Reviews

This film is nothing but an interminable sequence of flashbacks where a middle-to-older age couple tell and retell the story of how they were duped by a young man into believing he was Sidney Poitier's son.

I saw it because the combination of Donald Sutherland and Will Smith seemed great, but it must be the worst film of both of these two great actors.

In the end, this movie is nothing but a very pretentious psychodrama about how a very pretentious couple of not very successful art dealers came into contact with a boy of lower social class and ended loving him.

There are many far better films than this one in that theme. There is even a line where one of the characters is compared to Henry Higgins that will give a tip to those who want to look for an alternative.

For any fan of Isaac Asimov, this film is a total fraud.

Dr. Asimov went to great lengths to explain his motivation for writing his robot stories in the introduction to "The Rest of the Robots", an anthology published in 1968. In Dr. Asimov's words, "... there seemed only one change to be rung on this plot -- Robots were created and destroyed their creator; ... I quickly grew tired of this dull hundred-times-old tale. As a person interested in science, I resented the purely Faustian interpretation of science".

The film is totally at odds with the philosophy Dr. Asimov defended, and totally different from all the robot stories he wrote. Only a few names and the "three laws of robotics" were copied, but the central point in all his stories, that a robot could never be made to violate the three laws, was not respected. The Asimov robot stories are fun because they try to find situations were there is enough contradiction in those laws to create interesting situations.

"I, Robot", the movie, is just one more remake of that old, old, old story Isaac Asimov hated so much, it's Frankenstein again. If you insist on seeing that same story again, better get Mel Brooks' version, it's funnier.

Let's close with Asimov: "Never, never, was one of my robots to turn stupidly on his creator for no purpose but to demonstrate, for one more weary time, the crime and punishment of Faust".

If there is a film that should never have been made, this is it. Nicholas Cage plays the part of a most despicable person and, although the character continuously rambles about the reasons why he does what he does, he neither explains nor justifies it.

I know this film is not entirely fiction, it shows what's happening every day somewhere. But there are some things that should be best left to documentaries. If there are some gruesome facts that must be presented, at least do it in a "Schindler's List" way, try to find a character that has a moral attitude, do not put the worst possible villain in the hero's shoes.

This film is directed by Brian Cox who is famous for directing ... well, it seems that the most important film of his career is "Scorpion Spring". Apart from Music Director Lalo Schifrin, there is no one of importance in the cast. It's one of those ultra low-cost films, most of the action happens in a ghost town around the USA-Mexico border.

Anyhow, despite its limitations, or maybe because one's expectations are so low, there is some good suspense in the film. I wouldn't pay a movie ticket to watch this in a theater, but watching it from the beginning in the TV is certainly worthwhile. Considering the limitations, I would rate it 7 out of 10.

There's one big difference between Science Fiction, with a capital "SF"

and space opera. In SF, the writer takes one "impossible" thing and

asks, "what would happen if this were possible?" In SF, differently from space opera, special effects aren't strictly

needed, that's why Hollywood prefers space opera. In "Minority Report",

however, Spielberg took one "hard" SF story and rendered it to film.

The result was stunning. For about 2 hours, I completely forgot about

anything else. It's the kind of film that one would like to invite the

writer to discuss things over. The intrincacy of the whole story is

resumed at one pont where one character pushes a ball over a table and

another catches it. Anderton: "Why did you catch it?". Witwer: "Because

it was going to fall". Anderton: "But it didn't. Because you caught

it". That's the whole point about SF, taking ideas and seeing what

happens when you twist them in a knot. Plot, acting, and effects,

although good in this movie, are secondary. Spielberg, as he usually

does, did a great movie, and, in this one, he had an excellent story to

begin with. I give it a 10 out of 10. (One minor nit: at one point,

Anderton is being chased by the cops in an automated factory that

builds one car every few seconds. He finally emerges out inside a

just-finished car. That is the only car that comes out of that factory.

What happened to the other cars we saw being built?)

I hadn't seen this film before because of some generally negative comments I had read about it. Boy, some cinema critics *are* idiots! The only people who won't laugh seeing this film are those who think "comedy" is something Woody Allen does in his darkest moments. Those people never laugh with their bellies; at most, in their funniest moments, they smile with their mouths but not with their eyes.

