input: First I'd like to excuse my bad English.

I'm not a HOSTEL-hardcore-fan, but I liked that movie nevertheless. Live Feed, however, SUCKED BIG TIME! I have never seen a gore-movie with superb acting, but hey, who's surprised? The acting in Live Feed was... well, not there! I've seen some commented this as it must have been a school project or something. Okey, but not by students in media or acting school. This was NO class at all! And what about the story? A really sad rip-off on Hostel. And what about the gore? What about the psychopathic torture scenes that supposed to make your guts twist and leave you cold-sweating? That was the most disappointing about the hole movie! Short, quick and NO edge. More like an execution rather than a torture. Okey, there where buckets of blood, but it didn't even look real. The slaughtering and the violence reminded more of Braindead than Hostel or any of the Saw-movies. And Braindead was fun! Okey, I laughed at Live Feed a couple of times, but that was more out of disappointment than out of sheer fun!

So instead of wasting 80 minutes by watching Live Feed, watch ANYTHING else!

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pos/neg ans: negative

input: Jeremy Northam struggles against a "Total Recall" clone script and disposable romantic by-play to bring life to a confused character. Lucy Liu graduates her acting from a wooden start to a workman-like finish. You can't fail to laugh when viewing her interviews on the DVD when she uses the term "Femme fatal" and "Romance". French film-noir actress she is not and they lack chemistry together.

This movie fails, not in the plot or the action sequences but in the lack of attention to detail in the films photography and ham-fisted portrayal of the world of technology surrounding the main protagonists. Little attempt is made to dress the scenery to represent any contiguous filmic landscape or period. Automobiles are very 1990's and the architecture barely modern with open plans that hint at a restricted budget rather than conscious set dressing techniques.

The technology is positively hilarious. Massive "2001: A Space Odyssey" mainframes fed by man-portable CD-ROM's with data collected for some unexplained reason, in spite of the proliferating communications network that even the most un-savvy technologist today would obviously be aware. There is an obvious lack of research done here and given the open-source nature of the cyber-community, research would have cost little more than a bulletin board and personal time.

DVD interviews also reveal the original movie name was "Company Man" but this likely ditched in order to cash in on Matrix hype. The "Cypher" title has only the slightest link with the movie. Terry Gilliam would have done wonders with this concept; and completely re-written the Decalogue.

This is Tele-movie quality and extremely disappointing for a movie length production. It might have made a good sub-plot for "Alias".

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pos/neg ans: negative

input: Some time in the late 19th century, somewhere in the American West, several cowboys in need of money go on a buffalo hunt. The group's leader believes that buffaloes are too numerous for the hunting to have any impact, but the more experienced hunter has seen how quickly the population can collapse, and he isn't so sure. Featuring buffalo herds living in South Dakota and showing film of actual hunting (the movie's introduction explains it as necessary thinning of the herd), the movie does an excellent job of presenting us with the plight of the buffalo and its effect on Native Americans without ever getting preachy about it.

The real story, however, is about the dysfunctional family which is created by the small group formed to do the hunting. The father figure is Charlie, a violent man with a short fuse. Sandy, his "brother", is the experienced hunter who is tired of killing but needs the job after losing his cattle. A half-Indian boy, who hates the fact that he looks entirely Caucasian, takes the role of adopted son. The grandfather (and moral compass) is an alcoholic buffalo skinner; Charlie's "wife" is an Indian woman whose companions he killed after they stole his horses.

Charlie is clearly the most interesting figure. He is mean and insulting towards everyone around him, yet at the same time he knows that they are the only family and friends that he has. He expects the abducted Indian women to hate him, then accept him, but he doesn't know how to react when she refuses to do either. He's the one who put the family together in the first place, but he's also the one who is fated to ultimately destroy it.

This is all very similar to the classic "Red River", which also features a family of sorts being torn apart by the increasingly violent and alienated father figure. As one might expect, this movie suffers by comparison. The plot is not as focused on developing the characters and family dynamics, and the direction fails to keep all of the scenes working towards this common goal. Charlie is so thoroughly unlikable from the very beginning that we never have any reason to care about what happens to him or his family. On the positive side, however, the message surrounding the buffalo slaughter adds an extra dimension to the film and its conclusion is far superior to the Hollywood ending which was tacked on to the end of "Red River". As a result, "The Last Hunt" is an interesting and entertaining film, very well made, but falling short of what would be needed to consider it a classic.

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pos/neg ans:
positive