There’s a problem I have with this movie that I think the filmmakers over at Jerry Bruckheimer’s company can never fix: Keeping this movie from being made. If I could turn back time and prevent this disaster, it would make my life a lot more complete. Folks, this is probably one of the worst films I have ever seen in years, a travesty of filmmaking that drags on for two hours like Chinese water torture and never eases up. The screenplay by Jason Richman and Michael Browning is ridiculous because we have a spy, who is good, he dies, and what? You mean he has a twin brother? How convenient.
Category Archives: Movie Reviews
Moonlight Mile (2002)
“The truth is hard. Sometimes it looks so wrong, y’ know. The color’s off, the style’s wrong, but I guess…I guess it’s where the good ones live.” That quote pretty much sums the movie’s entire premise because the parents, Jojo and Ben are desperately holding onto their daughter Diana’s memory and prefer to hold onto an illusion of their happy life rather than ever seeing the truth which is right there in their faces. Why do they do that? Maybe it’s because they hope to have some happiness after their daughter’s deaths and can’t face the stark truth before them. Joe is the soon to be son in law who lives with his in-laws and constantly has dreams with his ex haunting him, telling him to “Just say it”. What “It” is, the parents Jojo and Ben know, though they prefer to turn their heads.
The Sweetest Thing (2002)
The only reason I decided to watch this film was Cameron Diaz, because of the fact that every movie she’s in, she plays a likeable character. She’s likeable even in the putrid “Charlie’s Angels”. So, in the movie her character is very loveable and charming while being sexy and seductive. The rest of the supporting cast is very good and enjoyable characters; especially Selma Blair who, though under-used, is a very funny and quirky character. The problem with this is that, the movie plays out into a row of constant painfully unfunny and unrelated comedy skits starring all the characters.
28 Days Later (2003)
Occasionally within the throes of watered down horror movies, a director comes along and decides to completely re-write the way horror is done. Danny Boyle is one of those people who will undoubtedly change horror movies. The movie constantly changes into pastels of moods within its canvas setting constantly going from light moods, ala the shopping scene, instantly cranking up the tension. He can leave us smiling with delight and in a split second leave us biting our nails and cringing in our seats. Boyles relies a lot on isolation to scare us, showing massively long scenes of lonely landscapes forcing us to feel even more terror and insecurity.
After animal rights terrorists invade a science lab, they begin breaking monkey’s free from their cages despite the frantic warnings from a scientist and are violently attacked by the apes that tear them apart and infect them. 28 days later, a man awakes from a coma in a hospital bed to discover a desolate and trashed hospital before him. He begins to inspect the marvel before him as the entire city of Britain is empty with no one in sight. He stumbles upon survivors that save him and tell him a virus has broken free on the general population and mankind as he knows it ceases to exist. The results of the virus are the infected. People that growl with beaming red eyes that kill anything in their path and infect others by tearing them apart or vomiting blood on them. It only takes twenty seconds to become one, so they waste no time disposing of their friends.
They stumble upon father and daughter survivors who decide to travel a military base where they supposedly have everything under control, but what they will find is not what they will expect. Boyle dares to break the mold of the horror genre by masterfully giving us a range of moods and colors, and terrifying sequences non-stop. Writers Boyle and Garland actually gives us characters we can care about and the director helps us by exploring the psychological effects this horror is having on them. We see Jim, the coma patient, have dreams that he is alone and deserted; we can see the desperation within the father’s eyes, and the torment in the daughter’s. These are actually characters that we feel bad for and within a split second Boyle takes them away from us. Characters in this movie come and go and Boyle snatches them without hesitation. Boyle often drops the characters off in small cramped dark places making the audience even more nervous and more anxious as we know terror is looming but we can do nothing about it.
The infected are horrifying as they stare with beaming red eyes and bloody faces and growl aloud; they can run and jump and dash and never stop. While “28 Days Later” is horror first and foremost it’s also more of a commentary on humanity and how we never really learn from our mistakes. We watch four people forced to live and exist in a world without order, a world with carnage, a world not very different from ours. This forces them act upon themselves and begs the questions: In a world without order, how do you achieve it? Who decides what life should be like, and is it all ultimately futile? This shows what humans do when there’s no structure or basis for order and basically take it upon themselves to do it with unsuccessful results. Danny Boyle is a genius director and might as well have re-invented the horror genre. Bravo Mr. Boyle, bravo.
Undisputed (2002)
From the beginning I could tell this would be a stinker purely from the way the movie derives from true life events. The character “Iceman” could purely be based on Mike Tyson alone, but fails where it has a chance to invoke some truly witty social commentary. Ving Rhames tries his hardest to look conniving and arrogant but most of the time comes off as laughable and outrageous looking like a hokey but smarter Mike Tyson imitation. Wesley Snipes also attempts to pull off the gruff silent hero persona with skills, but fails as well coming off as a mere caricature with no depth to him at all. The movie has a primary problem that plagues this: It has no focus. I wasn’t sure if this movie had any main character to begin with, because the movie doesn’t focus on any of the characters in particular.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
After “Terminator 2,” they were able to prevent Judgment Day but John still feels uncertain to his future. Now, a brand new sleek, tough, and advanced killing machine known as T-X has landed on Earth in the form of a seductive woman and is out to kill twenty people who will help with the rebellion. The Terminator lands on Earth as well and must protect John and a new character Kate Brewster a veterinarian who will play a role in the war. Now, they must travel to Skynet and prevent the machines from rising while they clash with T-X. Can they stop the war? Or is it all inevitable?
FearDotCom (2002)
The problem with this film is that it’s an evident rip-off or to put it nicely, “homage” to the Japanese cult horror film “The Ring.’ The plot is simple and straight to the point: bad website cursed, bad website kill, people who look at site die, the end. I was very intrigued to watch this, because I am anxiously awaiting “The Ring” and haven’t seen it, yet, so I figured this movie would be the next best thing… boy, was I dead wrong, dead, dead wrong.