hmarcy

This picture has all the elements of a good gothic horror picture. It starts out with all the warnings of the full moon, getting lost on the moors, wild animal sounds, the 5-pointed star and the surprise attack. So the start doesn't offer anything new; only after the attack and the subsequent trip to the hospital does the picture take a dramatic turn.

Here is where John Landis, director of Animal House and Kentucky Fried Movie, works in the comic elements. Landis has experience in comedy, although his record is spotty at best, he does know how to set up a joke. The hospital starts the encounters with his dead friend Jack who informs him that he is in fact a Werewolf. This is only the first of three encounters and is the start of the running gag where you can watch his deterioration as a member of the "undead".

The movie goes between a good gothic horror with all the elements of any good wolfman flick and a well worked comedy using the plight of a person turning into a wolf as the core of the comic elements. The horror scenes are done well; the transition where he turns into a wolfman the first time is really good, perhaps the best in movies. There are plenty of jumps when he is attacking the locals and the werewolf itself is a good piece of special effects.

In summary the acting is better than average, the girl is cute and the horror scenes are good and horrible. This is a real sit at home with your date kind of movie. Good fun, some scary scenes and an easy story to follow so you can fool around while you watch and not miss too much.

This movie is focused on the story line and the development of characters. It of course it has the obligatory songs but they are no too out of place and the production quality of each different as the plot changes. The story is about a boy whose father is a criminal and who is forced into this lifestyle because of pressure from outside forces. It takes to the life with a real favor and becomes a ruthless outlaw. The life he is leading is full of reflections bank on a troubled childhood and a family that was torn apart by his fathers lifestyle. He is going through the same things yet he seems to have some issues with respect for people he is close to. He has a good girl friend, loses the girl and gets her back but with dire consequences. His lifestyle begins to get him down and he becomes self-destructive. As I don't speak Hindi the movie's sub-titles were poor but the story was easy enough to follow. A lot of violence and double-crossing but this was the life he chose. If you like the Hindi movies that are up beat with humor and great dance numbers this is not the movie for you. If you want to be entertained by as decent story then sit back for three hours and watch this.

This movie is a stinker from the start. The story is bad, the action scenes are bad and most of the acting is bad. The hero is a super human character that marshals his strength when thinking about his poor abducted sister. The women fall in love with him in microseconds, willing to give up everything for this guy. He is good looking but that is way to unbelievable - even daughters betray their fathers after a day with this guy. He jumps through windows of speeding trucks, jumps off of buildings in single bound, dodges bullets, well you get the picture. There are three decent songs in the movie but the set-up and lead-ins are all too unbelievable. Leave this one where you find it and get anything else.

I loved this movie but then again I am a big Cronenberg fan. If you have not seen a David Cronenberg film then this is not a good place to start. Scanners, The Fly, Rabid would be a place to start and then work up to Videodrome before checking this one out. This is certainly one of his best and takes the interactive game phenomena one step beyond.

In this game the players plug a bio-engineered game pad through a jack inserted into their spinal cord and get into the game directly through their nervous system. It is very hard to tell you more without giving away the story and the plot but it is enough to say that this is a game you will not forget. It is full of Cronenberg's slimy body works, dark foreboding scenery all populated by a great cast including Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jude Law and Willem Dafoe who take the situation they find themselves in very seriously. These people will do what they can to figure out the game and then to win at it. Like other movies of his there is no shortage of imagination or parts where you sink to the seat but like an auto-accident you don't look away. If you liked any of the movies mentioned above then by all means go out and get this one.

This is an amazing piece of film from the creator of Ali, Miami Vice and my favorite, Thief. Michael Mann was able to weave ten or twelve concurring plots into a whole coherent movie that never lets you relax. The heist, the people involved, the families and the relationship between each of the groups, the cops and the robbers, are done seamlessly. You are brought along the entire movie by the actions of the people to the situation rather than the situation dictating the moves of the people.

