I first saw “American Gangster” in the cinema. I liked the film so much that I couldn’t wait to get the DVD. Of course, the 3 hour duration is not a big helper for repeated watching, but even so, I still enjoy it once in a while.
This film is excellent on so many levels, it’s hard to mention them all. There is moral, there is entertainment, there is an authentic trip back in time, there is plenty of good acting and directing.
This is now definitely one of my favourite films. 5 stars.
“Watchmen” turned out to be quite a disappointment for me personally. Maybe that’s because I am not much into comics and maybe because I don’t know who watchmen are and how they came about. But still…
The poster was sort of speaking for itself, and film’s opening credits were pretty cool. It started pretty well. But then it went into a totally different direction. Instead of being your regular comics-based story with a bunch of good and bad guys, and a fight between them, this time it was all about the psychology and drama of a superhero. There were quite a few superheros, who, for some reason, didn’t seem to be really superheros, but rather a bunch of guys in weird costumes. They didn’t do anything superheroic, didn’t have any tricks up their sleeves, didn’t care much about anything else.
The visual effects were excellent, but with no base for those effects, no action, they started to grow pretty boring. And the film went on and on and on (almost 3 hours), and by the time of it I myself was almost falling asleep. I pulled it through, but barely.
If you are into superheros and everything that surrounds them, then you’ll probably enjoy this film. For me though it was somewhere on the scale of 3 out of 10.
Either one of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino is enough to attract attention to the movie. When they are both in the same movie – that’s something that needs to be seen, no matter what the critics or ratings say. And that’s why I went to watch “Righteous Kill” today.
Altogether, the film was rather average – not much dynamics and action for a police movie, predictable story with a lot of cliches, dialogs really off sometimes, and so, and so forth. But. There was enough good acting, and there was enough thought provoking. I mean it’s not a philosophical movie by any measure, but it covers a few morals and gives enough time to the audience to poke around the good, the evil, and the fine line between the two.
Overall, maybe not worthy the big screen, but good enough for a DVD rent. 6.5 out of 10.
Jet Li is almost a guarantee of a good action movie with lots of martial arts. Not yet, but he is surely getting there. I rented “The One“, because I was too lazy to look for something else and I agreed to watch a Jet Li movie.
Directed by: James Wong
Genres: Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Cast: Jet Li, Carla Gugino, Delroy Lindo, Jason Statham, James Morrison, Dylan Bruno, Archie Kao, Richard Steinmetz, Steve Rankin, Tucker Smallwood, Harriet Sansom Harris, David Keats, Dean Norris, Ron Zimmerman, Darin Morgan
IMDB raintg: 5.4
My rating: 6.0 [rate 6.0]
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.