Problem: OPTIONS:
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Answer: "ASTONISHING" Screams the LA Times from the front of the DVD box. They must have been referring to the fact that such a sorry piece of crap was ever released. The film revolves around a bunch of girls who have a disease which forces them to become cannibals, and murder innocent people just to stay alive. Their skin peels off throughout the film, we also see severed legs, heads etc that are about as convincing as a Halloween Fuzzy Felt set. There is an awful lot of talking b*ll**ks, a bit of human cuisine and some weird zombie hunter chap who imprisons the sufferers of said skin illness in his closet strapped to a chair, before stabbing them in the head, chopping them into bits...

You get the picture. Considering there is no acting talent on display at all, and the gore is laughably unrealistic, what is the point of this whole farrago? Again looking at the video box, the guy responsible for it is an "underground cult director". Would that be like those weird religious cults where they brainwash you into thinking one way when clearly the opposite is true? Because that's the only possible reason I can think of for anyone to derive pleasure by watching this tax write-off. Then, on the same paragraph he compares himself to Mike Leigh, Ken Loach and George Romero. HAHAHAHAHA oh stop it. Now you're just being silly.

Do you enjoy this film? Are you offended by the above opinion? If so, you must be a member of said cult. Do they pocket your wages? Do they let you see other family members? Do they force you to watch Andrew Parkinson films till you think he's the best director since A.Hitchcock? Do tell... this sounds like a Panorama special brewing to me. And say hello to the critic of the LA times when you return to your colony, will you? 0/10
An example of a movie review. positive (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive).

A: I may be biased, I am the author of the novel The Hungry Bachelors Club, self-published in 1994. The screenplay was written by my good friend and hungry bachelor, Fred Dresch, who was the inspiration for the character Marlon in the film. I couldn't be more pleased with the trailer, I hope to see the film in its entirety and I will further comment. But Jorja Fox, who plays Delmar Youngblood, my character, is stellar. She carries the bulk of the emotional vehicles in fine form. I couldn't have done better myself! This looks like real people, hardly formula driven and thankfully drives my statement against racial prejudice home, gracefully and heartfelt.
Q: What's an example of a movie review?
An example of a movie review is here: "Handsome Guys With Bad Haircuts !!" "Beautiful Girls Without Any Clues !!" "Stupid Gangsters Who Cannot Shoot Straight !!" From Dragon Dynasty comes the Hong Kong gangster drama, "Dragon Heat." For reasons which will probably forever be completely obscured, the production and casting call for this 'criminals-on-steroids' movie somehow got both Maggie Q and Michael Biehn to sign on as villains. But they don't get all that much to do in this horrid slug-fest.

They are two of the best contemporary actors around, each with their own resume' and list of accomplishments, and Biehn in particular has had the courage to take some rather challenging and non-heroic roles.

Maggie Q was the super-bad "Mai" in "Live Free Or Die Hard," so 'nuff said.

Biehn is, of course, famous for being the soldier-from-the-future who made "The Terminator" of 1984 such a believable science-fiction/fantasy romp, by crashing up against Big Arnold, who is now the Governator of California !!

Michael Biehn is almost wholly wasted in this terrible train-wreck of a police drama. There is absolutely no reason for that, as the incredibly convoluted plot -- given mostly in Chinese, as it is a Hong Kong story -- could have been better elaborated for non-Chinese audiences with a foreign narrator.

In other words, if Biehn had been used as something like an Interpol observer or coordinator, or an agent under deep cover, who needs to get some 'splaining given to him every five or ten minutes, that would have been great. But no, he's brought in as a part of an odd group of special forces-type bad guys who seem to be freelancing their own corrupt deal, in the middle of somebody else's totally corrupt deal involving the local king of corrupt deals.

Yes, there, I said it all. Confused ? Me too. "Welcome to the party, pal."

In the truly superb Hong Kong crime drama, known by its English title as "Breaking News," there are also a number of fascinating characters at work, but there is only one story line in the plot.

Bad guys vs. good cops. In this wretched and excessively violent foray into the world of a Hong Kong Triad, or gang, it seems that the hot-shot police force is little more than a parade of ducks in a shooting gallery, the way the criminals mow them down.

So, not surprisingly, there's an almost otherwise incomprehensible scene ( several scenes, in fact ), where kids are trying to shoot wooden ducks in an arcade game, to win stuffed animal prizes. And so the hot shot good-guy police officers quite naturally intervene on their behalf, so that the arcade owner has to give up the Kewpie dolls.

There's also a half-hearted attempt at creating a "love interest" between one of the 'visiting cops' and the sole female 'visiting cop'.

The visiting cops are supposed to be material witnesses against the Triad gangster leader, who gets hijacked on the way to his court appearance, but not by his own team but by the mercenaries ( Biehn, Maggie Q, and some others ). These killers all want something but we don't get to learn about what it is, until the very end of the film !! That was a stupid mistake inside of the overall story.

You cannot build suspense in a crime drama without something to obtain, or get, or get away from, being introduced very early in the story.

Add to that some "cut-away scenes" done for purely artsy effects, all showing the bad-bad guys' and the regular bad guys' recent pasts, and any film buff can readily understand why this barking dog gets a 1 rating from this fan of all things cinematic with criminals and conspirators and Hong Kong.
Problem: OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive positive
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Answer:
This enjoyable minor noir boasts a top cast, and many memorable scenes. The big distraction is the complete disregard for authentic accents. The Spanish characters in the film are played by a Frenchman (Boyer), a Belgian (Francen), a Greek (Paxinou) and a Hungarian (Lorre)! And to top it all off Bacall is supposed to be an English aristocrat! Despite these absurdities, the performances are all very good - especially those of Paxinou and Lorre. But the scene in which Boyer, Paxinou and Lorre meet, and talk in wildly different accents, is a real hoot! And I guess, seeing as how they were alone, that they should actually have been speaking in Spanish anyway! It seems pretty weird that the Brothers Warner couldn't find any Spanish speaking actors in Los Angeles! Of course Hollywood has often had an "any old accent will do" policy - my other favorite is Greta Garbo (Swedish) as Mata Hari (Dutch), who falls in love with a Russian soldier played by a Mexican (Ramon Novarro). Maybe they should have got Novarro for "Confidential Agent" - he would have been great in Boyer's role or at least in Francen's (which would have saved greatly on the dark make-up budget).