've seen. If this is one of his masterpieces, then it will likely be my last. The film is nearly as despicable as the two characters featured in it.

I'll confess I'm no fan of true crime, but I'm the victim here, not the culprit. Additionally any film "based on a true story" is generally suspect. Horrendous acting, and peculiar pacing are only some of the glaring crimes. Vaguely you could make the case for this being about gluttony and vanity, or that Ripstein breaks with "Hollywood" conventions by having an actors and actresses with unconventional faces...but those conventions have been shattered properly many times with films far more engaging or entertaining than this.

Potential spoilers follow, but the film is already spoiled enough and anything but profound, although definitely steeped in crimson blood. Please see something from one of the other films I've reviewed positively here.

***light spoilers***

What is the point of having Coral toy with redemption in the last of the crimes in their murder spree? She has already been set up as extremely unsympathetic from the first few scenes, leading up to the one with her own daughter and son, thus the scene with a replacement "daughter" just doesn't wash at all. The blood has soaked through and through...

Again by having his lead characters so horrendous, Ripstein takes any force out of the foibles displayed by the other characters. We feel awkwardly sorry for some of the targets, but they too are generally given a grotesque caricature. Above I mentioned the obvious gluttony (Coral) and vanity (Nicolas), other characters do bring in lasciviousness, false piety and things that vaguely echoed the seven deadly sins, but this film just did not work on any level for me. Odd stabs at humor seemed woefully out of place, and added only a sense of insolence to injury.

Okay, maybe for the lighting I'll give this a

1/10


Movies have always shown a fascination for these grim, dreary tales with unredeeming, amoral, warped characters at their center (especially if the tales are based on true events), but OUR fascination with such movies is harder to explain and borders on the masochistic. If there is ONE (1) thing to be gained from watching "Deep Crimson", I'm afraid I missed it. Although it's set mostly in the Mexican deserts, the film is rather claustrophobically directed by Arturo Ripstein, who lets several of his scenes drag on too long. (*1/2)


***POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD***

This short is the story of a young man and a young woman who go around the 1962 Seattle World's fair and look at things. They're all smiles and excited as the audience gets bored. In the orient exhibit, the young man pulls the woman in a rickshaw. After a while, they come to the AT&T pavilion and look at what ma bell has been working on. They have a race between two phones, one of which is rotary and the other a keypad. Then they show the first ever pagers, which are considerably larger and more limited than today's models.

All in all, this short tries to excite the viewer into the future of phone service, but sadly, it just ends up boring the viewer.


Has the future ever looked so drab? The title pretty much speaks for itself and yet we aren't anywhere near turning on a stove or air conditioner with our phone!!!!! I watch this short a lot since MST3K watched on their "Space Children" episode. The kid's haircut is hard enough to figure out without bleeding from your ears and the girl looks like Nancy Reagan as a kid. The music is (as it was thought on MST3K) from an episode of "Ren and Stimpy" and the song near the end made me want to stick the barrel of a shotgun in my mouth.

To anyone who even thinks about seeing this short without it being the MST3K version, you're probably stoned, stupid or both.


I'm sorry for perhaps unfairly skewing the rating on this film by giving it two stars, but I could barely sit through it. I don't think it is necessarily a poorly made film. but it's a film clearly targeted at Asian early- and pre-teens with the inclusion of super-secretive Japanese rock star "Hyde" in a prominent, though not leading, role. Every time he appeared on screen I would roll my eyes and groan because he looked like a Keith Partridge wannabe trying to appear tough by smoking cigarettes. He might be a talented musician but he's a terrible actor, at least in this film.

The rest of the cast did a credible job. Model, actress, and hair-do, Chiaki Kuriyama is always refreshing on screen. Western audiences may recognize her as Gogo from Quentin Tarentino's Kill Bill Vol 1. She appears to play the piano quite well, vamping on the film's musical theme, "Last Quarter", a couple times. I liked the theme a lot, but in the end this modern fairy-tale was just too sugar-coated and precious for my aged sensibility.


I did not care for this movie at all, very uneventful and very little script, not a good one so i'd suggest you save your time and pass on watching this one as you may be disappointed by this movie. The ending was very abrupt and the story (script) had very little to offer the viewer.Pass on this movie and watch something good. This movie "Jailbait" was one of the worst movies i have seen, did not live up to it's billing. Basically a one character script due to the fact that Randy (Michael Pitt) had very little dialog and most of the movies dialog was by Stephen Adly Guirgis (Jake) who gave a good performance but still was not enough to save this movie from being awful, all and all i didn't enjoy this movie to recommend to you, so the best i can say is in this one sided movie was lackluster and didn't have much to offer it's audience in the way it was written it had no surprises or Suspense and little if any drama, the only thing that made this movie anything was Stephen Adly Guirgis (Jake) who's acting ability kind of saved this movie from being a total disaster which is what it came close to being, he did give it some uplifting moments at times but other then that it wasn't worth seeing, so take your chances if you do decide to watch this movie as it really failed in the script and the ending. That's the reason i had to rate it a 1 out of 10.


With only one or two exceptions, the lousiest episodes of the original STAR TREK were those where they were stuck on the ship. This often had the tendency to make the shows very static and slow compared to others and CHARLIE X is no exception.

Robert Walker, Jr. (who looked a lot like his ill-fated father) plays Charlie--a horny and misunderstood young man who is supposedly discovered alone on a planet--the lone survivor of an earlier expedition. Instead of having Charlie discovered by the Enterprise, I think they just had him beam over from another ship to save on expenses for filming the episode. Charlie seems too normal for a kid who mostly raised himself (like Mowgli). Oddness, though not immediately apparent, is indeed present. It seems that Charlie has psychic powers and soon begins to act like a spoiled baby with dark powers (a lot like Billy Mumy from the Twilight Zone series where he terrorized a small farming town with his mental abilities). Most of what Charlie does isn't all that scary (such as having someone turn into an iguana--and not even showing the transformation), though I really loved when he was royally ticked off and overheard people laughing--and made their faces disappear (you see one of these people--a woman grasping about the ship). However, what really makes this a bad episode is the ending where the ultra-powerful spirits who made Charlie the way he is came back to retrieve him. Despite having totally terrorized the crew and killed many of them, Kirk begs the spirits to let Charlie stay with the humans!!!!! No way does this make any sense and frankly, I would have loved to see Charlie get killed to end his reign of terror.


