Slug-3

I'm not a fan of glee or any Broadway performances that depict cultures that conflict with the Broadway scene, because it all comes across as so contrived. And there were many things about Rock of Ages that bothered me, such as seeing Tom Cruise play Stacee Jaxx, because Cruise's 80's frat boy image ruins it for me. I also didn't think the gay scene belonged, because it just wasn't something you associated with the musicians of that scene, even though there may have been many who were gay.

Personally, I wasn't a big fan of the music of that era and even found it troubling how they mixed in some good music from other eras that didn't belong. I did, however, find it refreshing to see a production about rock, which actually reflected what rock was about. Nowadays, you'll be hard pressed to find the sort of hard rebellion that was associated with rock in the past, so it's nice to see it captured here.

Note to kids: Tattoos and clothing are only surface deep and only reflect rebellion in a fashion sense.

At least that's my guess on why so many hate it. I'll grant you that it could have been better, but Kutcher was great as Steve Jobs, and Gad wasn't bad as The Woz, either. There have been many biopics on computer entrepreneurs, despite what some reviewers have written, and the only ones that received high marks, were those that were only watched by the nerds who can appreciate them, so I'm not surprised that Jobs isn't receiving the appreciation it deserves.

I do have a few complaints about the movie, but the biggest would be that they didn't even mention how Microsoft bailed out Apple. This happened within the time line of the movie and received lot's of attention when it occurred.

The previews for House of Lies had me excited. It seemed like an interesting topic and it had two actors I enjoy in it (Cheadle and Bell). Unfortunately, it just comes across as a jumbled/jangled mess of unlikable egos, attitudes and greed.

I think the writers probably had a good idea, but just missed their mark. I honestly don't know how they could have failed any more in their attempt to make the characters hip and exciting, because they're anything but that. What they are is grotesque in a very uninteresting manner; largely because they're petty and unbelievable. Being a big fan of Don Cheadle's work, I'm actually disappointed that he accepted his role in this wreck.

And yet, I am still watching it, while hoping that it will soon improve. Although I've considered removing it from my list of scheduled recordings on my DVR, I'll probably watch the rest of the first season (at which time I'll surely cancel the series, unless it drastically improves before then.) Ironically, the thing that keeps me watching the most, at this point, is curiosity for whether the show is really as bad as it seems or if there will eventually be some sort of breakthrough, where it all suddenly makes sense. I'm betting on the former, but hoping for the latter.

I loved Airplane! I think it's a staple on the American comedy scene. In fact, I love several of David Zucker's movies, but he seems to have lost his understanding of the American psyche in his last few attempts. An American Carol, for instance, could just as well have been a pro-Nixon movie, released soon after Watergate. I'm sure there will be a few who will find Zucker's portrayal of Michael Moore funny and they would likely find a Zucker portrayal of Martha Mitchell to be humorous, as well. The irony comes in Zucker's failure to realize that most people side with Michael Moore on his opinions, as well as the facts that support his opinions, which Zucker pokes fun at by treating them as if they were untrue.

As a Liberal, I didn't expect to agree with Zucker's political views, and yet, I felt compelled to watch it and give it a fair shake, believing that my difference in politics might not prevent me from finding it funny. Unfortunately, An American Carol ended up being as disconnected from reality as I'd feared beforehand and I can't help wondering what Hollywood genius figured it would be a good idea to make fun of a controversial American political icon, just as the vast majority of Americans were figuring out that his serious accusations were justified. If Zucker were around for the Boston Tea Party, he most surely would have had a blast ridiculing Samuel Adams, and those throwing tea overboard, and I'm sure he wouldn't have spared American revolutionaries for wanting independence, either, because Zucker seems all about protecting the establishment, no matter who it is and what faults it may have.

