GodsStar

I forced myself to give this film two stars because of the potential of the cast, who's acting was extremely well done, and for the cinematography & filming locations.

The actors convey their passion for one another in spite of the fact there's absolutely no apparent reason for them to excel, have independent thought or even love. The stringent environment the characters are "raised" in disallows any of that.

This film was a cold, drudging work wallowing around in it's maudlin subject matter. I found absolutely NOTHING thought provoking let alone uplifting about it. Skip it.

"Splice", in a word, was AWFUL. The "plot" is a myriad of already-been-done-to-death-in-film story lines and the stupidity level of the geneticist couple is off the chart. I kept asking myself how anyone approved -the budget although meager according to sources- for this waste.

Without "spoiling" it for people who insist on wasting their precious time and money on this atrocity, one event that occurs has watermarked a new L O W for film. Don't worry, you'll know it when you see it. You've NEVER seen a character cross the line like what we witness in this flick. My advise: DON'T! Wait for cable and satisfy your curiosity if there's absolutely nothing better to watch on. All it's a good for is for its "That's just WRONG!" shock value.

There's nothing new to this formula, People. You'll know the deal within the first ten minutes, more than likely.

Then, you'll probably like things to turn out differently for aging Randy "The Ram" Robinson sometime during the flick, but there's no redeeming payoff on any level; happy ending or not.

The "My kid hates me" element: no reconciliation AND no graveside remorse to give the audience a lesson in forgiveness is shown. Not even a good ass kicking somewhere through it all for the dweeb grocery store manager that smacks with jealousy towards the wrestler. As for the would-be love interest: How cliché is "I only strip to feed my family and, no, I don't sleep with customers"? No, Viewers-no redeeming payoff for us.

Another thorn in my side was the documentary-but-NOT cinematography. Following the lead character around "Gonzo" style though the whole film is pretty taxing. It could be that, being a "reality show" NON-enthusiast, I'm just jaded by that visual anyway. I rate this one: Sunday-On-The-Sofa w/some suds in the off season. Wait for it on the dish or the wire.

First off, I liked Craig's acting in the film. I even like the more sinister James Bond. Being a little more Rambo/Segal/Van Dam is certainly what we tend to like "today" so I'm willing to accept that. Nice touch.

Other reviews mirror my thoughts, though, about Craig NOT being a suave James Bond. The Bond we've grown to love has always been so cool while kicking so much tail that it defies logic to us. 007's the type of guy that mows down dozens of evil henchman like Aeon Flux and then pulls out a whisk broom to brush his lapels off before returning to the baccarat table. Craig ain't him.

What I couldn't get around throughout the film was that I didn't like Craig's appearance. Having guys like Connery and Moore to look at through most of the Bond films has set the tone for what a Bond should be…debonair and HANDSOME. Obviously, the RE-inventing of Bond has demanded that Bond look like "Regular Joe" and, of course, have the cool "Bed-Head" hairdo to make the Ys and Xs happy.

This all fits in a society that's hewn a "hooray for mediocrity" country. EVERYONE gets a trophy for playing! EVERYONE can be a cheerleader! EVERYONE can be a flight attendant! EVERYONE can be James Bond! Uhh…No! No you cant…Over two hours of footage and all the eye candy in the world doesn't change that.

Ong-Bak is a completely "formula" martial arts/kung-fu movie with one major plus for me- No feudalistic era, long pony-tailed, long eyebrowed masters and the like.

Semi-Spoiler ahead!!!! ]]]]]]]> "The bad guys stole our village icon! Get it back and save our village" is the motive for the hero to go to modern day Taiwan(?) to do that and get revenge. That's it, but it's a REALLY good time!

I've never seen more realistic fighting action in all my years of witnessing the genre. These guys kick butt to the point that you wonder how many people got hurt making it.

Aside from that, have a good time cheering for everyone who eventually gets to be "adjusted" by our hero, Ting. Keep in mind that I did NOT want to go see this but I was persuaded by friends to do so and I was NOT disappointed.