The choice of actors doesn't hurt the movie either. There is not one part that isn't played well by the likes of Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Val Kilmer, Natalie Portman, Asley Judd, and on and on. There are no landmark performances here but the whole is greater that the sum of its parts. Each player was a small part going through responses of how the plot of the movie was affecting his or her lives and as a result the movie took form and the puzzle came together. If all of this was not enough this film had two great scenes that were enough to make the picture on its own. It had a head-to-head scene with Pacino and De Niro where the two acting styles also came head-to-head. Pacino with all the expressions and eye movements that were creating a dialog of their own and De Niro's character with a quiet, in control, inwardly thoughtful way of telling you how it is. More is said in the moments between his lines than the lines themselves. You can see two great artists at the height of their craft interacting inside intelligent and confident characters. These were equals in every since of the word having a very meaningful, insightful conversation and the audience was privileged to eavesdrop.

The second scene that makes this movie one of the best was the most realistic shootout ever-devised on film. I won't give away the plot as to how it came about but I will only say that when it is over you will think to yourself `How long was I holding my breath?'.

The plot never lets you down, there are no slow points and this movie has some of the greatest scenes in 20th Century film; did I leave anything out. If I had to look for something wrong I would say that some of the sub-plots did not reach a conclusion but I only noticed this after the third of forth viewing. I recommend this movie to anyone who wants non-stop cops and robbers action with intelligent characters and great individual acting.

There are three things that you watch an Anime for, idea, story and graphics. In this movie the idea is really cleaver. If there are vampires then why would they be hiding in dark corners, after all they are almost invulnerable, have special powers and kick ass. So here you have vampire lords who rule over villages and communities and have kind of feudal arrangements with a mixed bag of creatures. The `normal people' live in fear of being a late night snack or getting infected by the vampire lords. The heroine in the story, a whip totting pre-pubescent in a short skirt, is from one of these villages and gets herself marked (i.e. bitten) by one of these lords. Now it is only a matter of time before he wants the rest.

She meets `D' who is a vampire killer and due to his special powers and great skill with a big nasty sword he is someone to be reckoned with. There are demons and dark princesses and an assortment of characters that each take advantage of being graphic creations and do a whole slew of things to keep the story rolling along.

It's hard to review this type of movie without giving away any of the plot so I will comment on how the idea or story line was developed and the graphics themselves. The story for the most part straight forward but it does get off the path where things `pop-up' and powers are added as they are needed but it holds together pretty well. There are lesser types of creatures trying to take over from the vampire lord and lots of blood and gore but with a heavy graphic quality.

The graphic themselves are a disappointment. If you have seen Ghost in the Shell or Ninja Scrolls then you have an idea of what I call good graphics and this movie has good moments but as a whole it doesn't measure up. I enjoyed this on the whole but would only recommend this to real Anime fans, for the part-time viewer there are better ones out there.

Here is a concert that took place over 20 years ago and the music is fresh and enjoyable as if was when it was new. Even more important here is a group of musicians who were on the road for years, working clubs and bars that had a chance to become a success due to their musical ability not what company they were with. Not one person in this concert could become a success today. Imagine any member of The Band, Bob Dylan, Neil Young and any of the other players, on this special night, trying to make it in the business today. These people were not placed together to saturate a demographic. They were not assembled for a particular look to please the 12 to 15 year old female audiences. They were not a promotion by a record company or radio conglomerate to build up a profit base in a particular section of the country who haven't been buying enough records of a particular type in the last three months. These are a bunch of guys who got together to play music, get laid and party and are thrilled that you could come along for the ride. This is a look back on what was going on before music was a global business that completely controlled what was to be deemed talent.

I didn't mean to use the context of a movie review to spout off about what is going on today in the music business but the whole time I was watching I was plagued with the idea that the future generations would not have a Bob Dylan or Robbie Robertson to take inspiration from. Can the Backstreet Boys inspire you with their musical ability or Britney Spears, who can't even perform live, make you want to learn an instrument? I'm sure that there are many new talents, Alicia Keys and Creed come to mind, (both of whom were rejected by every major label) out there but will they get the exposure to effect the future as these people did; only time will tell.

This DVD release came out when there is a `revival' of the older 70's and 80's bands so it is actually timely. The reason of course for this revival of `oldies' is because there is so little in the way of creative music going on now and the copyrights have run out on the songs so for the most part the cooperations rake in all or most of the revenues from these greatest hits copulations.

