Displaying Review 11 - 15 of 17 in total

• Spectacular — for Gwoemul
  Written by VierasTalo on 17.05.2010

  The best monster movie ever? I seriously doubt that making such a claim would be false. Why? I plan to tell you. First of all, Gwoemul propably had the best plot I have ever seen in a movie of this genre. It all starts off seeming like some cliched Godzilla-copy, but the moment we meet our so-called main character, Kan-Du, his occasional dialogue and overall attitude prepare us for something different. The moment the army arrives, everything truly starts. The plot unfolds into social and political commentary, different than usual character development, extraordinarily well coreographed action, and it's all covered in weird, sweet sense of humour that I'm pretty sure that any possible remakes will be unsuccesfull in copying, due to it's unique qualities. Also, this movie made something not all that many succeed in nowadays: I actually cared about the characters. I didn't really notice it until one of the main characters got killed. I felt like watching Balthazar Getty's character die in the last season of Alias, I mean I just realised that I didn't want the rest of the cast die. I also loved how little the monster was actually shown in the movie. Usually the monster is nearly the star, but here it was just used to give us something deeper and more meaningful.

  When it came to acting, this movie delivered and even gave us a free slice of damn good pie ontop of that! The man who played the grandfather did an excellent job in portraying a man who felt as if he needed to save all his children, and redeem himself a place in heaven. Also, Kang-Ho Song was spectacular in the main role, giving a truly memorable portrayal of what people will be willing to do for someone they love and take care of. Bong did a smashing job at the directing, bringing us an extremely realistic tale of what would truly happen in case a monster of such kind would ever emerge. Then, one of the things that are usually important for monster movies. The creature itself. It was apparently entirely created using CGI, but I'll be damned if someone is actually capable of seeing that. That has got to be some of the most impressive computer animation I've ever seen. The few action scenes that we saw the monster in worked wonderfully, and were highly more intense than in most other movies of this kind.

  But, you can't have a movie that just has good qualities. There's always something wrong. In this movie's case there aren't many, but one of the nads I have for this movie was definately it's incapability to actually put the humour into the scenes that would've actually needed them (except for the funeral scene, which worked awesomely). The humour worked, but it was somewhat loose from the story on occasion. Then, the final fight of the movie was abit streched, I mean the monster should've died atleast 20 times during the beating that it received. Then there were some slightly illogical things (for example in one of the key scenes of the movie, the main character receives brain surgery of somekind that supposedly removes part of his brain, but that sure didn't affect him whatsoever), but I can let them slide for now. Are those little problems enough for me to call this movie something that deserves less than my recommendation? Not in my opinion.

• All the little holes eventually form one big one — for The Illusionist
  Written by VierasTalo on 17.05.2010

  Let's start by saying that The Illusionist is a movie that I did not like very much, but the reason is a little different than the regular reason; this movie does not suck. The story, even though admittably somewhat silly, is interesting and full of soap opera-style drama. And I mean that in a good way, you won't see an internet poker addicted former janitor or a retarded fat chick fucking her cousin here, just stylish costume drama so to speak. Though I was somewhat annoyed by the fact that we never actually found out how Eisenheim did some of his tricks, which in my opinion created a relatively large plot hole since the film actually built part of itself around the mystery of how he did one of his illusions. I can appreciate some mindfucking every once in a while, but here we never even got a slightest clue as to how he did his trick, which basically ruins all the fun of theorising since it's impossible to come up with any proof to support any theory. Also there's a twist ending, which I personally hate most of the time. They can work, but here the twist is just incredibly predictable and made in such a boring manner that I can't see how some people can enjoy it.

  Norton does great here, although nowhere near as good as he did in American History X. He's more like on a Fight Club-level here, playing it low key. Unfortunately that doesn't work too well sometimes, and makes Eisenheim come off like a cocky asshole on a few occasions. That funny man you've seen in every other movie nowadays, Paul Giamatti does a good job here. I don't really understand why he has to shout all the time as inspector Uhl, but I suppose he just had some tension to let out. Biel is Biel, not a good actor and never will be, but she's pretty, and hence she does her job well here. The role of the Governor's wife really doesn't require top notch acting skills, especially since she doesn't even appear in about a third of the entire movie. The score of The Illusionist works surprisingly well, never making itself truly heard but yet keeping the happenings on screen become something more than just happenings on the screen.

  There truly are no great, big flaws in The Illusionist. Only some small ones. But the plot holes are incredibly annoying, and a few perforrmances don't work too well due to the weird way the actors charecterise their roles. I'd still recommend watching this if you can ignore such flaws.

• No. Just... no. — for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
  Written by VierasTalo on 17.05.2010

  I have no idea what this movie was supposedly about. I have seen the first part, but here there is a massive 10-20 minutes of actual story exposition in all of the 150 minutes that it takes to tell whatever the hell it's trying to tell. After I saw The Weatherman, Gore Verbinski became one of those directors who I have huge expectations to, no matter what the movie is. Here I managed to lower those expectations sufficiently, but I was still incredibly dissapointed. It's sad to see the man make pointless crap like this when he could easily be directing something beautiful like The Weatherman. This movie is just one break neck action scene after another. When there aren't action scenes on the screen, there's no time spent on character development, but instead it's used to show captain Jack throw a pointless joke or two, or simply give us useless dialogue between characters, which, agains popular belief doesn't actually develop them as characters whatsoever.