I can't wait for the DVD!

ENJOY!

From the moment that I saw this film in '82 until today, it's remained among my favorites. For the life of me, however, I cannot understand why the director eliminated the narration from this film.

Many of you may not know this, but there once was a movie genre called FILM NOIRE. These movies usually involved a really good, loner type detective, like "Sam Spade" or the like. He would walk you though the film using narration that highlighted what he was thinking while you watched him perform his investigative duties with a featureless "poker face" to fool the bad guys.

Periodically, and most often impersonated, the detective would "step out" of a scene he was in and talk to the audience instead of narrating over the action. Perhaps you've seen old Bogart films where he'd stand under a light pole in the rain and recite a monologue to the audience about how he felt the case was going or to highlight another character's actions, behaviors or personalities according to him. THAT is E X A C T L Y what Blade Runner was meant to depict in a futuristic setting. It worked WELL, and it is sorely missed from the director's cut.

Honestly, and many will agree, unless you've seen the original cut of this film, you lose a LOT of information that helps you understand the story to the fullest. If I'm "whining" or "don't understand the 'new school' " and you DISAGREE blindly, then don't you EVER use the CAST/CREW COMMENTARY feature on you DVDs again. Yeah…I THOUGHT so!!! So-perhaps those with the "power" can do what many of us are asking: Give us our movie back…the way it was MEANT to be seen…the way WE remember it.

It took only moments for me to formulate an opinion of this show. Once again, the brilliance of acting must suffer to mind dead scripts geared toward the key demographic that is, painfully, thirty and under.

Soap opera actors are a breed apart. They are called upon to learn pages of dialogue, just for a single show, CONSTANTLY. The actors here are no different. I can see that if they were given a REAL script to work with they could be extremely dynamic. Unfortunately, the need to work or contractual agreements kept them chained to this rehashed GARBAGE. This re-treaded idea that was sorry when it was "Xena", which was borrowed from the Hercules sagas [The Legendary Journeys] [[garbage], which borrowed from old Sinbad story lines that was campy GARBAGE back in the sixties and seventies. The actors must be positively relieved to not have to be chained to this foolishness any longer.

You see we are in a midst of a full blown ANTI RENAISSANCE of creativity. To actually NOT blatantly "borrow" from someone ELSES ideas that worked in the past is unheard of. This generation believes that since there's about one hundred years of recorded media to "borrow" from that they don't have to "waste time" by thinking up something NEW. Young people don't see the need to ABSORB knowledge when you can look up anything you need to find on the internet. This rubbish hit me in the gut as hard as when I heard the singer Little Romeo, "borrow" from Biz Markie's song "Just a Friend" a few years ago. That "artist" had borrowed from a song barely a decade old. I'd already been forced to live through the seventies AGAIN. How soon will I find myself looking @ kids with tall, box cut haircuts and "Cross Colors" yet again?

I've said it to friends and I'll say it to those who read this: I STILL remain optimistic that ONE DAY I will turn on a radio and NOT here music from MY past rehashed and desecrated by some blithering X or Y generation buffoon. ONE DAY, I'll turn on the television and NOT see herds of people contriving "reality" for some moronic coward living for free in his parent's basement to WATCH because he's too scared to go outside and experience it HIMSELF.

Now.I await rebuttals against what I've written here, no doubt presented in ALL CAPS, run together sentences, ridiculous grammar and lots of sentences using lowercase " i " to refer to themselves with. You'd think a generation raised on computers would know how the spell check function works on their word suites but then again, who do you copy THAT from?

I cannot believe that we waited five years between sequels for this.

There's nothing tackier about breathing life into a sequel than resurrecting a PAST cast member but I was willing to let my dreams of watching Linda Fiorentino working as Will Smith's new partner go in the hopes that Tommy Lee and Will could pull off another good run. Agent "L" is never seen and her character is dismissed with a passing line.

