Vodstok's Reviews

Doom (2005)

4/10

*Sigh*

26 August 2008

I haven't bothered to read any of the reviews of this movie, because I assuming they say the same thing I am going to here. This movie could have been so much more.

They dropped any and all references to Hell. Why? No one in the bible belt was going to watch it anyway...

the horror was minimized by making the movie centered around a group rather than one or a few characters (see Silent Hill if you don't think that would work for a movie, it does) The "genetic mutant" angle was just, well, retarded. Even if they had stripped Doom from the title and all references to it (which, lets face it, there were few), that subject just doesn't work.

The acting wasn't great, but then again, I wasn't expecting much there. I like most of the actors, the ones i was familiar with anyway. The Rock is just fun to watch, and Karl Urban has never disappointed me.

My final complaint is actually one i read in a magazine. They ended a movie based on the mother of all first person shooters with a damn fist fight? Come on.

The bad aside, there was some good in this movie. It still succeeds as a cheesy Sci-fi action horror movie. It was fun, there were good kills, the monster costumes looked like the creatures in Doom 3, and we get to see the Bfg in action. Not much action, but at least it was there.

All in all, if you are a Doom fan, forget the title of the movie and just watch it as a movie in the vein of running man and total recall: cheesy futuristic action.

If you know nothing of the game, watch it as cheesy sci-fi action. Then play the game and marvel on how they could have made something much better if they had bigger balls and had stuck to the game story.

In the future, only people with a deep passion for a game should make a movie about it. Paul W S Anderson, Uwe Boll and Courtney Solomon should be banned from film making. The boys who made Doom should have talked to Christophe Gans about translating passion to film.

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A Man Called Sarge (1990)

8/10

Silly, funny, but definitely not for everyone

7 February 2005

A man called sarge is one of those movies that isn't for everyone, but those of us that don't hate it, love it. It is full of stupid jokes, as noted before in the vein of the naked gun and Airplane. Being set in WW2, it completely lacks any PCisms at all. Germans are "Huns" (or "krauts", Americans are "Yanks", English are "Limeys", french are "Frogs"... you get the picture.

Most of the jokes are crude and cruel, and that is why many of us love it so much. It had some very South-park like jokes years before there was a south park. And it has a great sense of self-awareness that is funny only if it is done correctly, which it is.

In the movie, Sarge and his platoon are supposed to blow up the fuel dump at Tobruk, in Norther Africa. i was surprised to learn that there WAS a fuel dump at Tobruk, and it's destruction had a huge impact on the tank war in norther Africa.

However, in the movie, sarge and his men are supposed to blow it up. They then find out (after the fact) that they Aren't supposed to blow it up. make sense? not really, but with parts like the one where Sarge calls the attention of an entire German regiment to point at one of his men and say "Hey Fellas, i got a Jew up here!!", it's pretty easy to forget the "plot" and just laugh at the NPC jokes.

Recommended for those with thicks skins, who love stupid humor. Helps if you have seen Patton and like old WW2 movies.

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Dagon (2001)

4/10

When will the world get a good Lovecraft movie

2 February 2005

Warning: Spoilers

Though not a terrible movie, i really could not truly enjoy Dagon. I love cheesy horror flicks, but when it is yet another crappy adaption of one of HP Lovecraft's stories, it kills all of the fun for me.

Looking at it as a cheesy horror flick only, it is fun. Go watch it and enjoy the cheddar.

If, however, you are a fan of Lovecraft looking for something marginally watchable, i would find something else. Dagon takes the story "Shadow over Innsmouth" and completely bastardizes it. Rather than being set in a creepy new england town, it is a creepy Spanish town, lamely named "Imbocca". (In-Mouth for the non-Spanish speaking) In th end, the main character finds out he is descended from fish men, lets Dagon eat his fiancé, and takes off with a squid woman. Not really the kind of thing the master of Modern horror would have written.

I could have said more, but it really doesn't warrant it.

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Godsend (2004)

1/10

I've seen worse, but then again....

2 February 2005

Godsend is not the worst movie i have ever seen, but it is definitely down there just barely floating over the heads of Dungeons and Dragons and Spawn.(They are my mantra for crap).

For starters, we have Greg Kinear and Robert Deniro, a fine actor and arguably one of the world's best actors. Then we have Rebecca Romijn and Cameron Bright. Neither are fine, or particularly notable for any reason other than being bad actors.