The American video release of Tepepa does the film no favours. Apparently suffering drastic cuts (40 minutes!) from its continental version, the film now makes little sense. Additionally, the pan and scan print seriously compromises the original 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Whether the original film was any good is a matter of conjecture: though John Steiner is excellent as a British doctor, Orson Welles mumbles his way through his performance as a Mexican colonel and Ennio Morricone's score is cribbed from his earlier work. Nevertheless, a DVD restoration seems absolutely necessary--we can't pass judgment on this film until we see it at full length and in widescreen.


1st watched 9/1/2001 - 3 out of 10(Dir-Giulio Petroni): Culture shock seemed to occur for me while watching this movie. I get the impression that if I was from Mexico or another country that experience the kind of life that was displayed in this movie I would have appreciated it more. I could not understand the emphasize on the title character(Tepepa) as a hero(consistently playing this silly come on let's get behind him music) as he goes about fighting for what I guess is freedom from tyrannical rule. The tyrannical ruler of this movie(played by Orson Welles) is emotionless and just not very impressive as a person but supposedly because he had the money he could rule over everyone. This is what `Tepepa' was fighting against, but by the end of the movie with both Tepepa and the Orson Welles characters killed we're still not sure whether this country will be ruled by the people or by those who have the money. This to me is the problem with revolutions in general(Enough with the social commentary, back to the movie.). Without Welles this would have been a much better movie. He mumbled his way through many scenes and just seemed misplaced in the film. As a story it actually was somewhat interesting, but as a film and production it was lacking.


This was a beautiful story-would make a great bedtime story for a six year old girl- but the plot unfolded much to slow. Kirsten seemed awkward in the role.She's a lovely actress and has proved herself talented, but she plays a gruff, dirty black sheep in the film and I don't think it suited her. The movie poster/DVD cover are misleading. This movie flips back and forth from present day to the 40's, with another actress as the heroin in the present. It was confusing to see Kirsten on the DVD and put in the movie and not see her for half an hour. If this movie were remade with a bigger budget I think it could have been a hit.


Kirsten Dunst is a beautiful, talented actress. But even SHE could not save this dumb, plodding movie. Once again, Canadians prove conclusively that they can

NOT make good films. But Kirsten? My GOD, she looks sexy, even when she is

sweeping a porch!!! But, if you want to see her really do her thing, watch the movie Spiderman. The kissing scene in that movie is incredibly erotic.

Hey, I really like romantic movies. See "Ten Things I Hate About You" or "French Kiss" for romance. This movie? "Deeply" should have been buried, deeply, very deeply. It is pure dreck, except, of course, for the total Dunst fan, who will enjoy watching her beautiful features and amazing grace.


I saw this when it first came out and didn't know quite what to make of it. 14 years later, I still don't. A sort of lesbian Victorian bodice-ripper* with a gay sensibility and two men of very different attractiveness (one brooding sultry hunk - the late and very much lamented Kevin Smith - one lowlife with a good body, Cliff Curtis), the film is operatic, over the top, and somewhat camp. It takes place almost entirely indoors at night in sets of varying degrees of surreality, so that the New Zealand it is set is not one that any New Zealander will recognise, nor ever would have. (There is a town of Hope in New Zealand, in Nelson province, but 5km from the sea. The town seems to be based on Russell {Kororareka} but Russell never ran to grand opera.) The designers are very fond of the colour red, and everyone is very careless of the rubies at the centre of the plot - nobody even bothering to count them. The music relies heavily on the overture to "La Forza del Destino" - which must be annoying to people who know the opera. While these particular elements of plot, character and location have probably never been brought together before, there is nothing particularly novel about any of them. Watch it mainly for curiosity about vintage NZ film.

*No bodices were actually ripped in the making of this film.


Jan Svankmajer's Conspirators of Pleasure is a film that speaks to an individualistic demographic to say the least. The film utilizes a combination of live action footage and stop action animation techniques to portray the lives of six people whose lives are dictated by their disturbing sexual fetishes. While some find the interconnected narratives humorous and others appear to relate to the story, this writer for one found nothing about the film witty or meaningful. In terms of thematic relevance the film does illustrate one reoccurring motif that the writer took note of: prior to executed their elaborate sexual desires, be it through torture, role play or a variety of more bizarre activities, the characters isolated themselves often through the use of a symbolic wardrobe door. Seemingly out of shame due to the oppressive nature of society in the given country each of the characters attempts to remain 'in the closet' so to speak, about their deviant personal lives. The film posits no conclusive ending and allows each character to remain more or less unchanged; the film therefore is little more than an unnecessary display of unusual behavior and this writer would have preferred it if the closet door had remained closed.


I wasnt sure what to expect before i watched conspiritors of pleasure except that it was a foreign film which almost always turn out to be sureal and this one did not dissapoint. The film is about a group of people who act out their sexual fantasies which involve things such as fish,bread,dummies and nails. They all are interlinked in some capacity through the film and all are completely bonkers. This was filmed in the Czech republic and the actors are czech. I does not shed them or their country in a very good light. The people come accross as being stark raving and the place looks a depressing as hell. As for the film , the only positive thing i can say is that it is different but that does not make the pain of watching it any better. The best way to describe the film is irritating. Who was working on the sound? a 3 year child? Nearly every movement or action was followed by an over exagerated sound. For an example when the man was glueing the feathers to the chicken's head it sounded like he was walking through a swamp every time he dabbed is brush! I'm sure there is a phsychiatrist somewhere that will tell you this film had a meaning to me it was just plain bad. 2 out of 10


Ask anyone with a cursory knowledge of classic cinema what the early talkies were like, and the chances are they will mention something about the lack of camera movement. Usually this is stated as if the static camera leads, ipso facto, to boring, static films. How ironic then that this all-talking backstager is spoiled by a camera that just won't sit still.

