Tag Archives: Adaptation

The Punisher (2004)

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Let those who enter this film remember, this is nothing like the film which was released in 1988. A film that was very loosely based on this comic book yet was only used as a cheap vehicle for the fading acting career of Dolph Lundgren. Don’t get the two mixed up; for that one was a mindless action cheese fest, this one is far more superior and intelligent. For those who have read my reviews and noticed my high reviews for the comic book movies, you’ll notice I’m a comic book fanatic. I read “The Punisher” comic books when I was a kid; they were very violent but they were damn good and fun to read, and I wasn’t surprised to discover that Marvel has scored another hit with this loyal adaptation that respects its audience and readers. Hear that DC Comics? Marvel respects its audience.

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The Guys (2002)

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guysWhere were you on 9/11? Everyone who was somehow connected with the horrible tragedy of September 11th asks that; especially people who were living in New York at the time. Where were you on 9/11? What were you doing at the time? I’ve been asked that ever since. Being a born and raised New Yorker, it’d be only natural the topic of 9/11 would pop up sooner or later, and instantly the conversation and everyone involved in it would shift into a sort of sad slumped shoulder mode and gaze down in sadness. 9/11 had a profound effect on everyone, especially people who lived in New York during that tumultuous summer. Since then, there’s been countless films, television specials, documentaries, books, memoirs, and even comic books and trading cards chronicling the tragedy (for a lack of a better word).

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Dreamcatcher (2003)

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dreamcather-movieWritten while King was recovering from his tragic accident in which he was hit by a car, “Dreamcatcher” follows many of the themes of his traumatic event, even featuring a main character being violently hit by a car in the middle of the road. It’s unfortunate for King, that “Dreamcatcher” is one of his many onscreen misses. “Dreamcatcher” is a formula gone horribly wrong with plot elements and a story so contrived that it’s hard to watch this while not thinking about other stuff this borrows from. Borrowing from John Carpenter’s variation of “The Thing”, four men go up to a cabin in the woods to meet after years of separation and must take on an alien entity that can possess bodies; and borrowing from “Invasion of the body snatchers”, many people are getting overtaken by an alien that uses spores to enter one’s body and take over them.

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The Passion of the Christ (2004)

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One can’t deny that “The Passion of the Christ” was a bulldozer of endless publicity, and endless debate, and controversy, and uproar and anger and discussion, and feuds and so on and so on. Regardless of which blockbuster that was spawned on the American audience, “The Passion of the Christ” was a highly hyped and much publicized film, because it deals with religion. Religion takes brothers and sisters and family and divides them, it angers people, motivates them, inspires them, and causes them to commit heinous acts in the name of it. Thus explaining the Crusades, the search for the holy grail, and the war we are experiencing now. Religious wars. Religion, regardless of how you cut it is important, if an unnecessary and somewhat defunct part of the human condition that should be removed. Religious films aren’t just films, they expose a part of the human soul called religion, something many people live by and swear by. For better and for worse.

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Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

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Twas once a skeptic to the quality of the film now am a believer that Disney can still trot out quality films. My Mea Culpa was to assume that even with such a cast as Geoffrey Rush and Johnny Depp aboard that this would be a stinker, but once more I was wrong. Gore Verbinski who did an excellent directing job in the recent thriller “The Ring” conveys the true spirit of swashbuckling films in “Pirates of the Caribbean”, a film that is very reminiscent of the old Errol Flynn Pirate epics that stunned audiences in the early 1900’s in its truest essence; the swashbuckling film genre is dead only recently being brought to the screen with the bland “Cutthroat Island” a film that had style but little substance.

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Dracula II: Ascension (2002)

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When a coroner brings in a charred body, he and a doctor named Elizabeth discover that the body is that of Dracula. When they get a mysterious offer from a buyer who will offer them millions of dollars for his body, they and a group of college students decide to take it upon themselves to discover what makes Dracula immortal while hoping to extract the evil from within the essence but when Dracula becomes too hot to handle, a mysterious knife wielding priest is on the hunt for them and will stop at nothing to take Dracula down.

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Hey Arnold! The Movie (2002)

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I’m a fan of the “Hey Arnold!” television animated series. I grew up with it. It’s one of Nickelodeon’s banner television shows about growing up. Sadly, what we see in “the movie,” is just a glorified three part TV special that’s mashed in to a movie. And it’s a god awful closer for such a great show. What the animated series thrived on was the large cast of magnetic characters from the neighborhood, but this fails to bring anything truly magnetic to audiences to watch. “Hey Arnold! The Movie” is a half-assed effort that does no justice all around to a truly entertaining cartoon. What many of the executives at Nickelodeon do with their products when making them into feature films is completely take away what made the cartoon so likable to begin with.

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