A movie fails utterly when you feel no emotional attachment to any of it's characters, and that is one of the huge flaws in this movie. "Adam" acts way too cutesy. if he was my kid, i would be inclined to hit him occasionally to put some meanness in him. Seriously.

Don't read any further if, for some reason, you actually want to see this movie, and don't want to know what happens.

At any rate, by the time he gets hit by the car, i was Begging for something to happen. Rebecca is a terrible mother who lets her 10 year old go mincing about outside, near a busy street unsupervised. yes, I'm one of those people who snickers at the trailer-park resident who lost their house to a tornado. What did you expect? You live in Indiana and have no basement....

Deniro shows up out of nowhere to offer them the chance to resurrect their kid via cloning. Predictably, the kid somehow starts to grow up JUST LIKE the one he was cloned from, completely throwing out the fact that nature AND nurture determine how a kid will develop.

I'll skip through the rest of it. It has an ungodly long build up to NOTHING. Deniro gets pissy with Kinear for him suggesting that what he did was wrong, and then chastises him for doing it in the first place, like he knew it was a bad idea, but offered it to them anyway.

We find out the kid has been hallucinating and is maybe a reincarnation or something of Deniro's dead kid who was a rotten little psycho. by the end i was just begging for it to be over.

it has a very "What the hell?" ending, where we see that all of the build up in the movie led up to nothing. the filmmakers here should be slapped with an old, dead fish for this.

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Marilyn's Man (2004)

Interesting, but not wonderful

30 November 2004

First off, my wife is a huge Marilyn fan and she though Jim Dougherty came off as a bitter ex-husband trying to make a name for him because at one point in his life, he was with someone who became somebody.

The film itself is filled with tons of images of Marilyn, as well as some hard to find footage. Jim does share some cute stories about Norma Jeanne. However, for the most part, the movie is about Jim. (Not a problem there, it IS what the title implies). There is some obligatory butt-kissing to his current wife, who has to live with the fact that her husband was once married to the most glamorous woman ever born.

Personal opinions about the subject matter aside, this movie pretty much sums up what I don't care for in independent films. The score was terrible. Much of the movie felt like a wannabe film student making a home video on his computer with the help of a "for any user of any skill" video editing program, complete with static image slides and canned fade-ins. The intro scene with "Norma Jeanne" (played by an actress who couldn't look less like Norma jean or Marilyn" was easily one of the most painful experiences I have ever had sitting in a theater. Even worse than watching Two Towers in the first row on the far right of the theater.

I was easily embarrassed enough by seeing it to make up for the entire rest of the audience. When there is no dialogue, no speaking at all, and all you have to do is write and walk around, there is really no excuse for poor acting, yet the actress managed to pull it off anyway.

I truly did not enjoy this movie, and would not in good conscience recommend it to anyone. 2 out of ten. They would get a 1, but I figure some props are due because they actually got it off the ground with next to no budget.

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Alien: Resurrection (1997)

Okay Action Flick, but not very Good for an Alien movie

26 August 2003

Okay, I will admit that I am one of the most disturbingly Hardcore Alien fans on Earth. I spent an entire summer watching Aliens 2 to 4 times daily just to learn how to draw the damn things. And I like Alien 3.

But i had a hard time swallowing Resurrection. I love Ripley, we all do, but c'mon. Cloned? Grown up in a few weeks? Retaining Memory?!?!

Movies do require suspension of disbelief, but the other Alien movies did not require very much. The 2 originals were masterworks done by two people I believe to be geniuses. The third was done by another incredible talent (Fight Club is another favorite of mine and Se7en made me sick to my stomach, for all the right reasons). Resurrection...... I'll admit, ive never seen anything else this guy had directed. All I can assume is that he figured he was making a movie for an American audience, so he decided to make it nasty, gross and disgusting.

Do the others have their share of gross? You betcha. Did it drive the plot foward? For the most part, yeah.

But I can't eat through much of Resurrection. That friggin baby-thing at the end makes my skin crawl every time, and I have to put my drink down when it comes on the screen. It seems to be that in some director's hand-book it says "When a creature bites down on a head, blood should spew forth like the mighty Old Faithful". I never realised that death caused the blood vessels suddely gain the power of fire hoses, but here is the proof.