  All the acting here, if you can even use such a word, is incredibly worn out and quite frankly, retarded. Johnny Depp, who is indefinately one of the greatest actors of our time, just falls into these awful manners and gives use a one-dimensional performance. And don't you even fucking get me started on Orlando Bloom. Verbinski can direct good action, but that really doesn't help much when A) we don't give a rat's ass what happens to the characters due to poor development on them, and B) when there are about a gazillion CGI effects on screen at once, all of which could have been made using traditional technology as well instead of going to a computer. There's even blood at one scene, but even that is CGI. I just don't get it. At that point the end slaughter of Silent Hill came to my head, but atleast that CGI-crap was made with style. Also, back to the storytelling, it just runs around on the same thing. When you make a 150 minute movie you should have enough story and action to fill it up, but here the creators of this movie just put in a ton of action scenes that are all very repetetive, that are basically the same damn scene all the time. And the little storytelling that we get is just utterly confusing, I still have no idea what this movie was about. Atleast the music of the movie is good, and composed by Hans Zimmer. But still, overall, this thing is a long shot from it's mediocre predecessor.

• A movie with a name that is essentially a typo just can't be good — for Eragon
  Written by VierasTalo on 17.05.2010

  Words fail me. This is the utmost cliched movie on the face of the earth. And I can't understand why. The cast here, besides the awful main character are all wonderful in most movies, and do do a good job here too. Robert Carlyle worked great as a villain, even though he was barely recognisable under the heavy make-up. John Malkovich does great, even though we propably see him for a massive ten minutes or so throughout the entire movie. The guy who plays the main character is terrible though, with his awful brittish accent and Orlando Bloom-ish manners. He does shout better than Orlando though, which is basically what he does throughout the entire movie.

  I'm getting tired of talking about mediocre things, so let's talk about the script here, which is awful. First of all, Christopher Paolini's original is a terribly cliched book, but the script here, for some odd reason, was propably made by someone who had never even seen a screenplay before. Buchman skipped ALL the goddamn character development and overall meaningfull scenes, and added tons of utterly useless scenes such as that one where Carlyle is mad at his minions. What was the point of that scene? To show that he is a dominant force in the lines of evil? We knew that already for crying out loud. Then around the beginning of the movie, there's a fortune telling scene, because, well you know, you can't have a fantasy movie without a fortune telling scene now can you? Oh wait, I think I need to cough... *Cough*LOTR*Cough* Bless me. The dialogue is also a little too close to retarded, a departure from the relatively witty one in the book. I can't understand why they had to leave that dialogue out since it would've worked better than these classic lines like " That's the spirit - one part brave, three parts fool." Also, as a sidenote, in the movie that line sounds like the last word would be food.

  Technically, this is a pretty damn mediocre movie. You have your run of the mill special effects, which should've been better since this movie is occasionally about nothing but CGI. The score.. or actually, the entire sound mixing of this movie is just fucked up. The score itself is decent, nothing to be nominated for an Oscar or such, but still. But the way it's been mixed to the movie is awful. You can barely hear the music, since for some ridicilous reason even during action scenes which really do need good music to be great the sound is just too damn low. Whoever edited/mixed the audio here was an idiot, plain and simple. He didn't know what he was doing. Which gets us to the director. Even though he kinda did know what he was doing, the directing here is simply meaningless. It doesn't feel like it was directed by a person, all the camera work and such are far too machine-like to make us feel like we would be watching something other than a movie.

  I didn't like this movie all too much. It did however sorta keep me entertained and Robert Carlyle is always a blast. I still can't give it any higher than a 3/10 because some really important things were really fucked up here.

• Genre schlock — for Mindhunters
  Written by VierasTalo on 17.05.2010

  Another one of these movies... Damn. They're always the same as far as plot development and such go. It all starts off the same: A group of badly charecterised people go into a A) deserted house in the middle of nowhere, B) deserted island in the middle of nowhere, C) space ship or a station in the middle of nowhere, and they get killed one by one. I don't see how it's supposed to be exciting, but since they still make flicks like this, I suppose it is. So, as you propably could already tell, the character development in this flick is terrible. We don't really get anything out of anyone up until the final twenty minutes, when we find out something "shocking" about one of the people on the island. And no, I am not talking about the killer. Also, all the characters are awful stereotypes, but the plot does require it, since the killer... well, kills them, based on their own weaknesses so to speak. Such as one person wants to smoke, so the killer kills that person using cigarettes. So yeah, that makes the kills sound somewhat original, which they are. Too bad that most special effects either look awfully CGI or simply extremely fake. And what the hell happened to realism in movies like this? Here the killer is constantly setting up new traps and such within seconds, when other characters don't look at him/her. It truly is absolutely unbelievable how fast of a runner he/she is. Also, the way the killer's identity is eventually revealed is absolutely hilarious, because Harlin uses the most ridicilous sound clip ever in that scene.

  Harlin's directing in this film is terribly cliched. He can direct well, as proven by Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger, but here he reveals the killer within the first twenty minutes by simply showing him/her far too little, and since the killer makes it to the final four survivors, you immediately know it's him by then atleast, if not before. Renny does do a pretty decent job in milking the fine looking enviroments for good shots, but audiovisually does badly, since he uses extremely cliched heavy metal solos or random music that apparently comes from an old James Bond-movie. It just didn't work whatsoever. I'm amazed how he got such a good cast he has here. All the actors don't give it all they could, but they're still far better than in Traditional Slasher #9645, and amp the film up quite a bit. I especially digged LL Cool J's charismatic acting here.

  But the thing is, this movie is such a cliche bomb, and unoriginal on nearly all bases. Everything you've seen in this movie, you've propably seen before, or atleast read before incase you've read And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. There's just no point in watching this movie, and it basically serves as cannon fodder of some sort.... Just a very average movie with a good cast.