I may sound motivated by politics, but that's really not the impetus for my harsh review at all. We've all seen funny political humor that was driven by views that we didn't share, but this is different because Zucker is trying to force humor that just isn't there. Michael Moore offers a plethora of opportunities for humor, but there is nothing funny about portraying people as wrong, when in fact, they were right. And if I am wrong on this, then I have a great idea for a satire about Abraham Lincoln foolishly trying to end slavery, which I'm certain will have it's fans as well.

Get Smart is one of my all-time favorite television shows and so I was thrilled when I first heard that it would be made into a movie. When the details of the casting was released, I couldn't imagine anyone more perfect than Steve Carrel as Max or Anne Hathaway as Agent 99. Unfortunately, the script was awful and caused a wonderful opportunity to be wasted.

The familiar lines of the original television series were used in ways that they made no sense. The relationship between the two star characters -- which was so important to the original series -- was all wrong in the movie. It was so bad, in fact, that I found it difficult to recognize the characters I knew so well and I kept forgetting that I was watching Get Smart.

I really believe that this had all of the ingredients to become a hilarious movie, but someone messed up horribly along the way. It came across as if the writers have never even watched the television series, because they didn't seem to know what they were doing. Sadly, this was a waste of a wonderful opportunity to recreate one of the funniest television shows ever.

As many have said before, Ultraviolet does a horrible job developing it's story and the characters in it. Some have blamed this on a small budget and others on 30 minutes having been cut from the final version, but either way it's an undeniable truth.

Still yet, Ultraviolet isn't nearly as bad as many are saying it is. The horrible reviews probably have more to do with expectations set too high then with the value of the film compared to others. It certainly isn't one of the worst films that I've seen and the creativeness with it's story and visual effects were among the best.

Some have said it is unrealistic, but even though too little realism is a pet peeve of mine, I can't help but wonder what they were expecting out of a comic-book-style movie. Vampires set in a futuristic society definitely is not realistic, but it is a creative use of one's imagination and I fail to see how it's anymore unrealistic then many other popular comic-book-style movies (Superman? Batman? X-Men?). These people obviously missed something here.

The visual styles were among the best I've seen anywhere. If you removed the futuristic techno music, which first appeared during the mid-80's, it was stylistically comparable to the authentic punk rock/new wave themes of the late-70's and early-80's. I'm no expert on the use of CGI, but I greatly enjoyed how it was used in Ultraviolet, unlike many critics who thought there it was used too much or too poorly. The creativity of the visual styles and story line alone are enough to warrant a rating better then that of a middle-of-the-road movie.

Although I told you that too little realism is a pet peeve of mine, too little creativity is another one that I have. I would rebut critics who think this film was too unrealistic by saying that too many recent sci-fi movies lack creativity (in fact, this is a problem we see everywhere these days and it's probably the result of living in a society that has become a little too structured and orderly, ala "1984".) Specifically speaking, it's not the stories that lack creativity these days, but their presentation and how most of them attempt to copy the visual style of only a handful of other popular sci-fi movies (i.e. Alien, Star Wars, Blade Runner, The Matrix, etc.) Ultraviolet deserves credit for not falling into this trap.

Having spent much time defending Ultraviolet, I have to say that much of the criticism is spot on and there are few other positive things that can be said about Ultraviolet. It certainly could have been a better movie. Regardless, I still enjoyed it enough to give it 7/10, and while that may be a little generous, Ultraviolet is certainly a better then average movie.

This is a real disappointment for a film with such a fine cast. Despite the attempt to promote religious tolerance, understanding and disapproval of religious pretentiousness, it still comes across as an attempt to promote Anglo-American Christianity by using skeptics, who are, of course, presented as somewhat immoral characters.

The film seems to be promoting a message that says "It's okay to accept others who are different then you, but only as long as they're devout, Anglo-American Christians", which, I suppose, is okay if you want to show the film in an Anglo-American church, but besides being somewhat pretentious, it's also just a boring subject.

If I could re-write the script, I would re-write it so that the point it makes is that Christians aren't good people because they're Christians, but rather that good people are Christians because they're good people. This point seems to get lost in this film.