All the "so-so" parts aside (it is a pretty good movie, it just stinks for an alien movie), the only real gripe i have aginst this movie is the scene where Christie (Gary Dourdan) dies. It has always grated on me, because it was so completely unnecesarry. I never understood how acid-scarring and a high-dive into very deep water killed him. He was tough. It always struck me as the writers said "Well, the black guy always dies in movies, so I guess we should kill him". Irritating. Christie was one of the best characters in the movie.

I will mention that I miss the old Ripley. The new one is cool, but it's more "Siguorney Weaver in another Alien Movie" than good old Ellen Ripley. She has the same name, but is a different character entirely.

All complaints aside, i do like the movie, and was not at all let down that it was included in the Alien Legacy set. (which , of course, i have). The characters are a tad shallow, but still enjoyable. The references to the other movies reminded me of a Simpsons episode (that is a compliment from me). I like Ron Perlman, he's always welcome to any cast. Michael Wincott rocks. I've liked him since Robinhood: Prince of Thieves.

All in all, it is a creative, enjoyable sci-fi action movie. 6 out of 10

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Alien 3 (1992)

10/10

Not for everyone, but dont be too harsh on it.

26 August 2003

Warning: Spoilers

For starters: SPoilers found below!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now that that is all out of the way: Alien 3 was not a big hit, and I admit, the killing of Hicks and Newt straight out almost killed it for me the first time I saw it, but by the end i was so pumped at seeing more Alien that i didnt care.

They were very good characters that deserved MUCH more than this, but let's face it. Aliens came out in '87. Alien3 didnt come out until '92. Newt was in second grade, and Carrie Henn was about 10 or 11 when the movie was made. That would have made her about 14 or 15 when Alien3 was made. Explain that diescepancy without doing another "57 years in hypersleep"....

They could pull some tricks with Michael Biehn, but I imagine he was off doing other things. So 2 of 4 remaining lead actors are unavailable. Do you replace them? NO. I would have been outraged had they just replaced Henn and Biehn.

So what else could they do? They wanted Ripley. So they had to kill off the other two. I wanted another Alien, so I accepted the sacrifice.

I read something somwhere that said that since the characters were almost all criminals, we felt nothing for them. Okay, so they were criminals, and dressed the part. However, with the exception of descriptions of their crimes, and the attempted rape of Ripley, we see very little to suggest that these people ever did anything wrong. Hell, i always had a hard time buying that Pete Postalwaithe's character was there for any crime. He seemed to likeable.

On to the performances.

Charles Dance was great. For the first part of the movie, until he gets killed, he stole the show. I was almost offended to find out he was Sardo Nussebaum and that happy-face-contact guy from the LAst Action Hero. Those roles were beneath him. He was convincing and damn likeable as Clemmens.

Charles S Dutton. Okay, if I want to gush about him, I'll go over to his profile and comment there. This man is just great. When he and Ripley are convining the convicts to fight, wow. That is the most rousing speach i have ever heard.

Ripley is great as always. Sigourney Weaver managed to portray her as the exact same woman in 3 movies. Ripley is easily one of the greatest cinematic characters ever. period. Hard to imagine that she was set up to be the "most likely to die" character in Alien. Yep, Ridley Scott wanted the audience to think she would die. Not bad, huh?

I'll end with Morse, because otherwise, i would go after the whole cast, and space does not permit. The whole movie is bvasically split into 3 parts: Ripley and Clemmens Ripley and Dillon Ripley and Morse

Each act has it's own person paired up with Ripley (Arguably, there is a 4th one in there with Aaron, but he is an idiot), and each part manages to feel natural with that person as her partner. More props for miss Weaver.

Morse is great, because you get to see him grow from lazy rebel to active, getting-shot-for-the-cause semi-hero. He was SUCH an ass, it is hard to not like him. Plus, my sister thinks he's cute. As she puts it, "not cute-cute, but monkey-cute". Not since Bluto Blutarsky has there been such a loveable foul-mouth.

In the end, if you love the end of Aliens to the point where you cant bear to see the characters gone, leave the series as Alien and Aliens. If you are willing to accept their loss for the greater story, then enjoy.

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Dungeons & Dragons (2000)

1/10

This why Rifts and Vampire will never have movies....

21 August 2003

Okay, I have read through many of the other reviews for this movie, so i will try not to make it a rehash of all the other comments regard poor direction, poor writing, poor acting, non-existant plot, retarded ending, and a myriad of other reasons that the entire cast, crew, and marketing group for this movie should be ashamed and go to their beds without dinner.

