Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

I got lucky. I thought I would never find this film again. But no! DVD copy got in my hands and I watched it. Twice. Yes, the “El Mariachi“.

Directed by: Robert Rodriguez
Genres: Action, Thriller, Crime, Western
Cast: Carlos Gallardo, Consuelo Gómez, Jaime de Hoyos, Peter Marquardt, Reinol Martinez, Ramiro Gómez, Jesús López, Luis Baró, Oscar Fabila, Poncho Ramón, Fernando Martínez, Manuel Acosta, Walter Vargas, Roberto Martínez, Virgen Delgado
IMDB raintg: 7.1
My rating: 8.0

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Since Olga’s 9th month of pregnancy, going to the movies became a very rare occasion for both of us. It still is. But when I saw “Sin City” on a pirated copy at home, I said that there was no chance that I would miss it in the movies.

Today I finally got a chance to see it on the big screen. I went together with Vladimir who I was waiting to return from his vacations in Paphos. And, boy, did we liked that movie!

It was all as good as I thought it would and even better. Size does matter sometimes and this was one of those times. It was great!

Yeah. If you still have a chance to see it in the movies - go watch it. It’s worth every penny.

Now. When is that DVD coming out?

As some of you may remember, I had some really high expectations for “Sin City“. I went as far as forecasting it to be a movie of the year. Today I finally got a chance to see it. I spent close to one tenth of a second considering if I should wait for the local cinemas to catch up with the world or to watch a mild quality cinema screener that was in front of me.

Directed by: Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez
Genres: Action, Crime, Thriller
Cast: Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Clive Owen, Nick Stahl, Powers Boothe, Rutger Hauer, Elijah Wood, Rosario Dawson, Benicio Del Toro, Jaime King, Devon Aoki, Brittany Murphy, Michael Clarke Duncan, Carla Gugino
IMDB raintg: 8.3
My rating: 10.0 [rate 10.0]

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Watched “Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over” with Olga on DVD. Both she and I really enjoyed the first two movies, and both she and I didn’t like this one. Let me explain a bit…

First of all, the expectations. Both the first and the second parts were entertaining, active and in general fantastic. So our expectations were a bit boosted up. Especially mine. And it is always a pity when a movie doesn’t live up to expectations.

Misuse of the resources. This film is full of stars. First and totally undoubtful is the directory himself -
Robert Rodriguez. He proved many times that he knows a lot about how movies should be done, and that he can do movies the right way. Here something went wrong. It felt very empty, lifeless, boring and commercial. Cast for this film has such a long list of well known names that I cannot even remember another movie like this. Among the ones who don’t need no introduction: Antonio Banderas, Sylvester Stallone, Mike Judge, Salma Hayek, Cheech Marin, Steve Buscemi, and others. I mean there are probably more people you can name without IMDB than in any other movie. And they all have nothing to do there.

The story sucked. It was so pure and transparent that it was very boring. I bet that even kids were falling asleep while watching it. All coolness was gone. no one was cool anymore. Superheros running towards their grandpa in case of any minor danger. No gadgets. No spy talk. Nothing.

There were plenty of annimation. Actually the whole film is one huge animation with real people in it (supposedly inside a video game). But even this was boring. It wasn’t anything like a computer game. Take for example a scene where they are racing some strange vehicles at magnificent speeds - no thrill and no turns. They drive in a straight line. In which video game was that?

Anyway, I have a bunch of complains about this film. I expected it to be in line with the previous two, but it was way off. I will write it off as something Rodriguez wanted to do for his own reasons and I will forget about this film. I’ll rate as 4 out of 10. Save you money and spend them on something else. Watch this on TV when it’ll come… it will help you fall asleep. With your kids.