Over the past two years, “Donnie Darko” has slowly managed to achieve an underground cult status among movie lovers and horror lovers, so when I was able to grab hold of this, I had to check it out. Jake Gyllenhaal, independent actor for critically acclaimed films such as “Moonlight Mile”, and “The Good Girl” stars as the anti-social delusional boy known as “Donnie Darko”. Instantly, the movie begins with a mystery: we see Darko lying along a road looking out upon the city and so forth a voice tells the prophecy to him about the end of the world occurring in 28 days. Throughout the entire film, a demonic spirits in the form of a rabbit begins telling him these omens, and thought Donnie struggles to fight it, can’t escape the messages.
Tag Archives: Crime
Road to Perdition (2002) (DVD)
Adapted from the graphic novel and based on a true story of the Sullivan family in the early thirties who are all tight knit with a rich old man named John Rooney whose known Mike Sullivan, the head of the Sullivan family since he was a child and raised him. Mike’s kids Peter and Michael (Tyler Hoechlin) soon become curious of Mike’s job. One night, young Michael follows his father on one of his “missions” and learns the gruesome secret of his job. In an attempt to protect his son from being hunted by a vicious assassin named McGuire, he sets out on the road with his son to search for salvation and dodge death.
Stealing Harvard (2002)
Sure, this is a lame comedy, and surprisingly, I wanted to see this because I’m a big fan of Jason Lee. The movie is so silly and inept it’s pretty enjoyable. It’s not hard to see that much of the dialogue in the movie is improvised, especially by “comedian” Tom Green who looks like he made up his entire monologues. At one point he throws a paper ball into a car at a girl, and you can tell she wasn’t expecting it. Tom Green manages to be funny in some very rare parts of the movie and had me chuckling occasionally. Jason Lee whose starred in great films like “Dogma” and “Almost Famous” is a pretty good straight man in the film and just stands around reacting to Tom Green’s foolishness.
Red Dragon (2002)
I was very skeptical as to whether this would work; first off I really enjoyed the first film and the second film was completely violent and senseless, but inevitably, I was surprised with the end-result. To any one who has thoroughly reviewed this website and inspected its contents, I am a big fan of Edward Norton. He is a great asset to this trilogy and really manages to absorb his role. His character is naive and ultimately shy in the beginning and manages to evolve into a tougher and cooler person by the climax. I assumed he would end up being just a Clarise Starling character clone, but I was glad because he ended up being a much better antagonist towards Lecter. I enjoyed the way he had a special ability to see things on a crime scene but the writer’s never truly put a lot of emphasis on it and it never truly became the basis for his character which made him a lot more interesting.
The New Guy (2002)
Dizzy Harrison (D.J. Qualls) is an unpopular geek at Rock Creek High School and after an embarrassing accident with an erection, he decides to transfer schools but makes an oath to be a new man at his new school. He meets Luther (Eddie Griffith) a convict in a prison who decides to help him and teach him how to be cool and intimidate people, but can he pull it off when Rocky Creek students recognize him? “The New Guy” has barely any chuckles in it and has a ton of moments when you’re supposed to suspend logic and common sense. Why the character Dizzy would equate being a convict with popularity is beyond me.
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.
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.