Movie Reviews 2000 by
Ray
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The Cell
(8/28/00)
Rated [R], 90
minutes
Stars: Jennifer Lopez, Vincent
D'Onofrio, Vince Vaughn
Directed by Tarsem
Cher, Sting, Madonna, Tarsem. You've no
doubt heard of the first three names, but may or may not have heard
of the single monikered Tarsem, but you've probably seen his work. In
the world of music videos, ala MTV, he is known as a music-video mega
director ("Losing My Religion"). In this, his motion picture
directorial debut, he brings the beauty of the art of music videos to
a feature length film. Lopez, a singer and video star, seems at home
standing in front of bizarre high contrast MTV-type
backgrounds.
Vaughn plays an FBI agent bent on
catching the sick, twisted serial killer of innocent women. It turns
out, the murderous fiend, played by Vincent D'Onofrio, is plagued by
a rare form of schizophrenia which later causes him to enter a
coma-like state. With the help of high tech experimental goodies,
Lopez is able to enter his mind to find answers to a few questions -
one being, why is he so disgusting?
The real star of the show is the
engrossingly wonderful visuals, with the emphasis sometimes placed on
gross. Dispite the disturbing serial killer slant, I couldn't take my
eyes off of the shear visual candy that Tarsem has
assembled.
Bottom Line: This "Silence of the
Lambs" meets nine inch nails experience will blow your mind with its
visuals, but the story will stay with you about as long as last
week's dream.
Rating $5 out of $8
for a 1.5 hour music video which happens to have a serial killer in
it.
American Beauty
(8/21/00) - rental
Rated [R], 120 minutes
Stars: Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening,
Thora Birch, Wes Bentley, Mena Suvari, Peter Gallagher, and Chris
Cooper
Midlife Crisis would have been a better title for this movie.
American Beauty is the story of Lester
Burnham (Kevin Spacey), a man facing such a crisis when he realizes
his marriage is loveless, his relationship with his daughter is
hopeless and his job is totally joyless. While his anal retentive
real estate agent wife Carolyn, played by the stunning and funny
Annette Bening, is having an affair with another real estate agent
(Gallagher), Lester wonders about, in a narrative track that
accompanies the flick, where it all started to go bad. Then, a
glimpse of Jane's friend and wannabe superstar model slut pal Angela
Hayes (Mena Suvari) in her cheerleader outfit, gives Les the spark he
needs. Out come the weights and the sweatsuit, 'cuz the old man wants
to get buff for the American beauty he fantasizes about.
Extemely wierd characters proliferate
through this movie making for a fascinating & happy-sad
story.
Rating $7 out of $8.
The Insider (8/21/00) -
rental
Rated [R], 158 minutes
Stars: Al Pacino, Russell Crowe,
Christopher Plummer
The Insider dramatizes
the story behind a 60 Minutes report on the addictive properties of
cigarettes.
At the center the story
is a fired research V.P. for the Brown & Williamson tobacco
company named Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe). His knowledge of the
effects of chemical additives mixed with cigarette tobacco would
eventually supply the evidence that forced the "Seven Dwarves" (the
big tobacco companies) into a $246 Billion dollar settlement. When 60
minutes was ready to air their story, the threat of a multi-Billion
dollar lawsuit by B&Y coupled with, and this is how The Insider
presents it, the pending sale of CBS to Westinghouse and all the
stock option profits that would be lost because of such a suit caused
management to stomp on News. 60 Minutes aired an "alternate" story.
One which didn't include the on-camera testimony of Wigand.
(The preceding segment of
this review courtesy of CrankyCritic.com)
This movie is story driven and has a
deliberately slow pace, which may turn off people who are expecting
to see gun fights and car chases. But for those who are looking for
the story behind the story, this tale is a good one.
Rating $6.50 out of
$8.
Godzilla 2000
(8/20/00)
Stars: Starring Takehiro Murata,
Hiroshi Abe, Naomi Nishida, Shiro Sano, Mayu Suzuki and Tsutomu
Kitagawa
You're reading through the list of
stars and asking, "Who?" It doesn't really matter. The real star here
is everybody's favorite atomic lizard who returns yet again to
terrorize Tokyo with his fiery breath and size 300 feet.
In this flick, Godzilla meets an alien
space craft bent on taking over the earth.
Toho Films, the company who made
Godzilla movies in the 1970s, has returned...appearently with the
same miniature buildings, toy cars and tanks.