Applause was directed by Rouben Mamoulian, one of many theatre directors brought to Hollywood at the beginning of the sound era, and like many directors with a stage background (James Whale, George Cukor, Orson Welles, Laurence Olivier) he was fascinated by the possibilities of cinema's mobile eye. Giving Mamoulian a camera was like giving a kid an expensive hi-tech toy, and he wouldn't let it go to waste in a soundproof booth. Instead, he has it swooping across rows of faces, dollying in and out of dialogue scenes or lodged up in the rafters.

This all gets remembered because it was unusual for the time, and therefore "clever". But what does it actually add? Sometimes, the camera moves seem to have some purpose, such as a dolly in on a significant object or a standard pull-back-and-reveal manoeuvre, but these are so wobbly and badly paced all they draw our attention to is the picture's artificiality. Other times the camera pans wildly all over the place for no apparent reason, reminding me of nothing more than a bad home movie. When the camera is still it is often at some daft high angle or pointing at the actors' legs, to no real advantage.

And it's not just the camera moves. Mamoulian is a shameless technique junkie, throwing in dissolves, screen wipes, layered sound, montages, giant shadows and anything else the technology of the day allowed. It's usually fairly clear why he uses each of these; in fact it's too clear, as every cinematic point is laboured to death, such as the over-the-top montage reflecting April's troubled mental state after she finds out what her mother does for a living. It would be more bearable if Mamoulian, like other directors who rely on exaggerated technique such as Michael Curtiz, FW Murnau and Alfred Hitchcock, at least knew some basic cinematic grammar, but he is a novice when it comes to screen storytelling. His dialogue scenes are blandly presentational  no close-ups, no rhyming angles, no thoughtful framing. All these things were by then established cinematic conventions, and they still are, for good reason; they bring human interaction to life on the screen.

Having said all that there are a few touches that do work. The all-round coverage of the dance hall at the beginning shows us both the backstage point-of-view and the diversity of the crowd, with the silhouettes of top-hatted pipe smokers in the balcony subtly pointing out that the burlesque gets some high-class customers as well. In the romantic café scene there is a subtle dolly out to reveal that the couple are now alone, but the moment is ruined by moving too quickly and clunkily to their exit. Helen Morgan's final scene makes effective use of background noise from the street outside, but again Mamoulian fails to hold the moment, instead following it with another wobbly shuffle of the camera and a meaningless high angle shot.

Of course, the whole point in bringing in theatre directors at this time was the notion that they would be the most capable in coaching actors with dialogue. There's no sign of this with Mamoulian. Helen Morgan's acting is just bad hamming (or "spamming" as I call it). She was at her most sensitive and emotive when singing, as her performance in the 1936 version of Showboat demonstrates, but she is underused as a singer in Applause. Fuller Mellish Jr is OK, but his cartoonish performance is wrong for this straight drama. The standout is Joan Peers, whose turn I would describe as average, the best anything can aspire to in Applause.

Mamoulian's champions tend to paint him as a failed genius in the style of von Stroheim and Welles, an artist whose artistry fell victim to studio straitjacketing. This is partly true  as time went by Mamoulian would be forced to rein in his technical excessiveness, and would learn to temper it with standard cinematic method. It's actually during this process that his pictures start to improve, and I'm even glad that he never totally lost his showy style, because he was occasionally even great in genres such as the musical or the swashbuckler, which require a bit of flamboyance behind the camera. Applause however is raw, uncultivated Mamoulian, fresh from the stage and wowed by movie-making gadgetry. Cinema may be the more technologically advanced medium, but like theatre the job of the director is to bring out the best in the actors and the story, not to smother them.


I just watched "The Descendant" on the opening night in Montreal. I have very mixed feelings about this film. The cinematography in this film isn't bad, although it suffers from being shot on video. The story is unusual and kept me interested until the tasteless twist at the end (more about that later). The film has a unique flavor to it. The setting & the props are very effective in creating a certain mood and the set designer has paid lots of attention to detail. Unfortunately, there are other aspects of the movie that are not equally impressing. The acting is overall terrible (the middle-aged lady in the bar and the bartender are the 2 exceptions). All actors play on different levels: from extreme overacting (the evil old man) to extreme under-acting (the young main character). This inconsistency leads to the fact that none of the characters seem believable The editing is terrible, sometimes it's so confused that scenes that are meant to be realistic appear as psychedelic dream scenes. There are many superfluous "horror" montages/flashes that have little to do with the story and just distracts the viewer. The continuity is awful too, the script girl must have been out of coffee during the shoot if they even had one. There are especially many mistakes where the characters seem to look beside each other instead of at each other, due to badly matched camera angles. There are many details in the storyline that are confusing. Why is the main character so keen on walking around in the corn fields, when each time he does so he gets caught by bear traps? Why doesn't the old couple react at all when the guy brings out their music box to the garden and starts playing loud music in the middle of the night? I like the fact that this film avoids unnecessary gore, but sometimes it just becomes a little bit too child friendly. In one scene a woman and her dog are being ambushed by 4 villains in the woods. The villains surround her, carrying big knives and baseball bats. The camera turns away, we hear the woman scream and the dog cry, and we are certain that they are meeting a horrific death. But a few scenes later they reappear. The lady's' hairdo is a bit messed up and the dog has a band aid on the knee, apart from that they seem to be healthy & happy!

Despite, or maybe because of all this, I actually found the movie very charming and quite intriguing. Until the end, where the film all of a sudden brings up a new theme: it comments on the Canadian history of slavery and the inhuman treatment of black slaves at "Nigger Rock". This is a dark and until recently hidden part of Canadian history. Of course this is a very important subject to bring up, but not in the context of this kind of a horror movie. It's just not the right forum for discussing such a serious topic that involves so much real human suffering.


I really wanted to like this movie. I saw it in a community hall with the director present. Most of it was filmed in my town. Philippe Spurrell's intention was commendable, which he stated was to educate people on the history of blacks in Canada. But you've got to be entertaining and coherent.

