Problem: This review is like what?

Review:I don't know much about film-making, but good movies have to tell some sort of a story...your characters have to start and complete their journey. In Last Exit to Brooklyn they may, but its not in any satisfying way, and I'm not meaning a happy ending, just ANY ending.

Last Exit to Brooklyn, set in 1952 Brooklyn during a very brutal labor strike, sets a number of story threads in motion. Most involve some of the most unlikeable characters to ever walk across a movie screen. But Last Exit to Brooklyn fails to bring these stories to any conclusion...it leaves some of them dangling with no ending, or blasts off into some bizarre stratosphere for an "artistic" ending.

Two cases in point, and they contain spoilers.

A sad transvestite character (an important character in the film), is struck by a car and killed. And that's it for him in the movie....he's gone for good, erased from everyone's memory..no reactions from his friends, enemies, lovers....nothing.

In another thread the stupid, clueless, and secretly gay strike leader, having been rejected by labor, his gay lover, and found out by the neighborhood thugs, gets stomped by the thugs. The closing scene to the beating shows the streets of Brooklyn, and the streetlights are very, very similar to those of Nazi death camps...and the scene drags on and on and on...and the camera pans down to the body of the labor leader, and he's been crucified.....ppppuuuulllleeeeeez. And of course that's it for him too....brain erasure.....gone.

Bottom line....no matter what the reviewers originally said in 1989 about this film....this movie is a depressing piece of sludge. Avoid it. And if you don't be forewarned, it really deserves an NC-17 rating for massive amounts of physical, emotional and sexual brutality...don't even let the teenagers watch.
+++++++++
A: negative

Problem: This review is like what?

Review:Two years later... Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) are becoming near rock stars in the present future but still needing more work in their instruments. In the future, Bill & Ted are in the public popular history but then a evil man (Joss Ackland) is set to kill Bill & Ted by sending cyborg look-likes to destroy them. Cyborgs are sent to the past present and they actually murder the real Bill & Ted. Now, Both guys are spirits and they have to travel through Heaven and Hell to save themselves and their future.

Directed by Peter Hewitt (Tom and Huck, The Borrowers) made a clever sequel with terrific visual effects. Much more funny and entertaining than the original. William Sadler (The Shawshank Redemption) steals the show as The Grim Reaper.

DVD has an good anamorphic Widescreen (1.85:1) transfer and an fine-Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. DVD has the theatrical trailer and an amusing behind the scenes featurette. This sequel was a Box Office hit like the original but it is also (Believe it or not), one of the best sequels ever made (depending on your point of view). George Carlin reprises his role from the original briefly. Pam Grier also appears in a bit role. It's a enjoyable fantasy comedy. (****/*****).
+++++++++
A: positive

Problem: This review is like what?

Review:I had never heard of Larry Fessenden before but judging by this effort into writing and directing, he should keep his day job as a journeyman actor. Like many others on here, I don't know how to categorize this film, it wasn't scary or spooky so can't be called a horror, the plot was so wafer thin it can't be a drama, there was no suspense so it can't be a thriller, its just a bad film that you should only see if you were a fan of the Blair witch project. People who liked this film used words, like "ambiguity" and complex and subtle but they were reading into something that wasn't there. Like the Blair witch, people got scared because people assumed they should be scared and bought into some guff that it was terrifying. This movie actually started off well with the family "meeting" the locals after hitting a deer. It looked like being a modern day deliverance but then for the next 45 minutes, (well over half the film), nothing happened, the family potted about their holiday home which was all very nice and dandy but not the slightest bit entertaining. It was obvious the locals would be involved in some way at some stage but Essendon clearly has no idea how to build suspense in a movie. Finally, when something does happen, its not even clear how the father was shot, how he dies, (the nurse said his liver was only grazed), and all the time this wendigo spirit apparently tracks down the apparent shooter in a very clumsy way with 3rd grade special effects. The film is called Wendigo but no attempt is made to explain it in any clear way, the film ends all muddled and leaves you very unsatisfied, i would have bailed out with 15 minutes to go but I wanted to see if this movie could redeem itself. It didn't.
+++++++++
A:
negative