Reviews

The tag-line promises that we will see 8 different people's perspective of the event - an assassination attempt on the president of the USA. However, this is not what is delivered in the film. We see a somewhat shortened version of the 23 minutes four times, but that's just the first hour.

After that, the movie goes on and during the next, continuous hour, shows us "who did it and how". There's extortion, there's betrayal... and there's way too much lucky chance for my taste. To believe that all those lucky moments, which only had few seconds to occur, could actually occur, doesn't work for me. I like stories that don't contain that much "luck".

Thinking who did it and what was the role of each person was still quite entertaining, but once again, there's the problem with too many lucky moments or "twists". Worth watching, although "Sentinel" seemed a bit better to me.

For the second time in my life, I've read a comics just mere days before watching a movie version of it. First, it was with "300", now with "Watchmen". In the case of "300", what I criticized was adding the secondary storyline. In the case of Watchmen, there's nothing to criticize. The comics has been adapted almost page-to-page (with the exception of the "Black Freighter" comics-within-comics, and a few cosmetic changes such as the visual appearance of the near-end catastrophes), and those responsible for the visual side of this movie have made a perfect job -- costumes, devices, rooms, prison cells, streets -- it all looks almost exactly as in the comics. In this regard, the movie follows in the footsteps of SinCity with its "frame-to-frame" conversion, without looking ridiculous.

The choice of relatively unknown actors who will not try to steal the show for themselves was also a lucky one: They seemed to me to play as a team, rather than stars.

With over 3 hours of screen time, the movie didn't bore me for a single second, and that's quite an achievement, considering I knew the story from the comics.

This is a must see for all comics fans.

I knew that XF movie 2 will not deal with aliens, so I wasn't surprised there weren't any.

Still, I wonder why is what seems like a half of the whole movie spent in dialogs about good and evil, right and wrong, destiny, fate, belief, faith...

If you mentally remove all this existential talk, then all you're left with is a short-circuited plot in which Russians go to America where they risk easy detection due to suspicious accent and unsatisfactory vocabulary, only to perform surgeries by Russians and on Russians, while not even having armed guards around...

Now if I were the producer and the screenwriter proposed to me such a plot, I'd suspect him of not having the brightest of days, but why did this plot make it all the way through production is a mystery to me.

The main protagonists are behaving irrationally (Why does Scully work with seriously ill children if she cannot detach herself emotionally from them?) and the actors themselves do seem a bit bored by having to act in these roles once again.

One of the biggest problems here is that there's no-one here that we could care about; we don't get enough chances to attach ourselves emotionally to the victims-to-be, the visionary priest is pretty repulsive and the FBI agents are annoyingly impatient and jumping too quickly to conclusions. I personally missed explanation for the opening scene (why were there two attackers and why they behaved the way they did, considering their access to tranquilizers etc.) and also some closure to the whole Russian operation; instead, we're provided with some more existential talk.

What a disappointment....

First and foremost: I never played any R.E. game. All I know about the franchise is what I got from the three movies.

That being said, I really enjoyed this adrenaline zombie-splattering action movie; away goes the annoying Jill Valentine from RE2, away goes anything resembling the "Nemesis" crap from RE2, while things like the Red Queen, the laser-beam corridor, the blood hounds return, and a greater picture of the world is provided. The characters finally have a little more depth to them, they have their doubts, fears and passions; civilians finally stop being automatically saint and it turns out that some are afraid, some are liars and some are wicked.

True, automatic guns still have 100+ rounds per clip and ladies still have perfect makeup and flawless skin even when driving through desert and smoking 30 cigarettes a day; but this is an action zombie movie just like Doom-the-Movie or Land-of-the-Dead, and it works well as such.

100 minutes well spent.

I'll be very brief on this one: If it wasn't for the unnecessary hotel room gay-like scenes, this would be a 9/10 for me; as it is there (without serving any greater purpose (I expected the manager to enter the room due to the noise or something, at least), it doesn't fit there very well and will probably chase away some viewers.

Borat succeeds in revealing the hidden anti-semitism and bigotry in many of the victims; and surprisingly, even though the film begins with jokes about Jews, in the end it's exactly the old Jewish couple in the rent-a-room house that comes out of the movie totally unscathed by Borat's jokes.

Since I'm from a country not that far from the supposed Kazachstan, I loved the supposedly Kazach scenes; because it very nicely shows how an average West-country-citizen thinks of Eastern European and post-soviet countries (even though we actually have better cell phones than an average American ;-) ) Thumbs up!

I just finished watching this movie and I have to say I wasn't disappointed. Having never player the game, it was just a Blade clone for me - *a "sort of vampire" fighting vampires* stuff.

While there are obviously parts that were meant to raise the popularity for immature audience (the sex scene being particularly pubescent-oriented), the main storyline is not entirely bad and uninventive. As the saying goes "There are only 7 types of stories and all writers are just copying from Shakespeare", Bloodrayne copies Blade with average results. Uwe Boll is obviously taking the whole stuff very seriously, which results in somewhat laughable moments where Blade's "making fun of himself" helps release the pressure, but it wasn't a waste of time for me.