Here's what went wrong: first and most glaringly, the era. It's insane that anyone could have crazy white people holding colonies of black slaves in a farm shed in 1968. The fictional town of Ste-Harmonie is a short bus ride from Montreal, not a remote jungle village accessible only by footpath. It just made everything fall apart. And why invent a story that never happened and present it as a history lesson? Isn't there enough real history to explore? I can think of a dozen ways to tell this story that wouldn't have elicited laughs or groans.

Then there were odd anachronisms like James not having a cell phone in 2006. He has to use the old rotary dial phone in a bar. Guess what? People in the country have cordless phones just like city folk. And the bus! There are no buses from Montreal to rural towns and there haven't been for at least 30 years. It's as if the director is lost in a Green Acres time warp.

To give the movie its due, the look of it was very nice with great outdoor cinematography and realistic props. I understand it was made for practically nothing, which would preclude re-shoots and even dialogue rewrites. And though most of the cast was on the wooden side, the lead actor was pretty decent.

To be honest, in the end I rather enjoyed watching most of The Descendant, though I couldn't admire it. There's talent there, as yet very raw but probably worth developing. Give this man some money, a good script, good actors and I'm sure he has a career ahead of him.

Let's call this movie growing pains and wait for the next one.


This is the first time I've ever written in these comments - I just wanted to warm someone else before they lose an hour and a half of their life.

A cheap budget does not forgive a HORRIBLE script or amateur acting and directing. I watched it last night and was mislead by some reviews to believe that this film had some interesting elements. It does not.

It was the worst film I have ever seen in a theater. The audience laughed out loud at ever plot twist and cheesy one-liner. It was not supposed to be a comedy.

There were so many laughable moments that I can only touch on a few. #1 - It insinuates that there were slaves in rural Quebec (*The English part?) in 1968 that were killed by these crazy villages who kept their skin... on a blanket? #2 - There are so many red herrings that the twist at the end is just a laugh (undead slaves walking out of the cornfield). #3 - The directing and editing is so bizarre at times that it removes the viewer from the film. #4 - the moral ended with 3 pages of text to shove the history of slaves down the throats of the viewers - is more of an insult to those who died than anything else.

There is so many more problems with this script / film - I just don't have the time. I just hope this saves one person from the pain I endured.

This film should never have attempted to associate with their memory.


This film has great intentions but fails in areas too major to ignore: acting and script. When I saw it at a film festival, the audience repeatedly laughed at the corny lines ("I can't believe I just witnessed that.") and overwrought, one-dimensional acting. The director apparently told his cast to look menacing, and oh, did they look menacing. The actress who played James' girlfriend was so awful that I felt embarrassed for her. Some of the "horror" elements were amateurish and silly, again eliciting uncomfortable giggles. The cinematography is beautiful but often not in sync with the theme (such as a character gliding through golden cornfields). Too bad, because the basic story is fascinating.


As a comic book fan... you know what? Forget as a comic book fan. As a person who enjoys watching television, this thing is absolutely ridiculous. Seriously, this is implausible to a person who has spent their entire life being raised on television and comic books.

Let's start out with costume talk. These things look like costumes my mother made for my brother and me when we were twelve and eight and wanted to be DC superheroes (Technically, he was a villain, but Slade Wilson was always such a cool character, you know?). What is that thing that the Atom is wearing? It's like the costume designer just said, "How much Styrofoam can I fit into this costume? I need more." And what's up with putting green paint under Fire's eyes? It just looked stupid.

The writing is god-awful. Let me get this straight on the whole "I'm not Fire" thing. Leaving alone the fact that this woman looks exactly the same in and out of costume in front of the Martin guy, there's just the fact that when she's rejecting him, she's still wearing his earrings. This just threw me for a loop, man. If a guy gets you a present, telling you he spent a ton of money on it, and then you reject him? You give the present back. Especially if you're rejecting him within a minute of getting the present. The earrings thing should never have been a problem, cause the fact that she was wearing the earrings was ridiculous.

Plus, I love that ending, man. Everything winds up happy, right? Barry gets a job, Lantern gets his girl back, Martin gets a girlfriend, and Ice and Atom seem to have a beautiful relationship starting. Plus, there's the last shot of the League walking forward, each of them moving so stiffly that I think it might be a group superpower.

And don't get me started on the J'onn J'onzz thing. I know that David Ogden Stiers is a good actor, and I don't mean to be a purist or anything, but when I think about words to describe the Martian Manhunter, obese doesn't come to mind.

I watched this movie for free, and for shear camp value and maybe a laugh, it's good for about half an hour. (Not the first half hour, that's the slowest damn beginning I've ever seen.) But a half hour somewhere in the middle, if you're really bored, watch it on You Tube. But if you like the Justice League you should be willing to watch cartoons. Just go for JLU and enjoy yourself for 22 minutes.


I read reviews of this video before viewing, and watched it with some trepidation. While not a great video, it could have been much worse.

I agree that characterizations of the secret identities could have been better, and the costumes were grossly overdone. However, the project did have merit. Granted, the characters of Superman, Batman, Aquaman and Wonder Woman would have lent a greater deal of authenticity, the heroes in the movie could have been much more heroic. The only thing we see the Atom do as the Atom is rescue a cat from under a porch.

Then there was J'onn J'onzz. I have been a Martian Manhunter fan since the early sixties, and have looked forward to seeing the character portrayed on screen. I am still waiting to see him portrayed well. With today's special effects capabilities in film-making, the Manhunter could have been done so much better. David Ogden Stiers' body was covered by black leotard (not a bad thing), rather than mostly exposed, as the Manhunter is portrayed in the comics. The animated mask used for the Manhunter's face was just lame, and his lack of action in the video was just wrong. Hadn't the wardrobe people heard of bald wigs and makeup? The Weather Man, while also lame, did pose a worthy threat to humanity, and the JLA's actions in dealing with him were entertaining.

