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2b99a70c-031e-458e-8116-57c0b71615b9

I really didn't like this film~!!!! it was boring and didn't interest me that much at all.. i'm more of an action girl, and it had NONE. i went and rented this movie because of the other comment that was left.. but was totally mislead! don't get this movie unless you like the dessert and plenty of boredom. i just really didn't like the movie. it wasn't my style, but it could be yours.. you would just have to watch the previews or something but it's my recommendation if you're a girl.. don't get this movie! This Scandinavian production draws on some of the observational strategies of Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi, allowing us to reflect on patterns and phenomena of human and natural existence from both intimate and sweeping viewpoints. this just isn't for me!

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52839c9b-f58e-4540-973f-d3ef06adc39b

I've got 10 plus year old computer games with better special effects! Plot is choppy and very predictable. Most of the actors seem like extras with no experience! Everyone has Scottish accents. It's like watching a crew of 'Scotties' from Star Trek without the personality or charm. Needless scenes of people putting up tents! Tents with all of the supposedly high tech equipment! Actors looking like they were not sure the camera was on them. Nothing to make you care if these people survive or not! Looks like it was made in someone's backyard and garage using low end equipment! Nothing seems original or even slightly entertaining. Do not waste your time!

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bc98dade-688a-4f61-aa7c-f1e373df4a18

This movie was awful, plain and simple! The animation scenes had absolutely terrible graphics. It was VERY clear to see that this film had about the budget of my grocery bill!! The acting was just as bad.. I've seen better acting in pornographic films. I would seriously like the hour and twenty minutes of my life back. In fact, I registered on IMDb just so that other people don't get sucked into watching this like I did. Don't get me wrong though, I love sci-fi films! This one seemed more like the intro to a video game :( I'm glad I only spent a dollar to see this one! The story line reminded me of the movie pitch black, A prisoner on a ship in outer space escapes. Oh my goodness.. what are we gonna do??? I would not even let this play in the background of my house while I was cleaning! Bottom line here, you can do better.

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bb21dad6-c047-47a1-9884-081d753748f2

I pride myself in being able to sit through everything. I think "if I've paid the rental fee, then I'm going to at least watch it". I have found the exception to this rule- The Planet. I don't know what the exchange rate is, but reading through the other comments I can only guess that £8000 must be around $150. I'll date myself but this movie reminds me of the old Steve Reeves movies of the 50's. He was a bodybuilder turned actor. He was in these really awful Italian, dubbed movies that starred Reeves as Hercules or some other muscle bound hero. As a kid watching them you couldn't quite articulate why these movies stunk- you just knew they did. Mike Mitchell IS the new Steve Reeves. That's it.. that's what this really was- a new telling of an old Italian "Spaghetti Sand and Sandals" movie. And, I kid you not- where was Reeves born? Glasgow, Montana. This movie isn't so bad that it's kind of fun to watch- it's just plain bad.

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e043fa84-706a-4f4d-8176-84786b8b182d

I went through great efforts to get this movie after reading the comments on this site. I really don't have time to write reviews but I felt this was my duty as a sci-fi horror buff. This is only the second review I have written. The other was for Dracula 3000. Now to the point. This movie sucked. Plain and simple. I kept wondering if I was watching the same movie as those who wrote all those "lovely" comments. I have seen movies with bad effects, bad acting, bad sound, you name it and I've seen it. But this really sucked. I don't care how much it costs or didn't cost to make, movies like this and Dracula 3000 should be banned and the whole cast and crew arrested and jailed for time murder. By the way, Did I mention that this movie sucked. I mean really sucked. The plot was non exist and the acting was weak. It seems like the writer saw Pitch Black and got upset because he didn't think of a plot like that first so he decided to make his own ripped off version. But instead, the suck factor took over and possessed him. DON'T WATCH THIS. You'll have more fun if you pull down your pants and sit on burning coals.

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5ae26f39-22d1-4dc9-929a-d2fde62db270

I really did not want to write a harsh review of this movie because I genuinely appreciate how hard it is to make any kind of movie on an incredibly low budget, let alone attempt something as ambitious as a sci-fi.<br /><br />However this movie is truly awful. The acting is among some of the worst I have ever had to endure and as a fan of low budget movies that is a pretty serious accusation to make. There are plenty of aspiring actors out there who would work on a deferred payment scheme if they believed in the movie and what the director was trying to achieve. I'm sure the actors did their best as did everybody else involved in this production, but it simply was not good enough to pull off something of this magnitude.<br /><br />Then there is the dialogue. Very poor indeed. There is no excuse for that. I got the impression the script was hastily written on the back of a beer mat after some epic boozing session. I hesitate to use the word 'laughable' but that's exactly what the script is. I had no empathy with any of the characters. Indeed they grated on me with the result that on more than one occasion I wanted to thump a couple of them Mr Stirton has overstretched himself by taking on too many roles. Clint Eastwood he is not. Again, there are talented people out there willing to work on deferment if they believe in the project.<br /><br />Much has been made of the special effects in this movie. For the money, they are exceptional, if somewhat overused. It is like someone said "I have after effects and boy am I gonna use it". Whoever did the CG work was among the most talented of this crew.<br /><br />Quite simply the money was not available to make as ambitious a movie as this attempts to be. Kudos for attempting it, but unfortunately it fails to reach its heady goals in far too many ways.<br /><br />I salute everyone involved with its production, I really do, but for their next effort they either need to get a better producer or lower their sights to something more manageable.<br /><br />In conclusion I cannot recommend this effort to anyone other than the most enthusiastic of film students or habitual insomniacs. If you want to watch a true masterpiece of low budget sci-fi films try the student made "Dark Star" by a certain Mr John Carpenter.

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5bf902eb-fa8b-444a-86a9-f87bca0f2c5a

I felt compelled to write a review after seeing the only review which gave this film a suspiciously high 9/10 rating. I say suspicious because it looks less like a review but more like a publicity statement. Perhaps the filmmaker himself, or one of his mates, has written that "review"? Naughty, naughty.<br /><br />I watched this movie on the Propeller channel on Sky TV expecting it to be truly awful. The special effects used were to be honest very, very good for a low budget film, and some of the acting wasn't that bad either, but most of the acting was really awful, but well done for trying, as I expect most were pals of the filmmaker.<br /><br />I think the filmmaker has done really well by trying to punch above his weight. I did find some of the film funny because it was trying to be super cool when it just wasn't.<br /><br />If you don't take this film too seriously and watch it whilst drunk with some mates you might well have a good time but probably not in the way it was intended. This film is no way a 9/10 but worth watching for a laugh bearing in mind it was made on a very very low budget and in fairness due credit to those involved in it's production.

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770d86d4-5799-4c56-9449-2ff6270ab9ff

I had known Brad Linaweaver at Florida State U in the early 70's when he was an inspiring, inventive writer who I thought was headed for greater glory.<br /><br />And that is why I rented this video. Well, well, well, the time has not been kind to Mr Linaweaver. I suppose the pressures of making a living makes higher aspirations expendable. Another flower whose bloom has come and gone un-noticed in the summer breeze. Amen. There is nothing more to say. And nothing more to add. A sad epitaph to a once blossoming career as stated above. But it is the price one pays for chasing shadows without a firm foundation or goals for oneself in life. Because this movie has no goal, no purpose, and I kept telling myself, what happened to Brad's creativity, his once shining genius? Gone, gone, years of neglect has deteriorated his once shining mind.

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c5c9cc01-b397-414e-a0f6-ea9808a4aa89

I bought this out of curiosity. How did John Carradine (who died in 1988) and Cameron Mitchell (who died in 1994) make appearances in a film made in 1995? Thanks to the miracle of unused film can footage that's probably been sitting on a shelf somewhere for ten years, that's how! You can tell because the film stock used to shoot their scenes doesn't match the film used for shooting "Jack-O." The curse of Ed Wood lives on. The good thing for both Carradine and Mitchell is that this is exactly the kind of movie you'd expect to find on both of their filmographies. Same goes for Scream Queens Linnea Quigley, Brinke Stevens and Dawn Wildsmith.<br /><br />The setting is Oakmoor Crossing on Halloween, and some kind of curse is released when dumb, beer-guzzling teens disrupt a grave. The result: a hulking killer with a scythe and a big plastic pumpkin on his head! He (it?) goes after the wholesome Kelly family for revenge (and kills others who get in his way). The father opens a Haunted Garage for the neighborhood kiddies. The son (Ryan Latshaw, son of the director) has one continuous, perplexed facial expression for all his scenes and one hilariously badly acted dramatic scene lying in a grave. At least he's a kid. The mother's eyes about pop out of her head while she strains to read her dialogue. There is also an annoying woman who shows up to explain things who seems to be trying to phonetically pronounce all of her dialogue.<br /><br />So what about the name actors? You see Stevens, Wildsmith and Mitchell briefly on a TV screen (they're used to pad out the time). Linnea has a bigger role as a babysitter, and she does exactly what she can with it. Her enthusiastic performance helps a little bit. There's also one out-of-nowhere laugh when an ultra-conservative couple who watch a Rush Limbaugh clone on TV bite it. The woman slips on a rug and stabs a toaster with a knife. She's electrocuted and the end result looks like a flame-broiled Muppet.<br /><br />All and all, pretty entertaining stuff! I wasn't bored!

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660af5bc-ab37-4acf-a271-b77d8a67a632

Man, this movies sucked. It appeared to have like seven different plots going on at once and they all made little to no sense. The special effects, costumes, and all that stuff were beyond awful. The acting was particullary bad. Everything seemed so forced, especially the lines from the woman with the huge eyes and the little kid (his "Noooooo" as he gets burried is so unenthusiastic it's laughable). A good portion of this movie is rather funny anyway. The one woman's death where she shoves a knife into a toaster, gets electrocuted, and magically turns into the crapiest skeleton dummy in the world had my friends and I laughing for a good ten minutes.<br /><br />Bottom line: If you're into watching really horrible movies, seek this one out. If not, run for your life.

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6ab139e7-84a2-4ca8-bf31-52b64076fdaa

I've always loved horror flicks. From some of the usual well-known like "The Exorcist" to some of the more underrated like "Black Christmas" or "Just Before Dawn". But who are people kidding,even calling this trash a b-movie. It's straight up bottom-of-the-barrel Z-grade. The acting is the worst ever on film. Really,I've seen better on an episode of the "Young and the Restless"...SPOILER...Lookout for when the woman comes to tell them about the legend of Jack-o. She pauses sometimes for a matter of seconds as if someone is flashing her cue cards and she's struggling to read her lines. A RIOT! <br /><br />Oh,and besides the bad acting,absolutely no gore or F/X. And Jack-o looked like a plastic lit pumpkin. Watch Linnea Quigley in "Night of the Demons",or "Silent Night,Deadly Night",far superior flicks.

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4d7a3a87-2fec-413b-b0d0-78a9710f8c2b

I bought Jack-O a number of months ago at a Blockbuster video sale, and at the time I wasn't expecting anything outstanding from it. Upon watching it, I realized I not only got less than I could have ever bargained for, but a whole lot more as well. It seems, strange, I know. And it is. But it's perfectly fitting when you consider that the utter weirdness that is "Jack-O"<br /><br />The movie follows a young boy named Shawn Kelly. Somehow, thru ancestral ties, he is marked for death at the hands of a demented, scythe wielding Pumpkin man. This pumpkin man was killed by Shawn's Great-grandfather-uncle-cousin-etc, and now that the villain has been resurrected, Shawn's death is apparently crucial to his hell-bred mission of vengeance. Anyway, much "horror" ensues as Jack-O hacks his way thru various neighbors before battling Shawn to the finish.<br /><br />I'm not so much here to discuss the plot as I am to determine who may find any worth in this movie. I can honestly tell you that Jack-O is one of the most poorly made movies in the history of time. The acting is deadpan (except when it should be), the script is apparently a 1st grade group project, and the production budget must not have exceeded $150. Some of the most laughable death scenes are carried out in this anti-thriller, and they're all the more humorous when you realize director Steve Latshaw actually seems serious in his movie-making.<br /><br />And yet I heartily enjoyed the film. I can call it a terrible horror movie, yes. But I can also say I had a great time watching it with my friends, and have watched it several times since that fateful first viewing. Many people (including some of my friends) will find this movie intolerable and needlessly time-consuming, and that's understandable. If you're like me and enjoy ridiculously bad horror movies that take themselves seriously, you'll find Jack-O an instant classic, which is also understandable.<br /><br />That's why it's so hard to rate this movie. If I were rating Jack-O's quality as a film, I wouldn't give it anything. In fact, the studio would owe me stars. Yet if I were rating it's on the basis of pure enjoyment, I'd give it an 8 or a 9. I'll give it a 4, so to be somewhere in the middle. I recommend everyone go out, rent this, and form their own conclusion.

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7733cae6-4fbc-4c5c-a8e3-08ecef04eaea

When you watch low budget horror movies as much as I do, you get to where you can tell who was involved in creating the movie, as each film-maker adds his own flavor to the cheese. Such is the case with Jack-O. When I watched this truly awful movie, I was left with the undeniable feeling that Fred Olen Ray was involved, maybe not as director but in some fashion, and as I researched, I found that I was correct. Only Fred and a handfull of others could write something this pathetic, and this movie just reeked of Fred Olen Ray. Unless you like Fred Olen Ray (and God only knows why anyone would)avoid this movie. If you're going to rent an Olen Ray pic, rent Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, it's the only bright shining star in Olen Ray's dark cheesey universe of terrible movies.

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This is, without a doubt, the most hilarious movie I've ever seen. Seriously, if the makers of this movie are ever discovered, they'll put guys like Jim Carrey out of a job. Rent "Jack-O" tonight! Believe me, you won't regret it!

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6e2e09d5-e136-4579-9be4-236f1d558df3

This thing, it shouldn't be called a film, is almost worse than "Manos", but you just have to see it it's hilarious. If you see it at video store rent it, if you see the 10th anniversary edition, yes there is a special edition, for under $10 buy it, if your friend has it borrow it, you just have to see this. The acting is so bad, and the gore is is so fake. After viewing this you'll be asking yourself why did they make this insult of the art of film? That's assuming your face doesn't melt off like the Nazis's in "Raiders" . If you manage to see this, be sure to vote this movie as 1 (awful) so it can make the bottom 100, it really deserves a spot there. I'm surprised it's not number 1, right now.