The premise of the film was formula but well delivered. The MIB had an encounter with some life forms over twenty years ago. They carry the life source of their planet around with them to keep it safe from harm. Since some evil dame chases them across the cosmos to steal "the light" from them and rule their planet, they asked MIB if they would hold onto it but they refused, as it is against the code to put Earth in danger over some other planet's problems. Man…if only the U.S. government would do that…but I digress.

The "good" guys get away & MIB throws the evil woman off course.

For some reason only Tommy Lee has the key to saving the world and must be DE-neuralized back into action as Agent "K" when the evil Serleena returns. Serleena believes that "the light" is still on Earth and Agent "K" knows where it is…and away we go.

The special effects are great. As if we ever had a doubt. And that's pretty much it. Aside from a few jokes and gags here and there the film is ALL hype and no action. The snappy dialogue and the chemistry between Will and Tommy that we saw in the first MIB are gone. They look like they are both under contract and HAVE to be there.

The sets of the MIB headquarters are the star of this show. It looks like some serious work went into the neo-jet set look as well as spending some big money on a tangible environment. There's not so much matte painting and CGI work in the film and it's nice to see.

I wouldn't be surprised if even children will be disappointed by this fiasco.

I'd wait for cable/satellite on this one, People. I'm not sure if it even justifies a rental. 1 and ½ stars out of four.

FIRST to all: to all of the "Gene Siskles" out there that depict themselves to be mensa material - GROW UP. I don't go to movies to see "Schindler's List" every time that I go and that would speak for the majority. While I THOROUGHLY enjoyed "Othello" with Lawrence Fishburn, I can relax a bit, as I assume Anthony Hopkins did to star in it, and enjoy a film like "Bad Company" for what it is - an entertaining story.

Films are designed, PRIMARILY, for ENTERTAINMENT. If one would like to indulge in "entertainment" that's thought provoking and art induced, may I suggest a good BOOK or a PLAY. I HATE it when people [see edipisreks review in this section] want to scold the rest of the world for not "seeing" the "genius" in art when that art doesn't depict what's REAL. I am a stage improviser, lyricist, and artist. While I can peruse the Art Institute here in Chicago and enjoy a Monet, I have always found the work of Picasso to be positively horrid. The same applies to Andy Worhal, while Dali is most interesting. You can't blame the majority of the planet for not "seeing" the point of color blocked soup cans. People like "edipisreks" want film to be like THEATER. Theater is entertainment designed to translate a story and "fool" the audience into believing that the actors are who they are depicting. FILM is a genre designed to do the same thing with the ADDED feature of taking us some places we can NEVER go virtually, like to a galaxy far, far away, or swinging from a whip across a chasm like Indiana Jones.

NOW…about A.I.: Films CAN be designed to be thought provoking if the film is MARKETED that way. "A.I." was not. It was shrouded in mystery for hype's sake with the poster shot , SMACKING of "E.T.", was released. As an AVID science fiction fan, that logo and the trailer lead me to believe that the movie was going to be interesting. What little was shown certainly looked like my kind of movie [Bladerunner is my favorite].

This is another one of those movies that the people like to call a "Fable" these days. "Nightmare On Elm Street", "A Clockwork Orange", "Edward Scissor Hands", "Vanilla Sky" RUBBISH! As for you trend followers, like many people that I perform with, file "Water For Chocolate", "Natural Born Killers", and " Boogie Nights" on the same shelf-HORSE $H!T.

A.I. had Bladerunner's setting and started a several stories that never ended. I was, basically, a protracted sci-fi rendition of Pinocchio and it KNEW that. When Gigolo Joe hits the "submerge" button on the Amphibicopter David enters what appears to be, the possible remnants of Coney Island that contain a Pinocchio Land of some sort. Perhaps this is Spielberg's way of letting us off the hook if, for some reason within 145 minutes, we DIDN'T get the correlation. I am VERY glad that I saw this @ a friend's house for free and saved my money. That would have been the cost of TWO tickets for myself and my girlfriend who LOVES science fiction as well. Quite honestly, I'm frightened for "Minority Report"