Movies I didn't like
with some short comments. I take no responsibility for comments being
the same from day to day. These pages contain spoilers. Turn back now if you want!
Some things that will probably make me not like a movie: bad pacing,
poorly done special effects (that is, effects that look like effects
instead of what they're supposed to be) in some cases (with notable
exceptions), not maintaining self-consistency, using incorrect or
misleading technical information passed off with authority, flimsy
characterization, Peter Greenaway.
- Prince of Egypt, Theater I was
expecting greatness from Dreamworks, and got one of the biggest, hollowest,
most worthless pieces of Hollywood tripe I've ever seen. Not only were the
songs painful to listen to and poorly timed in the narrative (and what idiot
decided that nearly all animated feature films have to be musicals?!?!), but
the story itself was an insult to Exodus. The people who made this film were
suffering from some serious delusions: a) the story of Moses is not dramatic
enough as depicted in the Bible, so we need to throw in some extra danger,
b) God whispers, c) and Moses bringing the ten commandments down from the
mountain is a high point and good place to climax the story. Given that, there
were two pieces of fantastic animation (the dream sequence and the river turning
to blood), but this was nowhere near enough to make it even remotely worth
sitting through.
- Event Horizon, VHS The first half
of this movie was some of the scariest footage I've ever seen. The rest of
it was so bad it's painful to even think about. I was really looking forward
to this, even though someone told me before I watched it: "the first half-hour
was great, the rest was terrible." I'm a big science-fiction fan, and I like
horror, but this movie was just stupid. Firstly, the ship is a huge deathtrap,
and no one gets sliced to bits in the rotating razor tunnel or impaled in
the spiky engine room! And could it possibly get any stupider than "The Gravity
Drive"?
- The Negotiator, DVD I was hoping
to enjoy this movie, but was sorely let down. Kevin Spacey is one of my favorite
actors, and he barely mangaged to hold my attention. Samuel L. Jackson seems
to get more and more one-dimensional with every new role. Didn't he used to
be an interesting actor with depth and emotion? Like a few other recent releases,
the cast was great, but the film overall suffered from terrible writing and
a thinly transparent fluff-plot in which the great cast was gratuitously underused.
I was hoping that the whole thing would be a set-up orchestrated by the two
negotiators, but alas, it wasn't that deep. The DVD itself was okay, but I
was unimpressed with the supplements (I have no desire to watch anyone from
the LAPD prattle about anything), and the layer switch was right in the middle
of a Jackson face shot.
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