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ad00ca6d-0d99-4442-bcca-1b9a1249cb01

In Halloween, three friends seek an ancient cemetery in the suburb for fun and remove a cross from a tomb, where Jack-O was buried many years ago by the farmer Arthur Kelly. The evil creature is unleashed, kills the trio and seeks the descendants of the Kelly family for revenge.<br /><br />The cheesy "Jack-O" is a combination of a terrible story with awful acting. I was curious with the name of John Carradine in the credits and I can not imagine how a relative authorizes the use of archive footage in such a bad movie, showing a total lack of respect with the name of this great actor. It is impressive how bad the acting is, shifting the film to a comedy instead of the proposed horror genre. This is the type of movie good to see with a group of friends, drinking beer, making comments and laughing a lot. My vote is three.<br /><br />Title (Brazil): "Jack-O – Demônio do Halloween" ("Jack-O – Demon of the Halloween")

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5af9baba-4598-4f4e-850f-7b8d2cdc6a58

Ugh. Pretty awful.<br /><br />Linnea Quigley gets top billing, but her character doesn't have a big part. Who is her character supposed to be anyway, the little boy's aunt? Another user commented on her getting nude in a shower scene. While there was a shower scene in the movie, it was a head and shoulders shot. Perhaps there are some alternate versions of this movie.<br /><br />Quigley does have a bigger part than John Carradine, Cameron Mitchell, and Brinke Stevens, though. Carradine shows up briefly in a monkish robe reciting vague dialog. No other characters are in the scene with him, though he's sort of composited in, or else there are over-the-shoulder shots unquestionably belonging to someone else. There's also a really bad photo of him in a cameo locket (it looks like a bad photocopy), and a decent picture of him in a family bible. He conjured up Jack-O originally, or something like that.<br /><br />Cameron Mitchell briefly shows up on a TV as a TV horror host. Brinke Stevens is in the movie he's showing "The Coven," in which she runs around a cemetery in a robe. Evidently there's more of the Brinke footage as a bonus feature on the Retromedia DVD double feature Mark of the Witch/The Brides Wore Blood.<br /><br />Jack-O: what's it about? Darn if I know. A little boy is told a story about a pumpkin-headed demon killer, and he and some other kids are scared by a woman they think is a witch for some reason. She follows him home and offers to help his family with their haunted garage for Halloween (put your hand through a hole and feel eyeballs that are actually grapes, etc.). The pumpkin-headed killer shows up several times to hold onto branches while he watches people, or hold his scythe in front of the camera and pose with it for a while. Sometimes he manages to do more than just stand around holding things, and actually kills people.<br /><br />There are also some flashbacks to a western or prairie family, with the little boy playing the little boy in that family too: ancestors of his, I think. I think they figure into Jack-O's backstory, but I'm not sure how.<br /><br />The little boy is ostensibly the main character, but we don't really learn anything about him except that he wears glasses, has nightmares, and will fight bullies even if he'll get beat up in the process. More time should have been spent establishing his character. I couldn't have cared less if he died.<br /><br />Not recommended, not even for Halloween.

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27bf5320-8c9f-4aa8-ae83-1dea051d9ada

Wow! What a movie if you want to blow your budget on the title and have it look real bad ask the guys that made this movie on how to do that. They could have spent the money on a good rewrite or something else. Or they could have spent it on beer when they made this movie at least it would have come out better.

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I hope this group of film-makers never re-unites.

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0ba8c901-7471-4e40-8aed-cea3f118951b

If you are looking for a cinematic masterpiece, this ain't it. If you are looking for one of those awful movies that are so horrible that they are actually good, then this may be for you. There are so many unintentional laughs in this film, that it could almost be considered a comedy. Let's start with the opening titles, that say "Jack-O", and then add the word "Lantern", as if the viewer wasn't able to figure out the movie was about a pumpkin by the giant pumpkin shown on both the cover and in the opening scene of the movie. After that, the movie goes in about 20 different directions, none of which make much sense. Jack-o is everywhere, he's in people's houses, in the woods, and yet he doesn't ever seem to do much of anything. He does make a few kills, but the long buildup to those killings is so poorly acted and constructed you almost wish Jack-o would take out his rage on you the viewer. Other than that, the plot consists of poor acting, gratuitous nudity, and a ridiculous plot line. The acting in this film is among the worst I've ever seen in my 35 plus years of movie-watching. The boy who is the lead in the film (the director's son) has about as much emotion as a corpse, and just about all of the other actors/actresses are just as bad for numerous reasons (especially the bug-eyed lady with eyes bigger than saucers). But, having said all this, if you take this for what it is, (that is a steaming pile of dung) then you will get a few laughs from this movie. What I also found amusing is that the makers of the DVD saw fit to release a "10th Anniversary Version" of this movie (as if the original wasn't good enough). And someone actually had the idea of making a "behind the scenes" mini film which is also included in the 10th anniversary edition (I'm not sure why).......I'll give this 3 smashed pumpkins out of 10...

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If you are in search of a masochistic thrill, rent this movie, and show it to a group of your friends sober. This movie is just plane lame, but there not completely without value. The brief tits are nice, and there is one victim's death that is funny as hell. Other than that, this is straight garbage. But it is still better than "Grim" or "Spookies"

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bbd20b10-1223-4cce-a51c-2534e47e9004

My mother and I rented this gem a few years ago while she was here visiting for Thanksgiving. I have rarely laughed so hard. This is a typical low-budget horror movie with dumb special effects, a worse plot, and even worse acting. But are you really expecting a classic when Linnea Quigley receives top billing? I thought not.<br /><br />Since this movie does have some entertainment value, I give it a 3 out of 10.

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be897a66-875d-4a7f-af03-39944f92c2d4

Three delinquents disturb the tomb of an ancient warlock who after summoning Jack-O (a less then menacing pumpkin-headed figure) to dispatch said hoodlums, continues on his sworn vengeance to kill every decedents of the family that offed him. That includes young Sean Kelly and his horror-loving family. Of course it's up to Sean to find a way to save the day.<br /><br />Such a stupid low-budget B-movie. The acting's atrocious and the plot isn't much better. Throw in a extremely lame killer, a possible pedophile who laughs way too much & a couple of stereotypical cardboard cutout 'conservative' couple and you have this film in a nutshell. Not really worth your time save to see how superbly well Linnea is aging. <br /><br />Eye Candy: Linnea Quigley is always good for some T&A and she doesn't disappoint here with a lengthy shower scene; Rachel Carter also gets topless (although it could be a body double)<br /><br />My Grade: D-

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a2b1028a-e1ec-4101-8fc5-cad1177ed989

Warning Might contain spoilers<br /><br />i just sadly spent 5 bucks on this movie on amazon and i wish i never spent it. I have never seen suck horrible special affects, or acting. I mean Jack-0 is just a laughable monster and his costume looks like something u could buy at a Halloween store or make yourself. The acting is just horrible especially Sean Kelly i mean come on he is so pathetic with his little lines "COme get me PUmpkinman" low i laughed so hard on this its just stupid. I mean the movie is so awful they had to put a few minutes of nudity in it just for people not to shut it off low. I think the most laughable scene is when the woman sticks a butter knife in the toaster and gets electrocuted. I mean come on that looked so fake and the dummy i could buy that at any Halloween store or make it myself. Well I recommend not watching this cheesy movie cause it will be time you will never get back.

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7a445957-54e2-4004-b0d6-41e16a3ae72b

OK, I could only find three reasons to consider this film worthwhile considering the extremely low budget.<br /><br />First there was Linnea Quigley and Rachel Carter. Actually, the two of them gave me four good reasons to watch, and watch I did.<br /><br />The only other reason to watch is that a lot of was filmed right down the road. Now, I didn't know this beforehand, but I saw an Orange County car tag and said, wow! this was shot in Florida.<br /><br />I was impressed by the flashback to the past and the ancestors of the young kid, but that was really it. The killings by the pumpkin man were pretty lame, with the exception of the biker.<br /><br />If you want to see Quigley and Carter, OK, but Return of the Living Dead will give greater thrills.

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9a6651ad-069b-4724-a4f1-3cacd81aa28c

Jack-O (1995) was a really bad movie, we are talking snoozefest x 100, no entertainment value whatsoever, no budget, no gore, Z-grade actors etc etc, this film was an awful addition to the horror movie industry and shouldn't have been made!!! The only reason i purchased this movie was because i knew Linnea Quigley was in it, and sure enough, she does her obligatory nude shower scene, which is lovely yes.<br /><br />But as for the film itself........ i fell asleep at the 40 minute stage and had NO desire at all to finish it, it's just bigtime lame OK.<br /><br />I love horror movies, i'm an avid fan, a MASSIVE fan, i love low budget horrors, i love it all, but i hated this rubbish, so i think that will tell you all you need to know about "JACK-O".<br /><br />I give this movie 2/10, the "2" is for the 2 minute Linnea shower scene, the movie itself is a total ZERO!!!!

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af8d223b-47e7-49d9-ad38-12e3eb64ef17

I can not believe I even wasted a NetFlix rental on this complete piece of CRAP. How long did it take to make this film? 15 minutes? On a budget of what? Fifteen bucks? I can spend a few hours with my Sony Camcorder and come up with something better than this treacherous lump of bile, and it's even available on DVD!?!! A very sad thing to think classics like The Stepfather have not been released on DVD but this chunk of steaming dung makes it to the format. Here's hoping my rating of ONE ONE ONE ONE makes the overall (already) pathetic rating of 2.5 go DOWN.

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e3eb533e-c987-4791-b8fc-f2062ba1c263

On Halloween a town is terrorized by a lunatic with a big pumpkin for a head. Bad acting compromised mostly of local talent and laughable special effects makes this one baaaaad. B-Movie Queen Linnea Quigley looks embarrassed to be a part of this one and even her considerable charm which has helped so many of her other films can't help this one. Pass this cheesy flick if you are looking for a good Halloween horror film and rent "Night of the Demons" which also stars Ms. Quigley.

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0ae0be47-890e-44e8-82e5-e6dc7ff3d331

We were excited to rent this one after reading a few reviews and seeing that it scored so highly here. Well, we got it home and could not believe what we saw. Its basically comes off as if its written by some hard up perverted old guy who could not help inserting his sexual frustrations and fantasies into an anime film that really lacks in plot and humor. The main character is all over the place... one moment, he is like an immature little kid, the next moment he is mature and intelligent, then heroic, then a perverted stalker.<br /><br />The worst part is all of the out of place sexual content. I have no problem with sex and dig a movie that has some good sexual energy, but this is just presented in a way that is creepy. Nipple slips, close ups of a girls crotch (many times) in white panties, or a swimsuit. It was totally out of place and it seemed as if the person who wrote it was trying to live out some fantasies through his cartoon characters. <br /><br />We were expecting something of a mature nature, but we just kept looking at each other and asking what the heck the point of this was... besides jiggling cartoon boobs and poor dialogue. If you want to see some cartoon characters cleavage and crotch's... this is for you. If you are looking for something beyond that, this movie was empty. The characters and dialogue were just plain irritating.<br /><br />

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48a6e01e-078d-41b0-ba3e-66ba715664cd

The film made no sense to me whatsoever. Good actors(SergioCastellittoaparticular favourite; he was great in "Uomo DelleStelle"/"TheStarmaker"but that was made by Giuseppe Tornatore, a great Italian director as opposed to the mediocre one who made this effort),but awful, rambling script, terrible editing,and a director who seemed to have no idea of what he was trying to say, and ended up saying exactly nothing. Apretentious load of rubbish, but the sort of film that certain Italianpseudo-intellectuals whom it was my misfortune to have known in the dim and distant past would have loved it, and unfortunately Italy has no monopoly on these, they can be found everywhere and probably acclaim this as a great masterpiece. I never thought much of Bellochio as director. I remember seeing his first film "PugniNella Tasca"/"Fists in the Pocket" (or some such title) in Rome when it was first shown close on 50 years ago (I was living thereat the time). All the usual pseudos raved about it, but it left me pretty cold. I didn't think he was much of a director then, and still don't. Age has certainly not improved him, and this film must rank as one of his worst.

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4d39cc43-d534-4741-8c9c-336cced41175

I agree that this film is too pretentious, and it is not easy to know where it is going. I have been teaching literature and film for many years, and I find this film to be one of the most over rated, according to some of the previous reviews here. <br /><br />However, let me remind you that this is the same director who has L'ora di religione (Il sorriso di mia madre- My Mother's Smile) to his credit -- a gem of a film! <br /><br />Was he trying to outdo Fellini's 81/2 here???? The scene with the dogs, which has also been pointed out, is absurd and excessive – just one example. Others would take too much space, and some reviewers have already noted them. <br /><br />Overall, a most frustrating and annoying experience!

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042afa98-8cd4-418e-b827-a020dd271651

This would have to rate as one of the worst films of all time. The film screened at the Italian Film Festival in Melbourne, Australia. After the screening, not only did I want my money refunded, I wanted the 1.5 wasted hours of my life back too. I have a very broad tolerance level when it comes to the indulgences of some European film-making, but this is one of those films that is selected for festivals based on the reputation of the filmmaker alone. This film is proof that while such selections may satisfy the egos of the film-maker and the selection panel, there is absolutely no joy for the audience. There is no character development whatsoever, the plot is a garbled mess, the style is nonsensical, the shot selection is appalling, and the editing is worse. By the end of the first reel, you'll wonder if you walked into the wrong cinema, and by the end of the third reel, you'll be begging to be put out of your misery. This film is an abomination.

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885a5fed-a78a-4ec9-85de-52835424d6b6

I checked this out at the Vancouver International Film Festival and was not impressed.<br /><br />The only area of the film I enjoyed was the commentary on film-making. For the most part, this film seemed random and somewhat fantastical (I don't say that in a complimentary way, however) and just silly. It was as if he was mixing fantasy with everyday life, which may sounds intriguing in some films, but the fantasy merely seemed needlessly perverse.<br /><br />My criticism of this film is not upon the actors, rather the story itself. I found it boring and narcissistic. I wanted my money back, but considering it was a Film Festival, that wasn't about to happen.

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46847bce-9bc8-4bf1-8af2-338c600455b1

"Fat Girls" is among the worst films within the indie gay genre.<br /><br />The premise is promising: an average-looking gay teen is trapped in a repressive small TX town. His only kindred spirits are the other village HS misfits: the class 'fat girl', a naïve immigrant from Cuba, and the sensitive drama teacher. So far, interesting. In theory, this plot line creates a decent setup for an appealing coming of age story with a built-in audience---the thousands of gay men who grew up in small towns across America and experienced this adolescent anxiety first hand, peppered with a dose of self-deprecating humor.<br /><br />Unfortunately, rather than a nuanced dramedy, Ash Christian approaches his autobiographical subject matter with a poorly executed attempt at irony and dark humor. The result is a cast of unlikeable, derivative, two-dimensional characters which the viewer cannot but help feel indifferent toward. Sabrina (Fink) is a quasi-Goth bitter navel-gazer. She is such a prickly, unsympathetic person; there is little doubt as to the reason for her friendless condition. The chemistry between her and Rodney (Christian) registers zero. This may have been bad casting, but is more likely due to a screenplay which is simply unsalvageable. Consequently, one is left wondering when there is such a non-existent bond, what could possibly warrant their near-constant companionship throughout the story.<br /><br />Sabrina's newfound boyfriend, Rudy (de Jesus), and Rodney's mother Judy (Theaker) are among the most exaggerated of the clichéd stock characters ripped off from dozens of other films. Rudy is the horny undersexed immigrant/nerd lifted directly from every raunchy adolescent "comedy" ever made within the realm of TV or film. Judy is the born-again obsessed with Jesus- talk and big hair. Just when you thought the Tammy Faye thing had been done to death, Christian inserts a scene where Judy's mascara is running with her tears! Is there anyone in the civilized world that can possibly think this tired old stereotype gag is still funny after seeing it ad nauseum for 20 years?<br /><br />In addition to the failed attempts at sardonic humor, there are many puzzling story inconsistencies. Rodney considers himself a "fat ugly" loser. However, he simultaneously manages to participate in casual and regular impromptu trysts with the ubiquitous school jock/hunk, Ted (Miller). Although these liaisons are devoid of emotional fulfillment, most gay teens (filled with raging testosterone, just like their hetero brethren) would find this to be a rather enviable arrangement given the more common alternative of involuntary celibacy.<br /><br />Rodney finds an object for his affection in Bobby (Bruening), an exotic transplant from England. Against all believable odds, the lad not only happens to land in this tiny TX hamlet, but is conveniently openly gay to boot. Like Sabrina, Bobby is an icy, angry smart aleck and the viewer is left head-scratching as to his magnetic appeal. <br /><br />Much to his delight, Rodney is invited by his new crush to the town gay bar, where Bobby claims to be the DJ. Upon arrival, the boyfriend-to-be promptly leaves Rodney solo and heads off to another area of the bar for a quick encounter with a rather handsome young man. This is yet one more of the ridiculously inexplicable plot elements since Rodney's feeling as an outcast are supposedly derived largely from his lonely existence in a parochial town. As tiny as the town is, they have openly gay students at the high school? A secretly bisexual football captain? Lesbian moms? A Gay teacher? and it has a gay bar downtown (patronized by attractive men, no less)? Apparently, the place is not so backwater after all.<br /><br />Ten years earlier, Todd Stephens' "Edge of Seventeen" covered nearly the same material with a much more creative, honest, touching, and humorous film.