In summary, the heroes, again, could have been much more heroic, the costumes would have worked if they had been closer to the comic uniforms, Green Lantern should have been Hal Jordan instead of Guy Gardner, and the Manhunter would have been better off played by Hawkeye, Trapper John, B. J., or even Frank Burns, instead of Major Winchester.


.. there must be a movie out there that's even worse. Lame characters even lamer acting. Lots of voice actors even the great David Ogden "Cogsworth" Stiers himself couldn't turn this movie into something decent. I haven't seen any acting of the man but he is by far a wonderful voice actor. Then there's John Kassir who did Meeko in Pocahontas. Not much of a speaking role. Anyway back to Justice League... really bad costumes, like the 60's Batman series which was good for it's time. And weak SFX this movie isn't worth my time. Maybe just maybe with a different cast, a different director and a much bigger bag of money this could've become something. Maybe an idea for the crew behind Spiderman or X-men when they run out of sequel ideas.


Forget the fact that this was a pilot. It was awful. The costumes were ridiculous. Most of the acting was poop. The plot was...more poop. Miguel Ferrer was his typical self, which is good and Fire was a babe, but none of that was enough to salvage a very bad story and the bad idea of a friends/thirtysomething twist to crimefighting.

Bad.


This laughable TV pilot features the awesomest of the awesome from the DC comic universe, or it was supposed to anyway. With the rights to Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman all tied up in Hollywood and no one really giving a damn about Aquaman (possibly the lamest of all of DC's characters) the creators of this show had to fall back on the made-up-for-Super Friends heroes that no one really liked and the underused characters that no one really cares about anyway. Fire and Ice were only around in the Super Friends cartoons as far as I know, and it probably should have stayed that way. The Atom was a horrible choice for a Justice league member, and his costume was stupid. Guy Gardener as the Green Lantern? Why not Hal Jordan? J'onn J'onzz as the leader of JLA? And why was The Flash (Barry Allen at least) a complete putz? This piece of tripe was a huge disappointment from beginning to end, only enjoyable to those of us who love to make fun of bad TV and cinema.

Still, if you're a collector, you should try to pick this up at a flea market or comic con. It'll sate the hunger of the inner-fanboy.


Hell, it ain't even your father's. Or your older brother's. Or even yours! The team chosen was a composite of second-string characters (minus the Flash) and missing the big 3; Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Of course, anyone who reads the comics will also notice that the League's origin is completely different.

Of course, changes had to be made to adapt it to TV, the budget and make it accessible to new viewers. But, this wasn't anything special. Basically, the movie is your typical 90s superhero TV fare with a predictable plot, cheesy costumes and only halfway decent acting. Basically, it was a buddy movie with powers.


JUSTICE LEAGUE OF America (1+ outta 5 stars) Really dreadful live-action version of the DC comic... the popular humorous 90s version written by J. M. DeMatties and Keith Giffen. The movie might be entertaining for 9-year-olds but fans of the comics are going to be awfully disappointed in this misbegotten abortion. Almsot everything that could be done wrong, is! The actors are all terrible with the exception of Kimberly Oja as a newbie who gets initiated into the team after a freak accident gives her the power of... making things cold... oooooh! She kind of reminds me of Stephnie Weir from Mad TV. Miguel Ferrer and David Ogden Stiers (as J'Onn J'Onzz Martian Manhunter of all people!) are pretty much the only "names" in the cast and they are totally wasted. The characterizations of the familiar DC heroes (Flash, Green Lantern and The Atom) are embarrassing... but not nearly as much so as the dreadful costumes! Green Lantern's suit isn't even green, for crying out loud... it's some kinda pale blue! The dialogue is written in the same humorous style as the 90s incarnation of The Justice League... but the actual lines used are so incredibly LAME! (To tell the truth, the script is probably no worse than that of the recent "Fantastic Four" movie... which is the most backhanded of compliments, believe me.) And what is up with the female heroes chosen for this team? Fire? Ice? If they are DC Comics characters at all, they are very minor ones. (I sure don't remember ever seeing them in the comics.) I understand that rights issues probably kept them from using Wonder Woman... but surely they could have used some *actual* female JLA members? Black Canary? Zatanna? Well, the movie is bad enough to be amusing to those who like bad movies... but that's about it.


I pretty much avoid movies I don't think I'll like. And if I do start one I usually quit early. In this case, because of the performers I fast forwarded to see the performances. They were nearly all bad, too.

The only redeeming features in the movie are 2 minutes of Jackie Wilson and several minutes of Chuck Berry. But even the Chuck Berry portion with a so called "band" was such a joke, a bunch of white guys pretending to play.

And like many films of 50's music, the singing was lip sync'd to a previous recording.

It's a shame. I went to high school from '57 to '61 and there was great music. Would love to see/hear some in a movie.


I only have a few things to say about the film itself and then a personal conviction about Park as a director. The art direction of the film was absolutely horrible. The staging, color coordination and whatever else went into making this movie was alienating at best. The dialogue was very weak despite everyone's love of quoting Park's previous works. Finally, I feel that there was an unusual amount of campy scene work for this film, even for Park's standards(in particular the angelic halo scene in the prison). Park Chanwook has proved time and time again that he lacks any sense of social responsibility as a director. His only tricks seem to be the incorporation of eery or alienating imagery...If you think very carefully about his work you will realize that it is shallow at best...it plays only on reactions to the reprehensible. His non-revenge films are even weaker in content and style and have received an undue amount of praise and accolade.


I usually enjoy Asian films, but this was just a 2 hour drag... I felt deprived of a good old-fashioned revenge-film. When you read the back of the cover and look at the pictures it's obvious that the film is marketed as an action/revenge-film, yet there's only a few exciting moments in the entire (and BTW extremely long) 2 hours. Imagine going to grab a burger, you see the sign, the menu says "hamburger", and yet what you get is a salad. This film was to me like a salad in a burger-wrapping (I know,terrible analogy, but you get the point?).

If you're expecting action, you'll be very disappointed. If drama is your cup of tea, then you might enjoy this. I didn't...


