Reviews by shawn tomorrow

this films shows the story of a murder in a number of individual segments. each segment being about the people who are involved in the story in one way or another. the coroner, the woman who finds the body, the wife of the killer, the dead girl herself, etc. the story is built in this way. although, and i do have to say it because its why i wouldn't say this is a great movie, the movie builds to a crescendo but doesn't not tie everything together nor give much of a reason why we see some parts of the story. sure it doesn't have to but still it leaves me at least questioning the purpose of some things other than to just be shocking or strange.

take the segment about the woman who finds the body; its called "the strangers". a woman walking in a field finds a body of a woman. she steals her necklace and then goes back home to her ailing mother for whom she cares for. calls the police and news reporters show up too. now her mother, who is crazy mean, is pissed that people are on her property. the woman is also being watched/noticed everywhere she goes in town. so a creepy stockboy/checker at the market sees her askes her out presumably to talk about the dead girl which leads to the woman and her mother fighting later that night when shes getting ready to go out with him. now as if this hasn't gotten far enough away from the subject of the dead girl (and no the stockboy has exactly nothing more to do with her story), the date goes on as some fucked up fantasy of bondage and consensual rape. why? hell if i know, it has nothing to do with anything else in the film.

the segment on the killer's wife ends with her protecting the man by burning evidence. in the end the case is left unsolved. in fact, the last segment is about the dead girl and it ends with her in the car with the killer.

its an interesting story and its very well done. i simply take issue with some of the excess in that it doesn't add to the story. frankly its another movie where i begin to dislike almost everyone in it. and am left to write my own end story for these characters because otherwise they're left hanging.

watch but expect a bit of disappointment. there is nothing redeeming about this movie. maybe i felt there should be.

(7/10)

nice and of course a bit grotesque.

a team of 'scientists' ecologist whatever studying polar bears and their declining habitat discover a woolly mammoth in a melting glacier. a polar bear that was eating on it is tranquilized but then dies. then members of the team start to get sick. and it starts to get ugly. by the time a group of students and the lead team members daughter make it to the lab things have gone horribly wrong. almost everyone is dead and worse...now they are getting infected.

you can imagine most of what is going to happen, however the film continues to hold your attention. its nothing grand and nothing over the top in its attempt to gross out nor shock. it has it moments but its not a gorefest. its actually kind've understated. the film focuses on the struggle of these people to get ahead of the problems and where they fail to do so. it spends most of its time developing the characters. and along the way we get some mentions of politics and problems with ecology. the big question all along is 'how do we convince people that humans are a problems; how do we stop their capacity to destroy the earth'. nothing that really beats you over the head, but raises the questions and questions the rationality of eco-terrorism.

in the end its not an amazing movie, but it is good and i appreciate that it didn't overdo anything. in this day and age its no surprise that without a bludgeoning message this movie has been sort've ill received. i, on the other hand, found it interesting and just the right amount at every step.

good film.

(7/10)

a nicely done story that keeps you guessing.

i won't give it all away...
a marshal comes to an island were the worst of the worst of mental patients are being "treated" and you begin to learn the real story of why the marshal came here...and then the drugs kick in and things get really surreal crazy. you'll begin to wonder what the hell is going on and then wonder what the real story is, who's who, and then it comes down to the final story...the real.

so you may guess what the basic story will be but its a good twisting turning trip that keeps making you watch and wonder and guess again. really for this type of movie its written pretty damn well.

my only real complaint about the film (well i thought dicaprio was unsuited to the marshal role...but that turns out to be interesting) was that the film is generally over processed. sometimes heavy handed processing can help a film and in this it could have added a dimension of surreal 'crazy' to it all but it fails to do so. the overprocessing is simply over done. its not suited to the film in the end and is a little garish honestly. but thats my only complaint...otherwise it was good entertainment.

(8/10)

'dumb' pretty much sums this up.

this is written by morons. clearly the perverted fantasy of a small boy-man. give me a break.

there is a little interesting in the concept; a group of wild savage kids are cavemen like cannibals in a modern world. but everything else about this movie sucks.

the acting is sub-par but i can forgive that for they had nothing to work with. the directing is sub-par albeit somewhat typical. the camera work is ok at best. the fucking writing is pure crap. add to that shoddy editing and what you end up with is actors delivering lines that are all script and no reality in awkward timing.

the constant sex and fetish moments, and references to it, in this is just masturbatory. grow up people. this is below amateur stuff.

i'd go into detail but its not really worth it.

the most laughably ironic part about this dvd is that the special features include the fucking script as printable. why? why would anyone want to read that? its not included in any of the other movies from the series that i know of and its a rarity to find that in any dvd. why on this movie? so we can see how laughably bad it is? i wouldn't waste the paper.


the worst of the series that i've seen...i've seen most of them and i doubt any other will match how bad this is.

i'll give it this: the gore is good and convincing. watch it without the sound/subtitles (it'd be better. the music isn't good either)

(2/10)

sigh.

