I really wanted to like this film. I am a sucker for flicks like PREDATOR and ALIEN were a group of stranded people find themselves hunted down by some evil monster. Usually it happens in the jungle or abandoned space ship. The more brutal the creature, the better. The more isolated the locale, the better.
THE RIG gets two stars for it's locale. A working oil derrick. It was actually filmed on a real one. That was neat. Something really fascinating about those things. It also gets a nod for it's score composer (Fowler). Though we are not supposed to talk about film scores on this site, when it is the only saving grace of a film, it must be okay. Fowler's brooding music is well suited for the film. Unfortunately it appears the music is not commercially released. If, or when it is, I will purchase a copy of it. Very good stuff!!
Unfortunately it went down hill from there. For those of you who complain about too much digital animation and too much blu-screen (you know, they completely ruined AVATAR by using to much Digital Effects and too much Blu-Screen), you should enjoy THE RIG. Other than the juvenile writing, sophmoric direction and truely bad acting, this movie has one of the silliest "man-in-a-rubber-suit" creatures I have ever seen. Special Effects are non-existant except for liberal qualities of smeared and splashed blood. I think the most enjoyable moment I had while watching the carnage was thinking what "real" rough-necks might think of this film. It would have to be a real "hoot" for them
Those of you who love really bad "cult" films may like it. Others, stay away! You have been warned!!!
Thank you for the kind response, Dan. In fact, SOMEWHERE IN TIME is one of my favorite films. The "chemistry" between Jane Seymore and Christopher Reeves continues to fascinate me. I recently watched it again in High Def and was totally blown away. I have read some negative press about it, but it is one of those films you either love or hate. No middle ground. THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE is much the same way. I think you will like it, though.
BATTLE OF THE WARRIORS (aka BATTLE OF WITS) (2006) -- 8/10
Big budget historical epic from China details the strategic battle between Mozi Ge Li and a Zhao Commander with 100,000 troops who lays siege to a town that lay between them and a grander destination. Impressive production and fascinating story.
You should have a look at this one VietnamVet: La Prisonnière by HG Clouzot
I don't know how to rate it. A strange, bizarre and enthralling film.
Wow! A&C, you have really put me in a bit of a quandry. Not sure how to acknowledge this clip without sounding like a inarticulate buffoon. I am afraid it is just a little too "deep" for me. That, and the fact I have never gotten bitten by the "foreign" movie bug, being the "ugly american" that I am. But thank you!
BRUTE FORCE (1947) – I can’t believe it’s taken me all these years to finally get around to watching this great film noir prison film, starring Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn and Charles Bickford. Music by Miklos Rozsa. I watched the Criterion DVD print and it is a stunning restoration. Yes, it does involve a planned prison escape but its overall tone, script and acting put it far above the typical fare of this genre. Yes it does attempt to push a little bit of social conscience awareness (typical of the time)…but not much. The few female roles have little screen time, for obvious reasons. Lancaster was in his prime and dominates each scene he’s in. The surprise (for me, at least) was Hume Cronyn is his casting as a sadistic Captain of the prison guards. For me that was so against type for his later aged familiarity in roles from films such as “Cocoon” and “*batteries not included.” Cronyn, in a tee-shirt, brutally beats an inmate with the sounds of Richard Wagner playing loudly from an office phonograph in a scene you won’t forget. Indeed the film’s explosive finale is top notch. I highly recommend this, giving it a 9 out of 10. You won’t be sorry. Mike
Thanks, Recordman, for the insight on BRUTE FORCE. I may have to get a copy of it. Sometimes the old adage "they don't make them like they use to" is very appropriate!!!
Vietnam Vet, nice to see that The Time Traveler's Wife cured you of sexism. That is a nasty disease as are all isms. Try the novel , which is even better than the movie.
I saw The Dilemma, and I want my money back. How could Ron Howard, who now and then makes a good movie, make this piece of garbage? I've never been more bored in my life. It is NOT funny. It is dull. And I don't get why people find Vince Vaugh funny. He just delivers lines in all of his comedies at a fast speed in a monotone voice. I give this movie .05 out of 10 and would recommend you even avoid the DVD. Go watch a couple of good movies still out like The Fighter or the new True Grit.
My rating for this one will probably settle down to a 8-9 after a little while, but it was so much better than I expected I can't even put it into words. I expected a silly action comedy, but got a terrific (yet wonderfully strange) amalgam of black comedy and drama. It's quite a terrific film. If you've still not watched it, I highly recommend it. The ending itself is worth the rental alone.