Freedom Downtime is basically a personal video record of the "Free Kevin" campaign to free notorious hacker Kevin Mitnick. It's not really about hacking at all and the comparisons to Michael Moore are only appropriate in that the filmmaker confronts those who have been deemed as bad guys. Other than that, Freedom Downtime shares nothing in common with Michael Moore films and is an interesting, albeit scary, look at the justice system in the USA.

It should be an interesting film for anyone who remembers the "Free Kevin" campaign that was once so prevalent on the internet. It's full of that dry humor so appreciated by hacker culture, which adds a little hacker flavor to an otherwise serious subject. Those not familiar with Mitnick may not appreciate the film as much, but they'll still come away with an inside glimpse into serious problems with the justice system and the corporate media's willingness to ignore the truth when it wishes to do so. Of course, this won't come as a big surprise today, when trust in the corporate media is at an all-time low and people have turned to the internet as a result.

This is an extremely boring film. If you grew up during the Vietnam Was, as I did, then you've seen and heard all of the film footage and arguments here a hundred times by now. But what really makes this film boring is the narration by director Carlton Sherwood. The majority of the film is shot with Sherwood talking directly into the camera about his opinion of this conflicting time in the history of our nation.

If you're old enough to remember Vietnam, then you won't find anything new here. There is no new evidence to condemn John Kerry or new evidence worthy of another documentary on Vietnam. Younger viewers who are interested in the subject should see George Butler's excellent film Going Upriver! Stolen Honor was clearly meant to be a hatchet job on John Kerry, but it fails miserably at accomplishing that goal.

I'm not sure why this movie didn't receive a higher rating than it did, except, perhaps, that some people may have been expecting something different from a Jennifer Anniston movie. However, I found it to be hilarious. After reading the review on IMDB I wasn't expecting much, so you could say that I was pleasantly surprised. The movie was simply a goofy comedy, in the spirit of Caddy Shack, Stripes or some other late-70's style comedy, and anyone expecting something else was probably disappointed.

Perhaps it didn't deserve my rating of 10, but I felt compelled to give it the best rating I could, because it deserves a much higher average rating than it has received. This is a truly hilarious movie and anyone thinking otherwise, simply has no sense of humor.

This film is typical of the big Hollywood productions released in the mid 1980's to mid 1990's era, where an All-Star cast is assembled around a much too overused theme, with lots of explosions, cliches, and poseurs. Sticking to the often used formula, this film offers no thought provoking ideas, originality, or hint of artistic value.

If you're a 45 year old married man, who owns a home in the suburbs, and wears a red bandana, while driving a Harley on the weekends, then you'll probably like this movie; otherwise, you'll probably consider it a waste of time. This movie blows and I have to give it a 2 on a scale of 1-10.

I have found many of the reviews for The Contender very interesting. I found this movie very suspenseful and truly enjoyed it. However, I do vote mostly Democrat and some have suggested that may be the reason why I enjoyed it as I did.

I believe there are two important points where this movie has drawn criticism; the most important of which has to do with which party you stand behind. I don't think it should be a surprise that those who vote Republican probably hated this movie, while those who vote Democrat most likely enjoyed it. And THAT is exactly where I believe the line was drawn between those who liked it and those who hated it (Surprising huh?)

To be quite honest I was surprised by the high rating of this movie and even moreso considering that we currently have a Republican President with high approval ratings. I also found this strange given the immense negative reactions directed toward the Clinton/Lewinsky Scandal. I suppose some will say there is a difference between the two situations because Senator Laine Hanson (Joan Allen) was innocent, while it would seem that President Clinton was guilty. However, anyone stating this argument completely missed the moral of the movie and how it shouldn't matter whether you're guilty or innocent.