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bec40567-275f-410d-9a99-247f69cff791

The premise of the film was very promising - sort of a gay Napoleon Dynamite type of film. And to be fair, there were some funny moments and funny lines but it really wasn't very good overall. The script and dialog felt like a local sketch production, full of clichés and scenes that were predictable.<br /><br />However, there was enough that was amusing, that I stuck around to see how it finished, since there were hints that something special happens at the end. But it seems that either the film ran out of money or the writer ran out of ideas because the ending is extremely abrupt, almost skipping directly from what looked to be the key conflict in the film to the final credits.<br /><br />Overall, it was very disappointing but not completely unwatchable...

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73e18d8d-be94-4a0d-aa05-b85692895788

I wasted enough time actually WATCHING this chore of a movie, I don't want to waste more writing a big review. Not once did I so much as crack a smile. ALL the jokes were boring, forced and lacked any kind of wit. I kept saying, "wheres the punchline?" Almost every single character was an obnoxious stereotype and all the situations were clichéd and half the time there wasn't even any kind of solution. Things just happened to get to the next scene. For the life of me I can't understand how this got as many good reviews as it did. If you like clunky acting and poorly composed film making Fat Girls is the movie for you.

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a0e372cd-3f51-4305-9d0c-5b4f3d250e23

This movie has been done before. It is basically a unoriginal combo of "Napoleon Dynamite" and "Sordid Lives." There are some funny bits, but otherwise it is a cliché bore. It is a good first film attempt and the director (who also stars in and wrote the feature) shows a lot of promise. But the writing was kind of choppy and the story was not very original. I swear I had heard some of the lines in other films. However, the acting was very good and the film was shot in an interesting way. It is also refreshing to see gay-themed movies not be so bogged down with political correctness and tired stories of angst. The main character seemed fairly well adjusted for a gay teen in rural Texas so no saccharine, coming out drama here!

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0403f211-df52-435a-ac5b-b5db7da21dc1

"The Secret Life" starts with the worst possible narrative intro: "The crimes committed by Jeffrey Dahmer are too horrible to make a film about...". Okay, so what are you suggesting? That we shouldn't bother to continue watching as the film won't be accurate or bloody, anyway? And they were right, too! The film isn't the least bit shocking and contains almost no blood or gore at all. Although I think that's mainly due to the low budget production values and not because of Dahmer's crimes being too horrific. Basically, "The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer" is just one sequence repeated over and over again. Young, pitiful and mentally confused Jeffrey picks up victims (always males, as he was a homosexual), kills them and then talks about how it wasn't his intention to hurt them and about how lonely he is. This gets boring really quick and even the admirable performance by unknown actor Carl Crew can't save this movie from being a total dud. Still, this version is much better than the pretentious and hopelessly muddled "Dahmer" that got released in 2002.

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ee93e4e6-8a9e-44a0-b00c-ee4c92fe9b78

***Possible spoilers***<br /><br />I've read up on Dahmer a little and saw the new Dahmer film (with the same name) at an earlier time. This movie here concentrates rather much on the victims and killings, too little on Dahmer himself. The film called "Dahmer" had the opposite problem, it was too little about his crimes and too much about himself.<br /><br />I did not find the acting to my satisfaction, it had a certain amateur feel too it, especially the probation officer. It also seemed as if the Dahmer acting got worse every time he played against the probation officer actor. But I might be wrong about that.<br /><br />What annoyed me a bit was that some of the scenes were quite disturbing but that the filmmakers seemed to try and show "the real deal" about what he did anyway. That is ok - but what I then don't understand is why the guy who ran away from his flat while Dahmer was out getting beer, was not depicted being naked, since that is also how it happened. It's not a big deal, but it just eats away further on the movies quality that such details are left out. What wasn't shown either or not even really hinted was Dahmers sexual obsession with the dead. Again, I don't mind they didn't SHOW it, but at least they could have mentioned it or built it in to the movie somehow.<br /><br />Conclusion: I think the really good Dahmer film is still to be made, a movie that incorporates not only Dahmers crimes but also who he was, and why he did what he did. I think that 1.5 or 2 hours are just not enough to grasp the complexity of it all. This movie was just a cutout (excuse the pun) of Dahmers life and personality and does not give you any 'close to good' insight into his life or personality.<br /><br />4/10

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8dc7ae1e-1eed-45b5-bda3-ef94c1ac1176

Jefferey dahmer was one sick guy. There's not much to say about him that hasn't already been said, except that the many documentaries, and films made about him are probably better than this one. It's Ridiculously cheesy. It's so cheesy, a guy who posted the whole film on youtube added some annotations to make the viewer laugh.<br /><br />Carl Crew (Who's he?) stars as Serial killer Jeffrey dahmer, Who's killing spree began in 1978 with a young guy dahmer just wanted to be friends with, a finally in 1991 with a man he wished to have sex with, and eat.<br /><br />I didn't bother to watch the whole film through. it's basically a documentary that shows all the attacks dahmer pulled off before he got caught. And since this film was made in 1993, one year before dahmer was bludgeoned to death by a fellow inmate, The death of dahmer isn't shown. but it Probably would've been as cheesy as this cheese-fest.<br /><br />1/10

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9ae6fb9e-4056-422d-826d-5225b1e1ceac

"Hoods" doesn't deliver the goods. This half-baked mafia comedy boasts a stellar cast, including Joe Mantegna, Kevin Pollack, Joe Pantoliano, Jennifer Tilly, and Seymour Cassel, along with a number of faces familiar to those who watch crime movies, but it is truly a misfire if there ever was one. Writer & director Mark Malone, best known for writing "Dead of Winter" for "Bonnie & Clyde" director Arthur Penn, has penned up a pedestrian potboiler that has an ailing but vengeful mob boss Louie Martinelli (Seymour Cassel) dispatching his son Angelo (Joe Mantegna of "House of Games") to whack Carmine DellaRosa. It seems that a rival mob fire-bombed one of Pop's warehouses (in the opening scene) and Martinelli wants payback. Trouble is that nobody has a clue as to who Carmine DellaRosa is. In any other mob comedy, such a complication might be amusing, but here is just plain flat. Angelo and a carload of wiseguys, including his best pal Rudy (Kevin Pollack of "Deterrence") spend half of the time trying to find out who Carmine is. Neither Rudy nor Angelo want to perform the hit, so they track down a crazy mob hit-man Charlie (Joe Pantoliano of "Bad Boys") to do the dirty deed. Before they can convince Charlie to make the hit, they have to locate him, and Charlie's slutty wife Mary (Jennifer Tilly of "Bound") reveals that he is locked up in a mental hospital. Our misfit heroes cruise out to the mental hospital and break Charlie out. About half of the movie is over before they discover that Carmine is a kid in short pants (Vincent Berry) who is bland and harmless. Indeed, Carmine has the only decent line in the movie. As our brainless bunch of heroes wheel away from his house with him in the backseat to take care of business, Carmine warns them that they need to get him home in time or his father will kill him. Charlie tries to ice the urchin but he cannot. Instead, he reconnects with his feelings and wants to go back to the mental hospital so he can report the good news to his doctor. Meanwhile, after Charlie decides not to shoot Carmine, the kid gets his paws on the pistol and pops off several aimless rounds. Angelo and he struggle over the automatic. The pistol slips out of their collective hands and hits the ground, goes off, and blows a hole in Rudy's chest. Now, keep in mind that Rudy never wanted to shoot the kid in the first place, and Angelo and he argued over the wrong-headedness of the hit. So Rudy winds up on the ground with a fatal wound, while Angelo struggles to stop the bleeding. Talk about a dull death scene. Angelo is conflicted himself because his father ordered the hit and Angelo fears that dad will do him in if he doesn't execute orders. There is a flashback subplot about Angelo's father teaching him how to handle a gun that provides some insight into Angelo's reluctance to pack a gun.<br /><br />There is nothing remotely redeeming about this depressing comedy with a downer of an ending. Things gets worse, and if you last through this 90 minute nonsense, you'll see what I mean. The comedy is largely laugh-less. Good actors wallow in sketchy roles that aren't even funny. Perhaps director Malone was trying to do another comedy like "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight." If he was, he missed by a mile. Big-breasted Jennifer Tilly shows cleavage and snarls through a couple of scenes with Mantegna, but she doesn't do much of anything else. She's the stereotypical slut who doesn't even get naked. A paycheck is the only way to explain the presence of such a talented cast, otherwise this picture is pathetic from start to finish. Initially, I had hoped that this might be a "Ransom of Red Chief" knockoff where the kid drives the wiseguys nuts, but no such luck here. Of course, the biggest surprise is that they have to kill a kid, but it's not the kind of a surprise that makes you want to watch it up to its resolution.<br /><br />I actually bought this movie on a Canadian DVD label—Seville—and it contains only the most basic special features. If you hate previews that give away the plot, don't watch the trailer. If you ever meet Joe Mantegna, one of your first questions should be why he helped to produce this yawner. It is neither hilarious nor dramatic. There are no quotable lines, and none of the characters stand out as either interesting or sympathetic. The Seville DVD presents the movie in full frame with no subtitles or closed captioning.

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853cbbce-2141-4e2e-8707-a46563959eec

How can you make a joke about Mafia? It is not the kind of subject to laugh at! A near movie cannot make me laugh, because I am comparing it to Jane Austen's Mafia!. Mafia! wasn't a good movie but Hoods is really worse! In Mafia!, there were some good jokes but in this one there are maybe two or three...that make you smile. Not too bad actors but very bad scenario!! We sure prefer something serious like The Godfather. I give it * out of *****.

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3f3c362a-db79-4f3d-821b-68e7acc6f752

I've watched the first 15 minutes and I can tell that there was no consultation with any military type personnel. Judith Light's charactor (an officer) has her hair down past her shoulders! One of the first officers that greets her as she walks in to the medical facility she works at is so overweight that his pant pockets gap! No - there was no military advising them on this movie. Even an ex-military enlisted could have assisted here.

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cae13ef2-2dfd-49e7-adff-da07dcd778d0

I've been hearing a lot of this new bird flu that has killed dozens of people in South East Asia over the last three years . Apparently it's on the thresh hold of mutating into something very contagious and millions upon millions of people are going to be wiped out in a global pandemic . Just thought I'd mention this in case you haven't got round to writing your will yet .<br /><br />I'd also thought I'd mention it since I was watching something called CARRIERS tonight which wasn't about naval warfare but opens with a scene that's a cross between OUTBREAK and an episode of THE X FILES I saw many years ago . I thought I'd be watching something with added resonance after hearing the stories about the danger posed by bird flu but after the not unimpressive opening CARRIERS descends into a cheap and cheerful TVM and like every other TVM you'll see the lead characters are female , one of which is a ballsy authority figure while the other lead female is a mother of young children . It goes without saying there's a sick child subplot too <br /><br />What is irritating about the TVM format is that it overwhelms the potential of what could have been quite a good film if it was made for cinema . There's a fairly gory scene of someone coughing blood all over a nurses face and a very impressive jay walker getting run down stunt but these bits are quickly forgotten as the mood descends into family sentiment since this - And just about every other TVM ever made - was made for an essentially female audience

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44a26ae7-672d-4c43-a4a0-f92d7feb13f6

OK, imagine that every state in the US, nay, every country has exactly the same trees growing and ground foliage. Imagine, also, that a monkey-trapper's camp so far off the beaten track you had to do the first half of the approach by river has a beautifully tarmac'd, perfectly straight road leading up to it. Imagine a world where you have to wear a full biohazard suit to collect a floppy disk, then you just drop it in a ziploc bag and transfer it to your pocket with no precautions as soon as you get back to the office. A world where two nine-year old girls are happy to give lots of blood without complaining. This is the world this movie is set in.<br /><br />On top of that, it's one of the most cliché-ridden pieces of excrement it's been my misfortune to witness in many a year.<br /><br />I liked it. :)

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975dad00-ced7-41df-805f-1b5b05c2599f

I'm not going to bother mentioning any of the plot - this is strictly a B movie on its way to obscurity. The shock to me, though, is seeing what has become of some of the actors in this film. Erika Eleniak, never anything you'd call a thespian anyway, seems to have morphed into Anna Nicole Smith (in her Big period). Daniel Bernhardt - I almost shed a tear. He's always been a favorite of mine because of his martial arts prowess, as seen in the Bloodsport series (also B movies but, if you like martial arts, eminently watchable). Here, he is a shell of his former self - sure, he's older, but doing the mercenary thing and not even looking interested ... I just don't get it. Don't these people invest? William Forsythe is another "heavy" that I've always liked, but his last several roles are what you would call "mailing it in". I'm not going to even mention Mr. Reynolds - his gig here amounts to a throwaway, nothing more. The only winner is Andrew Divoff, as usual a creepy, evil, pockmarked villain with a sandpaper voice that can curdle milk - the best kind! This is a movie you watch for laughs. There's nothing else to it.

