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LeonardMonichi
Reviews
Step Up 2: The Streets (2008)
not bad at all!
I didn't expected this movie to be much fun, but it was! The story obviously wasn't that great and the ending was predictable. But this movie didn't pretend to be "intelligent", it never tries it! The story is told clearly and there aren't to much unnecessary scenes. The dancing is good and there are various funny scenes! Everything a entertaining mainstream movie has to have. The acting is mostly OK, no major problems found, although there are a lot of stereotypes used in the movie (the handsome white guy, the envious ex-girlfriend, the "Looser", the "bad" black guy,...). But which movie doesn't have them? I also like the soundtrack, a lot of good tracks can be hear with great dancing performances. This movie deserves 5 out of ten points!
D-War (2007)
after the first half of the movie I felt asleep, next day I looked the rest...
I you want to see a movie about Dragons watch "Reign of Fire". Forget about Dragon Wars, it's a boring movie. Some action at the beginning, some action at the end, and in the middle not that much...
Why do they have to tell me the whole story in the first 5 minutes? Never heard about SUSPENSE? This movie basically tells a story based on a Korean Legend, in which every 500 years a good and evil snake fight each other to become a dragon. Why? We don't know... This can happen trough the sacrifice of a selected 20 years old girl (she doesn't need to be virgin, just 20...modern times...) because she has something magic inside hear. There is also a chosen man who has the task to protect that girl (without knowing who she is...). This guy is interpreted by Jason Behr. Jason Behr has the charm of smashed potatoes and the emotionality of a piece of white paper. There's no difference if he orders a burger at McDonalds or he tells Sarah (the 20 year old magic girl) that he loves here... During the "emotional" scene where they kiss each other his eyes are covered by his hairs, probably the director realized that he isn't able to have any facial expressions... not good for an actor... The story is boring. The whole middle part is full of nonsense, scenes that don't tell anything (e.g. the guy working in the zoo, was that supposed to be serious?). What about the scene with the FBI and the president, how silly was that.... I couldn't figure out what this movie is: is it a sci-fi movie, action movie or a fairy-tale? Probably the director didn't know also... OK, a 12 year old child would have fun looking this movie. Flying animals, explosions, magical lights and stuff showing up here and there... There are a lot of special effects and visual effects (special=analog, visual=digital; for all non experts ;-) in this movie. Sometimes they worked more or less, other times they looked crappy. The scene where the Korean village is attached by the villains in parts cold be out of a video game. And the variety of animation wasn't amazing. Especially the mass-scenes looked bad. I will just explain one scene to show the character of this movie: A guy starts shooting at the evil guy. The evil guy let appear from nowhere a little tiny shield. Why does the black guy shoot exactly in the middle of that little tiny shield instead of his lower torso, the legs?!? The movie is full off scenes of people doing irrational stupid things. I hate that.
Anyway I give this movie 3 points, 2 of them only because of the stylish opening animation, 2 more points for the silly action (1 point has to be subtract for bad bad acting)
The Eye (2008)
just another remake
When I went in the cinema I didn'T knew anything about that movie. The poster didn't suggest that much.
It's a story about a women who gets an eye transplant and from that moment she is able to see things that happened to the person whose eyes she now has. Also she sees death people... and she also sees the death who is carrying away the souls of them. For the second part, no explanation is given. Its some kind of gimmick to justify some action in the first hour of the movie...
Although this movie is a remake of a Chinese movie (Gin Gwai, I haven'T seen that movie ...shame on me...), there are a lot of similarities to 6th sense (seeing death people) and also the Final Destination (the accident from FD 2, the whole story about the death seems to be copied and modified from this two movies) series. There isn't anything new in this movie. The lead role is occupied by Jessica Alba. I like her in Sin City, i didn't liked her in Fantastic Four (crap crap crap). She's a nice girls, no doubt, but as a blind violinist she isn't credible. Did you ever observe blind people? What I noticed is that most time they don'T wear make-up. In this movie Jessica lives alone in an apartment. Who put her the make-up on? Anyway, the movie had a few nice scary moments (actually just one...), and what i liked the most is how they visualized the ghost/death angel. When he/it appeared the first time i expected some kind of fight between Jessica and him, but it didn'T happen... They could have made the movie without the ghost too. It was just a visual clue that had no effects to the story... They should have done better. Her acting was mediocre, but nothing special. This role isn't definitely appropriate for her. I also didn't liked the acting of Alessandro Nivola. It was somehow boring.... no emotion. Maybe his character was written in that way... I don't know, the dialogues are boring and at times even stupid... The plot (at least for me) was sometimes confusing and had no clear structure. Even after seeing the movie some things remained unclear (not in a good sense like in Mullholland drive...) . Some things seem to didn'T fit in the movie. The ending was expectable. The last 15 minutes I was just waiting for what had to happen.
If you don'T have anything (and I really mean ANYTHING) to do, than you can go to see this movie. Otherwise watch some television, maybe they are broadcasting the Simpsons or Teletubbies, would be a better choice...
all grammatical and syntax errors are intentional
10,000 BC (2008)
...i expected more...
I have to admit that I had high expectations in this movie. Featuring Roland Emmerich as director the movie can'T be that bad, right? It can...
The plot starts in a stone-age village where some kind of prophecy seems to be fulfilled soon: A young man together with his wife will lead humanity in a new age. Sounds familiar, isn'T it? Anyway, the whole story couldn'T catch me. OK, there were some great visual effects and animation in it; the hunt with the mammoth was great! The movements, the render, almost real. This brings me to another point. Why were the scenes with the mammoths so good and the scenes with the saber-toothed tiger soooooooooooo poor (I refer to the scene when the tiger attacks the village, by the way: why do they have always to exaggerate so much? The saber-toothed tiger wasn't half that big
.) The implementation was cheap cheap cheap, it looked like an average student work... And the weighting, when the tiger jumps away, almost like a little cat
maybe the animation department was on holidays that week
I expected a movie that goes in the direction of "Quest for fire" (great movie), but it didn't. I took another direction. The direction of an endless number of previous fast-food-Hollywood movies with no surprises, no tension, no depth, no story..... Actually this movie took a lot of elements from other recent movies like 300 (damn good movie!). The scene when our cave-man hero is in front of of the Pharao is a bad copy of the scene where Leonidas faces Xerxes. Both use a lance to attack their enemy. Not just the scene set up was the same, the narrative aspect too: a single human faces a god, and through the injuries provoked by the lance he proves that neither the Pharao nor Xerxes is a god. Obviously our cave-man hero killed his enemy, while the good old Leonidas just wounded Xerxes. But that's enough to tell the story, he bleeds ergo Xerxes isn't a god! Another point that argues me: Credibility! The historic recreation is totally wrong. Look it and you will see what I mean. Pyramids 10.000 B.C.? no way (although there are some rumors, saying that the pyramids have been built before the last ice-age; search for Erich von Däniken to know more about that ;-). Howevert the thing that disturbed me the most was the ending. OK, in the whole movie there were some mystical elements, like the signs on the hand of the Evolet, the prophecy and and and. But there's a huge difference between mystical and magical! I know that Hollywood movies need to have a Happy End. But in this way? Is this really what the audience wants? Isn't that too silly? Wouldn't it be a Happy End anyways? The slaves where set free, the "bad" Egyptians defeated (10.000 B.C
). I will not tell you the ending not to steal you the surprise... and what a surprise
..
OK, the movie wasn't so bad as it seems from what I write. But the people who make this movies are supposed to be the best, so they deserve to be criticized in every possible point! And there's a lot to criticize.
all grammatical and syntax errors are intentional