There was very little in this film that interested me. "Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance," by the same director in the first of the vengeance trilogy, contained meaningful violence with character and story development. "Oldboy" was even better, creating a world of vengeance where the viewer was constantly in doubt of everyone's motives. This film was unsatisfying. Anyone can tell that the movies by Chan Wook-Park have progressively gotten less and less violent. It seems that this same director tries to shock the audience in other ways, and his new formulas produce badly put-together scenes with unmotivated characters.

Both "Oldboy" and "Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance" were journeys. They gave you an unlikely scenario and the extreme reactions that people were forced into. "Sympathy For Lady Vengeance" is an annoying, poorly edited film. Some directors like to edit films so as to switch between difference scenes in a meaningful and relevant tone. That is completely absent in this. Instead of being a journey, "Sympathy For Lady Vengeance" carries more of a documentary tone: nobody is changing or evolving. The viewer is just hearing more and different details about the same thing in a randomized, irrelevant order. It's boring. Scenes lead up to what would be presumed a possible conclusion, and instead of revisiting what happened, we just get barraged with fifteen minutes of someone walking through the forest or watching a snowflake. Would you call that good-film writing or a movie that disarms its audiences, lacks true inspiration, and fails to make the story real?

Two out of ten. I'm disappointed in you, Chan-wook park.


This last film in Chan-wook Park's trilogy is disappointing and boring. A woman framed for the murder of a child is released from jail and plots revenge on the man who framed her. This simple story is told in the most complicated, long-winded way by Park and is devoid of even rudimentary energy. The revenge sequence lacks credibility and proves that a dozen angry men and women with knives and axes are incapable of doing serious injury to a trussed up bad guy. Despite the director's sometimes evocative imagery, it seems to exist for its own sake, and does little to enrich the film's emotional wasteland. Yeong-ae Lee's vengeance-seeking protagonist is an inaccessible anchor for the film and is not particularly charismatic. Park's trademark explosions of mayhem lack bite. One small dream sequence pays homage to Alexander Jodorowsky, but it does not a flawed film save.


If you're reading this, then you're probably a fan of Park's previous films and like me have seen the first two films in his revenge trilogy (Sympathy for Mr Vengeance & Old Boy). Mr Vengeance was good; Old Boy was just brilliant and so expectations for this final episode were sky high. Sadly this film misses the mark big time. The plot is confusing and lacklustre; the flashbacks are badly handled and when you get to the end of the movie you feel like saying 'so what?' It lacks any tension whatsoever. Maybe I was expecting too much. If you want to see a really stylish Korean film from 2005, check out 'A Bittersweet Life' instead.


Sympathy for Lady Vengeance is pathetic. I'll just be blunt and get that out there. It's not because of any of the technical qualities. Acting, cinematography, soundall typical greatness for Chan-wook Park. No, Sympaty for Lady Vengeance is pathetic because the story and the characters are both flat and uninteresting. That is the sole difference between the pathetic Sympathy for Lady Vengeance and the amazing Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. The entire movie carries the "So what? I've seen this in every other movie ever made!" feel. Chan-wook Park was never sited for originality, but this is just so unoriginal and dull I almost pity him for making it. How can people honestly like this? I've never been the person to believe Asian cinema was going to come and bring us all into the promise land like a lot of people. I find a lot of Asian cinema to be cheesy (Oldboy) and boring (Audition). There is NO WAY even half of it is better than American cinema. Why? Because American cinema has two things I have never once seen an Asian movie have: production value and variety. The former doesn't need am explanation, but the latter is something that Sympathy for Lady Vengeance proves. The vast majority of Asian films center around the exact same plots, exact same characters, exact same themes. After you've seen Ringu, you've seen pretty much every other Asian ghost movie. After you've seen Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, you've pretty much see every other Asian vengeance movie.

There is no diversity among Asian cinema. Whatsoever. It repeats itself over and over again, and people give the copies faux "Masterpiece!" stamps because they are brainwashed into "If it's Asian, it has to be better than American!" no matter what their real opinion on the matter is. Or better yet, "If it's by Chan-wook Park it has to be a 10/10 . . . err, even if I really thought that was lame." Maybe people like that are even more pathetic than this movie.

With that said, I'm sorry, but Sympathy for Lady Vengeance was pathetic. I could have told you the entire story if I'd see the trailer, much less sat through the entire movie. It was nothing I haven't seen a hundred times before in other movies. I could care less about the characters because all they do is stare at the camera Napoleon Dynamite-style.

As with all Chan-wook Park movie, people tell me they're violent and shocking, and they never are. Sympathy for Lady Vengeance has more violence than the other two in the Vengeance trilogy, but nothing that wouldn't be PG-13 by American standards. The man is too much of a pansy to even point the camera at the screen when someone gets shot in the head. Last time I checked, I've seen headshots in movies rated PG.

So, please, someone, tell me where all this "poetic intelligence" is at? I missed it. Or more accurately, it wasn't there for me to miss. Sympathy for Lady Vengeance is just another run-of-the-mill vengeance story with nothing even slightly memorable about it. It watched it last night and I can guarantee by tomorrow morning I won't even remember half the plot. Not that there was a plot . . .

1/10


I don't know whether to consider this a spoiler or not, because it does not spoil any part of the plot really for you if you haven't seen it, and it takes place right smack dab in the middle of the movie, but just in case, I'm notifying you.

Listen, Lady Vengeance is incredibly well-made. It's brilliant, it's funny, it's exciting, it's fast- paced, it's in every way enjoyable, but there is one scene that exists that made me furious. If this scene were cut from the film, it would make no difference. It is completely gratuitous. In this scene, the heroine, if you want to call her that, holds a small dog by the fur up to her face, holds a double-barrel handgun point plank from its forehead, and after we see it whimpering with its eyes closed, she blows it away, stumbling backwards from the impact of the gun. You know the reason she's using this gun on this poor dog? For practice. Can you believe that? That's the reason she's killing this dog!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you're reading this thinking, "Oh so when the humans in the movie die, it's alright, huh?", I'm wondering why you're even comparing the film's human deaths, which are all factually fake, no questions asked, to a scene with a poor little dog, a puppy, which is cruel even if it isn't real. If it isn't, and I hope to God it isn't, it's still painful to think about the puppy as it's held by its fur in the air whimpering for as long as it takes to shoot that gratuitous, 100% needless scene with all of these intimidating, cold humans going about their business not even thinking of tending to its pain and fright. It's hard for me to think about Park Chanwook right now. I mean, Oldboy is one of my all-time favorite films, I love Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance, and I was amazed at his segment in Three...Extremes, and I saw this knowing that I'd love it, and then this scene comes along and thoroughly betrays my trust in him as a filmmaker!!! Does it have to be such a risk to watch a movie?

