I have to say director Steve Beck’s treatment “Thirteen Ghosts” is not as bad as everyone says it is. Every movie buff knows that this is a remake of the cult-classic directed by famous director William Castle. I found this to be a very good horror flick and a fun ghost thriller. The premise and concept of the movie are basically the same. The family is trapped in a big house with ghosts you can only see with special glasses. There are different entities and personalities for each ghost, my favorite would have to be the Juggernaut.
Tag Archives: Action
John Carpenter's Vampires (1998)
So, yes, “Vampires” didn’t exactly turn out to be everything I’d hoped, and perhaps I was expecting too much from John Carpenter, and I admit to being a bit disappointed, but all the while “Vampires” while not one of Carpenter’s best, ends up becoming a fun exploration and view into Carpenter’s experimenting with the vampire genre. Very loosely based on the book “Vampire$” (sans John Carpenter moniker), the movie you see here was looked down upon by many fans of the book which happened to have a lot of satire, and happened to be more in the vein of “Scream” as in not taking itself too seriously, while its commentary on many social dilemmas and basic morals on good and evil, greed and its connections to morals, and this is the perfect example of what the Hollywood machine does to a good book, but it’s not to say this isn’t a good movie.
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001)
In the supposedly last installment of the Jay and Silent Bob series, we meet Jay and Silent bob, two invalids who hang outside a convenience store doing basically nothing. When a hit comic “Bluntman and Chronic” based on their exploits is being made into a Hollywood movie, they’re not going to see a cent of royalties, so they decide to go to Hollywood to stop the film from being made. This is directed by famed cult comic book writer Kevin Smith who has based practically his entire Hollywood career on these two characters alone.
Ocean’s Eleven (2001)
Steven Soderbergh directs an all-star cast in this stylish and dazzling remake of the “Rat Pack” cult fav. In the movie, George Clooney takes over for Frank Sinatra and plays Daniel Ocean, an ex-con who just got out of the slammer; he reunites with his old friend Rusty, a card shark. Now, they attempting a huge casino robbery at the risk of being busted by Casino mob boss/guru Terry Benedict. Danny will assemble eleven of the most skillful and greatest criminals and corrupt the biggest casino and robbery in history. This is an excellent and (dare I say) superior remake to the classic movie of same name. We’ll start with Soderbergh’s directing style. Soderbergh has proven he is a film maker of many flavors in his directing power when directing movies.
Spider-Man (2002)
“With Great power, comes great responsibility.” – Uncle Ben
Superhero and American icon, Spider-man is born finally in the new box-office smash movie directed by acclaimed and cult director Sam Raimi (Evil Dead). In case you don’t know the famous story, Peter Parker, a geeky photographer at his school who is constantly bullied and has eyes for the neighborhood good girl Mary Jane, is bitten by a hybrid radioactive spider on a field trip to a science lab. The next day, the effects make him a superhuman giving him all sorts of spider powers. Meanwhile, a new evil is born. Multi-millionaire, Norman Osborne, while trying to explore a new experiment, gets hit with a split personality and becomes insane with power. Now Spider-man must stop this new menace before the Green Goblin hurts the people Peter holds so dear.
The Fast and the Furious (2001)
“The Fast and the Furious” is a fun movie. The action and fast hot rods will get any viewer pumped up with very high adrenaline action scenes that are all excellent if a little farfetched. We get to see a lot of cool stunts performed with the great looking hot rods and they never fail to deliver with the engrossing hot rod action. One technique in this movie that I did enjoy was the way whenever a hot rod would rev up, we’d zoom through its engines to see it start. It was an unconventional plot element to bring us in to the moment, but very cool.
That said, “The Fast and the Furious” is a virtual “Point Break” Xerox copy replacing surfing with racing. We know the cop is going to fall in love with the girl, we know he’s going to get close to the leader of the gang, we know he’s going to find out, and we know in the end he’s going to let the leader get away. Star Paul Walker is also pretty stiff in his turn here. There’s also Vin Diesel who despite being a bit over the top at times is at least an intriguing villain and potential anti-hero. Diesel as character Dom is the coolest character in the entire film, and he steals a lot of scenes from co-star Walker.
Michelle Rodriguez who’s grossly underused but still manages to get her few moments in to the action and fights, and there’s Jordana Brewster who garners a shockingly compelling sub-plot with Diesel as his sister and potential love interest for Walker’s character. While I wasn’t terribly surprised or kept on the edge of my seat, “The Fast and the Furious” is at least good action fodder with it unabashed silliness at the surface of every racing scene and bit of dialogue. It’s a cheesy movie, but it’s a fun cheesy movie. Though flawed, “The Fast and the Furious” is a fun, dumb, action-packed piece of B grade genre fun.
A Knight's Tale (2001)
Man, it really pisses me off when such a movie with such heart has tons of flaws to it. First off, the beginning of the movie threw me off so much. I mean, classic rock in medieval times? While two knights joust, we see the crowd of peasants and noblemen pounding their fists on the wooden banisters to the beat of Queens “We Will Rock you.” Am I missing something?