Same old boring stuff on the tube tonight. Sitcoms all are the same. HBO, Starz, Fox.....all stale reruns. Do I really want to see folks risk having a million dollars fall down a chute? So boring......what to do? Hmmm let's just surf a little....Now, what is this? FROZEN. 2010 movie. Rated R. Synopsis - Three young adults are stranded on a ski-lift at a ski resort which has shut down for the week because of an incoming storm. Wow! This sounds kind of interesting....something to watch afterall. Probably going to be really bad. I mean, come on, it just has left the theatres.......Everybody knows immediate release to the subscription services and DVD is the kiss of death, right? Well, somebody screwed up this time. This film is actually kind of entertaining. Don't get to fond of the central characters......bad things happen. Real bad things. Yet this quaint little fable about human endurance and the struggle to survive against over-whelming odds actually manages to keep one interested. The only reason I would not give it a 10/10 is the rather "downer" of an ending... And watching people slowly freeze to death is not much fun. It is not have an exactly "and they lived happily ever after..." ending, if you get my drift.......Also, I am curious. Are there ferocious Wolves in New England? Check it out. But don't blame me if your next home heating bill is outrageous due to your turning up the thermostat while watching.
Oh yes, and compared to PIRANAH, this flick deserves an Oscar nod!
Hmm. I thought Frozen was pretty bad. My own review, from October:
It's one of those new breed of survival horror/trillers where, instead of having competent people trapped in a very bad situation, you have stupid, entitled, often young people, often yuppies, trapped in an only moderately bad situation that arose of their own stupidity. Making matters worse, this movie, like many such movies, doesn't even treat its conceit honestly. The concept is that three friends go up on a ski-lift on Sunday evening and, thanks to a mix-up on the ground, are stranded there, high above the ground. The place will not open until the following weekend. This is a pretty terrifying scenario. Scary enough, you'd think. But no. It has to resort to stupidity and invention. These kids are stuck on a ski-lift in a New England winter in storm conditions with no food or water for at least two nights and a full day in between. Somehow they don't seem to suffer any ill effects of dehydration or hypothermia, though -- in fact, they only seem to get more physically coordinated as time goes on. But wait, there's more! The movie takes place in New England, where there are (to my knowledge) no known breeding packs of wolves. But what's a survival film without wolves? So of course there's a vicious pack of wolves that just kind of hangs out below them when the plot calls for some extra terror, but disappears when it's not needed. Why do we so love to hate wolves that we continue to perpetuate the evil wolf image in our popular media? Anyway, this movie does have some good moments when these people are just sitting on the ski-lift, feeling terrified and guilty and angry. But every time they actually attempt to do anything, the movie just amps up the stupid. This is a watchable movie, but it doesn't quite manage to achieve goodness.
Mastadge, I totally agree with your thoughts. I missed your initial review. I admire your intellect too much not to respond....... These people are STUPID. No doubt about that. And I honestly was unsure about the wolves in New England. Probably just "literary license" (I believe that's what they call it). Also, even though I know it is stupid, I really felt for the guy who was afraid of dying by being eaten by a shark only to have his worst fear realized.(just not by a shark) Somehow it just struck a chord with me.....Some of the sight gags, such as what are you going to do if you have to take a leak in a situation like this, I found humerous. Also, in defense of my premise, I enjoy seeing young actors struggling with the almost insurmountable task of conveying their emotions in a film like this.....you have to work at this thing called acting for it to work. This is not easy. I know from experience. Unfortunately, the worse the film, the harder the actor's job is. Some just "sleep-walk" their way thru the process, or flex their bicepts or jiggle their breasts and they think they are actors. I find that hideous.. Even the so-called "giants" of stage and screen, past and present, actors like Hackman, Brynner, Oconnor all who I have had the honor to work with in one capacity or another, all of them are guilty to some degree of putting their emotions on "auto-pilot" and wander aimlessy thru a scene I think you would be amazed at what film lies on the floor after the end of a editing session.
Buried (2010) dir. by Rodrigo Cortés -- You wouldn't think spending 90 minutes in a box with Ryan Reynolds would make for compelling cinema, but they pull it off. It's not great, but on the spectrum of such films it's certainly closer to 127 Hours than to, say, Frozen. Ryan Reynolds is a civilian truck driver in Iraq. His convoy was ambushed, and he awakens buried in, basically, a slightly-larger-than-a-coffin box. In the box is a cell phone: the people who buried him want him to arrange a ransom. Over the course of the movie we basically see a number of phone calls: to the people in his life, to his employers and so forth as he tries to get help. On the whole, it's solid. It's tense, it taps into what has to be as close to a universal fear as there is, the script works. There's one scene in the middle that's stupid and unnecessary, but on the whole this movie surprisingly enough sustained its runtime.
Devil (The Night Chronicles: 1) (2010) dir. by John Erick Dowdle -- Another trapped in a small space movie. This one is at least 10 minutes shorter than Buried but still feels overlong. Bad acting, a stupid script, people reacting to each other and to events in ways that I did not believe those people would actually react, a message already familiar from a number of Shyamalan's movies. Very few surprises. Way too much time spent in the security room. Fernando Velázquez turns in a fine score that tries its hardest to lend some weight to the whole thing. This is a pretty bad movie. Not awful, but worth watching once, maybe, if you like supernatural thrillers and don't mind silliness.