i thought this film was 3D and i was missing something because i'm watching it in 2D now. but in fact it was never 3D. i'm sure at some point it'll get translated for that if the technology stays around.

and it would probably be worth watching then. hell, i'm sure a lot of people would like this despite.

for my 2 cents: i hated too much about this movie to get into it. for me its a case of watching a script writer and an actor try to convince me that they have a clue about something that i know intimately. and they fail miserably at it. its absolutely clear these people know almost nothing about photography or the art world and its just annoying. i can make some leaps of faith...their understanding of new york is simpleton at best. although i can buy that they're trying to create a similarity rather than a physical reality. but honestly there are too many dumb mistakes of all sorts to buy into this.

for instance: scene friggin' one...man (from his perspective mostly) on the subway gets up looks to the front of the car, begins walking that way and slips on a massive pool of blood that he didn't bother to see. then gets up and slips around a bunch....and so forth... ok so right away an obvious error...and no its not the fact that he didn't see the giant pool of blood (i'll give them this as possible) nor that this subway car is soo full of blood theres no possible way of cleaning it so people wouldn't notice (that is more or less explained later in the movie); its this: when the guy looks to the front of the car he sees a normal subway car front, and right after he gets up from falling he sees it again and theres a huge spattered streak of blood all over it that wasn't there a few seconds ago. how'd it get there? well we weren't suppose to notice it a first so they just filmed it without. f**k off! do they really think we wouldn't notice?....i noticed immediately. its not that hard to do this in a number of different ways...this was just plain lazy. and thats the very first scene.

i won't even get started on the horrible parody of photography and the 'art scene'. that was just so freakin' off it wasn't even comic book worthy.

the 'oh my god, everything is so crazy. i figured out this crime and its like a conspiracy' moment in this film is weak...very weak...acting/directing. shameful laziness.

the filming has some interesting style but is so completely heavily dependent on cg effects that at times it seems more like a cartoon than a movie. not just overdone but way over overdone.

and then the throwback to the 80's 'shock you' 'wtf?' ending was....silly frankly.

this could've been good. and if your in the mood for a mindless slasher maybe it still is, but for me there were simply too many problems. too many things that made me annoyed by this film.

i read somewhere (when i was looking for info on whether this was supposed to be 3D) that the budget on this was $15 million and its only made $75,000 or so. its not that bad really. there shouldn't have been that much spent on it, but still i've seen worse.

i don't know. i guess watch it but don't expect to love it or even like it.

good potential in this movie mostly ruined by amateur filmmaking.
i'm guessing this is an early effort by the people involved here...and lets give them some credit if thats the case. there is, in fact, a lot of good in this movie.

mostly its the story which seems, at least, to be a fresh new idea. maybe its not but it does seem like it. a couple honeymoons in china where the groom was born, he speaks a little of the language but they have help from a guide. driving to the groom's family home the driver becomes 'lost'. he enters a town to 'ask for directions' but then fails to come back. they couple goes looking for him, finds a closed town and animal sacrifices everywhere. they take the car and run, except they find a man in the road who is hurt...and quickly are set upon by creepy ghostly naked bald white men who are trying to kill the man (not the first and definitely not the last plot hole in the movie....so many i won't even bother to remember them all). now the couple are being chased as well (the plot hole here involves the fact that they were brought here specifically to become a sacrifice....so why the extra man?).

thats about the whole story beyond the play by play and the finale.

and its good.

but where it goes wrong and it goes wrong a lot; the plot holes are numerous and obvious leaving you with questions; the acting by the lead characters is sub par; but the worst offender is the awful excuse of camerawork. i'm positive they thought they were being stylish with their focusing (mostly out of focus), hand held camera work (read: constantly shaky), and quick edits (read: shaky and nonsensical flashes of scenes) but in the end its freaking annoying and worse...tedious. if this was filmed straight (use a friggin' tripod occasionally!) the film would be slow. i can take slow. but add annoying and slow together and you try my patience.

worth watching once, but it won't be enough to bring you back.
maybe they'll remake this one day and fix all the problems. then it could be a great film.

(3/10)

hmm. so most of the leprechaun movies are what you'd expect; cheap thrills. gore, laughs, and little attetion to anything else. and for all intents and purposes thats what you get here.

this time a group of young-ish ghetto wannabes find the gold and go about spending it on ghetto couture; cars, bling, gold teeth, lots of pot and every other cliche you can imagine. i'm not sure why but all the attention to cliche in the attempt to be comical brings this thing down. this is like every bad black comedy out there. surprisingly they forgot two things in this movie: "you're momma" jokes and more surprisingly missing is the leprechaun crude limericks. i mean they didn't even make him rap one. what the hell?

the acting is bad; really bad. and any moments that are actually well acted are ruined by how bad the rest is. but this is not the actors fault. its the filmmakers. they wrote this stuff and had them perform it. of course we have to blame them some for going along with it. (i guess like in the movie, money will lead you).

the worse thing about this film in the end is that it is half assed. the drama isn't working, the gore is minimal and not convincing, the tension is never built (despite way over done and obvious scoring.....no you can't fix an error with more dramatic music over and over and over), the filming is so so. and the only character you could give one cent for is killed...without much to do about it. they kill her off and move to the next person to see how or if they'll be killed off. like its no loss, depite having built up far too much back story about how she's trying to do better and go to college, etc.

this is my final critique: while its not a bad film, i mean what did you expect really, but i nearly dosed off a couple times. thats not good.