They complain that "Rat Race" is stupid, but, if one is a rocket scientist smart enough to understand the math behind quantum mechanics, one realizes that being funny is about being stupid. A joke is, by definition, an unexpected solution a stupid person found for an insoluble problem. Slapstick *is* funny, if done right. And they did it right here, everyone is always at danger of suffering considerable bodily harm, because of their stupid decisions. If the characters were smart enough to make the right decisions, it would be drama, not comedy.

The characters' morals aren't the best, most of the transportation they use, ranging from a hot-air balloon to a supersonic rocket-car, is stolen. And most of them are trying to cause some harm most of the time, from a very botched attempt to sabotage an airport radar, to a helicopter pilot who tries to teach her boyfriend a lesson about fidelity, to the quite successful revenge of a frustrated squirrel salesperson. Even if it weren't for their questionable actions, normal parents wouldn't like their children to meet most of those characters in real life: there are gamblers, neo-nazis, lesbian bikers, a football referee, a tranvestite Lucille Ball impersonator, and even attorneys. But, with very few "bad" words, just three jokes about sex and a couple others about toilets, this is about as "clean" as a film will be these days. Any parent that has objections to letting their children see "Rat Race" is suffering from a severe overprotection problem.

Films sometimes come out in pairs, one for the connoisseurs, another

for the unwashed masses. It happened with the "Matrix" for instance,

released about the same time as "The Thirteenth Floor", a film based on

a related theme, but infinitely more intelligent. I saw "Hackers" for the laughs, that was a ridiculous caricature made

by someone who believes "software engineering" is about setting the

time in a VCR. Now, "AntiTrust" is one of those extremely rare films

that are done just right from the technical point of view. They

captured the spirit of Open Source vs. the micro$oft evil empire. Some

very knowledgeable consulting was employed. Of course, every geek who

saw this film realized at once that Gary Winston has nothing to do with

Bill Gates, since every computer at N.U.R.V. was running some form of

Unix. Insider joke, of course, I have to watch the tape a few more

times to catch some of the other references. "AntiTrust" was done on a

very tight budget, therefore the need for blatant Pepsi merchandising,

but at least the 461645 programmers working in one of the 44709

projects at sourceforge.net should enjoy this movie. Let the ignorant

hordes watch "Matrix" and "Hackers", "AntiTrust" is the movie for us,

geeks.

I was expecting good entertainment value, or, at least, some good

special effects. Too bad, there is very little suspense, the plot is

as linear as it can get: they go in, meet some zombies, they come out,

no surprises. Okay, it's a "horror" movie, not a "plot" movie, but

still it doesn't grip, one never comes to that point where there is no

obvious way out. The spectator seems to be the most endangered species

here, I believe at least some of them must have died of boredom.

The make-up and effects would be about average for a 1950's horror

movie, we have come to expect much, much better things in this computer

graphics age. Finally, we aren't even granted comic relief. If they are going to

emulate old horror movies, they should at least make it a parody, like

they did with the recent "Mummy" remakes.

It's still a Masterpiece, even if it's not the Master's greatest piece.

Compare it to the recent remake, and you will see why. Peckinpah didn't

need "FX". Cars didn't explode in His films. There were no useless

explosions. The hero had to reload his guns, and he had just as many

shells as he had bought/stolen earlier. There was a stark realism in

Peckinpah's films, a realism that wasn't just technical, but personal

as well. It was like Real Life. As always, no character was really

"good" (except for the extras, maybe), some were "bad" and others were

"evil". The hero was caught in a situation he didn't choose. but he

couldn't avoid either. Doc McCoy was intelligent enough to realize that

violence wasn't the answer, but he was born and grown in violence, so

he couldn't really avoid it. Compared to The Wild Bunch, or Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia, or

The Wild Cross, The Getaway is more like "Peckinpah Light", but it's

still worth seeing.

Kids, stay off cheap crack, or you may end doing something like "Mulholland Dr". The closest analogy to this film is a party drunk, who takes an eternity to say something he thinks is so smart and funny but no one can understand.

There are a few good scenes, a funny one where a hit man tries to make a murder seem like suicide and ends shooting everyone, including the vacuum cleaner. There's a couple of lesbian love scenes, with clear and explicit nudity, for those who think Hollywood movies have become too prudish lately. However, two and a half hours is too long to wait for so little. That used to be called "glacially slow", but, in this greenhouse effect age, one feels the glaciers will melt before this film ends.