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30c3e701-90c3-402d-bf2b-cda20df97d8f

Like a terrible cancer raining out of the sky, I wandered into this crock on some movie channel the other night. Being a fan of bad movies, and actively engaging in the purchasing and viewing of said bad film, i was intrigued by the idea of a genuinely terrible looking action movie coming from modern times. After that wore off though, I found my hands inexplicably turning against me, grabbing at anything in range and stabbing about my head and neck. Something sinister was in that tape...err...where was I...anyway this ranks among the more embarrassingly bad pieces of film I've run across. William Forsythe can't play more than one character, and that character is always a walking joke. Even when set into a comic background and given things to do and say that are supposed to be funny (ala Deuce Bigalo) he's laughable in the wrong way. Erika Eleniak is much the same, having starred in her fair share of terrible movies and done terrible jobs in all of them, she doesn't fail to help scum up this one. Classic b-movie villain guy Andrew Divoff does a respectable job but barely even has any scenery to chew on. Even reliable standby for b-movie action Daniel Bernhardt fails to deliver anything bordering on entertainment. As for the film's own merits, the plot is lame, the script, just like the action and the plot movement, is both dull and...well, stupid, for lack of a better adjective(lord knows they didn't put any effort into it, why should I?).<br /><br />Anyone who has seen enough movies has seen some bad ones, and anyone who has seen enough bad ones can learn to appreciate them, but there is simply nothing here to be enjoyed unless you are among the most bad movie tolerant and simply feel so inclined as to test your mettle. Before you do though, take it from me, this one isn't even terrible enough to be enjoyed (unlike say...some of the more ludicrous Italian zombie films). A fan of b-movie action would be much better off checking out most any of Bernhardt's other films, or pretty much anything else that has ever been put to film for that matter. America simply is not the place to go to for action it seems, especially not now. If you have a craving, check out anything from over the seas, films like Heroic Duo or the slightly less normal Hakaider(along with anything else in the awesome Keita Amemiya's cannon) will provide a lot more fun and way better action than your apt to find elsewhere, especially here.

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ebba57c0-ebeb-4a02-b6d3-4bf50cea4d5e

Recap: Simon leads a little team of special agents that has specialized in finding and returning missing people, against all possible odds. Their latest mission is about the granddaughter of a friend of them. She seems to have been caught in the web of a particularly brutal criminal and everyone that has gone looking for her has gone missing. But now The Librarians are on the case.<br /><br />Comments: This is pure B-action, through and through. The key phrase for this is unlimited supply. There is unlimited supply of ammunition, they don't have to reload once. There is an unlimited supply of bad guys, so the heroes have something to shoot at. There is an unlimited supply of breasts, many of them bare, in an vain (and as always failed) attempt to distract from the plot holes. And there is an unlimited supply of bad acting (it is almost like Erika Eleniak's performance shines in this, what about that?), and actors that don't seem to care more than the paycheck (and why should they when no one else seem to?).<br /><br />And as in most B-action movies there are an unlimited supply of bad gunfights. But these almost seem to be of a ridiculously bad kind. I think I saw more realistic gunfights when I played cowboy as a kid.<br /><br />But then again I didn't really expect much either, how could I from a action movie named The Librarians? And it actually delivers about what could be expected. 90 minutes of more or less bad action with some scenes to connect the dots between. But I am unsure if I can call it entertaining, it didn't keep my interest very long.<br /><br />3/10

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6133f61c-2cbd-4b5e-97bf-8e71ca1fd061

I heard the stories of the ravers in the movie and thats great but that is only 1/100 of the movie. The problem with this movie is the cheesiness. I never really got the plot or why the guy was stealing girls. That makes no sense but hey...why they were in a club randomly was curious also. Many parts of this movie make no sense but overall I was interested. It was confusing on many levels...maybe I am just not indie enough for this movie but judging from the B looking end scene they ran out of money, just cut some stuff in, and forgot about the plot. Its low budget and appears so. I like the fact that they used little special effects which were bad, but they used none that were quality. I would say this film is the quintessential bad script, with alright production. It is definitely not as random as many movies I have seen but the pieces of the puzzle just don't make sense together. In effects, I would give exception to the final battle when all the effects went 1950's on my ass. Sparks out of models and the like. Watch it if you like an unintentional comedy from an action movie. Mystery science theater has a candidate.

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5c9e39fc-d499-4d72-b81a-0e0637af8316

As stated by others, this is a ludicrously horrible movie (NOT A FILM!). It is not bad in a funny way, just painful to try to endure. Don't waste your time.<br /><br />Erika Eleniak is pretty hot, but there is one scene where she is in a bathtub, and you can see the wrap covering her breasts under the bubbles. Also, she's getting fat.<br /><br />The fight scenes are so bad as to be unwatchable, if you know or care anything about martial arts, or even decent choreography, and the editing/effects are abysmal.<br /><br />There is no payoff, it goes nowhere, and sucks getting there.

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c1af71f6-9ea7-4af5-b8c0-61a79b51f0e1

All things old are new again.Erika E. is on celebrity fitness (VH1);Florida State Rep. Mark Foley is the national buzz for allegedly sending sexually explicit Emails to a 16 yr. old male page.As I edit this Mr.Foley is resigning from his representative seat. Mr.Foley you see does his turn at acting as the father of the recovered girl seen during the opening sequence. My place in movie history will forever be solidified with my appearance in the graveyard scene.I should have looked at this as a omen.I hate to say it but be warned If you place this in your DVD be prepare to put your toe on the trigger of the shotgun you'll soon have between your teeth. Your level of depression has reached its zenith.I have seen better writing put to screen on an Etch a Sketch.Shot in 1999-00 under the working title "The Librarians" in and around Palm Beach Co.Why the Librarian's you ask,well you would need to be wrapped as tight as binding to be able to read anything into this frat party of over the hill stunt men plying their trade onto celluloid for one last time.Oh well enough with the accolades...Burt Reynolds as a Irish mobster, in Miami no less...possibly the worst forced accent impression since Linda Lovelace in "Deep Throat". .William Forsythe as a hip, slick and cool tough guy...doubtful,possibly 10 years ago.I'd say it's curtain time for Mike Kirton.You now have the Forsythe to pass up this sub par movie,more like a film school project, for anything on tape,disc or paper your local retailer has to offer.

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ca57293f-4e96-48ac-b133-4f92074da1a4

QUESTION: How does a film merit two different titles like "The Librarians" and "Strike Force"? <br /><br />ANSWER: The film is sooooooooo bad that the filmmakers couldn't even decide on a title!!!! <br /><br />This film is a hodgepodge of martial arts, death wish-vendettas, melodrama, romance, and other cliché film techniques. The story focuses on a vigilante group called The Librarians led by Agent Simon (WIlliam Forsythe). The group is hot in pursuit of a nefarious, multi-lingual, pockmarked creature named Marcos (Andrew Divoff) who captures women and holds them hostage in the lawless urban world of south Florida. <br /><br />Burt Reynolds appears as a cameo in this film, and his scene is entirely extraneous to the action. Burt delivers a long monologue in one of the strangest drawls I have ever heard. This may have been Burt's attempt at an Irish dialect, but the overall effect is a kind of perverse imitation of Marlon Brando in "The Godfather." <br /><br />Also appearing in this film is Erika Eleniak, who has infiltrated the inner circle of Marcos' bizarre world. Erika's character kick-boxes her way into an alliance with Simon. The Librarians and Erika will become a powerful strike force against evil in a film that has been delivered directly from the editing room to your cable TV converter box.

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1a78c4b0-8bff-493c-ac66-2f9f1e1313c2

I thought it was comedy!! What a hoot! I can't believe Forsythe or Reynolds would actually appear in this piece of trash..And then there's the beautiful Erika Eleniak or whatever this piece of eye candy is called..Appears she put on a few pounds since her Playboy centerfold..Like about 50!! The story line is ludicrous, the acting absolutely horrendous, and the tired old cliché's that are run over and over and over again, boy it took a lot of stamina to sit through this dog..The only thing worth it was the LAUGHS!! And there are PLENTY! If you really want to kill say, an hour and a half pick this baby up at the rental shop, but make sure you have a room full of brain dead people to watch it with you. I think that's who it was written for.. it plays like they were thinking of a real low rent, drug induced audience for this one..

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022a9e04-99b8-4080-95e9-e43814999e2f

I had very high hopes walking into this movie. After all, Ocean's 11 was a truly great Hollywood product. Its rapid-fire jokes, incredible star power and tight script made it one of the most fun caper films I have ever seen. Of course, with all the money it made, a sequel was on the way, and I, for one, was excited.<br /><br />Needless to say, I was absolutely blown away by this movie. Blown away by how horribly wrong things can go. This movie had everything going for it; the return of the entire original cast, the same director, news stories of crazy on- and off-set antics. How could it possibly have gone so wrong?<br /><br />It starts immediately with one of the most awkward and unnecessary opening sequences ever and goes downhill from there. After reasonably goofy short scenes between Pitt/Zeta-Jones and Clooney/Roberts, the film spends several minutes watching Andy Garcia waltz from scene to scene, telling each individual member of Danny Ocean's original eleven that he wants his money back. Believe me when I say that these scenes are only here to pad Andy Garcia's running time, because without these ridiculously awkward shots, his screen time would be WELL under five minutes.<br /><br />This leads me to another major qualm I had with this film. The pacing is so uneven that characters are dropped completely from the story, and only sometimes brought back later. Bernie Mac's character is dropped from the script early on, and never comes back except for 2 short scenes with no dialogue. Garcia appears for the first few minutes, and returns for an exceptionally brief scene at the end. Roberts shows up for about 5 minutes at the beginning, and isn't even mentioned again until there's about 20-25 minutes left. Even Clooney himself spends a large chunk of the film in prison.<br /><br />This would all be excusable if the film was funny. At all. 90% of the jokes fall completely flat and the ones that do work are worth a chuckle at best. The "plot" is undeniably worthless, and left me feeling cheated. At one point in the film, the team takes on a job worth $2.5 million of the nearly $100 million they need to raise before Garcia's two-week deadline. Several characters even acknowledge how absurd wasting the time to do this job is, but they do it anyway! Over 30 minutes of the film revolve around this job that they shouldn't even be doing, and one gets the feeling that this part of the plot was simply added to pad the running time. Furthermore, the equipment they use to pull this job off CLEARLY cost millions upon millions to fund. Just wait until you see what they do to pull this job and realize it would cost far more than $2.5 million to pull off. Obviously, because of this, they have to pull off several jobs to make the money. The beauty of the first film was the one big con and how ingeniously and intricately it was pulled off. Here, they pull so many jobs, in so many different ways, that they rush through all of them because to explain them would make the film several hours long.<br /><br />We all know walking into this film that there will be a big twist at the end. Thus is the nature of the caper film. The twist at the end of Ocean's Twelve made me laugh; not because it was funny, but because I couldn't believe how cheated I felt. I won't give it away, because I know most of you will be foolish enough to throw down the money to see this movie anyway.<br /><br />What I will say is that it makes most of the 2 hours you have sat through already completely irrelevant.<br /><br />I was excited to see this film, after absolutely adoring Ocean's 11. I left the theater feeling like I had been the victim of a truly great con pulled by the cast and crew of this movie in tricking me into thinking that this movie would actually be worth watching. I have never given a 1 to a movie on IMDb.com, but there's a first time for everything. Consider yourselves warned....1/10

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e37be159-a64d-4566-ae2e-f8644efb4a05

Every James Bond movie has its own set of rules. Just like every Indiana Jones movie has ITS own set of rules. And the fact that screenwriters don't break these rules maintains the integrity of the characters. With a completely unnecessary plot twist, the integrity of both Ocean films plummets somewhere between Airplane 2 and a Roadrunner cartoon.<br /><br />Imagine what would happen, while teetering on the rope bridge outside of the Temple of Doom, if Indy told Shorty and Willie not to worry because throughout the entire first two movies he's secretly had super powers and can fly them both to safety.<br /><br />Entertaining? Sure, for a Roadrunner cartoon. But Spielberg would never have done that because it would have destroyed the integrity of the film. More importantly, it would have ANGERED the audience. They'd already sat on the edge of their seats through 3 hours worth of Indiana Jones movies and they were counting on Indiana to get them off that bridge in a believable way. If he were to fly off? People would have walked out of the theaters the same way people did during Ocean's 12.<br /><br />SPOILERS<br /><br />1. Julia Roberts'character, Tess, infiltrates a museum by disguising herself as...Julia Roberts?!? A clever twist? By breaking the fourth wall three hours after we've been introduced to these characters? Is this the Naked Gun 33 and 1/3? It's a textbook example of how a cheap laugh can ruin an entire film. But wait...just in case you haven't walked out yet...<br /><br />2. The suspense builds throughout the last hour of the movie -- how will they pull off the heist -- there are only 10...8...5...2 DAYS LEFT! And then in the last 12 minutes of the film, the ONLY entertaining part of this movie, we see that the heist was made days earlier and took Matt Damon all of 30 seconds to pull off. The past 10 days? A complete waste of your time.<br /><br />BACK TO INDIANA JONES ON THE ROPE BRIDGE..."Just relax, Willie! I stole the REAL stones back about a month ago! Besides, I convinced them you were Kate Capshaw!"<br /><br />If you haven't already seen it, cut your losses and go see the Polar Express. I don't want to ruin the ending for you, but there really is a Santa Claus. Most importantly, you won't feel cheated leaving the theater.

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817af7d9-76ff-484a-b140-2d98e73c471c

SPOILER!! Terrible camera work, horrible writing, non-existent plot, and numerous plot wholes. Wonderful acting! Except for Julia Roberts. Who poorly plays someone who is impersonating Julia Roberts, poorly. Catherine Zeta Jones is adorable in this movie.<br /><br />During the movie, we repeatedly zoom in, on each of the twelve (!) characters. Twelve is too many, even for a classic like 12 Angry Men. And the problem is, we tediously zoom in on the characters, when all of them are in the same room, doing the same thing.<br /><br />Yep, Clooney's eating. Yep, Pitt's eating. Yep, the "Jew" is eating. Yep, the geek is eating. Yep, the bodybuilder's eating. Yep, Mr. Sensitive is eating. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep--Yep. Yep. Phew! This happens at least three other times in the movie. Yep, they're all sitting in cars, bored. Yep, they're all getting arrested, frightened. Yep, they're all being led out of a jail, depressed.<br /><br />But it wasn't until I was home that I realized how badly they'd "got" me on this one. This is a heist movie, right? That's what I went to see, right? But when I walked in and set my car keys in the change jar, only then I realized: NOTHING WAS ACTUALLY STOLEN IN THIS MOVIE! That's right. It's a heist movie, where nothing gets stolen. Oh, they try. They go to try and steal some boring document or something, from some guy's house (whatever), and it turns out it's already been stolen. 20 minutes of my life, wasted. Then they try to steal some egg from some museum (YAWN!), and they screw that up and get arrested.<br /><br />Then we see how some fairy french guy stole the egg even before they did, and we get all the joy of "Entrapment", except this time the person inside the tight catsuit dancing around the fake lasers is... an ugly skinny french guy. Um.<br /><br />But it turns out he didn't actually steal the egg either. Actually, our heroes stole the egg, LOOOONG ago, in another movie entirely, which would have been a GREAT movie to watch, had they made that movie.<br /><br />Instead we see a 30 second clip in black-and-white about how they robbed some college student of his back-pack. You heard me... the daring caper, the ultimate heist-- the buildup of this 2 and a half hours of utter boring crap-- is them stealing a back-pack from a college student, by creatively getting into a fight over baseball teams and distracting him, and replacing his back-pack with an identical back-pack? What?? <br /><br />Ugh. I'm telling you, this was so bad, I didn't even realize just how bad it was-- just how badly I'd been robbed-- until I got home.