(4/10)

peter greenaway has made films i love. rembrandt is a favorite painter of mine. unfortunately the two together is not a marriage fit to enjoyment.

pompous comes to mind. outrageous. over the top and beyond. greenaway seems obsessively compelled to tell the story behind rembrandt's "the militia company of captain frans banning coqc" aka the "night watch". he delves deeply into conspiracy theories and back stories; plots and mysteries. so much so that for most of the film the average viewer....well let me just say the average viewer would walk away from this....it takes a serious rembrandt and/or cinema fan to watch this...that 'serious' viewer is still going to be troubled to follow whats going on here. and worse, they'll be troubled to care about this overly theatrical style that permeates the film...i'm assuming this is a set up for the very last scenes.

i've watched several documentaries on rembrandt and on this one painting recently. those were interesting and insightful. greenaway's film does everything it can to prove to you that he knows the answers. but while based on fact the theories he brings forward are questionable at times. in the end this is a "based on" story not a documentary. so why the need to bludgeon the audience with "i know more than you do" and "its so complicated, you wouldn't understand" preposterous pomp.

its beautiful, as greenaway does well. but in the end i simply had a very difficult time sitting through it and didn't at all enjoy it.

strictly for fans of greenaway, and not his best anyways. watch 'rembrandt' with charles laughton from 1936 instead. same story but more watchable.

(3/10)

death valley...what could go wrong.
the first scene is a man driving down an empty desert road past a man hitchhiking. oh that can't be good... he decides to pick him up but the hitchhiker says a couple things that seemingly change his mind. he drives off and then stops. driving backwards runs the hitchhiker down, over, and then precedes to enjoy his handy work. what just happened??? a twist. the very next scene the man looses a bloodied hubcap and a cop tracks him down to his shack and is seemingly in his own perilous situation....except after a bit of a fight going horribly wrong for the cop, the man simply surrenders. what just happened? a twist. hmm, interesting. next, the killer is executed and we are fast forwarded to the present time where most of the movie actually happens.

and from there on we're going to get lost in something terribly unclear. a new sheriff comes to town in a rest stop with the old sheriff. three bank robbers come there, one is shot and dying. at some point something happens that puts everything in motion where the cops can't seem to get back up despite being told its on the way. there are people missing. there are new people showing up. and weird things happening. and at some point we start to learn that these people are trapped in an alternate dimension...literally the portion of death valley is in a physical bubble that one man runs into another is nearly killed after crashing into it. his missing face and most of his head actually, yet he seems to live. what is happening here? is it purgatory? they've already died maybe. is it an alternate universe? the people seem to hear into the real world several times. or is it a dream or a fragmented moment at death extended out seemingly longer and more surreal than it really is? and worse the killer is somehow part of this world and performing his magical twisted art upon these new inhabitants.

for me its the ending that fails the film but there are other problems that indicate the issue along the way. there doesn't seem to be a clear motivation behind the style. it wanders. some times its a comedy, sometimes a drama, and yet its a horror of sorts. its all over the place and never fully commits to any of these. but its the ending that leaves me questioning. the mystery is not "what was the meaning of life?" as much as it is "what did they intend this to mean?" it seems like some things got watered downed or lost along the way to finishing this movie. typical i guess. and i can't say the movie is truly bad, there was enough here to keep me watching and interested, but in the end i can't say it left me convinced.

what was the meaning of everything that happened in this movie? what happened?

interesting but disappointing.

(5/10)

my friggin' god, kids are evil!
seriously half the film is kids pretty much being kids and the parents trying to get a word in edgewise that makes any sort've since. its nauseating and exasperating. i was nearly so annoyed i wanted to stop watching. but then thats not because the film is bad, its just a decent set up to the chaos that will ensue under the nose of the parents who supposedly have some control over the children. then just when you want to put the kids to sleep and get on with a plot...the kids turn fuckin' murderers and all hell breaks loose. then you really want to put the kids to 'sleep'...permanently. these are some demonic little tykes.

seriously this movie should be shown in sex ed; there isn't a soul that would want to have kids after this movie.

not to say the movie is perfect, but it is effective. frankly the beginning does get a bit annoying and it is really difficult to follow what the hell is going on. it doesn't seem like any of the dialog has any purpose or meaning. its simply trying to create a 'likely' scenario amongst a noisy litter of kids. there is also little explanation of what, why, or anything like that. it remains a mystery. its well worth waiting for the second half though. there are some good twists, some unexpected happenings. all around pretty watchable.

(8/10)