Reviews

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.

When Harry Met Sally…

Olga and I just watched “When Harry Met Sally…” on DVD. It is an excellent comedy/romance back from 1989. It’s more than excellent actually. I think it is the way comedy/romance are supposed to be done. Basically, it is about two people who have lots and lots of dialogs and monologs. The subject is love, of course. And the comedy is just a sauce for the serious thoughts.

There was some good acting from both Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan. Supporting characters were pretty good too. I also liked the soundtrack a lot.

My verdict is 8 out of 10. A kind of 8 which is closer to 9, but not yet there. Good entertainment.

Virtuosity

Olga and I just watched “Virtuosity” on DVD. It is a nice action movie back from almost 10 years ago that touches the issues with virtual reality. And so that you are not bored with it, it mixes in Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe.

I find it interesting how this film brings back the memories of few old and new films, such as “The Matrix“, “The Cell” and “I, Robot“. I have a feeling that “Virtuosity” has it’s share of inspiration for all three of the above movies, and probably some more.

I liked this film. I cannot put it on my favourite shelve, but it does deserve the two hours of your time. It is a good combination of action, computer graphics, drama, and black humour (that part with the crying symphony was really nice). The only mistake that I can point out was putting Kelly Lynch in it. There was no acting what-so-ever on her behalf. Other than that, everything was pretty good.

I’ll give it a rating of 6.5 out of 10, which kind of round me about 7.

Sniper

“Sniper” was on TV. I must have seen it a thousand times by now, but I watched it again. There is something about this film that makes me watch it once in a while. Maybe I just enjoy everything about snipers. Maybe because there are not so many films about snipers. Maybe because of something else.

Anyway, the film is good, although it is about 11 years old by now. There is action. There is coolness. And there are, of course, snipers. There are no naked women, but who needs them when you’ve got marines in the jungle?

I’ll rate this film as 7 out of 10. A whole lot of points go the flying bullet which looked pretty impressive back in the last centure. So impressive, that even Matrix-makers noticed it. ;)

Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over

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. Noone 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.