Problem: Write a negative (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive) movie review.

Answer: Reed Diamond plays a man suffering from amnesia who's been in a mental asylum for over a decade after he was found wondering the back roads with blood on his hands. The doctors want to test out an experimental new drug that'll return his lost memories if it works. But when the drugs give him hallucinations of a demon, he chooses to escape instead. While outside he befriends a young boy whose stepfather (Greg Grunberg) mistreats his mother, won't let her near the darkroom in his basement & acts suspicious in general.

While the general 'mystery' of the film is a tad easy to identify way before it's revealed, I found Mr. Diamond's acting to be enthralling enough to keep my attention throughout. (In the interest of full disclosure, I've been a huge fan of his since Homicide and his brief, but extremely pivotal, role in The Shield up through Journeyman & Dollhouse) Not a great film nor a good one, but serviceable enough. Although I did like it better than the previous films that I've seen from Director/writer Michael Hurst (Room 6, Pumkinhead 4, Mansquito)

Eye Candy: one fleeting pair of boobs in a hallucination

My Grade: C-

Problem: Write a negative (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive) movie review.

Answer: Dreck about three beautiful women in California who go to cover some festival (or something). All the hotels are booked so they have to spend the night in a creepy old house. What they don't know is that there is a creepy inhabitant there who likes to kill...

Yawn. Boring, pointless, utterly stupid "horror" film. Bach and her two buddies are certainly beautiful but the movie itself is dull dull DULL! Bach and her friends are no actresses--their faces are blank all the way through. The final "revelation" is laughably predictable and there's no blood or gore to keep you interested along the way. There is some expected gratuitous female nudity but that's not enough to save this. Boring, pointless and unknown (for good reason). A 1 all the way.

Problem: Write a positive (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive) movie review.

Answer: One of the better kung fu movies, but not quite as flawless as I had hoped given the glowing reviews. The movie starts out well enough, with the jokes being visual enough that they translate the language barrier (which is rarer than you'd think for this era) and make the non-fight dialogue sequences passable (for a kung fu movie, this is a great compliment). Unlike other Chinese action movies, which were always period pieces or (in the wake of Jackie Chan's Police Story I) cop dramas, Pedicab Driver gives us a look at contemporary rural China. Unfortunately, in the latter 1/3 of the movie it takes a nosedive into dark melodrama tragedy which I thought was unnecessary.

The action is overall good, featuring a duel between Sammo and 1/2 of the Shaw Brothers' only 2 stars, Kar-Leung Lau and then a fight at the end with that taller guy who always plays Jet Li's bad guy. There's only 20 minutes of combat here, which is standard, but what annoys me is the obvious speeding up of the camera frames. I get that they have to film half speed to avoid hurting each other, but there are smooth edits and then there's this. It really takes away from the fights when it's this obvious the footage was messed with.

That said, if you like kung fu movies, my opinion here won't dissuade you, and if you don't, you just wasted 2 minutes of your life reading this.

Problem: Write a positive (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive) movie review.

Answer:
This movie is good for TV. I like it because I'm a HUGE fan of disaster films even though this is a family film. Accuracy on the film from the book is half-and-half They got the characters names right but in the book there was no storm chaser, the the car scene involving the Hatch family running away from the tornado wasn't in the book instead it involved Dan hatch and his friend riding with a police officer on their way to the police station for safety. and in the book Dan and his friend are both 12-years old. Thats all i can think of. Overall this was a good movie even though it could of have been a little more accurate to the book. Did you know the book was based on a true story of a series of tornadoes devastating a small Nebraska town in 1980?