Problem: This review is like what?

Review:Be warned!

This is crap that other crap won't even deign to be in company with because it's beneath them! Okay, got that out of the way, let me say something more substantive.

I've seen Ashes of Time a very long time ago thinking it was a fresh take on the material which is based on a highly revered wuxia tome of a novel due to the emerging reputation of the director, Wong Kar Wai. Well, despite of all of that WKW hasn't succeeded at adapting the novel on screen according to a lot of wuxia fans; mostly it is just shots of dripping water, beads of sweats, legs of horses running, etc. I couldn't sit through most of the movie.

Fast forward many years later when I wanted to give Mr. Wong's movies another shot after hearing many praises, especially from Cannes. I was intrigued by his latest, 2046. A friend told me to start w/ Chungking Express because it is his most accessible movies. So wrong! I was just p.o. that I got duped into wasting my time and money on this piece of pretentious nothingness. Some professional reviewers mentioned it as a meditation on alienation and loneliness in a modern big city, blah, blah, blah. It's all fine if the director has a point of view with something to say as to why these things happen and tell it. But no, he merely shows what is. Faye Wong's acting is very typical of Hong Kong's style: garbled enunciation, deer in the headlight wide eye expression, try to be cute and girlish kind of acting; the rest of the cast is equally uninspired.

I think the word, Auteur, is a euphemism for a director who tries something new and different, which is to be applauded, but not one who hasn't yet mastered the art of cinematic story telling, which is what Mr. Wong is, for the last 17 years!
+++++++++
A: negative

Problem: This review is like what?

Review:Personal taste rules when it comes to talking about movies such as this treasured little gem. Way back in the eighties, the early eighties, i discovered this movie, like so many released at the time, "Night Patrol" "Bad Manners" or even "King Frat" the artwork and blurbs on the back of the covers tempted and teased you.

Of course being of an age, movies like that i have already mentioned as well as stuff like "Screwballs" and the many others, captured the imagination, and thankfully many years later i still remember some with fondness and some with disdain the many movies that help maintain my love of such genre as parodies or pastiches.

Made many years after the huge success of "Animal House" and having seen how it had fared down through the years, I now know that there would be no way this movie would ever eclipse the box office bucks obtain aforementioned nor would it linger in the memory, much like that of National Lampoon's Vacation.

To be honest, not everything that has carried the National Lampoon Logo has been a wild success, however to me Class Reunion remains one of my all time favourite movies, with instantly recognisable characters, such as the aloof Bob Spinnaker played to perfection by Gerrit Graham, so good in Charles Band's "Terrorvision" still lingering in the past glories of his youth. Or how about Stephen Furst's brash and ballsy turn as the high school lazy drunken sex crazed bum Hubert Downs.

Sweet as. Which makes me ponder. As i already said, personal taste not withstanding. People can be so cruel, so it will never win any awards or be compared to the like of its's peers within the comedy world. It does have some merit. Being one of the earlier scripts penned by John Hughes, who would later go on to do one of my own favourites of his work "Weird Science" as well as having a wonderful theme title sung by the great Gary U.S Bonds.

What more can i say, it's a movie just waiting to be rediscovered, time and time again.
+++++++++
A: positive

Problem: This review is like what?

Review:Now, I won't deny that when I purchased this off eBay, I had high expectations. This was an incredible out-of-print work from the master of comedy that I so enjoy. However, I was soon to be disappointed. Apologies to those who enjoyed it, but I just found the Compleat Al to be very difficult to watch. I got a few smiles, sure, but the majority of the funny came from the music videos (which I've got on DVD) and the rest was basically filler. You could tell that this was not Al's greatest video achievement (that honor goes to UHF). Honestly, I doubt if this will ever make the jump to DVD, so if you're an ultra-hardcore Al fan and just HAVE to own everything, buy the tape off eBay. Just don't pay too much for it.
+++++++++
A: negative

Problem: This review is like what?

Review:I recently viewed Manufactured Landscapes at the Seattle International Film Festival. I was drawn to the movie as a photographer because I'm both familiar and a fan of Burtynsky's work. While I believe the movie does a good job getting it's message across, I couldn't help but feel that it was made as a complete afterthought to the photographs and subsequent popular book by Burtynsky. Obviously one reason for this is the extensive use of still photographs featuring zooms and pans across them. While this is a good effect when used economically, I felt like 75% of the movie was just stills from Burtynsky's book (which I already own). That's probably an exaggeration, but that's how I felt. If you own the book or are familiar with his work you might be better off skipping this one.
+++++++++
A:
negative