It is this moral that Democrats and Republicans often disagree upon and why they either loved or hated this movie. Even though the movie tried to present itself as objective and as unbiased as possible, that was obviously an impossible feat. It seems that Rod Lurie wanted to keep the movie as simple and straightforward as possible, so as to keep the complex story from being diluted with unneccesary material and distorting your ability to think about the moral of his plot. I applaud this course for it would have been easy to have misunderstood the moral had it not been kept simple.

Yes! This movie was simple in many ways and probably not what some were looking for in a political thriller; hence some of the bad reviews about it being too simple and the second important reason for the criticism is has drawn. And yes, there were some things about it which were not quite realistic and yet I found some of these as intriquing insight as to what might someday be considered realistic (a US Senator openly disclosing her unpopular religious beliefs?) Overall I truly enjoyed this movie and it lived up to my great expectations.

I gave this movie 9/10. However, I mostly vote Democrat...:)

I have found many of the reviews for The Contender very interesting. I found this movie very suspenseful and truly enjoyed it. However, I do vote mostly Democrat and some have suggested that may be the reason why I enjoyed it as I did.

I believe there are two important points where this movie has drawn criticism; the most important of which has to do with which party you stand behind. I don't think it should be a surprise that those who vote Republican probably hated this movie, while those who vote Democrat most likely enjoyed it. And THAT is exactly where I believe the line was drawn between those who liked it and those who hated it (Surprising huh?)

To be quite honest I was surprised by the high rating of this movie and even moreso considering that we currently have a Republican President with high approval ratings. I also found this strange given the immense negative reactions directed toward the Clinton/Lewinsky Scandal. I suppose some will say there is a difference between the two situations because Senator Laine Hanson (Joan Allen) was innocent, while it would seem that President Clinton was guilty. However, anyone stating this argument completely missed the moral of the movie and how it shouldn't matter whether you're guilty or innocent.

It is this moral that Democrats and Republicans often disagree upon and why they either loved or hated this movie. Even though the movie tried to present itself as objective and as unbiased as possible, that was obviously an impossible feat. It seems that Rod Lurie wanted to keep the movie as simple and straightforward as possible, so as to keep the complex story from being diluted with unneccesary material and distorting your ability to think about the moral of his plot. I applaud this course for it would have been easy to have misunderstood the moral had it not been kept simple.

Yes! This movie was simple in many ways and probably not what some were looking for in a political thriller; hence some of the bad reviews about it being too simple and the second important reason for the criticism is has drawn. And yes, there were some things about it which were not quite realistic and yet I found some of these as intriquing insight as to what might someday be considered realistic (a US Senator openly disclosing her unpopular religious beliefs?) Overall I truly enjoyed this movie and it lived up to my great expectations.

I gave this movie 9/10. However, I mostly vote Democrat...:)

I am really surprised that this movie received as high of a rating as it did. After reading the reviews I wasn't expecting a great movie, but I did expect it to at least be somewhat interesting. However, I couldn't have been anymore wrong. It was horrible!

I love this genre when it is done right, but the Ivory Tower looked as if it were written by a daytrader who had just lost all of his money in the stock market. It's not surprising to see Kari Wuhrer playing one of the leading roles, since she nearly always plays a witless character in very bad movies, but why would you cast her here? Kari Wuhrer is a beautiful girl, but I've yet to see her play a character which displayed an ounce of wisdom and T&A wasn't what I was looking for in this flick.

I read some reviews which said I would like this if I had ever worked in the software industry. Well, I've worked in the software industry for several years and it didn't do anything for me.

So many fascinating tales have been passed on by those who were a part of The Manhattan Project. It surely is impossible to capture the spirit of all of them in a two hour movie.

Fat Man and Little Boy fell far short of giving a glimpse into what was one of the most incredible stories of the twentieth century. While it presented a great cast, the storyline and production were both horrible. Watching it was like trying to read War and Peace in a day.

It's truly a shame because there was a great opportunity here to tell some of the great stories past on to us by some of the great men who were there. If this movie is the only thing you've ever seen or heard about The Manhattan Project then you have no idea how much you're missing. I was very disappointed after watching this movie.

