Category: 3 stars

Average movies, which are predictable, and offer nothing in particular in exchange for your time, are reviewed in this category. You won’t lose much by watching these films, but you won’t get much either.

Elektra

“Elektra” is one of those high profile movies that I missed in its time. Catching up…

Directed by: Rob Bowman
Genres: Action, Adventure, Crime, Fantasy, Thriller
Cast: Jennifer Garner, Goran Visnjic, Kirsten Prout, Will Yun Lee, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Terence Stamp, Natassia Malthe, Bob Sapp, Chris Ackerman, Edson T. Ribeiro, Colin Cunningham, Hiro Kanagawa, Mark Houghton, Laura Ward, Kurt Max Runte
IMDB raintg: 5.0
My rating: 5.0 [rate 5.0]

This is one of those movies with a lot and a lot of potential, but that blew it all away. While watching this film I kept thinking that the only purpose of it is to show how sexy does Jennifer Garner’s semi-open mouth is. Yeah, well, OK. I get it! One, two, three… even five times – show it and I will appreciate it. But you have to get on with the movie after some time. It didn’t happen with Elektra. It was just it.

Note that I am writing this post off the top of my head and thus I don’t know what I will end up with, so some spoilers can get in. Be warned.

The film is very disbalanced. Some things are done very well and others suck so much that it is hard to believe that both were made by the same group of people. The story sucked. Big time. The traditional battle of good and evil and the epical meaning of both. “Ancient war” and stuff like that. There were practically no character development. All I understood is that the main character (questionably even that) Elektra had some bad childhood memories which messed her up psychologically. Who she is and why she is the way she is I didn’t understand. And she was the most developed character of all. Crap.

But the biggest disbalance was betweeen the good and evil powers. This film had some of the best evil powers that I’ve ever seen.

Consider them: the biggest boss played by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa who is a well known bad ass in movies. He always plays yakudza mafia people and other evils. Sadly he didn’t show any evil powers in this film, but just his presence gave evil side a lot of credit. Than there was his son, who was wearing this styled long kimono with some letters on the back. And it came with two swords and some really cool powers like teleporting. This guy was leading a gang of super cool evillers. First there was this huge black guy with a stick. Somehow he couldn’t be shot with a gun and cut with the knife. Things were just bouncing of off him. Unfortunately he died rather stupidly killed by a huge tree that he broke himself. Next comes a guy called “tattoo”. He is rather small and tattooed all over the body. Different forms of wildlife (eagle, wolves, snakes) come out of him and follow his enemies in a burst of really cool special effects. And turned out that he was just hypnotising everyone around him while falling into a mediation. A simple neck brake killed him easily. And there was a woman. There was this gothic looking woman who reminded me Rogue from “X-Men” but the evil and much more powerful kind. Everything she touched, kissed or waves at died a rather quick death. Alltogether an excellent team which is hard to fight.

On the good team were all losers. First there was this teacher of martial arts and good philosophy. Apparently he was blind, but I couldn’t notice it until it was said so in clear text. He was supposedly possessing some really cool superpowers. Like he could even bring people back alive from the dead. But he hasn’t got enough screen time to practice that except for once on … you guessed it – Elektra. Than there was Elektra – some lost women with a couple of knives and teleporting power (hello?! repeating? how come two different characters possess the same skill?). Than there was this girl – Treasure – who was supposedly very good in fighting, but she was never truly shown. And there was her young father who was a total loser – no superpowers or skills worth mentioning.

How the hell did it happen that the good won? Evil powers in this movie were thirty gadzillion times more powerful than good powers. I don’t get it.

More on the film – costumes sucked and were virtually non-existent. Locations were good, but there were not enough of them. Two or three places couldn’t provide all the scenery that was needed for this film. Also I would suggest adding more drama to the movie. Otherwise all those dramatic pauses, looks and other moments weren’t connected to anything meaningfully and were lost.

And martial arts. This film could have benefited from good martial arts tremendiosly. You say there were martial arts? No. I’m telling you. Martial arts is when you can see one or more people performing a complex and fast choreography, and more often than not, being involved in a fight with some other people doing the same. Showing how two sticks hit each other in full frame, or how a bare foot cuts air does not qualify as martial arts. I can do that without breaking a sweat, and I am 120 kilos of fat that are no good at any martial arts what-so-ever. This is just the way the camera works…

Anyway, the film left a lot of unfilled space. It could have been a lot better. Seriously. It was on the right track, but it stopped all developments long before the finish line. Skip it.

War of the Worlds

One of the good things about having a grandma around is that Olga and I can go to the movies again. We wanted to see “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” in the K-Cineplex, but they had some power problems (coincidence? I think not), so we made our way back to Rio and watched “War of the Worlds“.

Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Genres: Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Cast: Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Justin Chatwin, Tim Robbins, Rick Gonzalez, Yul Vazquez, Lenny Venito, Lisa Ann Walter, Gene Barry, David Alan Basche, Michael Brownlee, Camillia Sanes, Marlon Young, John Eddins, Peter Gerety
IMDB raintg: 6.9
My rating: 5.5 [rate 5.5]

Continue reading War of the Worlds

The Man Who Cried

Watched “The Man Who Cried” on DVD. It is amazing how little this movie missed to be on my favourite list. It has to stay with the average ones now. Pity.

Good things about this movie are: story, pace, casting, acting, photography, and music. I liked how one small girl from the first part of the movie was used to bring in three more main characters. That was an interesting move. I liked the acting of all four main actors – Christina Ricci, Cate Blanchett, John Turturro, and Johnny Depp. All of them did really good jobs, but they weren’t pushed to the limit or anywhere closed. I’ve seen all four of them doing much better.

What I think this movie needs is more dramatism and depth. It almost touched me. But when it almost happend the closing credits started rolling. First half of the movie with the little girl had a lot more sadness and sympathy to it.

I’ll rate it as 6 out of 10. Good, but could have been so much better!

Shark Tale

I’ve just got disappointed by “Shark Tale“. Despite all the hype around it, it turned out to be pretty boring and badly drawn animation. It had no realism like “Finding Nemo” did. Fish here were walking on two leg-like fins, used another two hand-like fins to do stuff, and had ugly faces on top of their bodies. These all loked nothing like fish. For some reason also, I don’t get it why they moved half the time vertically and half the time horizontally. Oh, and there was no water at all. I mean there was not a second with an ocean surface, and there was only a few bubles to make you beleive some liquid was involved in the environment.

First half of the movie I was thinking that I didn’t like it because I’ve already seen “Finding Nemo”, which is way better. But than I realized that it is not the reason. The real reason is that this movie sucked.

Bad animation on top of the beaten usual story is something that has no entertainment. Ok, there were a couple of jokes that made me smile, but they were by far not enough for the hour and a half. That’s a pity, it could have been funnier.

5 out of 10.

Paycheck

Evening in the movie with Olga. This time we went to see “Paycheck“.

It was a rather disappointment. There are few interesting ideas, but there is also a load of crap that this movie doesn’t need. Ben Affleck fighting with the stick while being a genuis computer engineer is really stupid. And overall Ben Affleck has nothing to do with this movie. They needed someone more geeky-looking. :)