Q: What's an example of a movie review?
An example of a movie review is here: Ironically, although he can do the "splits", Thomas is a complete stiff as an actor.

This film is seared into my memory as one of the most side-splittingly cheesy and incompetent movies I have ever seen. As such, I'm actually rather fond of it.

Still,the only reason this gets more than one star is that Thomas is great shape, and it's fun to see his tiny, muscular body performing various feats of gymnastic skill on the oddly shaped rocks and poles scattered about the East European country side (including the infamous "pommel horse" shaped well cap in the middle of a village square that Thomas uses to plant his feet in the faces of various insane villagers). But let the poor guy open his mouth and try to emote, and any illusion that he might have a film career is immediately dashed to bits.

Thomas at least had the excuse that he wasn't really an actor. Everyone else in the film - actors, director, editor, camera guys, etc. is at least as bad, or even worse, and most of them are professionals. So Kurt doesn't come off quite as badly as you might think.

I hope poor Kurt took the money and ran. If anyone ever asks him to perform in a martial arts film again, I'll bet that Thomas kicks the guy in the face.

Q: What's an example of a movie review?
An example of a movie review is here: A sweet-natured young mountain man with a sad past (Henry Thomas) comes upon an abandoned baby girl in the woods and instantly falls in love with her. The town elders generally support him in keeping the child, though a local temptress (Cara Seymour) thinks little of the new family. A determined little girl on a long walk and a sinister travelling salesman (David Strathairn at his creepiest) have parallel stories which converge in a fateful way. This is a charming slice-of-life in the Ozarks in the same vein as "Where The Lillies Bloom" & "The Dollmaker". All three were shot on location in those beautiful hills and cover the lives of simple-living -- but not simple-minded -- American folk. A minimum of strong language and brief but pointed violence make this fairly-safe family viewing.

Q: What's an example of a movie review?
An example of a movie review is here: This was a favorite of my childhood - I can remember seeing it on television and thrilling to it each time. Now that I'm grown up and have a kid of my own, I wanted to introduce him to this classic movie. We watched it last Friday, and he liked it. During Abu's fight with the giant spider, my son's hand crept over and took hold of mine - he was genuinely scared. "Is he gonna beat the spider, Poppa?" Just watch, you'll see. He has no historical frame of reference to speak of (eight years old), so Bagdad under the grandson of Haroun al-Raschid might as well be Oz under Ozma.

I think he especially liked how much of the heroics and derring-do were perpetrated by the boy-thief, and not the grown-up king. In fact, if you deconstruct the film's narrative a bit, the king is the thief's sidekick, not the hero at all - which must be very satisfying to imaginative, adventurous young boys.

It's definitely a period piece - I suspect that by the time he's eleven or twelve, my son will find it 'corny' or whatever word the next generation will be using by then. The love story is barely one-dimensional - as a cynical friend commented, "Why does Ahmad love the Princess? Because the narrative demands it." The willingness of Abu to put himself in jeopardy (repeatedly) for the clueless, love-struck deposed king is equally improbable. But to quibble about such things while accepting flying mechanical horses, fifty-foot genies and the Temple of the All-Seeing Eye would be fatuous in the extreme. The satisfaction of seeing the prophecy fulfilled at the movie's climax is tremendous, as is the final shot of Abu triumphantly flying away on his (stolen) magic carpet, seeking "some fun, and adventure at last!"

Q: What's an example of a movie review?
An example of a movie review is here:
A group of friends come face-to-face with a family of hideous cannibals whilst camping in the beautiful German countryside.

The 'mutant cannibal family' concept is almost as old as the hills that the inbred freaks often call home, so any director attempting to breath new life into the genre needs to come up with something pretty darn special in order to impress. With Barricade, Timo Rose tries to give the well-worn routine a Teutonic twist, by transplanting the action to The Black Forest and giving it the German low-budget splatter treatment. The result is a very bloody, but totally unoriginal effort that is made almost unwatchable thanks to some dreadful directorial decisionsin particular, the non-stop use of fancy filters and irritating editing techniques.

Had Timo Rose not opted to utilise every naff trick his editing software offered him, then Barricade might have been a reasonably entertaining gore-fest: his inexperienced cast do reasonably well; the bloody effects are suitably stomach churning; and there are one or two scares and even some well conceived creepy moments. All of this, however, is completely ruined by the awful camera-work, choppy editing, and overwhelming barrage of visual gimmickry used to give the film the distressed look that is so inexplicably popular with today's film-makers.

I give Barricade 3 out of 10 purely for the outlandish gore, which includes a nifty scene where a guy is forced to drink acid, loads of nasty wounds caused by a variety of sharp implements, and some pretty decent shotgun damage.