Paper Man (2009) dir. by Michele Mulroney & Kieran Mulroney -- I had high hopes for this movie. I like Jeff Daniels and Emma Stone, and Ryan Reynolds' Captain Excellent costume looks better, no lie, than his Green Lantern costume. This movie is easy to watch, occasionally very funny, and the performances are good. Jeff Daniels is comfortably in his range, covering similar ground as he did in last year's The Answer Man. He's a middle aged writer who can't seem to write, going through what would be a midlife crisis if he had any sort of life, so really it's more of a long-delayed adolescence. He's a bit of a nebbish, and he knows it. I do find it hard to believe that a depressed man (with an imaginary friend, no less) supported by a spouse who's a successful doctor wouldn't be receiving some kind of psychological assistance. Emma Stone, as the troubled girl whom Daniels meets and befriends, continues to impress as one of the best actresses of her generation. Ryan Reynolds has little more to do than act earnest and goofy in a ridiculous superhero costume -- he's the imaginary friend -- and that he does very well. Unfortunately, this movie is very much in familiar indie territory in terms of its unlikely -- and often quite unbelievable -- relationships between damaged people, and its resolution is much too easy. Daniels acts like way too much of a jerk, and does far too little, for me to readily accept the way things turn out at the end. Ultimately, this is a very enjoyable movie, four stars while watching it, but it doesn't really have much to say and it doesn't bear much thinking about it; as soon as it ended I started liking it less and less.
Salt (Director's Cut) (2010) dir. by Phillip Noyce -- Ebert gave this film four stars because he has a hard-on for Angelina Jolie. I've never understood her appeal, and find it a pretty middling movie. In this year's crop of action movie's, it's no less preposterous than some of the others, with the key difference that it takes itself seriously. Some of the stunts are very cool, others just look bad. The plot manages to combine the Cold War and the War on Terror; it's completely ridiculous, and almost completely beside the point, just a substrate for scenes of Jolie running from set piece to set piece. Don't get me wrong, this is a watchable enough movie: it's a solid action thriller with plenty of twists and improbably action. It was moderately intense, but it wasn't much fun, and overall, as with most of this year's action movies, was a bit of a let-down.
In July (Im Juli.) (2000) dir. by Fatih Akin -- Romantic comedy from Akin. Lacks the polish of his later films, but very enjoyable nonetheless. He's one of those directors whose aesthetic matches mine very closely; I've enjoyed just about everything he's done.
RED (2010) dir. by Robert Schwentke -- An amusing action comedy that, in the hands of a more capable director, could have been something special. Mostly when it works it's because it's fun watching Willis, Freeman, Malkovich, Mirren, and Cox having fun together. There are a couple of neat shots, but plenty of bizarre angles and flat visuals that really don't help the movie, and the story itself has almost no momentum -- a number of set pieces that seem almost arbitrary. A character dies, and no one seems much to care. A character falls in love because the plot demands it, but it never feels real. Karl Urban is slightly less embarrassingly awful than usual. Yet another movie that's barely good enough when, with just a little effort, it could have been great fun.
Justified, Season One (2010) dev. by Graham Yost -- The ads didn't do much for me, but I've got a soft spot for Timothy Olyphant so decided to give this show a try. Glad I did. Timothy Olyphant is, as usual, great fun, and has a solid foil in Walton Goggins. The show is fun and intense enough to sustain its premise, and while it fishtails a bit midseason when the stand-alone episodes overwhelm the larger story, Raylan Givens is an interesting enough character to sustain the shenanigans. Not one of the great shows of all time, but certainly one of the best shows on now, and I'm definitely looking forward to season 2.
The American (2010) dir. by Anton Corbijn -- Based on Martin Booth's 1990 novel A Very Private Gentleman, this is an exquisitely crafted old-style suspense thriller. I love George Clooney for constantly taking chances on interesting projects, even if they don't always pan out, but this one does. Clooney plays an aging -- I don't know if there's a term for it, someone who makes specialized weapons for assassins -- who wants to get out of the game, but, as is often the case, isn't exactly welcome to leave. This is a brooding, paranoid thriller with excellent cinematography and Clooney at his best. One of the best films of 2010.
How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989) dir. by Bruce Robinson -- Robinson's second film is not as excellent as Withnail & I. It's often very funny, but sometimes too over the top and caustic, and goes off the rails a bit in the third act. That said, Richard E. Grant carries it and makes it work, even when it shouldn't. The man is a marvel. He plays a successful ad guy who develops a crisis of conscience for manipulating the public to buy unnecessary crap -- a crisis that manifests in a boil on his neck that starts talking to him. It's absurd and grotesque and much more funny than it should be.