Unfortunately, there are critics who enjoy praising films that make no sense, perhaps because they feel superior when they claim to understand it, or, worse, critics who think that making no sense is a positive contribution to entertainment. If I had known it was that kind of people who were saying such good things about "Mulholland Dr", I wouldn't have thrown away my hard earned money on this crap.

I'm not saying it's bad to be original, all I'm saying is that there are infinite ways of being original, most of them bad. It's very easy to do things at random. The hard part is linking the threads at the end, so it all makes sense. Doing a really good non sense film is extremely hard, I think Fellini did it a few times, or Buñuel, perhaps. Here, David Lynch certainly fell far short of the mark.

Some good action thrillers have jumpy cameras, woody characters and ridiculous plots, but this is not one of those. I mean, it's not good, although it does have all those defects. If it had the slightest bit of humor, maybe it could work somehow as a parody, but that's not the case. I give it a 1, because it's so unremarkable it doesn't deserve a zero.

By the way, there's a character named 'Torvalds', which is wasting a good cross-reference, since anyone who would enjoy this crap doesn't have any idea of what that name means. And that southern-european looking guy, who was supposedly a Finn, spoke some sort of pig-latin that had no resemblance at all with any of the two languages spoken in Finland. I should know, because I speak both.

This series main value is in showing the Weiss family members living

their perfectly ordinary lives, and then gradually realizing the big

mistake they had committed when they felt Nazism was a passing fad.

One can feel the increasing desperation of those people, the almost

useless attempts to feel hope, and the final realization that the only

way was to fight back, or at least try to. In creating a bond between

the viewer and the characters, a special empathy is formed where we

feel we must protect those fictional yet real people and never allow

that situation to happen again.

However, what can we do? Examining the last few decades of human

history, we clearly see that mass murder and genocide aren't just an

accident, they seem to happen regularly, given a chance. And "being

civilized" by itself doesn't seem to be a solution, as we are reminded

in "Holocaust", it happened in the land of Beethoven and Schiller. And

here is where I saw this series biggest shortcoming. It fails to

adequately display the attitudes of the common German people of the

time.

Erik Dorf is the most unsatisfactory character to me. He is

transformed suddenly from a shy and mild mannered unemployed lawyer

into a shy and mild mannered Reinhard Heydrich's assistant. He

repeatedly suggests to his boss new formulas for genocide, without

absolutely any feeling for the people with whom he had social

relations before Nazism came along. People are not like that. An

intelligent and introspective man like Dorf, would certainly be able

to imagine himself in the position of his victims. The first real

feeling he shows is when Colonel Blodel makes him actually shoot a man.

In Blodel's words, "when you kill one Jew you feel it easier to kill

ten", or words to that effect. That sounds more like it. The Germans

didn't suddenly wake up one morning and say: "Hey, folks, you know

what? Let's do a genocide!". The gradual build up of the forces that

brought the Holocaust along is what should really be avoided, if we

truly want to keep it from happening again.

However, from the producer's standpoint, I can see how difficult this

proposition is. It would be very difficult to show a typical German

family, from the Weimar chaos, through the economical Depression of

the early 1930's, into the new hopes brought by the Nazi coming to

power, fueled by the Goebbels propaganda. At least some viewers would

sympathize with those characters, some people might think it perfectly

natural to gradually evolve into a mass killer. Some people might not

realize there is a point where any moral creature should draw a line,

as many Germans didn't.

But amoral and heartless people do exist, they have always existed in

any society. The question is how that kind of people can come to

control a nation, and how to avoid it in the future. This question was

never even remotely treated in "Holocaust". In the end, given the TV

medium, perhaps this is the best that could be done, but just be aware

that this is a fiction story about a fictional family going through

extreme adversity. It's not a historic account or analysis, by any

means. It was worth seeing on TV as a series, but not on video. Too

long. With good editing, maybe a nice two or three hour long film

could be cut from it.

Everything that can go wrong, and a lot of things that couldn't

possibly go wrong, go wrong here.