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8196f77d-5f99-4f8e-9620-64fe5741921b

Unfortunately I think this is one of those films that if you or I took it to the studio and said, 'can I make this great movie with my friends Mary, Mungo and Midge from school?' the studio would have you kicked to death on the spot. However, if a bunch of massive Hollywood names say, 'look, I fancy a jaunt to Italy with my mates, how about it?' the studio writes a cheque.<br /><br />We kick off with the casino boss from Ocean's 11 tracking down the robbers who made off with his cash, and then Brad Pitt is shagging Catherine Zeta Jones, and then there's some monkeying about in Amsterdam and Italy and such and such and then it all ends somehow.<br /><br />The film does, however, include the most shameful moment of both Julia Roberts' and Bruce Willis' careers, which is a cinematic gem. I nearly vomited in my lap and tore my eyes out when Julia Roberts, playing Tess in the movie, pretends to be (you guessed it) Julia Roberts! Bruce Willis stands about clearly wondering when he can leave, and how much the cheque will be.<br /><br />Ah well, to be fair, I'd have done it for the cash, so I suppose I can't really criticize the poor loves, but I'm a penniless slob not a Hollywood legend. I guess what really annoys me about this film is not that it is boring and pointless and has a terrible story, but that I think the actors probably all had good fun doing it! I think the actor's entire job is to project emotion outwards...I feel like I paid to go to the party, but had to stand outside in the rain. Booo!<br /><br />Watch it if you like Como, or fancy CZJ or something, but otherwise go for a walk.

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97a3ef0a-29cb-4852-9ba9-2f0b7e5528d9

Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) catches up with Danny Ocean and his team and demands that they repay the money that they stole from him (in Oceans 11) plus interest. He holds back from violent action however as he is under the instruction of the world's greatest thief, the Night Fox. The team then have to pull off a series of heists to pay Benedict back whilst testing their abilities against the Night Fox who wishes to maintain his position as the greatest thief ever. Put simply, this film is a complete mess. The masses may argue that it is "cool" and that Clooney and Pitt put in great performances but these are the same people who have a subscription to "Hello" magazine and think that David Beckham has the potential to be a great actor. The story is convoluted, it is not complex or clever and it does not have intelligent twists and turns, it is just a complete mess that spills out in multiple directions with the hope that the audience will think it is cool and intelligent (Hello magazine readers). Any respectable movie watcher will however see the film for the farce that it is. Whilst Oceans 11 wasn't a great film it had a decent pace, was stylish and had some decent twists and turns. This movie loses its way very quickly and then basically gives up. It is as if the director and cast said to themselves, hey this isn't really working out, lets just have a laugh! Indeed the cast looks like they are enjoying themselves but I was not. I will not delve into the plot as its confused evolution does not warrant any examination. The addition of Catherine Zeta Jones is largely annoying. The scenes where Julia Roberts impersonates herself (with Bruce Willis undertaking a cameo role) whilst mildly amusing appear to be a desperate move to keep the audience interested. The movie is so full of plot holes that it as if Arnie has emptied an Uzi 9mm into the film studio. Credit can only be given to some scenes where the Night Fox uses Caopeira to undertake a heist against the back drop of some funky music but this is hardly justification to watch the movie. The final scene features the team in a nonsensical drunken stupor; this accurately sums up the movie. Stick with the original.

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f6f8cab1-fdd0-4920-81fa-f08996780a6e

I felt compelled to write about this movie after i joined IMDb because i thought it was the worst script writing i have seen in a while.<br /><br />The acting/direction/other-areas of the movie are fantastic. I love brad Pitt with George Clooney. It works. The witty banter was still there too from the first movie. My question is how in the world did they let this script out of the drafting process? I thought that not only did the plot develop like a slug racing to the end of the sidewalk, but that twist? (can i call it that) was so incredibly stupid that i wanted to go demand a refund from the ticket booth. I have never felt so played and used from a movie in my entire life. Here i was expecting something similar to the first movie (good chemistry, good acting, good direction, amazing plot) only to find that they had taking my 8 dollars and made a mockery out of it.<br /><br />The part that gets me still is that this movie has now grossed more than 125 million dollars.<br /><br />In summary, I felt that this movie insulted my intelligence. I still feel like the only part the writers concentrated on was that little bit with Julia Roberts acting like Julia Roberts. This movie made me sad and angry.

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5b813c0c-fe05-43fc-928e-d6f34f1de1a0

Ocean's 12 starts off on annoying and gets worse from there on. Like a celebrity awards presentation, each major actor/actress is introduced in short 60-second scenarios that seem to stop just short having a blinking "applaud now" sign. The first 60 minutes of the film are incredibly disjointed, poorly edited, and at times, utterly unrelated to the story and confusing. Speaking of the story,...there is one, kinda,...but its barely visible for all the "look at me" shots and cameos. Only Matt Damon seemed to actually "act" during this film...the rest of the cast appeared to only be there to participate in a rat-pack-wanna-be session. As for the heist, the action, the drama....it was put into the last 8-10 minutes of the movie and was pathetic and anticlimactic. Horrible! Horrible! Horrible!

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cd16063f-4070-4b5a-a967-bc430855e5d1

I had read the newspaper reviews of this film and I must say my expectations were very low before watching Ocean's 12. I really enjoyed the first movie but this successor is one of the worst movies ever. I would rate it top 5 of the worst movie I have ever seen. Why do I say that? First of all there is a story so thin that Britney Spears Crossroads looks like the perfect action thriller. The fragments that could be assigned the term "story" is loosely held together at times but most of the time the movie just moves along with no purpose or drive. The entire story seems forced and the script surrounding the story is even more forced that it become farce at times.<br /><br />The actors show up but doesn't do anything to deserve any credit or appraise. Most embarrassing are leading ladies (Roberts and Zeta-Jones) that either overplay or are extremely plain. Damon, Clooney and Pitt aren't brilliant either. To be honest I really don't understand how they would want to be associated with something as bad as this movie.<br /><br />=== May contains spoilers ==== Camera and editing, sigh where should I begin. There are many unnecessary camera movements that just make the experience painful. Combine that with extremely untactful editing and you start looking for a wooden spoon to carve your heart out. Especially the scene where the entire gang is moved out of the prison to be transported away by car. The camera zoom to each person just get boring and when you are at number 3 of 12 you got the message: wow you are cool and can do simple zoom effects - NOT. I understand that the scene with Tess Ocean (Julia Roberts) playing Julia Roberts is supposed to be funny but it just gets extremely embarrassing and you turn away to avoid experiencing the mess. Bruce Willis. Why? Please explain it to me! WHY???<br /><br />To summarize ... if you have to choose between root canal work and watching Ocean's 12 I recommend the former. Make sure they do all the teeth while you are at it ...

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86f49422-f52a-4d1c-933e-675e03256fd8

This was the biggest disappointment of a movie...:( Sucks, cos I was really looking forward to it.<br /><br />All the twists were crap. They were ALL flashbacks!!! <br /><br />What makes a good heist movie is the BELIEVABILITY of the the job. Yes it has to be surprising so the audience is stunned, but if you walk away and go that's bulls#!t... what's the point? <br /><br />Plus the main heist was a bag snatch anyway! You didn't get to see the team operating at it's full deceptive and brilliant potential. There was not even ONE good heist in this movie! They were all rubbish.. including that french idiot's break dancing crap to get through the lasers... it's easy to do that when they are composited in afterwards! Plus that kind of stuff has already been done in at least one other movie.. and it was stupid then as well...<br /><br />Also, there's no reason to have even HALF of the 12 or 11 in this movie! What difference do half of the cast really make to the outcome of this movie??? Half the SCENES don't even need to be there! <br /><br />The first one was classy. This was CHEAP! And it makes the whole team loose credibility. Especially Ocean himself for bowing down the Bennett.

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20e0b0b5-15a3-49a2-8035-5b5e6288f3b9

I was watching this movie and getting increasingly bored with the silly plot that was going nowhere, when suddenly, the story takes a surreal turn for the worse and has an actor playing herself. Oh how I guffawed. Because it's sooooo funny, isn't it? We know Julia Roberts is playing the character of Tess, and here they are, in the film, cracking the joke that the character of Tess looks a bit like Julia Roberts. So Julia plays someone impersonating Julia. How well she does this, we'll never know, because 99.999% of the audience don't actually know Julia Roberts personally (and reading about her in Hello magazine doesn't count). <br /><br />And then Bruce Willis turns up! Apparently, he's Julia Roberts' best friend. Well, he is in the film... how would I know whether or not Bruce Willis and Julia Roberts even know each other? I'm not in the least bit interested in the personal lives of actors - I just pay my money and expect them to do the job they're paid to do. Anyway they start cracking jokes about the plot twist in the film where Willis (rather unconvincingly) plays a psychiatrist... the one with the little kid in it... you know the one? I don't, I've forgotten what it's called. Willis even drops in a comment about how well that film did at the box office - how modest of you Mr Willis!<br /><br />The problem is that, not only are these scenes pointless and horribly horribly self-indulgent, it also remind us, the viewers, that we're simply watching a bunch of actors strutting around and getting paid vast sums of money for very little effort. You see, when I see a movie, I want to suspend disbelief and forget that I'm watching actors - I want to believe in the story I'm watching. When you start pulling the scenery down, mid- movie, you simply ruin the illusion for me.<br /><br />You know that a TV series has jumped the shark when it starts introducing celebrities, playing themselves (stand up and be counted The Simpsons, Friends, etc.), but this is the first time I've seen a movie jump the shark. I usually stay away from movies like that (e.g. Scary Movie, The Naked Gun, etc.). The trouble is, I honestly never thought the Ocean's 11 films would go in this direction. What a shame.<br /><br />So with suspension of disbelief thrown out the window, and the plot now languishing in the movie then cracks the most wicked joke of all on the audience - the heist actually happened way back in the story, and the final 90 minutes or so of the film was pointless posturing. Yes, that's right: Steven Soderwhatsit and his actor friends all get up, point at us the audience and say, "Ha haaa... you've all been had... thanks for your money!". Then they give us the single fingered salute.<br /><br />Well, right back at you. I didn't actually pay to see this movie... I downloaded the DVD for nothing. How d'ya like them apples? Now THAT'S a plot twist.

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2cae253b-814c-4add-bf08-17f0d434a6e1

Man I loved Ocean's 11.<br /><br />Smart movie. All eleven characters were crucial to the heist as each had their own specialised skill that was necessary to pull of the grand finale.<br /><br />What on earth was Oceans 12? What was the purpose of the twelfth person? I assume it's supposed to be Zeta-Jones but she wasn't really a part of the 11 as she was trying to trip them up and working against them the whole film?? It was more like the story of Brad and Zeta-Jones' characters boring relationship with some bits from the original movie thrown in just to get some bums on seats to watch the movie.<br /><br />With O-11, the gang were always a step ahead of Benedict (Garcia). They were always able to outsmart him. What happened here? He catches up with them after a tip-off and suddenly they're all wusses? The whole movie is so that they can raise the money they stole plus interest to repay back Benedict for the heist they pulled on him 3 years earlier. So next movie they're going to develop courage and brains again and get him back for making them pay him back for the first heist? Puh-lease...<br /><br />This movie could have been achieved with just Brad Pitt, Zeta-Jones and 5 mins of Matt Damon for the switcheroo scene.<br /><br />Slow moving movie, not the energy of the first one. I tried hard to like it and I'm usually very easy to please but I'm really disappointed.<br /><br />SPOILER!!! The twist - the whole movie didn't need to have been made as the real heist was done before everything you just saw over the past 2 hours.<br /><br />END SPOILER.<br /><br />Wait until it comes on TV or if you're a fan of the original from 2001 please don't watch this.

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e233856c-e4d3-4bc8-a163-ba78a4268a6e

What a ridiculous waste of time and money!!!! This movie was the biggest loser of the year. All the hype was a warning. I am disappointed for Julia Roberts, by far she is the most talented cast member. I think her ability to truly act carried the film. The buddy buddy boys club was a little too phony, and to add insult to injury why bother to cast Catherine Zeta Jones? She only has the ability to ruin a film. She lacks the ability to have on screen chemistry with anyone, not to mention she lacks the ability to act. She lacks chemistry with the other characters: kind of reminiscent of "America's Sweetheart's". She made "The Terminal" terminal. This movie is headed nowhere, what a shame, please please don't tell me "13" is on the way!

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c9935f85-758e-45e9-9cce-f379c2b4dec1

I hadn't planned on watching O12 because I didn't like O11 that much. I thought O11 was a nice but slightly boring little bank robbers movie with a sensational arsenal of stars. Anyway I was talked into watching O12 one night and I regretted it a lot. The plot is not only boring but also senseless. I honestly don't even know what it was all about. I left the movie after 3 quarters and got some coffee with another girl who didn't like it. Much more pleasure I can tell you that. But even the guys who stayed till the end later reported to me that the plot continued being awful and useless. My advice: Don't watch. Go watch Team America (hilarious btw;-)) and forget about Ocean's Twelve.<br /><br />In my opinion the most boring and senseless peace of crap to be on the screen in years.

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694d36be-c692-41e4-9f34-2d02ec94b2ca

I've seen "professional" reviews claiming Julia Roberts playing herself was "clever and very funny". I think NOT. An actress playing herself? And doing it with her same usual dizziness whenever she tries comedy? Talk about Hollyweird narcissism at it's utmost. Why doesn't she just stand there and go, "Me, me, me. Look at me!." The director and writer should be shot for not thinking of something better then this in what could have been a charming sequel. and by the way Steven, when the audience starts paying more attention to the weird camera angles then the story you have a problem. Capra, Hitchcock, all used some creative cameras but they were talented enough not to lose the audience in them or just show off with the camera. You seem to have forgotten a cardinal rule of film-making in the name of "style". The Pitt and Zeta Jones chemistry is quite good however, perhaps if they had made the film more focused around them and dispensed with the narcissism it might have worked. Once again Zeta Jones shows how she's got more talent and beauty then Roberts could dream of. Sadly, this film wastes talent and fails on many accounts. I want my money back.

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b0938517-5e1b-4333-8d37-3a841bd754ec

Just like most people, I couldn't wait to see this Ocean's 11 sequel but it really stinks, I must say. It stinks because there's simply no good screenplay,it was just cheap. I hope the producers donate all the money this movie has made (or will make) to the tsunami-victims in Asia so this movie will have at least one good reason to exist. It is so bad I even can't write a decent comment about it but....i still advise the creators of this thing to make "Ocean's 13". Ocean's 13 will be about the same thieves who are trying to steal a screenplay well hidden somewhere in Hollywood. The 13th member will be a foreign (maybe,Russian) screenplay-writer who knows all tricks to write a copy of this well hidden screenplay, so they can replace the original they'll have to steal. Or they need to find at least 13 people to write a decent screenplay for a movie in which not only Julia Roberts plays herself but even all other star-members of the Ocean's-films. 13 People because it's the lucky number of Andy Garcia's character.

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ccc85b85-b811-4353-b0b8-bed4e618fde4

The people who bash this movie were looking for it to be as cool and slick as the first one, which this isn't. This movie was supposed to be the complete opposite as Ocean's 11. This has been said by a lot of the cast members and also the director, Steven Soderbergh. Ocean's 12, while it did lack a gripping plot, is being bashed because it was different then what people wanted. If it were released before Ocean's 11, it would be taken much differently, not as a failed sequel. The problem with sequels is people go into it with a preset idea of what it should be like it and have lots of expectations. They should go into this movie with an open mind and not expect it to be "Ocean's 11, again".

