The premise to “Man-Thing” is nonsensical and is mostly comprised of bits of many different subplots that never add up to one fluid plot in a movie. There’s industrialists digging for oil in a swamp somewhere in the South and people are being killed off in the mysterious swamp. A new sheriff comes on-board and begins investigating the murders and discovers an evil force is offing the local residents… and there’s an Indian thrown around the movie somewhere, who knows? What they did drop the ball on was the plot which I found often fascinating.
Category Archives: Movie Reviews
Envy (2004)
Here’s my pitch for a product: A spray that causes really bad movies to vaporize into air. The first victim I’d choose for the spray would be “Envy”. This is a heaping helping pile of excrement. “Envy” is purely and utterly awful and I just don’t know where a plot with such potential, and a cast of great actors could have possibly taken a turn for the worst. Now, if I’m not mistaken, this is a comedy… isn’t it? Or at least it was supposed to be. Well there were Jack Black, Ben Stiller, and Amy Poehler, and yet I didn’t laugh once.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
If you could wipe a tragic event from your life completely from your memory, would you? If you could wipe clean a tragic, abusive, or damaging relationship with someone clean from your mind, would you? If you, I, anyone had the chance, would we? I know I would, but the tragic picture painted here by the talented Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman. While I just did not like the duo’s previous outing and my first introduction in to their abilities “Human Nature”, I did manage to find a lot to like in films like “Adaptation.,” and “Being John Malkovich.” Regardless, “Eternal Sunshine” might seem like a high concept confusing movie for the casual movie-goer who doesn’t want to think, but open your mind and watch this heartbreaking, often sad, and very surreal love story that will surely manage to play on many viewer’s vulnerabilities.
Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004)
What I really liked about this movie is it managed to take a clever satirical horror film with a twist and add some lore and depth to it. Whether or not “Ginger Snaps” needed to progress beyond the first movie is open for argument, but this film does manage to add some creative and some times engrossing lore to the whole “ginger snaps” story with a similar tale being told in the past century, and it kept me interested the whole way through until the dynamite conclusion. Two sisters traveling abroad the Canadian country side, Ginger and Bridgette, travel through the forest horseback and get lost. When Bridgette accidentally gets caught in a bear trap, Ginger goes to look for help but they’re discovered by a Native American hunter and taken to a local fortress where they’re taken in by a group of soldiers awaiting orders and supplies.
Pieces of April (2003)
This is not your conventional holiday film. It doesn’t exploit emotions for the sake of drawing tears from the audience, nor does it shove the whole holiday theme down our throats, this is an independent film with a holiday theme that tends to focus more on the actual character within the general theme of the holidays. What’s shown is an array of colorful and somewhat eccentric character dealt into an engrossing story of family and values. If you’re sick and tired of the usual holiday fare, check this out. It’s a great story about family and holidays. “Pieces of April” we learn is symbolic of the main character April’s attempts at making amends with her family. It’s alluded that she was a troubled girl so, not only does the story become a quest for April to finish her meal, but it becomes a quest to prove to her family that she’s reformed.
Blade: Trinity (2004)
This review is being written at a good time for me, not only because I dug the last two Blade films, but because of the lawsuit Wesley Snipes has just waged on the studios about this movie. Snipes is a known diva, if you’ve read the past issues of “Fangoria” and “Starlog”, though his co-stars and director Goyer don’t openly admit it, Snipes is known for being a diva, and now he seeks retribution for a movie he claims he didn’t want to make, for starring along side people he didn’t want to star with being directed by a director who he says was forced on him. Regardless, I didn’t think “Blade 3” would live up to the first two. People often say there’s hardly any sequels that are as good as the first film, but I have something better for you. How many second sequels are better than the first film?
Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi) (2001)
“Spirited Away” has had the unfortunate distinction of being compared to “Alice in Wonderland”, and while they bear similarities in themes, characters, and oddities, but Miyazaki’s animated tale is highly superior. Miyazaki takes us into an incredible land of creatures, landscapes and spooky villains, along the injecting truly heartfelt emotions, and thematic undertones. Miyazaki’s animation and storytelling bear an aspect sorely missing in American animated films, which heart, and true sincerity. Chihiro and her parents are on the way to their new home, and while driving they stumble upon a weird tunnel. Curious, they enter the tunnel and end up in a magical field and begin journeying into a village. But when Chihiro discovers her parents have been turned into pigs, she finds that there may be no going back where came from.