What a piece of dog shit. This has to be the cheapest, most thrown together movie I have seen in a very long time. It's like crap sandwich week around here. If you like garbage, you're going to love this rotten movie.
Della (Kim Basinger) is a housewife. It's Christmas Eve and after her asshole husband comes home, commits some domestic violence, she goes to the mall to buy wrapping paper. The kids are in bed so either the kids go to bed at six o'clock or she lives near the only mall that stays open all night on Christmas Eve. She gets harassed by a group of thugs led by Creepy Witness Amish kid Lucas Haas, leading to them murdering a rent-a-cop before her eyes. She gets chased to the trashiest sub division under construction I have ever seen. There is just shit lying around everywhere. OSHA would have a field day in this place. She takes a red metal tool box with her and it's a fight for her life, though most of the film ends up in the woods. Blah, blah, blah.
I'm just going to list the problems with this movie. Just a list of shit I noticed while viewing it.
1) This is the most ethnically diverse gang I've ever seen. You have the Hispanic guy, the Asian guy, the Black guy, and the Amish Kid. Does Affirmative Action count for street toughs?
2) The fact that said group of thugs are more like The Three Stooges than The Warriors. There is one scene where one of them falls and rolls like a damn bowling ball into the others that follow. I shit you not. We also can't forget that wonderful scene where one of them says "Let's split up." and they all go into the same fucking house! And who can forget how the first thug bites the bullet in this thing.
3) In the woods, why does Della keep following the flashlight? Wouldn't you go the other damn way? How many times does she have to stop and eavesdrop on what's going on? She's not Rambo or MacGyver. Run the other damn direction Vicki Vale.
4) Dead cell phone battery=cheap screenplay ploy on eliminating technology that would have ended most thrillers made before 1995 end in 20 minutes.
5) Finally, I'm going to talk about the damn tool box. That red metal toolbox she feels the need to cart around with her throughout the film. Now I own two tool boxes just like Della's. I'm hear to tell you that they are the loudest fucking things on the planet, especially when someone is trying to kill you. You look at them funny and they make banging noises from the tools inside. I challenge anyone to go for a run through the woods with one of these sons of bitches and try to hide from some sadistic guys wanting your head on a pole. It can't be done.And there can't be many tools in it either because she flings it around like it's her purse.
Add in the crap acting, direction, and everything else you get a waste of 90 minutes. It's a good movie to make comments during, but other than that it's shit. Dog shit.
Truman Capote was sent to Kansas to write an article about the senseless murder of a family in their farm house in the middle of the night. What he brought back was the timeless novel In Cold Blood, telling that story and the stories of the two young men that were going to the gallows for that crime.
I've never read the source material, but I've seen both adaptations of Capote actually researching the novel (Capote with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Infamous with Toby Jones). Both docudramas are powerful pieces in their own right, but it's this film that is a masterpiece. It stars Robert Blake as Perry and Scott Wilson as Dick. These guys have both been to prison, each of them with dreams to follow. The thing about dreams is they need working capital, like a business. So in the dead of the night they follow a prison tale of a farmer and his safe, driving to the rural Kansas home. The next morning the family is dead. No safe. No money. No dreams.
We continue to follow the pair as the haphazardly make their way to Mexico for a little bit, but they come back because those dreams are so damn good. The inevitable happens. They make the mistake and Lady Justice takes over.
Before this film there were movies that followed the antagonists point of view, but In Cold Blood makes you sympathize with these two young murderers or in the very least Perry. Here's two men that slaughtered an entire family in their own home and we feel pity for them. They're lifetime losers and this was where the road they shared was heading for a long, long time. They were ticking time bombs. They were two chemicals that mixed together and tragedy followed.
The movie is filmed as bleakly as the characters it shows us. Black and white in 1967 was very rare, but for this film it works for an added effect that would later be used by Scorsese in raging Bull and Spielberg in Schindler's List.There is no color because this life is colorless. There are no bright spots. Darkness is at the end of that tunnel, not that great light that everyone is talking about. This is a very beautiful film from director Richard Brooks.
This is one of those wonderful gems from the late 1960's that teetered between the old Hollywood and the new. This was before the ratings system, so hearing the word "bullshit" was an awe inspiring experience (this is the first Hollywood production that used it). In Cold Blood is a groundbreaking film that broke new ground and even though it didn't quite open the door for those great films of the 1970's we can say that it turned the latched and cracked it open a bit. This is one of the great films of the '60's.
I am so sick of these fucking ensemble films. It was fresh and new in the '90's. Well here's a damn news flash: the '90's were ten years ago. Let's try to do something different or at least use a different structure. Instead we get a handful of people whose stories intersect each other at various times and places. I'm not complaining about that. I'm pissed because it's used to try to make a movie better than it actually is, which is the case with Boogie Woogie. Here's the plot: Christopher Lee owns a painting called the Boogie Woogie. Everyone wants to buy it in one way or another. All of those other people screw each other, literally or otherwise. That's the extent of this picture. Screwing. Everyone comes out screwed. The characters and the audiences. I spent a dollar and forty cents on this garbage and feel shafted myself.