Don't expect much jaw-dropping parts, although some scenes did make me say "wow, never seen this before, that was cool!" (introduction of BR, BR getting the first relic).

I read a lot of negative criticism on this one and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by the movie. True, now that I search intensely for any hidden flaws, I might find some, but they are definitely not visible while watching the movie, and for a summer blockbuster, this movie works well.

Scarlet is really sweet and - as we learn later - true to her "Delta" origins; McGregor is like a teenager who's starting to question authorities but does not always know the right way to do it.

Other actors are showing their better skills as well, without over-acting.

The highway chase is one of the most spectacular that I've seen without being obviously "designed" that way - where other movies need way too improbable constellations of cars, trucks, helicopters and other stuff, here, Bay succeeds with one special truck (the rest is just ordinary cars with no special parameters) to create a memorable chase that will surely be quoted many times.

The finale is also nice and thrilling, the witty "shite" dialog is just pure fun and although you do expect the movie to end in this way, the path that leads to that end is quite surprising.

Frank Miller made a comic book. It took an actual event -- a suicidal stand of 300 Spartan warriors under the command of king Leonidas against a vast armies of Persian god-king Xerxes -- and transformed it into exaggerated heroic legend. It added cool remarks, cool view angles, cool action sequences, and readers loved it.

This movie is that comic book transformed almost frame-by-frame onto the film; the only change is the addition of a secondary storyline about the king's wife's desperate attempt to get some reinforcements for him.

These events are more than 2000 years old; the people portrayed in there have nothing to do with today Arabians (after all, the "losers" were worshiping their KING as god, not Allah, for god's sake!), nor with "the West" (those "winners" were disposing of weaker children without mercy, after all!). So it's not US against THEM, it's not U.S. against Muslims, and anyone trying to see that parallel in the movie is a stupid warmonger.

The transformation of the comic onto film was superbly done: Same colors, same visually stunning angles. It's much better than Troy, it's much better than Gladiator (in terms of the visual appeal of the fight scenes); the edit cleverly uses "temporal jerkiness" (wow, I wanna trademark on this expression! :-) ) , i.e. slowing and speeding one continuous shot so that you see each kill in slow motion and the "dance" between kills in fast-motion; the CGI of 2006/7 allowed the film makers to create absolutely unbelievable battle sequences that are jaw-dropping.

The secondary storyline seemed to me to be heavily cut; I'd say prolonging some of the scenes of that storyline with a bit more solid background for them (i.e., adding more of "before" and "after" for the scenes) would be good and I think that the extended version will add formidable amount of time to this storyline, as it seemed too brief. It's similar to Gladiator (the Extended version of which I greatly recommend), where in the original cut, certain acts didn't really seem rational, but the extended cut added plenty of "evidence" that justified them.

To sum it up, if you're looking for a historical action, you won't be disappointed. And if you are paranoid and see anti-Whatever-ism in everything, being it The Passion of the Christ or Black Hawk Down, give this movie a break - it's over 2000 years past the events depicted and we do have a brain.

I'm rating this with a 10. The reason is simple - never before have I seen a parodying comedy that works without vomit, urinal and fecal jokes, a parodying comedy that doesn't need to make fun of George WC Bush.

Where many serious-looking sci-fi movies try hard to explain how the futuristic technology works, Galaxy Quest in a clever way lets the spectator to find out (to his/her amusement) that sci-fi writers sometimes accidentally correctly guess something functional.

Where other movies either depict extra-terrestrials as blood-sucking carnivorous monsters, or as peace-loving beautiful creatures, both easily distinguishable as such by appearance, Galaxy Quest in a clever way makes the E.T.'s surprising and twisty.

Jokes about nonsensical equipment/machinery, jokes about "cult remarks", obvious nods and eye-blinks to other cult series or movies, as well as a multitude of mocking remarks aimed at the very same series and movies - that all adds a lot of fun to this fantastic movie.

So to somehow wrap it up - I highly recommend this movie, it's probably the best it can be.

No laser beams. No alien attackers coming to consume Earth. No Will Smith and no Charlize Theron in sexy outfit. Not frightened yet? Read on...

I saw this movie in a cinema with my girlfriend - a Physics teacher. What we both liked was how it followed laws of physics - it was perhaps the first sci-fi we saw which showed properly how space works and what vacuum is all about.

I read in one review that the scene where they raise the USA flag is pathetic, when they should be running into the base to look for survivors; I disagree: Since they arrived nearly a year AFTER the incident, rushing doesn't make any sense.

I liked the "puzzle" part of the movie, as well as the final moments when the truth is revealed. Some laughed at that point, but I liked it a lot.

Remember how Space Odyssey plays with the idea that the intelligent life on Earth might be a product of "targetted imprinting"? Well, M2M suggests yet another possibility, and I find that extremely appealing.

The cast seemed brave to me: No top-class stars, no pretty faces, but instead good actors that are believable (after all, Garry Sinise played in Apollo 13 and Jerry O'Connell played a similar role in "The Sphere").