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philth
Reviews
Behind Enemy Lines (2001)
What movie shall I be today?
I think I can ignore the content of this film for this review as it appears the producers ignored it completely. I'm being serious. There's nothing of note. Let's talk about form. This film is based solely on form, which sadly is one of the trappings of stepping from television commercials to feature-length films. After genuinely exciting and stylish opening battle (FA18 vs. 2 missiles), the movie drops in tone to what is simply a catalogue; a book of camera and editing 'fabric-samples', if you like. It has every trick in the book. Sumptuous dolly and jib shots, nice composition... but wait! Let's go for the flickery Spielberg hand-held look a la Saving Private Ryan... NOW let's have a go at Tony Scott's Enemy of the State/Guy Ritchie's Snatch fast/slow/fast motion effects... whoops, back to smooth slow-mo crane shots again... Is this a bad thing? Well, yes. It feels like the director has made a bet that he can emulate every visually influential director of the past 30 years in two hours. It doesn't matter that all characters display abject stupidity at every turn. Even Hackman looks bad in this, a hand-wringing, insecure ADMIRAL, no less. Does that make sense to anyone?
See it if you like eye-candy, but avoid otherwise.
Funniest moment: our hero and his new friend run through a forest. He shouts 'stop!' and holds up his hand. They freeze, listening intently as the poor old steadicam does about 20 laps around them. He eventually lowers his hand and they run off.....
Jeepers Creepers (2001)
Vomitous
Don't ever see this film. I wish I hadn't. I can deal with losing £3.50 renting this, but the two hours of my life I can NEVER get back. I could have done the dishes, cleaned the windows, or vacuumed the house rather than watch this, and been far more entertained AND scared. Instead, all I feel down is a persistent disappointed malaise at being foolish enough to think that anything to do with Coppola's American Zoetrope may have been OK. I feel spent and used.
Dangerous Game (1988)
Eye Candy
This movie mainly serves as a showreel for Peter Levy's vast talents as cinematographer, with some flashy moves by director Stephen Hopkins. That aside, the plot seems to pause occasionally for the lush camera-crane shots to end. Given a fairly by-the-numbers story, the acting is quite good, but its less entertainment, more visual candy.
Both Hopkins and Levy have gone on to bigger and better projects, so someone liked this film a lot!
Deep Blue Sea (1999)
First Draft?
It fees like this film was drafted over a couple of nights, by a couple of authors and a bottle of tasty red, with 'temporary' one-liners and situations subbed in to keep the script moving. Some-one may have accidentally passed this notepad on to the director, who made a film from it. Whoops! Maybe those hollow 'clunks' that were LL Cool J's dialog should have been replaced with jokes, or witty banter... Maybe his character should have been defined instead of being an amalgam of two, maybe three characters.... Samuel Jackson tried to hum the tune... but was obviously only given half the song to begin with.... Renny Harlin possibly knew all this, and maybe put together the action scenes in the hope that someone...ANYONE would sub-edit this splatter of words, but no... This is like porn, you almost want to fast-forward the talking. Sorry guys, but as a wannabe director, I can see the value of money fairly well, you've insulted me and many others by not taking the time to actually read this script first, before going into production. 4.5/5 Action, 0.5/5 Narrative