But the people in charge should read a little bit of physics. Just the

beginnings, let's say "The Feynman Lectures in Physics", or maybe

Alonso/Finn, or Haliday/Resnick. Just to make sure you know that

tsunamis don't happen in open seas, it's only when the water gets so

shallow that the water volume doesn't fit between surface and bottom

that the waves rise. (Okay, I'm simplifying here, get one of those

physics books to learn that it's the short waves that catch up with

the long waves in shallow waters). But there are NO big waves in open

seas, only on beaches, every surfer knows that. Well, maybe if a

really big meteor hits the Earth, but then the wave will move in

supersonic speeds. That wave would be essentially solid, it would

instantly turn the ship into a two-dimensional structure and each of

the passengers into a pizza-shaped pink pancake.

Well, let's give those guys a break, they tried to make a movie, not a

physics class. However, it's just a "b" movie, not even a capital "B".

The one thing you can say for this kind of film is that one doesn't

know who will die and who will survive to the end. Well, the kid we

are sure he will survive; he is just too insufferable to die. But

everyone else is at risk. And here they did a great job, the suspense

is constant to the very end, when we see the steel plate glowing from

the blowtorches that are cutting it from the outside. Every single

instant, from the time the ship capsizes, we are never sure of what

will happen next.

All in all, not too great, but not bad either, I gave it a 5/10. Good

for keeping the kids out of the street for an afternoon.

No matter what you do to those pesky creatures, there will always be a

lost book or amulet somewhere with the recipe to bring them back. A

sequel is a certain thing, and The Mummy 3 is just a question of time.

And we can also be sure that the graphics effects will be, if not

better, at least more grandiose.

The computer graphics were the biggest disappointment for me. They

were well planned, but there is still something lacking in the

software to make them look real. The scorpion king was the worst part

of it, but all the computer generated scenes stand out as artificial

looking. Let's just hope the next couple of years bring enough

technical development to make the next sequel perfect.

The plot, well, what kind of plot do you expect from a film called

"The Mummy Returns"? It may not have been written by Shakespeare, but

the story carries well and there is the right amount of tension and

comic relief. Two very lovely ladies. The only thing that bothered me

was a certain abundance of characters. One feels they could have

combined the kid, the brother in law, and the balloon pilot into one.

The dispute between the women, reaching back a few millennia, is as

important as the dispute between the male characters. I kept trying to

grasp which was the "main" plot line without success. The museum

curator has a small part in the beginning, but hovers around appearing

briefly several times. If I had written the story, I would have that

obnoxious person meet a particularly gruesome end once Imhotep had

been resuscitated. Perhaps the idea in the story alternating equally

between so many people was to bring the main focus to the special

effects.

I see a definitive improvement in this kind of film over the

"classics" of the 1930's. In those days, horror films were dead

serious. It was as if they were telling the spectators "hey folks,

never mind the lousy special effects, this thing is for real".

Nowadays, they say "it's just a movie, sit back and enjoy the show".

I give it a 8/10 and can't wait for "The Mummy Returns Again".

Apparently a historical romance, there are a few rather delicate

political issues in this movie. First, the "Irish Question" seems as

far from a solution today as it was in the 1890's. Second, land

ownership still leads to passionate debates over much of the world.

And I suppose the native North Americans would have an alternative

viewpoint about the Oklahoma land grants. Art criticism aside, "Far

and Away" should encourage some lively political debate.

From the viewer's point of sight, the film is rather good. Not being

born in Ireland, I cannot comment on the characters' accents, which

seems to be a major objection from the Irish people. But it's a good

story, well directed with a good storyline. A nice romance, between

two socially unmatched people, whose cultural incompatibilities end

being smoothed over by an intrinsical soul matching. The final

Oklahoma scenes are really good, they seem to capture the spirit of

the old American west, when the land seemed to be there just waiting

for anyone to come and take possession.

When I first saw this film, I didn't know it was so mediocre as the critics said. I didn't know critics existed, and I didn't care. Now, over 30 years later, I still think it's one of the most delicious films for kids ever made. Perhaps the critics really don't know so much about cinema as they think they do.

If the director wanted to portray Mexico as a violent and miserable

land, he didn't need sepia tones for that, Sam Peckinpah did it much

better in "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia". "Traffic" tells

people in the USA what they expect to hear: there are corrupt police

officers in Mexico, you can buy drugs in the slums from black people,

every teenager is exposed to drugs, drug lords are rich, whatever.

