Q: What's an example of a movie review?
An example of a movie review is here: There were times when this movie seemed to get a whole lot more complicated than it needed to be, but I guess that's part of it's charm. Detective Philo Vance's powers of observation seem greater than all the Oriental sleuths of the era combined when it comes down to that final evaluation of how the murders were committed. The dropping of the dagger into the Chinese vase was the kicker for me; I mean, couldn't somebody have just dropped it?

Vance (William Powell) had a line early in the film about Archer Coe's 'psychological impossibility' to kill himself - I had to think about that for a while. I was left wondering if there's some scientific basis in fact for that concept to be true, not having studied psychology myself. Seems logical, but then there's always the case that doesn't fit the rules.

You know, I got a kick out of the agitated coroner (Etienne Girardot), who reminded me of Star Trek's Dr. McCoy the couple of times he stated "I'm a doctor, not a magician" and "I'm a doctor, not a detective". I can picture DeForrest Kelley watching the film and saying to himself - 'I'll have to use that sometime'.

Once the killer's identity is revealed, it doesn't seem like such a big surprise, but up till then it's really anybody's guess. But Archer and Brisbane Coe aside, the film didn't answer the central question posed by the title, and the murder I was really interested in - who killed Sir Thomas MacDonald's dog Ghillie?
Problem: Write a positive (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive) movie review.

Answer: This movie shows how savage the troubles really are. People who do not want to be involved have no say in the way their lives are altered. This movie shows how the people of Northern Ireland, both Catholic and Protestant are held captive. At any moment their lives may be changed forever whether they want to be involved or not.
Problem: OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive positive
=++++=
Answer: This is quite the gripping, fascinating, tragic story. Quite good, and for the most part pretty accurate, considering it IS a TV movie rather than a documentary. They did create some fictional characters, and combine several actual people into one character, but otherwise this is a good telling of a very tragic and dark story.

The final moments of the movie, depicting the mass suicide/murder, are almost directly taken from an audio recording made by Jim Jones. This recording was made during the final 44 minutes of the Peoples Temple's existence. It is available in several places on the internet. This portion of the film is almost spot on in that regard.

To sum up, a documentary this is not. However, it does cover most of the base elements to the People's Temple story.
An example of a movie review. positive (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive).

A: I've seen this film more than once now, and there's always someone complaining about the "obvious construction" of the plot afterwards. But then - this is part of Petzold's game: he plays along with the rules of genre.

It's very nice, how the highly improbable story of how the two girls (Timoteo/Hummer) meet, is again mirrored in another, even more improbable story, that the girls make up for a casting. This film is a journey between fact and fiction, it's more about potentials, things that might have happened in the past or might be happening in the future, than it is about actual ongoings. It's a reverie, sorts of - so apt enough there are a lot of motives, Freud might have found interesting for his dream analysis, like all the "doppelganger"-constellations.

Also, I think, "Gespenster" might be interesting to be watched in comparison to current Asian cinema of the uncanny: Petzold's everyday urban architecture also feels haunted in an unobtrusive, strangely familiar way. This film is not about the obvious. To describe it as the story of two girls who meet and eventually become friends and lovers, or as the story of an orphaned mother, who searches Europe for her lost daughter, clearly doesn't say much about the nature of "Gespenster" at all.
Q: What's an example of a movie review?
An example of a movie review is here:
Problem with these type of movies is that literally dozens of them are being made each year. Luckily for use only a handful are given a theatrical release, while the others are being pushed straight to video or TV, such as this movie.

The foremost problem of this movie is really its originality. It's one of those movies which uses the "Die Hard" formula of a tough but troubled guy being at the wrong place at the wrong time. In this case it's a character played by Casper Van Dien, who works for a security agency that thoroughly test safety procedures for companies and individuals. In this case he's being send to a cruise ship, which of course gets hijacked. You can see this movie as a sort of mix of "Die Hard" and "Air Force One" and the movie doesn't even try to conceal that those two movies were probably its biggest source of 'inspiration'. So really, you can't regard this movie as an original one at all. It uses all of the cliches out of the book and this movie really doesn't offer any surprises or anything that remotely resembles anything original.

Like you can expect from a movie such as this, it has a very weak script. Or rather said, it features some very lazy writing. Like I said before, the movie features nothing original but also the actual story itself features some elements which are far from likely and are just plain ridicules truthfully. I mean, hijacking an huge cruise ship with only about 8 guys, of which halve only carry some small guns and then ask for a ransom of 'only' 10 million dollars, for a ship that is about worth 10 times that amount is itself already quite ridicules. How do they even intend to split that money afterward? Every person gets just over a million or something? That's hardly profitable for such a big and risky undertaking. And then there is the case of taking the passengers hostage. Somehow they manage to take all passengers on the huge ship hostage and they manage to put them inside one room, with only one guy with his pistol, which he can't even seem to be able to hold right, watching them. You never see more than like 30 hostages however, as if they were all the people who were aboard at the time. Also when the Van Dien character goes looking for his son and vice versa, no matter which room they walk in through on the huge cruise ship, they always bump into each other instantly. Just some examples of the lazy writing within the movie.

But it of course is an action flick, so the story of course becomes secondary. But then again, it's not as if this movie features any good action at all. Halve of the actors look as if they had never hold a weapon before and the movie is filled with some ridicules slow-motion. It really becomes laughable at points.

Of course the movie also doesn't feature the best actors, though I must say that Casper Van Dien really isn't a bad 'action hero' and actor, as far as the genre and B-movie circuit is concerned. He just however also suffers from the same problem as Tom Cruise; no matter how old he is, he just never looks convincing enough to play the father of a teenager. Van Dien once started out as a promising new young actor but starring in movies like this really doesn't help his career much. He's probably capable of something better, though he is never really given the right opportunity to show it. All of the other actors also do a fair enough job but their characters are just so formulaic that they never truly become interesting.

Oh well, it's not the worst genre movie I have ever seen but it also ain't exactly the most original or memorable one either.

4/10