The movie itself was a great mixture of interviews and the concert itself. The interviews were some single and some group but all very short glimpses into the character of each of these persons as part of the band. There were two songs that were done in the studio that really emphasized the roots that this music came from, Gospel (Staples) and Country (Harris) but both of these went with the flow. This is a concert of `imperfect' music with a sound from ordinary folks playing songs that most anybody with some guitar training could master quickly. This was a celebration of music, like Dave Mathews is now and the Grateful Dead were for so long. This was an affirmation that this band, as a total, was certainly greater that each of its parts. A great way to spend an evening with a six-pack, a pizza and your system turned up loud.

There is no chance of giving the plot away on this one. This has been done in `Flashdance', `Ballroom' and more than 50 movies going back to `A star is Born' and `Babes on Broadway' but this version has enough going for it that the predictability of the main plot becomes less unimportant when the entire movie is taken in as a whole.

I found this movie very watchable due to the various sub-plots and character development that give this movie a very rich texture that allows you to overlook the numerous flaws. The major change in this movie, from those mentioned above, is the interracial love affair that develops around the training of the novice (played stiffly by Julia Stiles) to become a talented dancer. The sub-plots about peer pressure of a black man (played very well by Sean Patrick Thomas) going with a while girl, the acceptance of the family taken from the black point-of-view and the rivalry of an old girl friend (the very attractive Bianca Lawson) all add to this texture. The most interesting character development was the relationship with the lead character's best friend (played very well by Fredro Starr). A choice has to be made between supporting his old way of life as part of the neighborhood crew with measuring a friend by how he stands by you on the street and the future he has by being a good student with an opportunity to become a doctor. This was, I thought, done very well with care and sensitivity to the characters involved.

This sensitivity carried over into other sub plots but as a whole the move was done with an atmosphere to be politically correct in the depiction of the school and life in the Ghetto in Chicago. I'm sure this was softened to take in a wider audience but it was handled well and didn't detract from the movie. This a good `feel good' movie to watch some night with your `significant other' over soda pop and a slice of pizza.

The picture is about using sexual deviation to cure tedium. Here is a group of people who are living boring lives so they are experimenting with sexual variation to give them a quick fix. This creates more impairment to these discontented people and as such the results are they become even more miserable. The end result is you get to share a "slice of life" with unhappy people having meaningless deviant sexual encounters with other unhappy people while looking for some substance in there lives. If this doesn't sound like a wonderful way to spend the evening, then I also agree.

The central character works in a morgue and some of his coworkers exchange girl friends/wives, watch home made pornography and contribute to the debasement of the women who love them. They spend the time in-between yelling at each other and feeling sorry for how miserable their lives are. The only time there is any warmth in the movie is when they are visiting their friend who is dying of AIDS. This subplot is suppose to give us some reference about life and death but it is overshadowed by the selfish behavior of the leading roles. Besides the main character who has three women who care for him and he treats them all with disdain there is a suicidal man and a lady who had died recently of a drug overdose but managed to come back to life. The main character introduced the other two into his world of S&M, general depravity but mostly humiliation. They seen to get along fine, as they are as screwed up as he is. The man keeps a book of all his sexual encounters as this is the meaning for his life and the girl is just a bored youth living on ecstasy and techno music. This movie is not about sexual obsession like Damage, Turkish Delight or even Last Tango in Paris it is about boredom, plain and not so simple. The result left me not caring about the main character, not caring what these people do and only feeling sorry for the female roles that are played with some feeling and sensitivity but not enough to save this movie from being lackluster and unmoving.

This is a movie that should have been a mini-series as it tries to get too much information in too small a space. The whole story is constantly being bombarded with sub-plots, character introduction and meaningless pieces information that go nowhere. There is a underlying plot where boy meets a girl, she has doubts but gets married anyhow and then her doubts surface and she goes to see if they are real. They turn out not to be but her husband won't believe that she was not unfaithful and her almost boyfriend doesn't want her as she was not unfaithful to her husband. With that said there are no less than 1000 sub-plots and character introductions that make this plot almost incomprehensible. In the first 15 minutes you are inundated with so many things and situations that you just stop caring. You don't care about any of the confused and screwed up cast that drifts in and out of the story like vultures feeding on a corpse. Each one comes in and takes some interest away from the viewer. After a half-hour, and completely disinterested, I stayed and watched the remaining two and a half hours out of pure morbid curiosity. I couldn't imagine where it was going but like staring at a fire I just couldn't get up and turn it off. The production values are superb but the resulting movie is a waste of time; wash your socks instead.