There are some unbelievable details in the plot, such as a drug lord's

wife first being unaware of her husband's business and then organizing

a professional assassination, or a high ranking USA government officer

having a conscience attack and renouncing his job during the

acceptance speech in a White House press conference, or the Mexican

hitman killing the other Mexican hitman. The Mexicans, both police and

criminals, seemed to have an unerring instinct to find anybody they

were looking for, no matter how they tried to hide, while the American

officers seemed totally lost.

But, despite all that, it surprised me in being a very good film. It

weaves several different story lines, bringing them together despite

the fact that the characters in each line seldom came in contact with

the others. There is some excellent acting. Benicio del Toro certainly

deserved his Oscar, although his character seemed somewhat too saintly

to be true. I give it a 9/10.

The intention might have been to recreate a 1940's B-film, right down

to the long obsolete view that the jungle destroys men - now we know

it's vice-versa. But it is such a BAD film, it hurts to watch. Was

Jonathan Hyde trying to be funny? I'm not sure. And if Jennifer Lopez

was trying to be sexy, she failed. Jon Voight wasn't trying anything,

I'm sure of that. The photography could have been great, if they had

used the jungle at its best, but they seemed to prefer scary movies

cliches. Those images of something big moving under murky water,

characters filmed from a crack in the woods while looking over their

shoulders, etc, look like they were done by a ten year old boy with

his big brother's camcorder.

Given the theme and the plot, it would be hard to make a good film.

With some good acting and direction, maybe it could have been a

tongue-in-cheek parody of a horror film, but in this case it just

didn't work. My advice is keep away, there's nothing worth watching

here.

From what people where saying, I expected this movie to be worse than "Cobra", a film so bad it's a classic. However, except for the editing. this remake of "Get Carter" is surprisingly good. Not for the "art film" people, those should stay out and watch something they can understand, but, for the action fans who survive the dull beginning, this is a rather nice "film noir".

Stallone teaches family values. He is a Las Vegas bookmaker/casino owner's strong-arm assistant who goes to Seattle when his brother dies in a car accident, and starts investigating. He even cries when he gives his niece some good advice for a perturbed teenager. She is played by Rachael Leigh Cook, who does undoubtedly the best acting in the film. Mickey Rourke and Michael Caine aren't bad either, in rather minor parts. If you are a Stalone fan, or enjoy action films, don't miss this one; you'll get good car chases, and some very minor fight scenes. And, if you don't like Microsoft products, like me, you'll get treated to a rather despicable Seattle whiz-kid billionaire who owns a computer company whose name starts with "M-i-..."

We are old when we feel our dreams won't turn real. For Joe Buck, raised in Texas, the dream was New York. For Rizzo/Rico/Ratso, raised in New York, the dream was Florida. I don't know, because I've never been in the gutter like this film's main characters, but perhaps life is like that -- you can never truly reach what you fight for. Depressing.

One curious thing, our society hasn't changed very much in the last 30 years. Cars evolved from ashtrays to salad bowls, and we don't see women wearing pink dresses anymore, but the social situations in Midnight Cowboy aren't much different now from 1969. And Alanis Morrissette could have sung all the songs. Brenda Vaccaro was a cute, 30 years old woman, and she is now a respectable 60 years old lady. Jon Voight played the part of a young stud, today he plays the part of president Franklin Roosevelt. His daughter, Angelina Jolie, was born six years after "Midnight Cowboy" was made, etc, but the film doesn't "feel" old.

Surely, the difference between 1969 and 2000 is much less than the difference between 1899 and 1930, for instance. We have computers that are a million times more powerful, but they could create credible "psychedelic" images in the 1960's by simply projecting images through a bubbling liquid. Compare the party scenes in "Midnight Cowboy" to those in the 1998 film "Blade", with Wesley Snipes. Am I cheating, comparing a "true classic" with a horror film? Well, the technique is the same, flashing scenes used to conjure feelings, the same as deejays' strobo lights. I've been waiting all my life for a music style that will surpass Rock'n'Roll, but there's nothing new in the social scene since the mid 1960's.

"Midnight Cowboy" may not be so revolutionary anymore, but it's still a great film.