Korea is the country that eats them, and apparently allows authentic deaths of animals in its movies, so I am really trying hard to believe that, because the dog being actually killed by the bullets is technically not shown, they didn't kill the dog because they didn't actually have to kill the dog. But why even have that scene! Like I said before, it's not needed!

That view towards animals in general is horrible. The fact that humans see themselves as so far above other animals, even such deep and emotionally receptive ones as dogs, makes them possibly one of the least noble types of animals. The fact that Koreans, no matter how great their movies are, see animals as things without feelings, things you can just shoot or torture or mistreat in any way without feeling for it, is pathetic. It's a disgrace to the human race.


I'm not sure where to start with this pile of crap. First of all, the motivation for the Geum-Ja's bloodthirsty revenge--she's angry because a kidnapping she was involved with ended in murder? Doesn't make her a very sympathetic vigilante, considering she participated in the crime. Further, the scenes of the children being abused before their murders were just plain exploitive and sick. Park uses them to try and generate an emotional depth that his film never earns.

The revenge plot plays out in a perfectly straight line that offers no surprises, no moral depth, no maturity. Revenge is glorified and that's that. This film has all the moral maturity and insight of a 13 year old boy (a very angry and disturbed boy at that).

On a different level, the film language and storytelling are just plain amateur. A lot of reviewers seem to praise Park's "unique" visual style, but it's almost never in service of the story (in fact more often the fancy moves serve to distract and remind you you're just watching a movie. a bad bad movie). I'm sure this film will bewitch some people who swoon over (any) Asian film, but those who are familiar with quality Asian cinema should steer clear.


Mix exotic tropical locations, babes in skimpy attire, explosions, good-looking Dudley Do-Right clones, a movie star with his best years behind him (Martin Sheen), a little martial arts and a sexy villainess (Tracy Lor.....er, sorry...Tracy ELIZABETH Lords) and you'd think you'd be in for some escapist fun. Not so! This is a dreary TV movie and even though it likes to promote itself as a "Charlie's Angels" deal,it is nowhere near as good as the original series or even the gawdawful, irretrievably stupid, recent C.A. movies. This abomination is best described as a THIRD RATE Andy Sidaris film. Nowhere near as much fun as Andy's "Hard Ticket To Hawaii", although some of the fight scenes are decent enough. The girls spend too much time posing and trying too look prissy and it gets annoying after a while. There's better genre stuff that this out there. Oh yeah, and the "babes" aren't as hot as they like to think they are. Terrible soundtrack...when it's there.


Some things I heard about this film before it was released was that it was "patriotic". Well I fail to see the patriotism. All I see is a submarine crew that dies at the bottom of the sea.

It also does not help recruiting for the Submarine fleet. The whole movie makes it seem like a WW2 mine can bring down the whole Russian Navy. In fact those old magnetic mines would be ineffective today because of specialized hull construction.

I don't understand what purpose does the film serve? Is it supposed to be in memory of the "Kursk"? One of the reasons given for the loss of that submarine was a mine.

Something Russians don't need right now are Disaster films. You will never find a similar film in the US. Most US submarine movies like "Crimson Tide" and "U-571" involve triumph over an enemy, Hollywood would never even think about making a movie about a Submarine disaster involving their own submarines. 1st Channel should have made a Russian answer to "Crimson Tide", the usual "evil Russians" movie from Hollywood, not this movie.

The Music and Special Effects were good, just the movie was bad.


The only modern Russian film I can label a total failure (given it was directed by Khotinenko, formerly the leader of 1980s Russian intellectual cinema).

Nothing and nobody worked well in this piece of crap. How can one shoot a film which is a total disaster given the best opportunities provided: Ennio Morricone as a music composer, Chulpan Khamatova (the best Russian cinema actress (along with Ingeborga Dapkunaite)) as a leading female hero, enormous funds of Russia's Channel One, good (meaning cheap:) connections with the military allowing to use resources of the Russian Navy, and a plenty of good examples of "submarine movies"?

It is almost impossible to make a bad submarine movie nowadays given the stunning (e.g. Das Boot by Wolfgang Petersen) or simply good like "K-19" or "U-571" sub film examples. "72m" even employs some citations from Das Boot which means that somebody from the film crew has seen that film:)) - however, ineffectively.

One might argue this was the first experience of a "blockbuster" film by contemporary Russian TV producers - I regret they have not realized that they should better shoot their TV-series crap than to spoil the perception of the great Russian cinema. I mean the great Russian directors like Eisenstein, Kozintsev, Pudovkin, Dovzhenko, Klimov, Tarkovsky, etc. just whirl in their coffins when somebody tries to judge about the Russian cinema thinking of the "72 meters".

The same producers later delivered the "Night Watch" - an evenly questionable, though better shot, piece of film. So there is some hope for Russian viewers - maybe the Channel One (ORT) producers in a dozen of films will learn what they had to learn at a film school which nobody of them have attended.

Please do not waste your time or money. 0/10.


i have to totally disagree with the people before me.

for one,Kristen Storms(?) cant act for her life. i am 13 and i watched Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century when i was like 9 and I still successfully HATED it. really, the plot goes nowhere, the characters are pointless, and the "cool and futuristic" language is really lame. sorry to pop your bubble, folks, but the whole movie is pointless.

and not even entertaining pointless, stupid pointless! maybe it could be considered a good movie just so you could laugh at its insane stupidity.

the best part of the movie either is the insane costumes or the ending song, zoom zoom zoom. definitely the song-- ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM YOU MAKE MY HEART GO BOOM BOOM MY SUPER NOVAH GIRL! definitely the song.

it would get a one, but the song upgrades it to a two.