That being said, The disappointment (nay, disgust) I experienced when watching this film was almost overwhelming. The average drunken, tabacco-fueled gaming sessionof my youth and early adult life, usually filled with lewd comments about female characters and the occasional pointless suicide of a freinds character were filled with better story points and acting than this.

For anyone that had anything ggood to say about this movie, all i can say is that i would never trust you to pick a movie for me to watch. Or what food to eat for that matter (cmon, it tastes just like chicken. ill just wipe it off......)

It almost completely killed all hope for any RPG based movies in the future. Sure. Vidoe-game movies typically suck, but tomraider did well (it wasnt very good, but it sold tickets), and Resident Evil was a good movie, even without its great ancestry.

But even video games are more "mainstream" than roleplaying games.

The support for this kind of movie to be made is very low, and when one is made this bad, the support for more will probably be nonexistant. I blame it for the fact that many good movies will most likely go unmade because it set a terrible standard for it's genre.

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The Exorcist (1973)

The scariest movie ever

19 May 2003

The exorcist is one of those movies (right up there with Citizen Kane and Casablanca) that will remain with popular culture forever. It is truly frightening, with scenes that can actually make you feel physically threatened. Now, some reviews have been done by people with religious upbringing, and i can see how it would have a great impact to them. I, however, am an athiest, and i have to say, the movie doesnt lose any of it's impact even if you dont believe in the existance of God and Satan, because in the movie, they are very real, and very convincingly portrayed.

Linda Blair was pretty damn brave at her age for taking the role as Reagan. Unfortunately, this movie did for her what Clockwork Orange Did for Malcom McDowell. Rather than being lauded for her part in one of the greatest horror films ever made, she became the bearer of it's stigma, actually having her carreer suffer for her convincing performance.

If you wish to make your life filled with paranoid delusions and a fear of the dark and being alone, I recmmoned watching The Exorcist, The Ring, and possibly House On Haunted Hill (okay, crappy movie, but had some good scares) alone in the dark at night. try taking a leak at 2 in the morning with the subliminal face of the devil creeping into your thoughts.

All in all, the film was well produced for the early 70s, the acting was well done, the special effects were great, and the attention to what constitues "horror" was impeccable. While it is blatant at times, it is never particularly gory. Anything that could be construed as "inappropriate" was the Devil talking through a child, so it wasnt inappropriate, it was plot.

To date, the only horror film that affected me nearly as deeply as the Exorcist was The Ring. If you like horror and have not seen this classic, you are sorely cheating yourself.

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The Rock (1996)

Great action movie with a couple of glaring mistakes

5 April 2002

Just to get them out of the way, here are my complaints:

Atropine does NOT get injected into the heart. This would puncture the pericardium and kill you, plus, atropine is a poison it'self, and pumping that directly into the heart would also kill you. It gets injected into the thigh.

Also, F-18 Hornets belong to the Navy and Maines, not the Air Force.

Okay, that aside, this movie kicks serious butt. I has a great cast (Sean Connery and Nick Cage, of course. Ed Harris is fantastic in anything, so this is no exception. Some of my favorite supporting actors are in it, John c Mcginley, Bokeem Woodbine, William Forsythe and Tony Todd just to name a few.

The plot is about as feasible as they get for Jerry Bruckheimer films. It also runs the gammut from Intense action to some extremely heart-wrenching scenes. (The Navy Seals getting it is always difficult to watch)

The first night I saw this was New Years eve, 96 turning over to 97, Aand it was the most fun I have had on a New Years before I turned 21.

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Spawn (1997)

(Shakes head)

20 November 2001

I saw this movie in the theater. Later, I saw it on video then on tv, each time watching it to see if I had been too harsh on it the time before.

I hadn't. I want to start htis on a good note though, the visuals on spawn himself were fantastic. That was it. The rules of this message board forbid me from expressing properly just how awful I thought this movie was. It had as much body and plot as a wet paper towel. The acting was awful (Martin Sheen is a great actor and he sucked) The only person that did a good job in acting was John Leguizamo, but he was so disgusting he was hard to watch.

One good thing about this movie is it gives you a good idea of what Hell is like. Not the movie's depiction of hell, but the movie it's self.

Keep in mind, however, that I loved Virtuosity, which only some people have ever seen, and most of them think it's a whopping piece of crap.

To each his (or her) own.

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