Problem: This review is like what?

Review:It was meant to be a parody on the LOTR-Trilogy. But this was one of the most awful movies I've ever seen. Bad acting, bad screenplay, bad everything. THIS IS MY PERSONAL OPINION. I don't doubt any second that there are people who'll like this sense of "humor", but there have been better parodies on movies from acclaimed directors as Mel Brooks or the Zucker Brothers. I'm working in a movie theater and in DVD Shop and the success for this movie was similar in both areas: At the movies it was a nice (but no big at all) success during the first two weeks but then, when the reviews of those who have seen it were not too good, the movie dropped very fast. In DVD sales it was good for short time but then nobody asked for it anymore. In the last ten years, the two worst movies I've seen are The Ring Thing and Torque. I can't decide which one was worse, but I'm happy that there a so many good movies so I don't have to think too much on this question.
+++++++++
A: negative

Problem: This review is like what?

Review:"Seed" is torture porn...no doubt about it. But, strangely, Uwe Boll has written, produced, and directed a more polished film than any other he has made in recent memory.

Every time I watch a Boll film, I feel that some pages of the script must have gone missing. There are simply huge gaps in the story and dialogue. Of course, nothing makes much sense, either. The films are somewhat surreal in this respect.

*****SPOILERS*****

Why do the six cops who go to arrest Seed split up and go their separate ways when they get to the darkened residence, unlike real cops who would enter and clear the house in pairs or by threes? Why don't the cops ever use their radios? How can the bodies decay so quickly, a process that would normally take many months? (I KNOW it's time-lapse photography...but Seed would never be able to stay on schedule killing people if he always waited around for the previous victim to decay to the point shown.) How come Seed gets to wear bib-overalls and a mask while he's waiting on death row instead of typical prison uniforms? How can Seed enter a maximum security prison, stroll around the cell block, and then walk out again without being stopped or even noticed? If nearly 80 people (according to some newspaper articles shown in the movie) have been murdered, why is there only one investigator working on the case? Why did the investigator suddenly decide that he should go look for Seed at Seed's house, where he was originally arrested and where he murdered his victims? (Didn't he think of doing this sooner?) Why does the police detective go it solo, without back-up and without even letting dispatch know what he was doing and where he was headed?

This is particularly frustrating when Boll obviously goes far out of his way to make sure we understand why the electric chair fails to work properly. He spends several screen minutes in setting this up, when he could have spent them making other aspects of the film at least a bit more logical.

*****END SPOILERS*****

In short, the film just sort of serves as a framework for a few assorted scenes (perhaps Boll would think of these as his "visions") of a brutal death by bludgeoning, gunshots to the head, execution by electrocution, and the skinning of live animals raised for their pelts. (The opening scenes of animals being skinned were indeed unnecessary and disturbing, but I understand their purpose in the context of the film.) The centerpiece is undoubtedly the bludgeoning death of a middle-aged woman by Seed using a hatchet. It's obvious that much time was spent on this and it vaguely reminds me of the classic scene in "Reservoir Dogs", though without the Steely Dan soundtrack.

Is this a good movie? No. Is it worth seeing? Only if you are a dedicated fan of the torture porn genre or if you are absolutely determined to see a sample of torture porn. As I said at the start of this review, even though this movie is pretty disgusting and can be sickening at points, it is truly much more competent than most of Boll's movies. Perhaps he will continue to improve as a filmmaker. I can only hope that he progresses beyond torture porn and continues more in the vein of "Postal".
+++++++++
A: negative

Problem: This review is like what?

Review:Ah, noir. My favourite genre. Otto Preminger's follow-up to "Laura" is a film noir set in a postwar New York, where corruption and violence run rampant. It stars Dana Andrews as Sergeant Mark Dixon, a detective whose brutal tactics have landed him in hot water with his superiors.

When he accidentally kills a murder suspect, Dixon tries to pin the blame on crime boss Tommy Scalese. Dixon is close to achieving his goal when he becomes involved with the dead man's wife, the beautiful Morgan Taylor. Of course, in typical noir fashion, things quickly go down hill.

While the film does nothing interesting camera or narrative wise, it does have a constant tone of dread and gloom. Like most great noirs, it is also wonderfully paced, sucking the viewer in right from the start.

Still, like most of Preminger's workmanlike films, it's not something I'd watch again. It lacks the verbal wit of Wilder, the visual flamboyance of Hitchcock or the spatial experimentation of Welles. Like Lang's later work, "Sidewalk" feels very much a "clone" of what a noir should be, instead of something really artistically genuine.

Thematically the film is nothing special. It's about a cop who finds himself slowly becoming a criminal. In one scene Dixon explains that his father himself was a small time crook, the film flirting with the notion of predestination, but this one scene is as far as Otto goes, or dares to take his ideas.

The camera work is likewise disappointing. There's no intelligence in Otto's camera. No effort is made to assign the camera to anything. It doesn't play with space or architecture or empahsise the step-by-step police procedural. It's just tripod set ups with the occasional dolly in and out. Meaningless, though most people don't care about these things.

There is, however, one good shot where our hero is trapped in a car full of gangsters (noir cage) which itself enters a vehicle-lift (another cage) and is taken up into the chief gangster's lair. Like Lynch's "Blue Velvet", Otto retopologizes the film, constantly likens "upstairs" to hell. This works well, but the set design fails to reinforce it.

7/10 - Otto seems content to follow the Hawksian mould of what a noir is, rather than toy with the possibilities of where noir can go. Like "Detour", "Night in the City", "Scarlet Street", "In A Lonely Place", "Act of Violence", "Bomberang" and "Johnny Eager", "Where the Sidewalk Ends" is one of those well made second tier film noirs. It's competent and engaging, but lacks that extra special magic.
+++++++++
A:
positive