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1c6d2012-3f32-4bcc-a51c-e275a678902a

I didn't expect a lot when i went out to see this, but my god what a disappointment. The original was kind of fun within it's genre, but this is so bad, i felt abused when i left the theater. There's no plot, it's not funny, it's not enjoyable to watch, it's straight out embarrassing. After an hour i hoped my patience would be rewarded but now i regret not leaving the theater. Do yourself a favor and ignore this one, see it when it comes to the small screen. Or see it on budget DVD, whatever you do don't waste any money on it. Don't say i didn't warn you.

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15a0f521-5e56-4d7d-b9e3-5e0a54e32de6

Comparing Oceans Twelve to the 2001 Oceans Eleven, did anyone else notice all the things that stayed the same?<br /><br />- All the stars returned for Twelve, and Zeta-Jones was added;<br /><br />- Twelve had the same director;<br /><br />- Twelve had the same producers;<br /><br />- Twelve had the same production designer;<br /><br />- Twelve had the same music director;<br /><br />- Twelve had the same film editor.<br /><br />Did anyone notice the things than changed once the "Oceans" franchise was established?<br /><br />- Twelve's budget was $25 million (30%) greater;<br /><br />- Eleven got great reviews, but Twelve largely got panned;<br /><br />- Eleven made $450 million but Twelve dropped to $362 million;<br /><br />- Domestic box office for Twelve dropped 32%;<br /><br />- Soderbergh teamed with a different screenwriter.<br /><br />Movies are a director's medium, of course. I almost forgot.

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6c5a3f8d-c6fb-44f3-92e7-c6337319e67d

Watching this movie brings several words to mind: "sophomoric", "ridiculous", "improbable", "self-indulgent" and finally (and fatally), "boring". Badly directed, badly photographed and badly acted, the film is a confusing mess with plot lines (if one can call them that) veering in all directions. Someone may have used a five-year old's finger painting as a template. As punishment for this childish crime of a movie, this cast of "stars" should be spanked soundly and sent to their respective beds without dinner. . All in all, it seems like George needed an excuse to get together with his little buddies for a paid summer vacation and we're the suckers paying for it. Bad George! Bad!

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e6c59453-f62c-4d74-a6a5-977965b86908

What can I say about Ocean's Twelve? Who thought that it would ever come to this? A gigantic mess that loses itself halfway and can't retrace. I found myself amazed at how bad this really was. Really! I have never seen the ending properly because this film is just insufferable. I'm a huge fan of the first but this is a lame excuse for a sequel. <br /><br />What was the point of the heist if they were going to give the money back? The movie is just boring and so drag along that I can't ever sit through this. It really is bad. Just stay as far, repeat, far away as possible from this movie. It's worthless.

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22c8e208-62ef-4683-a9a4-2bd531780722

I enjoyed Oceans 11, I thought it was quite enjoyable, helped by the performances and the direction. However, I was disappointed with this film. Don't get me wrong, it is not a complete dud, thanks to the stellar performances from Brad Pitt, Catherine Zeta-Jones, George Clooney and Matt Damon especially and the efficient direction from Steven Soderbergh. However, the film really does suffer from truly lethargic pacing, some of the film was so slow I almost fell asleep between one key twist. Second, the plot is very convoluted and there are many twists and turns that makes it hard to keep up. The camera work wasn't as innovative as it was in the first movie either. Whereas in the first movie, it was smooth and professional, it was jerky and awkward here, and the music wasn't particularly memorable. The screenplay also wasn't as witty or as fun, and the film felt anti-climatic. At the end of the day it all felt a bit too lazy, despite the expert playing and direction. So much potential, but really a missed opportunity. 4/10 Bethany Cox

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c05013ca-db41-42db-afe3-4ab7ccc97b32

Ocean's Twelve: just plain stupid, bad and nothing compared to the other two.<br /><br />An art robbery. 10 known actors, at least. A weak script and very slow developing idea. That's why I characterize a movie I only saw at least 20 minutes of it. Don't get me wrong, you may like it. But I only like the Ocean's films because of the Heist theme. If Ocean's 12 it's not about Heist then what's the point to see it? Glad Soderberg saw his main error and redeemed himself by making a film far superior to the first one. Kudos for that.<br /><br />Steven Soderberg isn't really a good director. Apart from his hit "Sex lies and videotapes"... nothing else happened so much great to the career of this director. Shame on him. But his fault only.

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ba6be89a-b745-4106-80fa-aa79a2524fc5

Oh, how the critics fell all over themselves to praise their goldenboy Paul Schrader (author of Taxi Driver) when this movie came out. I never saw the qualities they were detecting when I watched this movie back in the day, so I re-viewed it, to see if I got it wrong. Mishima is extremely uninteresting. This is a chilly, unremarkable movie about an author living/working in a chilly abstruse culture. The flat reenactments don't hold your attention because they are emotionally adrift and stagy. And the rest of it just sits there being awful... with soldiers singing songs about the masculinity they pledge themselves to, hairsplitting about purity, the admiration of swords, etc.<br /><br />It must be a triumph when you learn you've landed Philip Glass; but then you have to get something out of him. Glasses score offers not a whit of distinction from his other work, nor does it provide the film any perceptible value. In 2010 it should be clear to anyone that Schrader squandered his career on work of no impact or importance (Cat People, AutoFocus, Light Sleeper, Patty Hearst, American Gigolo). He can bore you to pieces, and kill the momentum of a movie, quicker than anyone else. Schrader has made a resume full of lousy, amateurish films.

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0b6c9fa0-a1ed-4fae-a27e-6142005aedb5

This is officially the terrible, boring, corny, and ridiculous movie ever created. The movie is all about a crazy kid and his friends, and they land a 747. His dreams are very corny and make no sense at all, and is very poorly done. Every special effect looks as if it was done without any modern technology, and might have been created by the kid that plays the "leading role" in the movie. If you watch this movie, it will definitely make you stupider. I advise you to never consider watching this movie, and if you do, good luck and don't miss the brain cells you killed off. My comment does not even fully grasp the awful creation from hell that has been made. The person that wrote the comment before me did not watch the same movie that I dreadfully watched, and wish I never watched. Peace.

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d93659c8-c1e1-410d-b044-669ef2f36c7b

There are no - NO redeeming qualities to this film. They didn't check a single fact - NOT ONE about... anything. I feel sorry for Larry Miller, and even more sorry for his agent for not being more capable for finding him a more suitable venue.<br /><br />The adults are all idiotic. The effects are cheesy and devoid of any sense of reality. The music is honestly cheesy. The plot is beyond belief.<br /><br />I you want to see something good with your family, see anything else. Take some time and check for mildew in your attic. My ten-year-old is mocking this film as we watch it. He's unfortunately learning that not every movie is worth watching.

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bce8992a-ac23-4f52-a001-c2729bdc5033

When I read the reviews of Kahin Pyaar Na Ho Jaaye, I thought, "Huh?". It was THAT confusing. To be sure, I went to watch the film and what do you know? It's a remake of "The Wedding Singer". Several scenes have been changed to suit the whole essence of Indianness, but the rest of it is a direct lift from the 1998 Hollywood hit. Bollywood is no stranger to remakes, but this is one so poor that it pains me just to watch it. I groaned so much watching this and I realized I wasn't the only one doing so! One guy actually walked out of the theater and never came back! Salman Khan should seriously stop doing comedy roles. He shrieks and whines too much. Why can't he just take it easy? He doesn't do justice to the role originally acted out by Adam Sandler. He doesn't have Sandler's sense of comic timing. Rani is a wonderful actress and one of my favorites, but she's no Drew Barrymore either. The scene where she stands in front of a mirror practicing to say her new surname ("Hi, I'm Mrs Pugalia") doesn't match up to Barrymore's version ("Hi, I'm Mrs Julia Gulia"). I felt embarrassed watching that scene, even though I had loved the original. The music is not too bad. It's probably the only saving grace of this otherwise horrible film! Avoid this at all cost!

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fe1a1d3a-5d16-48c3-8f80-5e2300ff4d1d

K Murli Mohan Rao made the much better BANDHAN in 1998 This film is an awful remake of THE WEDDING SINGER<br /><br />Basically in short, the film consists of: Salman Khan who in those days used to have the role of a dejected lover who looses his girl and also he had his comic scenes where he hammed badly even today he does well he does it all here too and also looses his shirt in scenes<br /><br />Jackie Shroff- wasted, bored and tired, his role is so stupid He is shown as a lover of Pooja Bhatra then in 1 scene he is shown as a womanizer?<br /><br />Inder Kumar- confusing characterization again<br /><br />Rani Mukherjee- boring, overweight and does nothing special Pooja Bhatra- tall, fair and actress worthy but lacks talent<br /><br />Kashmira Shah- says a dial as if a poetry<br /><br />Mohinish Behl- poor fellow the 2 kids were awful too<br /><br />The story is the same and has awful comic scenes, a sudden love story and boring drunken scenes plus a forced comic track of Shakti Kapoor<br /><br />Direction is poor Music is decent<br /><br />Salman khan just goes through the motions, Jackie is bad, Rani is as usual, Pooja is bad, Mohinish and Kashmira are nothing great Inder is awful

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145935b2-b2bc-45e4-840b-6681b5803341

Where should I begin with this movie. All I know is that it is a mess. Be the script, story, or the actors. First of all, this movie is very disappointing from Salman Khan who gave us a fun Dulhan Hum Le Jayenge and Har Dil Jo Pyar Karega before this. Second Rani is getting really annoying, appearing in every stupid movie since Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (glad Saathiya stopped this nonsense). The story is stolen from The Wedding Singer, but ruins the funny movie. The dialogues are lacking. I may have laughed here and there, but entertained? NO!!! Salman Khan was tolerable in the above mentioned movies, but here he is insane. His character is poorly written. One minute he is poor and next minute you wonder how is he poor. Rani Mukherjee looks like a plain jain and wasn't putting any effort. She luckily redeemed her career with Saathiya because her career was going haywire around this time. Pooja Batra put a little charm here with her looks but it is still not enough. Jackie Shroff is wasted. Kashmira Shah's beauty and acting has ran away from her because she chose such a horrible script. Raveena Tandon looks beautiful, but puts little performance. Mohnish Behl gets the award for Worst (Supporting) Actor (they need Razzie's because there have been terrible movies in India). He says stupid dialogues, dances terribly, looks weird, and is not in his regular form. Just to tell you, there is more to the cast who are also terrible. If it weren't for Raveena's awesome beauty in Aa Meri Life Bana De, I wouldn't give the movie a point. Otherwise the dancing by Salman was terrible. Pooja Batra was dancing like a wind in Savariya, otherwise I wish the costumes were given a make-over and the rest of the cast (and their monkey dancing) had been blown away from the wind. The good song of the album was O Priya O Priya which doesn't have a good enough picturization. Same goes for the half way decent title song. Otherwise this movie (and the rest of the songs) are a no-no for everyone.

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1e8634c8-b7a1-4ce4-8f2b-29970bad8c12

This is so embarrassing. It's a REMAKE of The Wedding Singer, which happens to be my favorite movie which gives me another reason to disapprove of this film. It has the same plot, same jokes, same characters. Jeez, people need to be more original.

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8d3597c6-bae1-4d42-9dc9-4fb395e62eee

In 1932, Humphrey Bogart was a relative unknown--an unproven actor who was starring in one of his first films. And, because he was an unknown, the movie they gave him was clearly a B-movie--a quick film with relatively low expectations. After seeing it, I could see why it would still take Bogart many more years AND another film studio before he became a household name. While the film isn't terrible, it certainly isn't good--making it more of a curiosity than anything else when seen today.<br /><br />Bogart is a pilot who has dreams of building his own aircraft engine company. However, when a vacuous rich playgirl comes his way, his dreams all seem to go on hold. As one of the characters in the film said, the combination of the two is like oil and water--they just don't mix.<br /><br />While Bogart is throwing away his promising career, his sister is going full speed on the Road to Skankville--having met a sleazy guy who convinces her to sleep with rich guys so they can shake them down for tons of cash! Bogey has no idea his sister ISN'T the actress she claims to be and doesn't realize later that the rich woman he loves leaves him for the same guy whose mistress is....Bogart's SISTER!!! All this leads up to a finale that is reasonably enjoyable. However, what follows is one of the dumbest scenes I have watched in a very long time! By now, the rich lady is not going to marry the guy sleeping with Bogey's sister (whew!) but because she's now poor and no good for Bogart, she's about to fly away and kill herself. Bogey finds out, chases the plane on foot, jumps on the plane as it's taking off and crawls up the fuselage to take control of the plane and save her!!! This is so utterly silly and ridiculous, I found myself laughing out loud. Up until then, I might have scored it a 4 or 5--this sunk the movie to a 3 (how one reviewer gave this an 8 is beyond me).<br /><br />The bottom line is that this was a talking and silly film. On top of that, it's all wrong for Bogart, as the action hero at the end and the simpering lover are horrible matches for his persona that was so wonderfully created in the early 40s. Manly and solid better suits the man--one of America's great actors but clearly out of his element here.<br /><br />By the way, those who love Pre-Code films and their very adult sensibilities may want to see this one. Practically everyone in the film believes in and practices pre-marital sex and Bogey curses in the film--things you never would have seen after the toughened and more moralistic Production Code was adopted in 1934.

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f0ad96f9-4a3b-46d1-a7d6-01ec4738cd4b

On Humphrey Bogart's first trip to Hollywood, he got his first leading man role in this B picture Love Affair. The first thing you ought to realize is that this film has absolutely nothing to do with the classic Love Affair later in the decade with Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne or the two remakes that followed. It's not half as good any of those films.<br /><br />In fact Bogey is second billed to Dorothy Mackaill as a spoiled heiress who finds out she's been living her extravagant lifestyle courtesy of her late father's best friend and financial adviser Hale Hamilton. It comes as quite a shock to Mackaill. She considers a show business career as a way for an income.<br /><br />Bogart is a test pilot who is also an aeronautical engineer and he's designing an ultimate airplane motor and is looking for investors. Mackaill is willing to do it, besides she likes what she sees in Bogey.<br /><br />Considering the cynical roles that Bogart later made a specialty, it's a bit disconcerting to see him as this highly moral and self righteous character in Love Affair. The part doesn't wear well on him.<br /><br />Love Affair is your average B program second feature, nothing terribly special about it.

