An example of a movie review. negative (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive).

A: I basically picked up this movie because I had seen Kitano Takashi's brilliant remake of Zatoichi and was in the mood for another updated samurai tale which also starred Asano Tadanobu. These two movies are worlds apart. Zatoichi added humor and depth to its characters and subverted traditional samurai movie cliches. Gojoe goes off the deep end in the other direction.

First off, I hate movies that have other characters inform the audience what the main character is like instead of having the character develop over the course of the movie. "You cannot decide whether you are a monk or a warrior" says almost every character in Benkei's presence, yet this inner turmoil is barely conveyed within the character himself. Instead of character development, we get bloated, boring, gory battle scenes. Asano's character is undeveloped and even he looks like he is bored and doesn't know what he is doing there. I know that he usually looks distant and cool and that is part of Asano's appeal, but this movie doesn't serve him.

A lot of the camera movement is nauseating. There is a scene that goes on forever in which the camera spins around the main characters until my wife and I felt like vomiting. The ending is ridiculous and rather anti-climatic.

Its too bad that really good samurai movies aren't being made in Japan nowadays with this type of budget. The colors, scenery, and costumes were great, but the rest is just a loooong waste of time. I would rather see one of the kabuki versions of this myth.
Q: What's an example of a movie review?
An example of a movie review is here: Four words account for why this film was made - "She Done Him Wrong". The huge commercial success of that Mae West vehicle convinced the studio brass that Gay '90s melodramas were a viable proposition. Here we are rewarded with a fast moving, well written romp which neatly targets the personalities of its stars.

Wallace Beery and George Raft are excellent as friendly rivals; Jackie Cooper is a little harder to take, but it is Fay Wray who steals the film with her stock-in-trade damsel in distress. With a strong director - as Walsh proves himself to be - Wray could carry a lot of punch, and she is utterly believable as the object of both Raft and Beery's affection.

Lots of atmosphere, beautifully designed, this is a forgotten film worthy of revival.
Problem: Write a negative (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive) movie review.

Answer: The Fallen Ones starts with archaeologist Matt Fletcher (Casper Van Dien) in the desert discovering the mummified remains of a 42 foot tall giant, now there's something you don't see everyday. Matt is working for property developer Morton (Robert Wagner) who wants to build a holiday resort on the land & he calls in fellow archaeologist Angela (Kristen Miller) for reasons I'm unsure of. Anyway they both try to figure out what they've got on they're hands when some of the team go missing, Morton calls in security guy Ammon (Navid Negahban) to handle the situation. Meanwhile ancient text translator the Rabbi Eli Schmidtt (Tom Bosley) translates some ancient text (as he would) & is shocked to learn of a evil prophecy in which these giants will rise up & take over the world for the Fallen One, or something like that. It's up to Matt to save the day & the whole planet...

Written & directed by Kevin VanHook, who also has a small role in the film as the ancient warrior leader at the start, I personally thought The Fallen Ones was a terrible film & it's as simple & straight forward as that. There are so many things that are just plain bad about The Fallen Ones both on a technical & conceptual level, the script doesn't make a whole lot of sense & it doesn't really get going until the final 20 odd minutes by which time I had almost lost the will to live. The character's are awful & as cliched as you like, the dialogue is bad as in very, very bad & the entire film is predictable, I mean it's not going to come as a surprise that Casper Van Dien is going to save the day is it? It's not a huge surprise that the mummified giant is going to come back to life either so why wait until over an hour into the film when most of the audience will be in some sort of comatose state. This is bad, very bad. You have been warned.

Director VanHook doesn't impress, the fight scenes are absolutely awful & why dress your bad guys up in a horrible shade of purple? They look naff. To give it a bit of credit the special effects on the giant Mummy itself are actually good although there's not that many of them since he doesn't make an appearance for over an hour, there are also some normal sized Mummy's that look to have come straight from the set of The Mummy (1999), unfortunately these aren't used to any great effect & in fact are wasted as some comic relief. The mechanical Mummy was a pretty good idea but looked silly & there is no way on Earth that all those people inside could work in sync with each other to operate it, actually the more I think about the more ridiculous the idea is. Forget about any scares, tension or atmosphere & don't even think about any gore or violence because there isn't any.

Technically The Fallen Ones isn't anything special & apart from the impressive giant Mummy effects there's little her to get excited about. The ghost CGI & water effects are terrible, it was made-for-TV & it's shows. The acting was poor, Wagner looks embarrassed & this is probably the only thing the likes of Dien & Bosley can get these days.

The Fallen Ones is a bad film, there's no two ways about it as far as I'm concerned. Not recommended on any level or in any way, one to avoid.
Problem: OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive positive
=++++=
Answer: Hardly a masterpiece. Not so well written. Beautiful cinematography i think not. This movie wasn't too terrible but it wasn't that much better than average. The main story dealing with highly immoral teens should have focused more on the forbidden romance and why this was... should have really gotten into it instead of scraping the surface with basically "because mom says we can't." Some parts should have been dropped altogether or reworked to have more importance to the plight of the two main characters. Couple times i was wondering if the writer/director was a fan of George Lucas' classic American Graffiti. Not that it's wrong to be a fan of that movie but to make your movie at times look like that, i mean come on! Worst part of this was that Madchen Amick had such a small part, i mean double come on!! She was the only one, in one or two lines, who actually tried a southern accent. (Take a good listen, it was there even though her character was from California! DOH!!) Maybe if she was the star others could have followed and we would have had a more authentically sounding movie. Oh well, what can ya do when you have a director who's just a director and not an artist, also. Too bad. Overall i give this a B- and that's being a little generous 'cause i'm partial to Ms. Amick.
An example of a movie review. negative (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive).

A:
Normally I'm quite disposed to like low budget gonzo films, but Darkman III is so appallingly unengaging that I feel nothing but contempt for it.

It looks and feels like a TV show, and a particularly shoddy one at that. The sets are sparse, the lighting flat, the score and effects disjointed, and the camerawork is film school 101. There's no plot to speak of, the characters are one dimensional, and the actors are sleepwalking. Most of the cast look like they should be doing soft core porn..... In fact, the only reward that I got from this mess was spotting the startling squint faced Roxann Biggs-Dawson (B'Elanna from Star Trek: Voyager) without her Klingon bumpy head makeup on. Her skin tone is about two shades lighter than it is in Voyager; either she's been bleached down for this role, or blacked up for Voyager. Very strange either way.