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?
Tag Archives: Adventure
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.
New York Minute (2004)
Why anyone would still find the Olsen Twins even remotely appealing is still beyond me, unless you find spoiled, rotten, rich girls appealing, then perhaps they’re for you. Luckily, “New York Minute” was a flop and I had a good laugh, but let’s face it, they laughed all the way to the bank. It’s clear judging by the movie that the Olsen’s have zero talent, and they prove just because you can buy yourself into a movie doesn’t mean you should be in one. Nonetheless, this is not a movie to be taken seriously even by someone as uptight about movies as me, but as harmless as this tries to be, you can’t also escape the fact this is a basic rip-off of “Ferris Bueller”, a much much better movie with an actual believable premise, where as this is basically driven on the vanity of the Olsen twins.
Kaena: The Prophecy (2003)
Ultimately, I wanted to like this movie. I really, really wanted to love it, on the contrary, but damn it, I just couldn’t, because Within twenty minutes of the movie I had this very grim sour look on my face and I was just so disappointed. Judging by the trailer and pictures from Entertainment Weekly I thought this would be great, I love fantasy, I love the genre of it, but this just wasn’t anything good. Forgettable, and just plain bleak, too bleak for a child’s cartoon. Not even teenage boys are going to like this, and the reason is it’s just so damn confusing.
Miracle (2004)
It’s one of the most amazing stories in sports, the stuff that legends are made of, and it’s a riveting underdog tale whether you’re sports fan or not. The king was dead, there was an oil crisis and the nation was basically in turmoil, until the story of this one Olympic hockey team took the world by storm and gave the nation just a little hope that is sorely was in need of. I’m what people call “Not a sports fan” (made that up myself), so it’s never usually on my list of things to do when sports movies come out, but for “Miracle” I was intrigued. Simply for the fact that this wasn’t just a sports story, it was an underdog tale, a tale of hope in a time without it, and a tale of people coming together to take on their enemy on the ice.
AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004)
This is it, the two bad asses of science fiction cinema finally clash. Fans have been waiting years for the chance where we’d see them finally go head to head, and we get… this. In the right hands, with the right people, “Alien vs. Predator” had the potential to be a balls to the wall action packed epic, and that’s what’s sad. Anderson is not a good writer, decent director, but no good as a screenwriter. There’s not a lot of set up until we get to the actual plot at hand. Anderson surely wastes no time in taking us to what is the actual point of the movie. But it wouldn’t have hurt to spend time with the characters before we got into the action, which would have made us care more for these people who were basically trade offs. I didn’t really care who died or who lived because there’s nothing for us to care about in this movie.
The Incredibles (2004)
While comic book movies are shooting to audiences in theaters at an almost rapid fire pace, very rarely does the film medium examine the person behind the superhero, the true human and “The Incredibles” does that. Few films such as the underrated “Unbreakable”, “Spider-Man 2” and “The Hulk” have taken the time to examine the psyche and basic mundane aspects of being a superhero and living with the persona as a human too. As a comic book geek since childhood I always relish the chance to catch my superheroes on the big screen despite the fact that rarely is the transference ever satisfying, but few films create their own heroes and then work from the ground up, and instead of focusing on the superhero aspect and then the human, films such as Shyamalan’s “Unbreakable” and this, work on focusing on the humanity and then the hero which is more secondary.