This seems to be a direct sequel to
Godzilla 1984 starring Raymond Burr, which was a direct sequel to
Godzilla starring Raymond Burr. Just forget about all the other
Godzillas that came in-between, especially the 1998 Rowland Emmerich
directed U.S. version of Godzilla which was all special effects and
little plot.
Before you are completely turned off, I
want you to think about this. Growing up, I and other kids I grew up
with loved Godzilla movies because of the bad dubbing and the cheap
b-movie special affects. This movie brings back many old memories of
running home from school to catch Creature Features on Channel
50.
Rating $4 out of $8 for nostalgic
reasons.
Boiler Room (8/13/00) -
rental
Rated [R], 120 minutes
Stars: Giovanni Ribisi, Ben Affleck,
Nia Long and Vin Diesel
Written and Directed by Ben
Younger
Greed. That would have been a good
title for this movie if it hadn't already been taken.
Seth Davis, a small town New York hustler played superbly by Giovanni
Ribisi, runs a casino in his home for the neighborhood kids. He is
talked into joining a stock brokerage firm which is run and staffed
by 20-somethings who are willing to break all the rules in the stock
selling game to make a quick buck by selling unsuspecting suckers
worthless penny stocks.
Ben Affleck puts in a spectacular
performance as the recruiter who talks Seth and other young men into
joining the firm. "I guarantee you that within 6 months, you will be
millionaires!," boasts Affleck.
The acting in this movie is top of the
line and so is the story. Don't expect any chase scenes or steamy
love scenes.
Rating $7 out of $8.
Hollow Man
(8/6/00)
Stars: Kevin Bacon, Elisabeth Shue,
Josh Brolin, William Devane
The special affects in this movie top
any invisible man flick that ever came before it. The attention to
detail is incredible. That being said, the plot is something akin to
a Friday the 13th or Nightmare on
Elmstreet.
Kevin Bacon plays Dr. Sebastian Caine,
a scientist with an ego so big he refers to himself as "God".
We join the story as he and his team of
young scientists, after successfully inventing a syrum for
invisibility, try to invent a syrum to make beings visible again. It
is suggested early on in the film that being invisible too long is
bad on the mind.
Things go horribly wrong when the
already unstable Sebastian injects himself with invisibility
syrum.
Unfortunately, there are holes in the
plot that you can drive a 18 wheeler through. For example, naked
invisible man gets burnt by blow torch, but shakes off dead skin and
continues to torment heroine. Yeah...right.
One lesson you will take away from this
movie is that duct tape, the universal fix-all, can save your
life.
NOTE: From this
movie on, I will be incorporating a new rating system. The average
movie costs about $8. I'll rate the movie by how much I would have
been willing to shell out for it, given an $8 maximum. (Idea taken
from Crankycritic.com)
Rating $4 out of $8 for great
special effects, but that's all.
X-Men
(7/15/00)
Stars: Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman,
Anna Paquin, Ian McKellen
The comic book mutants come to life in
this well done first installment of an obvious X-Men movie franchise.
The heroes are effectively introduced by showcasing each mutants'
special powers.
Australian actor Hugh Jackman steals
the show as Wolverine who is the result of a secret military
experiment that gave him metal retractable claws, a metal
endo-skeleton and quick healing powers, but wiped most of his
memories of his past.
Paquin (Academy Award Winner, The Piano)
plays Rogue, a teenager with the ability to steel other mutants'
powers just by touching them.
Patrick Stewart plays Prof. Charles
Xavier - a telepathic mutant who heads a private school for mutants,
and leads a stable of superheros including Jean Grey, Storm and
Cyclops.
The school setting was partially
filmed at Casa Loma in Toronto, Ontario - a castle worth visiting if
you are in the area.
Ian McKellen plays Magneto, Xavier's
old friend and foe who believes mutants are destined to rule over the
non-mutant human race and leads a gang of angry mutants.
The special effects in this $75 million
movie are terrific. This movie builds much excitement for future
installments which will hopefully be more action packed.
Not since Blade have I enjoyed a movie
based on a comic book hero so thoroughly.
Rating 4.5 out of 5
Chicken Run
(6/25/00)
Stars: Ardman Animation's Claymation
Chickens,
Mel Gibson, Miranda Richardson
If you aren't familiar with the talents
of Nick Park and the Ardman Animation team then you haven't lived.
They have won Best Short Animated Film Academy Awards for two Wallace
and Gromit short films "The Wrong Trousers" and "A Close Shave". Both
films are well worth renting. Both kids and adults will love
them.
