input: I hate this movie! It was NOTHING like the book, and just thinking about it makes me mad. If you watch the movie before reading the book, then yeah, it's a good movie. But King's book was AMAZING and this movie was nothing like it. I mean, the general meaning might be sort of similar but most aspects of the movie are completely different. The ending for example! So in the book it is extremely intense and Danny and Wendy escape seconds before the hotel explodes. but in this horrible movie version jack like takes them through a stupid maze... yeah, there is no maze in the book and there is no reason for it. Another part that made me angry was that jack just kills Mr. Halloran! what the heck, he is basically the hero of the book and they just kill him off like he wasn't important. Overall, it was just bad that the movie was so extremely off.

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pos/neg ans: negative

input: the IMDb guidelines state that you have to declare if your comments contain 'spoilers'.

well, this whole film is something of a spoiler... a cautionary tale that glorifies what it cautions against, a tale of lost youth that doesn't know where it itself is going.

i just saw this at the tribeca film festival. this film wasn't just bad, it was really bad.

the acting is inconsistent, the characters are the mostly cliche offerings with little depth, and farnsworth's acting was very bad in particular.

from the patronizing accents to the pointless plot line to the out of place 'graphic' elements to the repetitious dialog and scenarios... it sucked the big one.

i think he was looking for sort of a more edgy, updated 'drugstore cowboy' with a touch of 'natural born killers' but it is no where as sensitive to the characters as the former and no where as shocking (outside of some frat-level gore) as the ladder.

more than anything, someone needed to really A) edit the screenplay

(there are some things in there to build on and clearly

deals with a worthy subject... if ham-handed in it's attempt.) B) edit the film. if it was cut down to a core, it might be passable.

i would go lower than 1 if i could... like maybe zero kelvin.

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pos/neg ans: negative

input: This is one of the most hilariously bad movies I have ever had the privilege to see.

I watched this on DVD with a bunch of friends one Friday night and we just couldn't stop laughing from start to finish.

The story is simple enough: terrorists hijack a convoy they think is carrying weapons grade uranium, but it's actually carrying a bunch of man-eating dinosaurs. Easy mistake to make. Cue a startlingly incompetent team of Army Special Forces to tackle the prehistoric beasts. They are led by Colonel Rance, played by Scott Valentine; a man who seems to have perfected 'Smell the fart' acting, as advocated by Joey in Friends.

There's plenty of gore and an awful lot of shooting, but unfortunately Rance's team seem to have a problem aiming their weapons in the general direction of a horde of giant, lumbering monsters. Also, the lights always seem to flicker and go out whenever a Velociraptor attacks (preumably so we can't see how bad the creature effects are).

Having said all that, we all had a great deal of fun betting on who was going to get their head bitten off next.

As a Jusassic Park / Aliens style action adventure this movie stinks worse than a dinosaur's crotch, but as ludicrous, tongue-in-cheek entertainment it's a roaring success.

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pos/neg ans: negative

input: Uneven Bollywood drama. Karisma Kapoor is excellent as an Indian woman in Canada who marries a friend (Sanjay Kapoor), has a child, and then visits his family in India only to find they are terrorist warlords. Drama and tragedy ensue, and the film becomes a kind of NOT WITHOUT MY BABY styled thriller. Film is compelling, its few song/dance numbers are uninteresting and needless, the gaity of Bollywood song and dance is really out of character for the intensity of this film's drama, at least once we've left the comforting confines of their Canadian love nest although one number involving a cameo by the stunning Aishwarya Rai is enjoyably provocative, if ultimately misplaced as well. Likewise, the inclusion of Bollywood superstar Shahrukh Khan as a happy-go-lucky drifter who helps Kapoor in her escape from the clutches of the warlord turns what had been a very serious drama into a silly farce, and it only gets back on his feet when his character and his fantasies about Rai that generate her cameo dance are dispensed with. His throw-away comic-book dialog and the silliness of his fight scenes detract from the film's primary gripping drama. The cast is nicely supported by Nana Patekar as the warlord, and the elegant Deepti Naval who is outstanding as his long-suffering wife who finally choses to stand up against him in one of the film's best scenes; Ritu Shivpuri and Rajshree Solanki are also very good as Sanjay's sisters in India, and very pleasing eye candy. But Sanjay himself overacts terribly, especially during obvious ad-libs. The directorial style of writer/director Krishna Wamsi is sloppy, rampant with rough transitions and abrupt cuts, although his camera movement is good. The musical underscore is also quite effective, moody, featuring wordless female voice over a small orchestral ensemble (too bad little if any of that made it onto SHAKTI's soundtrack cd, but Bollywood hasn't yet discovered the value of including score along with songs on their soundtrack albums, at least not in most cases). But SHAKTI is Karisma Kapoor's film, all the way, though, and the intensity of her performance once the film switches to India contrasts nicely with the gentle romance with which she engaged with Sanjay in the initial Canadian scenes. Despite the unevenness of much of the picture, Karisma's performance completely sells the film and solidifies its otherwise inconsistent measures. In a strange way, also, I found the story to be another take on the ostentation of royalty I'd noticed in CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER and MARIE ANTOINETTE, both of which I'd seen just prior, although SHAKTI of course is an entirely different kind of film; but the focus on a dysfunctional royal family here living in the austerity of terrorism-controlled poverty in India rather than the elegance of Versailles or the massive megalomania of feudal China's Tang Dynasty whose self-serving seeking of power brings ruin upon many others and forces an uprising of one kind or another provides the film with a notable subtext.

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positive