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e14b0946-a41c-4034-a5d6-f39810d01171

Attention, possible spoilers<br /><br />This film is so lousy that it actually becomes funny. The director has put in all the clichés that have ever plagued B-series movies. The stupid bimbo (nice rack) getting caught again and again by the bad guys, chief villain smirky and revealing his plots before they happen so they can be ruined and who, of course, bullied/killed the hero's father in an unclear past, a side-kick in the person of a policeman - small, bald and whose only preparation for the last battle (another cliché) is returning his baseball-cap rim-backwards etc. <br /><br />The film's end really tops it. After the chief villain dies when the hero Paralised Stoneface Jack or whatever throws him from the roof of a building ten stories high, they walk out of the building. Which, from the exteriors, looks three stories high only and very much like your regular city hall. <br /><br />When they exit the building, the side-kick can't walk, being that his right leg appears to be wounded. How, nobody can tell: ten minutes earlier he fell down shot in his shoulder and his feet were fine. There is no further explanation for the inquisitive mind of the viewer who would be curious to know such trivial things as "Where is the villain's body which should lay near the building?" and "Why is there no police or even curious folks gathered round the said body?". <br /><br />I could go on forever with the list. Why does another one of the bad guys claim to have invented martial arts when he gets his ass kicked in no time? Why do bad guys in general make silly movements when attacking? Why does the hero look so faggy? Is there anyone really thinking "yes, these characters and this plot makes this a film to remember"? And the actors suck. Our hero and saviour of the day wears the same expression on his face. The whole film. That disgusted-trying to be cocky smirk must be some copyrighted feat of him.<br /><br />Also, thinking that until now 12% of the people having rated this film gave it a 10 makes me full of fear inside. They might have been serious and then we're doomed.

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b924848f-425f-4f16-9a0a-56267acb234d

It is unsettling seeing so many people giving outrageously high ratings to this film. Some of the praise uses such twisted reasoning (and transparent agendas that betray a simple love of anything that is in any way critical of the U.S.) that it approaches hysteria.<br /><br />Heaven's Gate is a bad movie, it is fundamentally awful. Endless scenes using elaborate shots that serve no purpose, muddy dialogue, murky narative, no sense of any theme aside from excess...<br /><br />The high rating of this disaster is a product of revisionist history and temporary shifts in perception.<br /><br />For some perspective watch Lawrence of Arabia before watching Heaven's Gate. You will see just how aimless and lost this film truly is. The "issues" it may have been trying to deal with are lost in a miasma.<br /><br />I have no problem with films that are critical of the U.S. per se, but when a terrible film gets such undeserved praise purely because of that element... that's worth challenging.<br /><br />The film is worth seeing for two reasons; curiosity, and as a cautionary tale for young filmmakers.<br /><br />I saw this at home for free, imagine the torture of being in a theater and sitting through it... for 4 meandering hours!

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dff4f210-732e-4587-8576-b882d4ae6d42

I watched the 219 minute version and have to say that dollar-for-dollar, it it probably one of the worst films ever. Now I am NOT saying it's THE worst film ever--but if you look at a ratio of cost over how much an average person would enjoy it, this is a very, very bad film.<br /><br />I would say that the single biggest factor making this a bad film is the writer/director, Michael Cimino. Rarely can so much blame be placed on a single person. Had he not been so self-indulgent, a film just as bad could have easily been made at about 90 minutes--saving the studio millions! <br /><br />The film begins with a completely unnecessary prologue that's supposed to be set at Harvard. The scene is HUGE but completely without context. You have no idea exactly what is occurring nor do you know why the students (in particular, John Hurt) are behaving so boorishly. I find it very hard to imagine a commencement going like this in 1870--and it looks a lot more like 1970. This is a half hour where you have no idea what is happening, who the characters are or their motivations. <br /><br />The next scene is 20 years later. Inexplicably, the two Harvard grads (Hurt and Kris Kristofferson) are in Wyoming. So, they went to the best school in America and now one is only a law man in the middle of no where and the other is....well, what IS John Hurt in the film?!?! He just appears here and there and seems to be either a jerk (the prologue) or a pathetic and pointless drunk who hangs out with murderers--even though he is apparently against them!? His entire character made no sense. They never explained why he was a Brit living in the middle of nowhere (it was impossible to hide his accent), why he bothered to come along with the hired army IF he was so against their wicked plan nor why he would risk his life for a cause he didn't believe in at all. As for Kristofferson, his excellent acting and better defined character made his character more believable, though having him move to Wyoming AND risk his life for a prostitute made no sense at all.<br /><br />This brings up the worst aspect of HEAVEN'S GATE. While the scenes are WAY TOO LONG and needed trimming, the worst part of the film is that the characters were like cardboard. John Hurt (a wonderful actor with nothing to do in the film), Jeff Bridges and many other big names are there but you have no idea why. In fact, other than Kristofferson, Isabelle Huppert (as a hooker with a heart of gold--quite the cliché) and perhaps Christopher Walken, EVERYONE is completely one-dimensional. It's hard to imagine a movie THIS long where you don't know or understand the characters. <br /><br />Much of the film also seems anachronistic. Who would have thought to have a giant roller rink constructed in the middle of no where in 1890? I am sure that just getting the basic supplies in this region in the West would have been very, very difficult--and yet we are expected to believe that trains filled with roller skates and lumber arrived instead of FOOD. Maybe if they hadn't spent a bazillion dollars building and frequenting the roller rink, the farmers could have afforded to BUY food and avoided this war over purloined cattle!!! And what's with the guy on roller skates with the fiddle? What did this have to do with a land war? <br /><br />The most obvious problem you are left with is that it's a film where very, very little actually happens until the big battle late in the film. There are lots of scenes of filth and flat nothingness. So much nothingness that by the time the battle occurs, many audience members would have left or are now so hostile to the film that it's inevitable that nothing could salvage the film.<br /><br />As for the final battle, it was done reasonably well but had problems. First, this minor skirmish on the prairie lasted longer than the D-Day invasion!! Second, while details of the actual events of the so-called "Johnson County War" are a tad sketchy, we do know that the characters played by Huppert and Kristofferson never actually were there, as they'd both been hung BEFORE the battle. Third, I can't believe that Cimino actually killed animals throughout the film--especially during the final battle. While I am far from a bleeding heart about animal rights, his need to use animal guts and actually kill some of the horses is a low point in cinematic history. Watching and knowing that some of the horses died to achieve Cimino's "vision" for the film is very sad.<br /><br />Finally, after the big battle, we have an epilogue. While it is blessedly short, it also seemed completely unnecessary and vague. We see Kristofferson on a fancy yacht, so we can assume that he's finally putting some of that Harvard education to work for himself. We also see a woman who appears to be one that Kris looked at a couple times during the prologue. Most importantly, nothing is said and you have no idea what the final outcome. I read up on it myself and found that the film often got the facts wrong.<br /><br />Overall, to say the film is long and needed tons more editing was like saying WWII was a "minor tiff". Well, I've certainly seen a lot worse, but if you factor in the cost of production, I truly think it might just be one of the worst films in history.<br /><br />Finally, when a film has this much explicit nudity I warn parents. However, as no child COULD sit through this film (even with a promise of sex), the warning is not necessary.

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967ec9e1-f178-4e62-800d-694e711b1aa8

The recent death of Stephen Bach, one of the producers of HEAVEN'S GATE, has raised the specter of at least a partial resurrection of the reputation of the cursed film. Moreover the original release, the "long version" was recently shown on TCM exposing the film, in ail probability, to its largest audience ever. <br /><br />I saw the film when it first came out at a packed screening in a 3rd Avenue cinema across the street from Bloomingdales. I think it was released on a Friday and withdrawn on the following Wednesday. Maybe that wasn't a fair release but it was and is a terrible film. Seeing the full-length version recently confirmed that judgment and with some thirty years more experience watching and writing about films I am better able to articulate why.<br /><br />First there is the dreaded phrase "mise-en-scene" whose definition is at the same time so simple yet so amorphous that it puzzles even after being defined. Basically it's everything that happens in front of a camera. For example, a crowd extra will be given a piece of action, say just walking by on the sidewalk and a spot to start from. When the assistant director yells action the extra will go through their action. If there's another take the extra will return to the start spot and go again on "action". All of the extras do this. Then say a cab drives up to the sidewalk and the star gets out and embraces another principal while all the while the crowd extras are doing their thing. This is mise-en-scene. In the theatre they call it blocking but cinema is far more multi-dimensional.<br /><br />The importance of defining mise-en-scene is because when the French critics developed their theory of the auteur the opposite of an auteur was a métier-en-scene, even more derogatorily referred to as a "traffic cop". An auteur was intimately involved in the meaning of a film and through the director's body of work a theme or themes discerned. The metier-en-scene was basically a company man rendering in film what had been handed to him on paper. It is the difference between say John Ford and Sam Wood.<br /><br />The second point is how the director, Michael Cimino, got into the position of directing films. Cimino first gained prominence directing the first million-dollar TV commercial. This depicted a Chevrolet floating down the Grand Canal in Venice. This commercial never appears on any lists of greatest TV commercials of all time and is notable solely because of how expensive it was and how utterly exaggerated it was. The effect is like that of a three year old girl brought out to entertain company who gets her biggest response when she flings her dress over her head. Cute for a three year old, embarrassing for a thirty year old. So Cimino was praised early on for spending a huge amount of money for some over-the-top image and so he learned.<br /><br />His first film, THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT (1974) has a scene where Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges are passengers in a lunatic's car that drives back and forth, back and forth, until it drives off the road and the driver opens the trunk full of rabbits which he proceeds to shoot one by one. I had the feeling that if the producer, Eastwood, hadn't stepped in, that the scene would have lasted until every rabbit had been killed.<br /><br />Which brings us to HEAVEN'S GATE. I guess if one watches the film on a DVD in snatches like a mini-series it can be impressive. This is because scenes are directed with such a dense mise-en-scene that each scene is like an encyclopedia it's just plain exhausting to sit through nearly four hours of this. Its like sex, at some point it just becomes a whipping. There is the opening 40 minutes, which takes place at Harvard. Brilliantly photographed at Oxford, it is something of a non-sequitur. I personally favor the artistic way of unfolding a story as opposed to the more commercial _"Now I'm gonna tell you what I'm gonna tell you" of most films. However the whole preface adds up to only one line- Kris Kristofferson and John Hurt went to Harvard together. Now twenty years later… All of that time, money and effort, not to mention all of the audiences' attention and energy just to deliver this almost useless piece of information.<br /><br />Then there's the scene in the street between Kristofferson and Masur which just goes on and on with a populated city of background extras and horse drawn vehicles in the background in continuous motion to deliver a tiny bit of expositional information. It's just so exhausting. There is just one scene after another like this. It's like trying to eat a thirty- pound pizza. Then there are these long conversations of inconsequential details and unintelligible, witless dialogue, which go on and on and are exhausting and boring. <br /><br />Of course any single scene excerpted looks brilliant. Overall it's a rich piece to spin praiseworthy articles about. Seen in snatches with the possibility of fast-forwarding through the boring bits or turning it off if feeling mise-en-scene whipped, it's basically painless. But don't let anybody tell you it's a good film. When I saw it in 1980 there was a guy sitting in front of me who commented on the scene where Kris Kristofferson is on his horse and he turns one way and then the other and does this about six times. "That's symbolic," he said, "of he doesn't know which way to go." That is basically, at its kernel, the basis of every pro- Heaven's Gate critique.<br /><br />Watch it, if you must, but be forewarned, this is not a film whose time has come, this is a stinker which will smell for all time. <br /><br />HEAVEN'S GATE is historically inaccurate in the extreme. I recommend the book BANDITTI OF THE PLAINS by Asa Mercer on the Johnson County War.

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b392b166-354c-48bc-98df-44097c9f2b86

Let's see. What annoyed me most? The extra long dance scene in the beginning watching people twirling around so much I got dizzy... Without even showing where the music was coming from... All part of a college graduation that had nothing to do with the rest of the film. Or perhaps it was the fact that each scene lasted about fifteen minutes longer than they had to. What a drag this film is. And the most annoying aspect is the bad guys are so bad, so obviously horrible that it seems as if the director were making this film for second graders. "These people are bad... These people are good". Whenever a movie has its agenda-heart on its sleeve I am beside myself. There's a scene in a rollerskating rink that seems totally out of place. Long drawn-out love scenes with the main character and a Russian prostitute that seems more like a rock star and his sexy groupie. John Hurt's character, who is part of the overlong beginning scene, drinks and disagrees with the overdone villains. His death scene could very well be the stupidest in history. And I hear everyone, even the haters of this film, talk about how gorgeous the cinematography is. I think it looks washed-out. Watch "Days of Heaven" if you want to see gorgeous backyards. This movie is even worse than the anti- hype. It's pointless. The epilogue, showing the main character in a yacht, was almost as dumb as the prologue. The battle scenes are tedious and dizzying. This movie is really bad. Avoid it unless you love bad movies, because this is the king of them.

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60b12f89-107c-4d49-8c23-2125a3a7a0fb

This is the movie that, pretty much, sounded the death knell for the auteur in Hollywood. At over 40 million bucks, Heaven's Gate is so poorly conceived and executed it would take a lifetime to break down every area of failure. What really galls me the most about it is that technically it's very bad, an unforgivable sin for the money that went into it. John Hurt's commencement speech at Harvard is inaudible, as is a conversation between Kris Kristofferson and Richard Masur at the train station. Some people seem to think Cimino intended this as a "style". He didn't. It's just bad sound recording. The characters are not particularly well-drawn, except for the four or five leads; in the climactic battle scene, it's difficult to tell who's the bad guys and who's the good guys. Even on that level, it's impossible to enjoy the movie. The casting of Isabelle Huppert as the town madam is a joke, her French accent renders the whole character a fraud. The acting is generally stiff, without any range or depth of feeling; even Christopher Walken is bad. John Hurt's character is the only one with any swagger or vitality (although Hurt, in his 40s, playing a fresh-faced Harvard grad with bags under his eyes is patently ridiculous). <br /><br /> I guess to say that it's overlong is overkill. The roller-skating sequence could have been easily cut, the cockfight scene is rapidly becoming a movie cliche, and the final scene on board the ocean liner is right out the Twilight Zone. Having Rod Serling appear before the camera at the end to explain what we just watched would have been the perfect finale. Actually, those scenes in and of themselves are not bad, but Cimino has not earned the right to include them, because what he's given us as the "meat" of the picture IS so incompetently bad. The editing is poor, especially in the grand battle climax. At one point, the same explosion with the same wagon wheel flying from the blast is used three different times. I wish could I say something- anything- nice about this movie: a great scene, a great performance, even one memorable line of dialogue, but I can't. It is all just one big unholy mess. About the only thing I did like was the cinematography and the Montana locations, which are stunning. Even Cimino couldn't screw that up. This is a long, boring, bad movie by all standards. And the people who say that it gets bashed only because of the cost overruns are just kidding themselves. 1/2 * out of 4

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9dddc8b7-e547-4632-ba16-641435cc79c6

Now infamous Western that was (at its time) the biggest budgeted disaster in Hollywood history. I was "lucky" enough to see the full 220 minute version at a theatre in 1990. It was truly staggering how BAD the film was!<br /><br />They had a great cast, a story based on a true incident (a fight between foreigners and Americans in the 1800s), magnificent scenery...so what went wrong? Three words--director Michael Cimino. He was so full of himself after "The Deer Hunter" he went out and made this god awful Western. He's not totally to blame. His previous film "The Deer Hunter" was considered a masterpiece and United Artists gave him free reign to do anything. They let him all alone...and everything went wrong. The cost went barreling out of control and Cimino insisted on redoing sequences again and again until they were perfect.<br /><br />First off, the sound is horrible. Entire sequences go by and you can't make out a word the characters are saying. For instance, Jeff Bridges' character is introduced during a dance sequence, but I STILL have no idea who he was! The dialogue in his introductory scene is incomprehensible! That's the director's fault--he should have made sure the dialogue could be heard. Some scenes are shot with so much dust flying around you can barely make out what's going on. The story line doesn't make a whole lot of sense and Cimino took great liberties with the facts--in the real story only one person was killed--Cimino turns it into a massacre. There is some admittedly beautiful sequences here totally destroyed by lack of story and incomprehensible dialogue. Also the bad sound was not the fault of the theatre--all the prints sound that way.<br /><br />This garbage effectively closed down United Artists and was the end of Cimino's career. A textbook example of a director so full of himself he doesn't realize what he's doing. Jeff Bridges has said this is the worst movie he ever did. This is from a guy who made "Tron"! A definite must-miss.<br /><br />There is a pretty good book called "The Final Cut" which details the whole disaster. This gets a 1. I wish IMDb had negative numbers--this deserves it!

