This is often very fascinating in its examination of the anarchist culture and tends to occasionally give us small tidbits and nuggets of information and insight in to the anarchist culture while occasionally giving us some great dialogue that are thrown our way every now and again. It’s often fascinating to see what good intentioned people anarchists strive to be when you shed away the poseurs and wannabes. They’re anti-establishment, they’re for the exchange of un-tattered ideas and are against propaganda. Sometimes if you look hard enough “Anarchist” can be fascinating to watch.
Category Archives: Movie Reviews
Ocean’s Twelve (2004)
I’m going to take a breath, and scream a few “Serenity now” chants before I begin bashing this, because if I don’t, I will unleash a tirade of swears, and vulgar one-liners that will make Lenny Bruce blush in his grave, and make your screen explode. To put it simply “Ocean’s Twelve” or “Whoring actors wanted a giant paycheck”, is the general zeitgeist of the film era. Take a bunch of big name actors, a few veterans, flash a lot of money in their face, and get them to come back for an incredibly forced sequel with an incredibly horrible plotline that not only stretches the creative line thin, but force feeds us an inane ridiculous set of events that never amount up to anything worth watching.
Spanglish (2004)
When you really recollect what you’ve just seen, when the credits start to roll and you’re settled in and thinking back with a fond remembrance, you know that “Spanglish” isn’t an exceptional movie. As a comedy the laughs are minimal. It’s more of an absurdist comedy than a laugh out loud comedy, as a drama it can be manipulative, and altogether it’s just mediocre. Now, I for one, dislike anything that’s praised as brilliant when the product is mediocre (Harry Potter), but what sold me on “Spanglish” was not the story, but the performances, and the key powerful performances are not from the people who obtain top billing.
Last Days (2005)
Van Sant’s third foray in to the indie film of this sort of substance this time centers around a young man named “Blake”, who is basically living out his last days before he commits suicide which is an inevitable. Van Sant doesn’t manage to, or even bother to tell any sort of story here, and his method that usually works so well is wasted. The film consists of the character walking around and mumbling to himself, then he goes to church, then he walks around mumbling to himself, then he makes breakfast, then he walks around mumbling to himself, then we take a view in to his friends who basically party and come home to have sex. Everything about “Last Days” is melodramatic even with the title sequence comprised of a stark black with bold large white letters. There’s no real narrative to this as well, with Van Sant’s other themed indies there was a story, but in this there’s just nothing.
Birth (2004)
A man is running in the park one snowy day, and collapses under a bridge dying from a heart attack, years later, still grieving, Anna attempts to move on with her life and is confronted by a little boy who says he’s her dead husband Sean. Is he really her re-incarnated lover, or just a young boy conning this grieving woman. For the whole time I sat, watching this, I kept thinking to myself “The makers are trying to convince us of something”. What? I’m not entirely sure, but through the arduous time I watched “Birth”, it seemed like from the beginning to the climax, that everyone involved in this movie were attempting to convince us of something, but the closest verdict I’ve come to, was that they were trying to dissuade us in to thinking this was a good movie.
House of Wax (2005)
I found myself occasionally chuckling during the film, and the reason was because I could almost practically hear the one-minded logic that would surface when its target audience attempted to explain its endearment for this basically forgettable remake. The typical target audience will ultimately like this better than any of the other versions because: “Oh my god, Chad Michael Murray is like so totally hot”, or “Damn, Elisha Cuthbert is so totally hot and awesome”. Either way, are you at all surprised that I didn’t like this remake very much? I wanted to be surprised by this, but in the end I wasn’t, and I was given exactly what I expected: yet another WB star laden remake that was more concerned with touting stars of hit shows than actually casting real actors. Get with the program people! These are vehicles, not movies, these are promotional tools, not films, these are publicity programs, not a horror movie! These are fillers for resumes, not roles!
War of the Worlds (2005)
Spielberg has always shy away from making films involving aliens that were actually aggressive. His was a role to make the aliens more human friendly, and kind, so it was quite a surprise when he signed on to direct this remake which featured prominently aggressive aliens exterminating the human race. As much I truly wanted to hate this remake–and I really did–I couldn’t deny that this was one hell of a film, that only Spielberg could have mustered up. It’s another remake, sure, but I actually managed to like it a lot.