I'm not going to go over the cast because I just don't want to. Let's just say that they are too good to be in crap like this. It's becoming more and more common for high end Hollywood stars to do garbage by third rate studios in between big budget movies that have actually been nurtured. I'm not defending Hollywood, but let's face it.Going through reviews the low end films have been just as bad as the Hollywood product. Boogie Woogie follows in that trend. It's a movie about art that tries to be provocative, but it's not. It's just a slow, boring process where we run a title sequence, people act badly with bad dialogue and plot points, finally ending with the end credits and you can finally turn it off.
I try to avoid turning anything off. I will do myself by falling asleep, but that doesn't count. I'm talking about getting up and turning off the TV or leaving a theater. I can't do it. There's a movie sitting in my Blu ray right now that I said was a piece of shit a third of the way in, yet I'll probably finish it because I just have to know how bad this is going to be. It's like being a masochist.
Sorry for going off on a tangent. Boogie Woogie is crap. You'll need a scorecard for the infidelity. You'll need a drink when it's over. You'll wonder how much bullshit was shoveled for so many good actors to be in a piece of shit like this.
Just Wright is a mess of a romantic comedy where the biggest star in the NBA Scott McKnight (Common) ends up inadvertently meeting physical therapist Leslie Wright (Queen Latifah) leading to McKnight to fall in love with... Wrights God-sister Morgan (Paula Patton). They are in love and get engaged. Then it hits. Scott's knee is screwed. He's laid up and Leslie becomes his physical therapist while Morgan dumps him because she really wants to land a superstar NBA player. I don't need to continue the rest of the plot because the rest of the film is cliche central.
Just Wright tries to be more than a romantic comedy by weighing it heavily with the basketball plot. I think they figured that guys would scream "Hey! It's Marv Albert!" when he's on screen (of course I thought "Hey, there's the guy that bites hookers!") It fails unless you're a hardcore NBA fan. Otherwise it opens well enough and then falls into the standard fold of fall in love, misunderstanding, redemption. You've seen it all before and you'll see it again.
This year has been full of those movies with hunked out dudes trying to save sacred objects and stop creatures of the gods. Percy Jackson, Clash of the Titans, and now Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, a movie that is surprisingly better than these other two AND it is adapted from a video game, which is the kiss of death in the film world.
Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal) is an orphan who is adopted into the royal family and, as time passes, becomes a major warrior in the Persian army. He ends up being accused of murdering the king, who was the father he never had while learning the powers of a magical, time traveling dagger and the beautiful keeper of said dagger (Gemma Arterton). The goal is to redeem his name to his brothers and uncle and figuring out this royal conspiracy.
I know, I know. By hearing the plot the movie sounds like B-Grade trash, but it actually works very well on the screen. Prince of Persia doesn't fall into that typical video game adaptation cliche of looking like the video game. I'm sure there are some homage shots, but they don't glare out at you like other films (Doom) that feel the need to look like something at an arcade. Do they still have arcades other than Chuck E. Cheese?
The acting isn't bad and when you realize that Ben Kingsley is in this you're amazed out how everyone else can at least keep up. The effects are well done, yet they don't over power the film except during the end when it's almost like a hard drive exploding on the screen. It's a techno mess trying to figure out what the hell is going on. This is really the only problem with the film is the ending. It gets a bit messy.
It's a nice action/adventure piece that isn't as bloated as the other two films that I mentioned earlier. It has a simple plot, simply shot, and it works more than those films. It's a nice popcorn flick that doesn't try to be an overblown piece.
Wow. I was stunned watching this movie. It was mesmerized. I was in awe. How in the hell can a studio make a film that is sort of a spin off to a dead franchise, yet has nothing to do with the rebooted franchise. That's the first major problem with this film. How can you do a film featuring a Batman villain without Batman? You can't. It will fail every time.
The other major problem is the film is crap. I'm talking legendary crap. From 2004 on people have said "I'm going to go take a Catwoman!" when going to the bathroom to defecate. The plot is silly as hell with Catwoman (Halle Berry) being resurrected by cats after being murdered by a poor man's Bond villain (Sharon Stone) who runs an evil cosmetics company.
Yes, I said evil cosmetics company. Shit. Pure shit.
So she's Catwoman. Revenge. The end. I have never seen such putrid garbage. Shot like a crap MTV video with seizure like qualities, there is no direction in this film. Just a bunch of cuts with crappy acting and even crappier characters. This film is such a waste of time, money, neurons, anything that went into this film was a waste. Somewhere in this world someone died in a car accident going to see Catwoman and that is the worst fucking tragedy in the world. No, there is another tragedy. Dying on the way home from seeing Catwoman.