"You're a disease. I'm the cure" - can you imagine a more perfect tagline? This film has been quoted by some as one of the worst ever made. Maybe, but it is like "Ed Wood", it's so bad it's good. Call it a self-parody, everything that characterizes a violent film, in the same line as Schwarzenegger's "Commando". (what critics usually call "unintentionally" funny). If you like "action" films, you can't miss the "Cobra". (Another excellent one-liner: "Here's where the law stops and I start")

An interesting footnote: Brigitte Nielsen, ex-Mrs Stallone, did the first 5 of her 25 films while she was married to him. Smart girl, ain't she?

To enjoy this film, you should keep this in mind: it's NOT a thriller, don't expect any suspense! It's not a drama, don't expect complex characters! It's not a horror story, don't expect gore! It's instead a very funny parody of a horror film. If you go for the laughs, you will have a lot of fun.

As in all films about making films, expect tons of self references. Carrie Fisher has a very good cameo everyone will catch, but there are many film references thrown all around, I certainly missed many of the more obscure ones.

A good parody must be logical, not with the "reasonable" kind of logic we call "common sense", but the twisted yet precise logic used in jokes. And, a very uncommon thing in Hollywood, this film is technically precise in the details. For instance, revolvers fire six shots and no more, automatics have larger magazines. When the lights go out at the house and the fax still works, one can clearly see the battery-powered "no-break" power supply there: it's the beige box with the green light right besides the fax machine. A precise detail, yet only experts would catch it; that's why I mentioned there must be many movie references I missed.

But all the normal horror movie clichés are there for anyone to see. That's why there are no complex characters in the film, since everyone must behave as typical horror movie characters do. When a group of people is in a big house full of secret passages with a killer loose, for instance, what do they do? Each one goes in a different direction, to be murdered alone, of course!

Only the heroine has any brains at all. She can be as stupid as the rest when she is overwhelmed by the feelings about her mother, but if anyone at all survives in the end it's because of her smart precautions and quick reasoning. It's something like the punch line of a joke, where all your expectations are reversed: in a film about movie clichés the prettiest girl is the smartest character. And what a pretty sight she is, I wonder where in the IMDB can I find Neve's private phone number...

Judging from the IMDB rating demographics, this film has been enjoyed most by the under 18 age group, but I recommend it for everyone who likes a good laugh at any age.

I think M:I-1 had a much better plot. At least, it DID have a plot. If there is any plot at all in M:I-2, it's carefully disguised in a rubber mask. The formula for making this film was: get a James Bond film, remove all the girls but one, put in some Jackie Chan gymnastics, and add a few rubber masks. Anyway, those masks are great for the suspense, you never know who is who.

For an action fan like me, this is a very good film, as one could expect from John Woo. Very dynamic, if you know what I mean. At several points, I thought "Ouch! That must hurt!". The action scenes are well distributed along the film, with the power steadily increasing to the breaking point at the end. The motorcycle chase, in particular, is among the best chase scenes I have ever seen in the movies.

To enjoy this film, turn off your left brain hemisphere and activate all your adrenaline receptors. I rather liked it, but not too much. It's more like "Mission: Frenetic". And it should have more, prettier, girls. I give it a 6.

It's dense and long, you get involved in those people's lives, at both sides of the law. Although both main actors seemed to overdo their roles somewhat, everyone did a good job here: a good, tight and logical plot; credible people, each with their own strengths and weaknesses; a photography that's always in the exact focus for each scene.

I have one small nit to pick in this film: Robert de Niro's character, Neil McCauley, was almost a superman. He could rob a bank, an armored truck, a safe, in a perfectly staged sequence. He could pick a girl in a few minutes at a cafeteria and take her to bed within a few hours. The only way he could be caught was by betrayal. In real life, this man would not need to be a criminal. He could make much more, without the risk of spending several years at a penitentiary.

By contrast, Al Pacino's character, LAPD lieutenant Vincent Hanna, seemed sorely incompetent. He messed completely his own personal life, and only full time dedication, together with a good knowledge of criminal procedure, allowed him to prevail in the end. The other characters, too, seem to have one or more weak points. Only Neil McCauley is perfect, and that's why I don't give this film a perfect 10. No criminal is perfect in my opinion.