When I first saw the trailer for the Runaway Bride I thought to myself "Oh great, a Pretty Woman sequel!" It may surprise you to know that I actually enjoyed Pretty Woman. But, as good as it was, it was over-glamorized and I'd about gotten to the point where I was ready to puke if I heard anymore praise for this movie.

So, I decided I would wait and catch it on video on an evening when I didn't mind being disappointed. I expected most would be disappointed, as the movie had all the setup needed for failure being envisioned as the sequel to Pretty Woman. But, I expected it would still receive quite a bit of praise and I would spend another few years holding my gut each time I heard the name Runaway Bride.

As the reviews came in I was quite surprised to find that so many others seemed to have rated the movie the way I envisioned I would. So, I was quite shocked when I FINALLY got around to watching this movie and discovered that I loved it! As far as I'm concerned it was much better than Pretty Woman.

I think the Runaway Bride may have been a little too non-traditional for some to cherish. While this seems to be a trademark of Marshall's films, I think this one definitely out did Pretty Woman in that department. Even though Julia Roberts played a prostitute in Pretty Woman, everything else was richly traditional. I don't believe the same can be said for Runaway Bride and this was the difference to me.

I also believe there will also be those who disliked the troubles Roberts' character had in the movie. Some will say they were unreal or just plain silly. But, I didn't feel that way and in fact, I believe they gave the movie a sense of reality lacking in most traditional romance films. Robert's and Gere were both marvelous and I gave this movie 9 stars.

Many people want to compare this movie to The Truman Show with Jim Carey. While it is true that both movies are about men who's lives are filmed on television, the comparisions should stop there. Most of the reviews I've read have said EDTV doesn't quite live up to The Truman Show and I have to disagree. While I found The Truman Show to be okay, I truly enjoyed EDTV much better. Unlike The Truman Show this movie was more real and the plot tended to draw me into the movie more so because it was more realistic. I have no desire to ever watch The Truman Show again, but I would enjoy watching EDTV ever so often and this is coming from someone who watches very few movies twice.

One line mostly sums up how I feel about this movie: it was the most realistic war movie I've ever seen. I tend to get agitated with unrealistic major Hollywood productions and their quests to bend or shape the truth as they see fit. I believe 'When Trumpets Fade' was probably the first war film I have seen which dared to display war as I imagine it to have occurred: atl east on the battle field.

I cannot iterate enough how refreshing it was to see actual young men play soldiers, instead of the regular usage of men over the age of 35, requiring the viewer to imagine he's not long out of high school. Get a grip Hollywood! Viewers are not that stupid...Are you?

Furthermore, I cannot iterate to you how sympathetic I felt towards watching these young men running through forest and river beds along side their fallen comrades who had realistically been ripped to pieces by enemy tank fire and land mines, etc.

I'm quite a critic of Hollywood (how they get financed for the majority of junk produced I'll never understand), but this was one of those rare films which actually dragged me in with it's believeable and realistic production. You won't watch this film and feel as if you've wasted your time afterwards.

I wasn't expecting much from this movie. What do you expect with a name like Joyride? I expected some silly sexist comedy, which wasn't funny, and failed miserably to keep my attention with quick over-used one-liners. So, it was a pleasant surprise to find that this movie actually wasn't all too bad.

Checking up on Christina Naify, known only as Smith in Joyride, revealed how few movies she has done and I'm left wondering why. Her performance was outstanding to say the least. Unlike most action figures Naify's character uses her intelligence as her main weapon. In one scene where Tanya (Amy Hathaway) is beaten by a client she's hooking for, Naify's character busts in the room, shoots the assailant, takes a picture of stunned Tanya with gun in hand over the assailants dead body and proceeds to threaten Tanya with the picture if she doesn't get her car back which Tanya had helped steal.

She is the freshest face I've seen in a long time and would like to see her in bigger roles in the future because she certainly appears to have the talent to pull off a big production.