This is a Hong Kong action flick with a distinct taste of the west. The movie starts off with a bombing and small store shoot-out that is right out of John Woo's stylebook but then it under goes a change. The story starts taking over and it is one of intrigue within intrigue. There are great moments of action with two guns blazing and an unbelievable amount of bullets but the story becomes the main thing. This works as glue that a lot of Hong Kong movies don't have. There are long pauses of plot developments between double crossing bad guys that are a real change to what is a typical Hong Kong action flick.

The director John Foley likes to place people in positions where they have to make critical decisions under pressure (At Close Range and Fear) and this is no exception. A caring cop caught up in a situation of corruption is under constant pressure to decide what is right. You are kept guessing as to his ultimate decision but the pressure is there under a dozen different situations. The sub-plots add to the texture of this movie and add to its richness. These side stories of the bad cop father in trouble, the interaction of rival Chinese gangs and his love of Asian culture are all parts of the puzzle that is Danny Wallace played by Mark Wahlberg. Foley knows Wahlberg from the direction of his acting breakthrough in Fear and uses him at what he does best, the confused tough guy with the sensitive agenda. (His latest movie `The Yards' is an example of what I mean). Nick Chen the experienced street cop played by Chow Yun-Fat is the perfect slightly crazy hard-hitting loner, who has embedded himself in the struggle of rival gangs in New York's Chinatown. There is no black and white here, only shades of gray, in a world of who is doing what to whom but like the cultural differences between East and West the relationships between individuals overcomes the hard facts of doing business on the street.

A very good blend of the Hong Kong actions movie that was brought in by Chow Yun-Fat (if you hear the commentary that Foley never saw a Woo movie) and what Foley's image is for street life in New York. Coming from New York and living and working in Asia gives me insight into the homework that went into the making of this movie and I will say they did a very good job.

This is a quirky movie with a first rate cast and a muddled story. This story like many of Wim Wenders tails is about the character interactions with each other in unusual circumstances. You could not ask for a better selection of odd balls to be in one movie, all of which were acted to perfection. It's the story that holds the characters together that required more development.

The lead character, Tom Tom (Jeremy Davies) was an innocent child-like person with no interactive social skills but being someone who gives away everything he has until there is nothing left. He is in love with Eloise (Milla Jovovich) but it is the love of a small child that is only looking for recognition and has only a slight sexual element. The story takes place in a hotel that is filled with mental outpatients and society misfits who all have some delusion they are living under which takes up most of their lives. A stiffed back FBI man, played to the hilt by Mel Gibson, comes in to investigate the possible murder of one of the tenants and upsets the delicate balance of this on-the-edge environment. Every part of this ensemble cast is played to perfection by a group of artists (Jimmy Smits, Peter Storemare, Amanda Plummer, Gloria Stuart, Bud Cort and Julian Sands) that is the strong point of the movie. Anybody studying acting should make this a highlight picture to go onto a greatest hit list. Every role is a little gem. The problem here is that the total was less than the sum of its parts. The story holding all of these off-the-edge players has major flaws like broadcasting a confession tape over public TV before an arrest or the FBI breaking all the rules in public plus many more. One major point is the fact that all of these completely crazy people can have organized meetings to discuss strategy and arrive at some semblance of a result. I wish some of the corporate meetings I have to attend were so clear-cut. These obvious flaws serve to damage this very complex plot. You are introduced to the characters through the process of an investigation one by one and they are played against each other by the FBI man but taken all together the resulting outcome losses its cohesion. The people were very complex yet the complex plot became fragmented. The story and soundtrack written by Bono of U2 is a much better soundtrack than story.

A good movie for acting students and a look into a story line where this microcosm society is taking advantage of innocent but not a movie I would like to watch again.