GeoffL

I had high hopes, but this movie was terrible. The storyline was woefully pretentious and the action scenes were so-so; the fight scenes were particularly risible. It looked like Hong Kong action cinema with the last thin tethers to reality removed.

Movies like this are sucking the oxygen out of science fiction; they touch all the bases, but there's no trace of intelligent thought or emotion behind the pompous story-line. Ah, well. If William Gibson can't write a decent cyberpunk movie script, who can?

The first part of the movie - up to the point where they kill the hooker and the security guard was fairly tight. After that, the whole thing becomes unwatchably stupid. The only bright moments are the occasional parody of self-help seminar language coming from Christian Slater, but in an effort to up the gore factor, the movie descends into sheer gibberish.

Boring, Sidney, very boring. My girlfriend fell asleep (!).

Immensely stupid; the movie revolves entirely around showcasing Downey's overacting ability. Presumably we're meant to find him magnetic enough to understand why the two girls of the title continue to hang around his character (Blake Allen) after they've found out what he's been up to.

Also contemptible was the sudden dash of pathos at the end. This tiresome formula - to add depth, add death - seems to be getting a real workout, providing illusory depth to both this movie and to Ang Lee's cretinous movie "The Ice Storm".

Finally, the disclosures that the two girls have notched up a fair number of infidelities themselves seems designed to undercut their earlier outrage so that we can be more sympathetic to Blake. This seemed more like a manipulative attempt to improve his moral position in the movie, not a reasonable plot twist.

Aguirre, The Wrath of God is wonderful: it's what Apocalypse Now would have been if it only had a brain. Warner Herzog directs this visually stunning analysis of righteous colonialism, and Klaus Kinski is appropriately mad looking as our insane hero. Rumour has it that Kinski was prevented from fleeing the shoot by Herzog threatening to kill him with a revolver; if so, the tortured expression on Aguirre's face is probably something more than just good acting.

For some reason, this is a very good movie to see drunk.

Aside from an utterly brilliant opening sequence (the landing on Omaha beach), this movie is basically old wine in a new bottle.

Spielberg flirts with the idea of realism (yes, kiddies, war isn't fun after all) and the pointlessness of war, but at the end, we've got the same old "small number of outgunned Americans save the day with ridiculously obvious tactics" theme. Haven't these Germans heard of scouts?

Also irritating is the fact that Spielberg sets us up for the mission to "Save Private Ryan" to be a ambiguous, even pointless affair, risking the lives of several men to save one, then suddenly loses the courage of his convictions: all of a sudden, we're fighting Germans in a strategically important battle. How convenient. "Just a dash of Catch-22, if you please..."

Speaking as an Australian, I suspect that this film might come as more of a revelation to me if I too had been raised to think of war in terms of John Wayne and Rambo and the rest. Newsflash for the clueless: War wasn't fun even before Vietnam...

What's to like? The Ice Storm is a ponderous bore, dealing with a bunch of (nearly all) unlikeable adults as they indulge in some rather unattractive infidelities and generally neglect their rather needy children. After a great amount of time and a large number of rather shallow antics, the movie artifically adds depth by randomly killing off an innocent character. Everyone becomes very somber, and the movie can now be lauded as a tragic reflection on the moral confusion of the early 1970's.

To paraphrase a nasty remark about Hermann Hesse: "The Ice Storm is the ideal second-rate movie for those who wish to feel that they are grappling with first-rate issues."

Bleeargh. Nice-looking direction, though. Perhaps Ang Lee has a bright future as a maker of nature documentaries or something.

Every now and again, a movie truly surprises me. I am absolutely amazed that someone could make a movie as unfunny as this one; Mike Myers seems to be under the delusion that a lame joke, if repeated enough times, will be funny.This movie is a (heavy-handed) parody of the Bond movies, but that's not enough to save it. Here's a typically deft jab at Bond villains:

"I have an even better idea. I'm going to place him in an easily escapable situation involving an overly elaborate and exotic death"

Tiresome drivel.

Now this is a truly wonderful film. It's simple enough: one day, a young boy goes missing from his family. Several years later, he returns - or does he?

This movie is a flawless dissection of a frighteningly twisted family, with extremely vivid characters. Agnieszka Holland has succeeded at that difficult task: create realistic characters in a believable situation, yet present them with shockingly eerie dilemma. Strongly recommended.

Side note: the only flaw in this movie was the rather ridiculous invocation of the supernatural. Fortunately, it's part of an almost completely irrelevant subplot, and can be safely ignored.