Bill Paxton

Watched “True Lies” again yesterday. Now this one is a special movie for me. I first saw back in 1994 or 1995, during my first ever trip out of the country, when I went to the Flint, Michigan, USA under a student exchange program. This was “the first” of many things – the first film I’ve seen in English, the first action film I’ve seen on the big screen, etc. It brings back a lot of memories, and it itself is being one huge memory. Even so many years after I saw it, I still remember it almost to a word.

Obviously, I am very biased in this case. But I spoke to a few of my friends about this film, and practically every one of them remembers the film quite well and has only good things to say about it. Even now, decades later, it still looks pretty awesome. I guess the fact that it has lots of real stunts as opposed to CGI helps it to survive the time. Also, this film being a mix of action and comedy, even with action bits slightly outdated, the comedy is still there, doing just fine.

Overall, an excellent entertainment. 5 stars.

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.