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d44c9436-512c-4c0e-8cb1-6cd7d95d380d

The director spent a lot of time making the scenes look real right down to the historical photos and all the sounds of the old west bustle. Too bad the Producers and Writer/Director, Michael Cimino, spent zero time on any of the historical facts of what the Johnson County war was really about. A lot of the war was over how public lands should be used for grazing. The cattlemen didn't want the poor sheep herders on the land to compete for forage on this cold, windswept plateau. The entire epic makes no mention of grazing sheep which was one of the most important reasons for the war.<br /><br />The worst scene is the battle between the peasants and the hired killers. The peasants are shown circling the gunmen like a bunch of Indians would do in much earlier Hollywood movies. The true fact is that Johnson County Sheriff William (Red) Angus, with a posse of 200 to 300 men, intercepted the gunmen and trapped them in a barn at the TA ranch. I doubt any women took part in the siege. <br /><br />Ellen (Ella also known as Cattle Kate) Watson and her second husband, James Averell, were hanged by a lynch mob about three years before the Johnson County invasion. Ella was never a prostitute. This was a canard spread by the Wyoming Stock Growers Association (WSGA) in order to discredit her. The fact that the plot makes her out to be a brothel madam only serves the interests of the WSGA.<br /><br />I object to the use of names of real people in a plot that is so obviously fiction. There is no fact in the events, time lines, or backgrounds of the characters. Why Michael Cimino would use real names of people who were loosely connected with the Johnson County war (and events leading up to it) is beyond me.<br /><br />The movie could have been much more interesting if it had dwelt on the political ramifications of the Federal Government intervention in a State Government's affairs and what happened after the WSGA gunmen were saved by the Calvary. Some effort was made to prosecute the Cattlemen who were responsible by the Johnson County attorney. But since Johnson county could not afford the court costs and the Governor of Wyoming, Amos W. Barber, backed the WSGA, the charges were eventually dropped.<br /><br />Overall I think the movie was just an excuse to show Isabelle Huppert naked for much of the three and 3/4 hours of running time on the DVD version.

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5ad6bfe5-2814-40a8-9949-10280ece27fa

The operative rule in the making of this film seems to have been "never make a 1 minute scene when you can make it a 10 minute scene." This was a principle set right from the start with an interminably long portrayal of the graduation of the Harvard class of 1870. The point of that scene, I suppose, was to introduce some of the primary figures in the story and give a bit of their background - which is somewhat effective when comparing the idealism of the Harvard graduation ceremony to the realism of life in Johnson County, Wyoming, but it just keeps going and going, and that sets the stage for a film that features repeated stretches of mind-numbing nothingness, made even worse by the fact that I found a significant amount of the dialogue to be almost incoherent. In the end, I couldn't even watch this in one sitting. I got through about half of it and had to set it aside for a couple of days before I could drag myself back to see how it turned out.<br /><br />My reaction to this movie in many ways is a shame, because there are positives here. The performances are generally of a high calibre, especially from Kris Kristofersson as Averill, Christopher Walken as Champion and Isabelle Huppert as Ella. The basic story - interspersed as it is around that ever-present mind-numbing nothingness - is potentially interesting, focusing on the efforts of immigrants to establish themselves in Johnson County and a local cattle company's efforts to stop them by killing a number of them in collaboration with the government and the military. There's also some absolutely breathtaking scenery shots. Having said that, the whole thing could frankly have been done in half the time - and should have been. In the end, all those potential positives are washed out by - again - the mind-numbing nothingness that the movie seems to revolve around. Seriously - 2/10.

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5788ac35-b602-4a2a-b6c5-74f2e316e432

The film, Heaven's Gate, was a good view, although still tedious at over 4 hours. But the film took great license - as usual with Hollywood. James Averill (Chris Christopherson), and "Elle" were actually married in real life. Their main contribution to the Johnson County war, was to start it by being hanged. Well, by starting it, I mean it came at the beginning, not the end. Here's the real scenario: James Averill and Ellen Watson were secretly married because one homestead could be given to each family. By filing as single individuals, they could get two homesteads. They chose homesites on Crazy Woman Creek actually controlling the water above the land held by a powerful member of the Cattleman's Association. He offered to buy them out repeatedly, which they refused.<br /><br />Although characterized in real life as the owner of a brothel (Cattle Kate), and a prostitute herself (and also in the film), there is no real evidence that was true. It is known that she bought many head of sick cattle, nursed them back to life, and was later accused by the Cattleman's Association of receiving the cattle in trade for "lewd acts'. In the end, she was accused of rustling - an act almost certainly untrue. So much for this part of the myth of the "American West", which is a gooble-de-gook of myths spanning a time period of about one hundred years.<br /><br />In real life, she and Jim Averill were surprised one day by several members of the Cattleman's Association, taken in hand, and promptly hanged. Those perpetrating the injustice were never brought to trial. But that was the first link that led to the murder of Nate Champion, and the start of the Johnson County war.<br /><br />Quite different from the Hollywood version which shows her shot at the end. <br /><br />Other than that, I think the main problem with the film was the editor, who could have made the action a faster pace by more skillful editing.

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eff201e2-e19c-4b86-81ad-377b56aedcab

I have just recently seen Heaven's Gate. After i watched this 3 hr 40 min epic western that's not a western, i read the book by Steven Bach. After considering all events and the movie itself, i still think this movie is a complete waste of time. I believe that when someone tells you to watch it, they are, in fact, trying to bore you to death. If for some reason you can enjoy this self indulgent over thought truely bad movie, i have to ask why. Though this isn't a reason to hate it, it is historically way off. It pretends to be about a situation that happened in Wyoming called the Johnson County War. Simply, the cattle barrons of the time wanted to kill all cattle thieves and claimed they were all immagrants. You find that you simply do not care about these people and hope they all get killed because at least then, something would happen. Everybody in the movie talks about things that happen, and it is never shown. After you sit though this giant waste of time you wonder how someone could actually make a 4 hr epic in which nothing happens. Oh and by the way the Johnson County war was not a war, it never happened. The Johnson County war, in fact, was called that because it almost happened, in actual fact, 2 people died. I can't warn you enough off this movie. However, if you're like me the, the idea of watching a movie that ruined careers and put United Artists on the "for sale" lot, sounds like an interesting case to study, then by all means, watch this terrible, narsisistic, movie with no sub-text, and a lot of photography.(which is lovely sometimes)

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b74b7760-bea7-4503-a9ae-8c4a8b75783e

I watched this last nite with an open mind. Sorry to say it is still bad. first, the movie is too noisey and you can't hear what people are saying. The accents are bad especially Richard Masur. What is the French chick doing in this film ??? Miscasting at its worst. Walken's makeup is strange. The Harvard scene is useless and not needed. Kristoferson's character is unlikeable and I wanted him to get killed and go away. Meanwhile, the Walken character gets killed too early and easily ( despite the makeup). The settlers are all stupid. GET ORGANIZED you bunch of hicks, people are coming to kill you !!!!! John Hurts character provides some humor buts thats all.<br /><br />I have nothing good to say about this excessive piece of crap. The only good thing is it ruined the director's career and killed United Artists.<br /><br />Still Crap after all these years.

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15031c2e-1e84-4a8b-a439-d644fc6c9ffb

You have to acknowledge Cimino's contribution to cinema. He gave us both the most over-rated film in history (The Deer Hunter) and the worst film in history (Heaven's Gate). And before you start with the 'It's bad but not the worst ever' let me explain. <br /><br />For 20+ years I listened to the critics and avoided "Heaven's Gate"-actually this was not hard because you are hardly bombarded with opportunities to view this film. Then a few days after seeing the 'Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven's Gate' documentary I stumbled on a used $9.99 DVD of the long version. My advice after 229 minutes is to seek out the most negative review ever written about this film (you will find a wide selection), and imagine that the reviewer is Cimino's devoted mother and that she is doing everything she can to put a positive slant on her dear son's movie. Then you will have an idea of just how big a mess Cimino made.<br /><br />While pretty much everything is wrong with this film, what ultimately tips the scale to make it the worse ever (and a classic 'less than zero' example) is its shameless distortion of history. Although the cattlemen's association did send a group of regulators/gunmen to Johnson County and did have a list of targeted names, the actual facts of an interesting historical event are hopelessly exaggerated. On the morning of April 9, 1892, Nick Ray and Nate Champion were besieged and eventually killed by an army of about 50 cattlemen and Texas hired guns who had come to Johnson County to clean out "rustlers." The citizens of the county then besieged the regulators who finally were arrested (or rescued) by the Army. Women did not actively participate in the fighting and aside from Ray and Champion there were minimal casualties. After all, these were sieges not assaults-and there were not wagons of immigrants riding in circles around the encampment of regulations (early westerns to the contrary this was a film making device and not an actual tactic of the Indians). And weeks prior to the arrival of the regulators a number of Johnson County residents were hanged without trial including Jim Averell, the keeper of a modest road ranch, and his wife Ella Watson (who Cimino resurrects as his two leads and he even shows Averell living to a ripe old age). <br /><br />There is no movie-making sin greater than fictionalizing history, if you are going to play fast and loose with historical facts, then change the names and locations to protect the unsuspecting audience members who might go away from a film believing what they saw actually happened. Fortunately so few people saw this film that the damage was minimal. Perhaps it is harsh to blame Cimino for his distortion of history. He could probably escape blame anyway with an insanity defense-the film provides plenty of support. If Cimino was insane during the production of Heaven's Gate it would explain a lot of things. But my vote goes to 'lack of directing talent' instead of insanity.<br /><br />There are some good things about Heaven's Gate. You can actually see on the screen where some of the huge budget went; expensive sets-beautiful epic camera shots-artful dance sequences. Isabelle Huppert (a strange casting choice that actually worked) gives an agreeable and likable performance although most of her scenes are extremely boring (that tends to happen when the director forgets to give the viewer any reason to care about the characters). The dialogue is generally solid if rather ordinary.<br /><br />But don't fall for the crap that this film experiments with storytelling by intermixing carefully crafted moments of character interaction with textured pageant-like explosions of communal action. This implies that there was a method to Cimino madness. 'Experiments' is another word for when a filmmaker gets so lost in his project that a coherent story is no longer possible. The simple fact is that there is no evidence Cimino storyboarded a single scene or made any attempt at control or organization. What it looks like is that he just turned his DP loose to stage action and to get an endless selection of colorful shots-1.5 million feet of loosely staged scenes. Then he tried (without success) to pare this down and fit everything together in post-production. <br /><br />The final battle scene is genuinely hilarious as babushka wearing townswomen (perhaps borrowed from a 'Fiddler On The Roof' touring company) throw countless sticks of dynamite at the regulators. Unfortunately each explosive falls just short of the target and explodes harmlessly. After you see this happen 50-60 times you can relate to the woman (the one who looks like something out of 'The Grapes of Wrath') who puts a huge gun in her mouth and pulls the trigger. This is probably what Cimino's mother did after writing that review.<br /><br />So believe what you have been hearing about this film since 1980. It is a sloppy, disconnected, poorly paced, and historically distorted mess. Of value only as a 'how not to make a film' example for film historians and as a source of amusement to those knowledgeable about the actual history of the American west.

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8923c5ab-fa09-40ac-bffc-3b81f560fb55

Critics love this movie. I personally found it senseless and tasteless. This is the millionth time I've fallen into the "critics love it" trap and came out wishing someone would throw boiling hot water on my testicles because it was less painful than watching the movie. There are many scenes that are completely unnecessary. A warning to Animal lovers: Don't see this movie if you don't want to see sheep killed and molested.<br /><br />If you want to see a good Asian film, see Afrika. If you want to see a film about escaped convicts, see the Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor classic Stir Crazy. Avoid 9 Souls like the plague.

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eb4b317f-9901-4cc1-b5ed-53ecf917a65e

The idea of nine stupid prisoners escaping and going on a road trip sounds pretty good for a movie. Especially because it's meant to be funny and I guess heart-warming in some weird way. The problem is, the movie was very rarely funny and often just seemed pointless and needlessly gross. It was as if jokes or interesting scenes were being set up again and again but no one bothered finishing any of them--there was just no payoff. Also, the movie was just brainless and had the crooks meandering across Japan even though they left so many crime victims alive that it's impossible to believe they wouldn't have been caught almost immediately--especially since they continued to keep using the same stolen camper for days on end. And as far as being gross goes, I just didn't need to see scene after scene after scene of guys peeing along the side of the road. Plus, believe it or not, there is a scene where four of the guys are out raping sheep!<br /><br />All in all, I really hated this movie. And it's a shame, as I almost always love Japanese films--just not poorly made and uninteresting ones like this one.

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469b92b9-9ab1-4317-a8cc-5d88652ce1ba

Here is another great film critics will love. The problem is that it is not a very good movie.<br /><br />The films premise is simple. Nine convicts escape a prison after the tenth one goes crazy and tells them where the treasure is.<br /><br />The first half has a lot of slapstick some of it very broad while the second half is a character driven descent into fantasy and melancholy.<br /><br />The two halves simply don't mix. Individual scenes do work very well (The guys crashing a friends house who has a new Filipino bride is hilarious While a later scene with the big guy working in the restaurant tugs at the heartstrings.) They simply don't mesh with each other.<br /><br />The movie as well is missing entire set-ups. One scene shows the guys desperately looking for change under a deserted vending machine to buy a snack. The very next scene has the whole crew in drag sitting down in a restaurant. Where did they get the dresses and wigs? (The crew includes both the big guy and a midget) How did they get all the clothes and money to buy the meal? And most puzzling is why are they in drag? They are clearly guys in drag and lets face it is there anything more memorable to witnesses than a big guy and a dwarf eating a meal dressed as women? I mention the big guy and the dwarf because besides the old guy everyone else seems to blend into each other. (In fact they wear matching white jumpsuits throughout most of the movie) The movie has very little character development in the first half and as a result the second half really lacks an emotional punch. As we are often trying to figure out who is who in their individual payoff scenes.<br /><br />Speaking of a drag the second half has all those wonderful sweeping camera shots and big emotional moments and great symbolism that makes a great film. It is also excruciatingly slow which makes for a boring movie.<br /><br />9 Souls is a big disappointment, the reviews gush about a great film and it's in there somewhere, good luck finding it yourself.

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