This movie, a parody of "The Great
Escape", is about a group of hens that are couped up on Tweedy's
farm. The evil Mrs. Tweedy keeps a close eye on egg production or
it's lights out for the occasional unproductive chicken. Mel Gibson
voices the rooster Rocky who drops in to save the day, and Miranda
Richardson voices Mrs. Tweedy.
Bravo!
Rating 5 out of 5
Brokedown Palace
(6/19/00) - rental
Stars: Claire Danes, Bill
Pullman
Two recently college graduated women
decide to take one last trip together before beginning their
professional lives. They choose Thailand where they meet a man who is
seemingly charming and generous. They take him up on his offer to fly
them to Hong Kong. While at the airport, they are apprehended by the
police who find two bags of narcotics in thier luggage.
Their struggle to clear their names and
get themselves out of a Thai prison with the help of an American
lawyer living in Thailand, played by Pullman, rounds out the movie.
The ending is a bit of a surprise.
Rating 3 out of 5.
Dinosaur
(5/20/00)
Stars: Disney's Animated
Dinosaurs
From first shot to last this movie is
beautiful. It is about an orphaned iguanadon (in keeping with
Disney's obsession with incomplete families with the exception of
Mulan) named Aladar who is raised by a family of lemurs. Aladar's
home is destroyed by an asteroid and he, along with his adoptive
family, is forced to join a group of dinosaurs crossing the desert to
find a new home.
The sound track needed a little help...
too generic. Perhaps a pop star could have helped it out.
Rating 3.5 out of 5
Gladiator
(5/6/00)
Stars: Russell Crowe
Compelling, Ridley Scott directed, 2.5
hour epic of a man out to get revenge for the murder of his family,
set in the latter years of the Roman empire.
The movie is hyped for its special
effects. The fact that you can't tell that the sets are special
effects make this movie worth seeing - the Roman colluseum is
beautifully recreated.
The only thing that is hard to watch
(sometimes) is the MTV-style quick cuts during the fighting
sequences. To see a better style of portraying warfare rent
Braveheart.
Rating 5 out of 5
Frequency
(4/30/00)
Stars: Dennis Quaid, Jim Caviezel,
Andre Braugher
Man speaks to dead father on father's
short wave radio. Is this a joke or is he communicating through time?
Sounds hokey, but the story gets pulled off quite well.
The man changes the future by changing
the past and he must help his father solve (prevent) a murder
mystery.
Rating 4 out of 5
Final Destination
(4/16/00)
Stars: Hollywood Teenagers
Boy forsees that his high school french
class's flight to Paris will blow up, so he leaves the plane followed
by 4 other classmates and a teacher. His prediction comes true, and
his teacher, schoolmates and the FBI are suspicious.
This movie looks like Dawson's Creek
with death him/herself as a character. Although the story kinda grows
more and more convoluted, the dying scenes are done very
well.
Rating 3 out of 5. (mostly for gore)
Erin Brockovich
(4/2/00)
Stars: Julia Roberts
Twice divorced working-class mother of
three, weasels herself into a deskjob at a lawyer's office and finds
herself investigating a corporation's coverup of a serious pollution
problem affecting families living around the corporation's California
plant.
This enthralling true stoy manages to
keep your attention quite well, and Julia Roberts sizzles as the
working class girl with the salty vocabulary ("F-this, F-that,
F-you") and the flirty wardrobe.
Rating 4 out of 5.
Mission to Mars
(3/2000)
Stars: Gary Sinise, Tim
Robbins
Story driven tale (no car chases here)
about Earth & Mars. Astronauts go to Mars. Astronauts get into
trouble. New Astronauts go to Mars on a rescue mission where they
find out what happened to the first astronauts.
Meanwhile, movie borrows from Close
Encounters, Star Trek, Apollo 13, The Right Stuff, The Abyss and most
of all 2001:A Space Odyssey.
This movie is a date film. Views of
Mars are worth seeing in this. What bothered me was the over-use of
organ music (What was with THAT?) and Disney style music near the end
(blue birds and deer and bunnies came to mind...on Mars??)
Rating 3 out of 5.
The Devil's Advocate
(3/20/00) - rental
Stars: Keanu Reeves, Al
Pacino
Story driven tale (no car chases here)
about good & evil, but mostly evil. Keanu Reeves actually does a
good acting job in this one...go figure...even if his southern accent
does fade in and out at times. And Al...what can we say...a suave Mr.
Evil Incarnate.
This movie is worth it for the last 30
minutes with some neat special effects & a twist ending and a
speech by Pacino that makes you touch your forefinger to your temple,
nod and say "hmm".
Rating 4 out of 5.
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