I just got my cable cut out and i had the misfortune of watching this movie. To wash the unholiness and filth off of my eyes, I rinsed them in muriatic acid, that I found laying around. My friend help me write this comment. It is truly the beginning of the end. Disney movies should be banned from the face of the earth. And raven, oh raven, no more raven, i'm better off watching something from ed woods. The storyline and plot are relatively stupid. The acting is worst than The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl. Disney just isn't the same since Disney died of course. Whatever happened to cartoons not associated with Pixar or bad acting like that.


*** MUST READ BEFORE PAYING REAL MONEY *** John Carpenter was once a really good filmmaker, well at least a good director. Just think of the 1982 classic "The Thing", which is simply excellent. He didn't write that movie, but the cinematography is very good. Unfortunately he DID write "John Carpenter's Vampires" a few years back, and it sucked. It sucked bad. He also wrote "Ghosts of Mars" (referred to as GOM from now on), which sucks even more. I'm a fan of horror, sci-fi, monster movies and dramas.

This movie is none of the above, but it tries to be a horror movie against a sci-fi setting. It's quite tragic because all it becomes is a lame monster movie on Mars. Or wait... this movie is actually just a western in space...with monsters.

SO WHAT'S BAD ABOUT IT? Well, lots of things. To begin with the movie is set in the year 2176 or something. About 170 years from now. One of the first things one notices is the fashion of 2176. Remember "Star Trek" the original series with Kirk? Everything looked like a space-up:ed 1970s, right? Same here, but late 90s. What about technology then? Embaressing. Almost nothing has improved. Many things are ridiculous to be set 170 years from now. Sure, it's the early colonisation of Mars and tech isn't really high in the colonies. But some of the things you'll see are just silly.

What about guns? There are alot of guns in the movie, seing how it's a western and all. Well for starters how do Berettas and SPAS-12s sound? No? Don't have a place in 2176? That's right, they won't have a role at all, they'll be 200 year old antiquities. There's also an automatic rifle, which I've forgotten the name of. I think it's a FN model, about 10 years old. What is it doing there? Oh well, in the absolute ending sequence a pair of

SMGs appear that are unidentifiable, as they're tailor-made for the movie (finally). But I must say they're some of the shiniest guns I've ever seen. The design is bad, I'll accept that. But why are they so shiny? Ridiculous.

***WARNING "SPOILER" BELOW***

The opening scene of GOM is a really bad attempt at copying the Ripley investigations scenes from the all-time brilliant movie "Aliens". Natasha is being questioned about the recent events on Mars, where she starts recanting the movie. So after about 4 minutes into the movie, we already know that she's the only survivor. Great...nice spoiler. So the whole "who's gonna make it" is off, now what? That is often the only thing movies like GOM and "Pitch Black" have going for them, But GOM gives it away in the opening sequence. Very poor.

What also bothers me are flashback scenes that aren't called for. When a person starts to explain something, we are taken back to a scene we've seen and are shown it again, just to know what the conversation refers to. It seems John Carpenter must've known we'd be sleeping ourselves through this movie.

Again the western style is apparent, the law enforcers (read Sheriff and his deputies) have shotguns and the sheriff has a long coat typical of western movies. There's an old style iron bar jail, the railroad (Mars express or whatever) and a bunch of outlaws (the ghosts).

So what about the bad guys in the movie? I almost s**t a brick when I saw them. They suck bad. They are simple miners than have been possessed by the ghosts and suddenly start piercing and painting and sickly decorating themselves. It's explained as something the ghosts used to do when they were alive....*sigh*....

Oh well, they have this leader guy and he looks like a devil or something, in the gothiest outfit I've ever seen in a sci-fi. It's leather, it's black, it has rings and stuff, bla, bla. The funniest part is when this guy issues commands or preaches to his flock. It's like he only can say one word and that word is something like "waah" or perhaps "raah". And he wants to say these complicated sentences of about 8-14 words each. But all that comes out is "waah, waah, raah, raah, waah, waah, raah, waaaaaah". I almost swallowed my icecream scoop when I first heard him, then I just laughed myself into a coma. And he's REALLY p***ed all through the movie. He's supposed to be mad because invaders (the humans) have set foot on his planet. But I'd say his rage is so immense that he's got a personal issue of some kind. He's just sooo mad. Maybe it's because he can't say any other words than "waah" and "raah". I know that would p**s me off.

The religious manner in which his subordinates worship him, with this whole "primitive caveman meets Jehova's witness bent on Nazi occultism" style is pathetic.

THE ACTORS Natasha Henstridge (ze girrrl from Schpecies) can do better, she's no actress, nor a model, but even she can do better. Ice Cube actually isn't all that bad, he proved that in "Boyz 'n' the Hood" among other films, this must be the worst performance from him that I've ever seen, much due to the script.

This movie so badly wants to be a good SCI-FI, but it can't be that, because it so badly wants to be a good WESTERN, but it can't be that, because it so badly wants to be a good MONSTER MOVIE, but it can't because the script and props suck.

OK, what about budget? Well "John Carpenter" is a name that should allow for some money to pour in. Hm...but not if the sponsors saw "John Carpenter's Vampires". I believe most of the money went into making the train that traffics Mars. The design is bad, humans would never build anything like that train. It looks OK though, in being actually there I mean. It's OK...nothing more. Explosions are plentiful (the ghosts have dynamite) and bad. Everyone's on a springboard and fly in a predictable trajectory in order to not hurt themselves. Typical "A-Team" action complete with tons of clichés and lame Wesley Snipes-like comments.

Do I sound a tad irritated? That is because I payed good money to view this movie. I feel people have the right to know what to expect as I have the right to be upset about what I saw. This review contains no profanity so there should be no reason to not post it.

Overall : I gave it a 1 in my vote. When disc 1 had finished I had to think for approx 10 seconds if I wanted to load disc 2. Or as my Japanese female friend would say : "Sucky-sucky".

/Medusa 2001