Escape from LA. You have a choatic, terrorist filled USA bad enough that the US government essentinally turns Manhatten Island into a prison to hold the criminals around the time of Escape from New York. You have Snake Pliscan, an ex-special forces badass who can survive anything and kill anyone. You have a million things you could do with this setting and character.
So what do we get? A lame re-make of Escape from New York with CGI. It’s technically a sequel but the plot is almost exaclty the same. Not only that, but it has some huge plot holes in it(Like the possibility of just blowing the island up).
As a plus, it had an Evil Bruce Campbell, but that’s not nearly enough.
Definitely the Omega Code that was produced by TBN and Matt Crouch. You had great material to work with the end times as described in Revelation. It could have been a fast paced, action packed movie and in some ways it was but the acting and writing kind of killed it. Rather than being a movie that secular audiences would want to see simply because it was good it’s a movie barely suitable for Youth Night at a church. Now I should add that Megiddo the sequel to Omega Code actually was a great movie and Mike York who played the Devil was a good actor and by far the best actor in both movies.
All right, I’ll step in where Mapcase left off and say that The Matrix left me disappointed and annoyed.
The hardcore sci-fi fans will fill in the blanks I missed, but it looks like they took Philip K. Dick and William Gibson and hashed them in a Mixmaster with some CGI sequences that looked nifty.
The funniest sequence was Morephus’ explanation of the Matrix’s purpose, which culminated in him holding up to the screen a Duracell battery. At that moment, i flashed on scene in “Monty Python and the Holy Screen” in which Arthur was told to cut down the largest tree in the forest with . . . . a HERRING!
The shootout in the office building was ludricrious, with lots of gunplay and running in slow-motion that looked very silly. About as silly as Neo firing thousands of bullets into the office building where Morpheus was being [MST3K reference] TORTURED [/MST3K reference] and not hitting him once.
There were a few sequences I liked about the film, and I can see it being a pleasing way to blow an afternoon, but given the public’s reaction and box-office take it got, I was expecting a lot more.
Rosenkranz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Hysterically funny play, good actors. Richard Dreyfus, trying his heart out. Something just wasn’t there. It’s the only time I’ve actually fallen asleep in the theater.
The recent The Time Machine. Excellent visuals, decent acting, and a plot which was consistent for most of the movie… But no attention to details at all. The math we see on the board is understandable, but meaningless, whereas it should have been the other way around. The first time the Machine is used, we see clocks moving extra-fast… In the wrong direction. When he goes to modern New York, we watch a skyscraper being built, and in the time it takes the building to go up, a jetliner moves a distance equal to its length. And in the end, when the hero gets the answer he was looking for, he doesn’t act on it, he just makes a new life with some random (but admittedly hot) chick he met days before. Had they cleaned up these problems, the movie could have kicked butt, but as it is, meh.
No, his daughter’s death was due almost entirely to his own machinations. He involved her and her cousin/lover in one of his intricate plots, and she died because of it.
Duvall wanted equal billing with Pacino, since he was getting top billing in all his other movies. Coppola wouldn’t go for it.
Seems to me Connie wanted her son out of the family business–but I could be conflating that character with Michael’s son, the opera singer.
I think Mars Attacks was great. You have to see it for what it is: a campy movie that pays hommage to the old films of the 50’s. It’s meant to be silly, stupid, and fun. Not serious in any way, shape, or form.
The tone the movie sets up is incredible, the dialog is smart, and the characters don’t fall into stereotypes, which tends to happen in movies starring teens. Having said that, I was severely disappointed with the ending. I was anticipating that all the threads of the story were going to be woven together, culminating in some big philosophical statement (a la Dark City). However, what I got was a confused mess and a complete absence of closure. I have heard a lot of people defending the ending, saying that it leaves things open to interpretation, and let’s the viewer decide how it’s meaningful to them. Yeah, yeah, I’m all for that. But the problem is that it’s just about impossible to hold any interpretation, because it seemed no matter how hard I tried to put the pieces together, I was left with something contradictory, and ultimately meaningless.
It’s a damn shame, too. It could have ended up being one of the more memorable movies of this decade.
I mean, if there was ever a time for hot latina girl-on-girl action, a movie with Salma Hayek and Eva Mendes certainly qualifies, but the two never meet.