Let Me In (2010) dir. by Matt Reeves -- On its own terms, this is a pretty good movie. Problem is, it's completely unnecessary -- it doesn't have anything new to say about the subject matter, and in almost every case where it deviates from Let the Right One In the change is for the worse. It lacks the atmosphere and whimsy of the original, removes the genderfuck adds in some ridiculously heavy-handed subtext in the form of constant Jesus and Ronald Reagan imagery, amps up the gore and bad CGI, confirms something that is hinted at in the original in opposition to the book to no real effect, and levels down audience interest. I plan to watch the original again soon, mostly to compare Chloë Grace Moretz to Lina Leandersson; Kodi Smit-McPhee I found as unconvincing here as I did in The Road. Honestly, if I sound harsh it's only because the original is the rare film that I'm happy to put on again as soon as I finish watching it; I love it, flaws and all. If I'd never seen it, I'd probably enjoy Let Me In more, but as things are, Let Me In is a lesser iteration of the subject matter with little new to say.
I look forward to seeing The American. I'm usually pleased with Clooney's choices (I even like The Good German!!), and this one looks to be no exception.
Justified, Season One (2010) dev. by Graham Yost -- The ads didn't do much for me, but I've got a soft spot for Timothy Olyphant so decided to give this show a try. Glad I did. Timothy Olyphant is, as usual, great fun, and has a solid foil in Walton Goggins. The show is fun and intense enough to sustain its premise, and while it fishtails a bit midseason when the stand-alone episodes overwhelm the larger story, Raylan Givens is an interesting enough character to sustain the shenanigans. Not one of the great shows of all time, but certainly one of the best shows on now, and I'm definitely looking forward to season 2.
I'm rewatching Season 1 on DVD this week, as I never got to see the last three episodes. This is the first FX original series I've enjoyed. And it's nice to see a TV crime drama again where the main character isn't a corrupt cop or a holier-than-thou jerk like on the CSI or Law & Order shows, but instead an honorable, upstanding law enforcement officer and nice guy.
Golly! I really love you British people. I know a lot of you think we Americans are an"over-weight", "over-indulgent", under-educated bunch of morons. I take a little offense at that - actually most of us are not morons...
Seriously though, Sir Michael Caine's latest movie, HARRY BROWN shows us once again that just because an acting legend is getting a little old, it does not mean he cannot ply his trade.
I won't go into much detail about the plot of this film......It's rather mundane. Retired British Marine. Living alone. Losing his wife. Only one real friend left, another retired old pensioner. Their favorite past-time, playing chess in a local tavern. Portraying the retired marine, Sir Caine utilizes his enormous talent. He is amazing to watch.
As stated, the synopsis is rather mundane. The character driven plot has been used in hundreds of movies - Sir Caine's HARRY BROWN goes on a vigilante spree after losing his last friend to the local young drug cartel/gangs that rule his housing project.....Enough said. But be warned. The scenes of the young thugs preying on pedestrians and themselves are very intense. These people are very scary!
The only reason I won't give this film a flat out 10/10 is because I am "under-educated" and really have a hard time understanding the vocal accent of you British guys.........Don't get me wrong! I absolutely love the way you people speak. So refined. So damn sohisticated! I sometimes wish I had been born in England.........
But.....please pity some of us yankees and provide a sub-title alternative. Especially when you produce a fasinating film such as HARRY BROWN God Save The Queen!
ALTITUDE (2010) 3/10
Okay, as Mastadge has pointed out earlier. Some films are unwatchable (or at least not enjoyable) because the plots or sub-plots are hatched/borne by really STUPID people. I definitely agree on this one.
I had to watch this thing twice (a fate I would not bestow on my worst enemy) and I still don't know exactly what the damn movie was about. And frankly, the characters were all so stupid I didn't care about them either.
Synopsis - 5 young adults (teens) charter a twin engine airplane to fly someplace. The pilot of the plane is a young (teen) relatively inexperienced (read new) female whose mother was killed many years before in a private plane crash. As the story progresses the teens argue and panic, especially one young man who should have been thrown off the plane immediatley after take off due to obnoxious "over-acting". We are then treated to a giant octopus attacking the plane, a time-warp event, and some kind of mind altering mental event (probably due to the abundant use of drugs and alcohol).
This one is laughable foks.. I gave it 3 stars only because it tried so hard to be original..Save your money!
I look forward to seeing The American. I'm usually pleased with Clooney's choices (I even like The Good German!!), and this one looks to be no exception.
No, No, No, mrscott. I wouldn't go THAT far. MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS has got to be Cloony's ISHTAR. THE AMERICAN was a bit slow, but at least it made a bit of sense. I am not "Gay", but I could watch Cloony pour piss out of a boot for 2 hours rather than watch MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS again..
