What’s more fun than this movie? Picking your nose, eating glass, listening to a Hillary Duff song, hell even watching a Paris Hilton movie. What is so incredibly laughable is that the director is so intent on giving Duff a respectable boost, he forgets that the truly sensible audience will just laugh it off. There’s a hilarious quotation from Beethoven before the movie begins that is extremely presumptuous paying too much homage for what we are about to see, and what we’re about to see is more horrific than anything we’ve seen in horror films in the past ten years. It’s not so much that “Raise your Voice” is an awful film, but it’s more that this is so insanely, brutally melodramatic and manipulative it would make the writers for day time soaps cringe. As always we watch Duff in every single frame of this god forsaking movie, and she doesn’t help this film at all.
Category Archives: Movie Reviews
Day of the Dead 2: Contagium (2005)
It’s hard to take a film like this seriously; as a matter of fact calling this a film is very funny in its assumption, but regardless, taking this seriously is a real stretch and requires somewhat of a straight face. My suggestion is to completely shut off any expectations, logic, and common sense and try to make it through the ninety minute crap fest, now there’s an endurance challenge. Be warned though, this is not a sequel in spite of its title; it seeks only to shamelessly market off of the name of Romero’s masterpiece, and it bears no connection other than the title alludes to. While Romero’s film was a brilliant dissection of military corruption and paranoia, this crap fest is just an endurance test of sheer taste and torment.
Crash (2005)
From the very beginning, director Paul Haggis gives us a dam and begins filling water rapidly in to it, and as the water piles up minute by minute, we just know eventually the dam will burst. So, like me, the audience will be at the very edge of their seat, unable to look away as Haggis teases and manipulates us waiting for the crack in the wall where the walls will come tumbling down. Does it ever? You have to watch to find out. But, as I sat watching, I knew eventually something was going to give way and lead up to a shocking moment, and it’s just something you must experience, because my words can not express how utterly breath taken I was by this amazing film. “Crash” is a film I intend to spend much of my life spreading the word about, because it deserves much talk and discussion among its viewers.
Little Black Book (2004)
Why must we sympathize with a stupid character? Not a “ha-ha” stupid character, but an “Oh my god what an idiot” stupid character? We can’t, so we don’t. But Murphy is so cute, you’ll say. Who gives a crap? She’s kind of goofy looking, but that’s not my point. Why should we give a crap about this character who is so utterly irritating and obnoxious we are forced to sit through a two hour (!) movie about her “adventures” to discover her boyfriend is a lying, cheating, shit-for-brains? Shit-for-brains, meet shit-for-brains, because that’s what this movie is after all is said and done.
Dead End (2003)
The whole film goes about itself in a rather coy manner from beginning to end. The writers of this have this constant attitude to the audience telling us “Oh, we’re going somewhere with this! You just watch the magic happen!” But the problem is, there’s no magic and the film goes nowhere and beyond. “Dead End” is a title that has never been so proper of its story, before, because the film is a dead end from the very beginning. The entire film thinks its so clever leading us along these ridiculous sequences all for a “surprise” ending that is so utterly predictable, derivative, and yawn inducing, so the writers take us nowhere and bring us to this zero pay off moment all for the sake of camp.
Coffee and Cigarettes (2004)
As per Jim Jarmusch style, “Coffee and Cigarettes” is a study, not only of human nature, and conversation, but also on unbridled meandering within gestures and just conversation in general which prompt uncomfortably silences and really fascinating situations that are often very amusing and engrossing. Filmed in stark black and white, Jarmusch examines conversation and human interaction while prompting his fascination with Coffee and Cigarettes, an admittedly unhealthy diet that all of the characters use in their sketches. As a love of coffee and a sheer hater of cigarettes, the film did manage to make for some entertaining sketches that shows off the talents of its stars while inadvertently paying homage to “Waiting for Gidoux”.
Under Milk Wood (1972)
From the play by Dylan Thomas, “Under Milk Wood” examines not only a colorful array of individuals that pepper the town of Llareggub, a small but flourishing village of people who scheme, gossip, and co-habituate among one another in this village of oddballs and eccentrics. The well-acted piece closely resembles Thomas’ play in which often times we pan through the rooms over and over exploring these villagers. The film, set in different locales, doesn’t really have much of a focus, instead we explore each villager over and over and, surely, this is that experimental art film that movie-goers fear intently. It’s often times very whimsical with Richard Burton who pulls in a good performance as the narrator exposing the quirks and idiosyncrasies of the town folks through his serene storytelling.