The CPA movie critics forum

D

DÛke

Guest
Stigmata
6.5/10
Love, sadness, pain, action, and religion all packed right here. It’s very smart, and incredibly unique in style. Stigmata lacks special effects, though its clever dialogue more than makes up for it. This movie kept me up, unlike similar movies, such as The End of Days.
“With The Matrix impression: whoaw!”

The Matrix
9/10
After The Matrix’s revolutionizing the action movie scene, it seems like if an action movie doesn’t have the ‘pause and rotate’ action scene in it, it just doesn’t cut it…it just isn’t up to date. The Matrix is the first movie to have all that it had. Action movies are never viewed the same, thanks to The Matrix. Though incredible, The Matrix does get confusing at parts…watching the movie more than one time helps you get those “weird” moments.
“Don’t you just wish this thing is real? I mean, who would want to dodge bullets?”

X-Men
8/10
Possibly the movie that stands next to The Matrix in the special effects department. This movie was a blast; thought the shortage of the dialogue between the characters really does shun information about the characters, their feelings, and many other things. Over all, X-Men is a movie for anyone and everyone, not just X-Men’s hardcore fans.
“I love Jean…I wish she was real…”

Titanic
9.9/10
If you haven’t seen this movie, you’re either dead, or crazy. This movie really touched many people with the clever dialogue, clever love story, and the interaction of both the love and death tragedies. It is a must have, and must see movie.
“It even puts a tear in my eye…it has got to be touching…”

Mission Impossible: 2
7.5/10
MI: 2 is a bit disappointing. This sequel, although with great effects, doesn’t match up to its first movie.
This movie is strictly for action and stunt loves, other than that, this movie lacks a story; meaning that there’s nothing more than those random shot guns and superhuman experiences.

There...
 
F

Fear

Guest
I feel a great swell of pity for those that voted the matrix below a 10.

Carry on...
 
A

Apollo

Guest
Matrix: 10

Star Wars series:
-New Hope: 9.5
-Empire: 10
-Jedi: 8.5
-Menace: 6

Perfect Storm: 6
Mission to Mars: 6.5
Erin Brockovich: 8
 
J

Jaws10387

Guest
Titanic: 0 Don't make me explain.
MI2: 9
Perfect Storm: 7.5 Book was much better.
 
T

TaLoN

Guest
Legend of Drunken Master
9/10
The best fight scenes i have seen in a Jackie Chan movie. Loses a point due to the ridiculous dubbing. It still was very good.
 
D

Duel

Guest
you have not seen Titanic until you've seen it with 7 teenage girls sitting behind you...... Luckily, I couldn't hear the dialogue, because of there screaming.... You know that one scene where the ship is sinking and the band decides to just keep playing? I LOVE that scene. Or would have, if one of the girls hadn't leaned forward and loudly exclaimed "Maybe nobody's listening because the ship is sinking, duh!"


Now, I LOVE leonardo DeCaprio (See him in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" or "The Basketball Diaries" or "Marvin's Room" He's FANTASTIC!), but he was bad in this movie.

titanic:
6.7
 
K

K9Archmage

Guest
OOOOoooh! Leonard de caprio is the hootttest guy there is!Ok, just kidding, of course. i didn't like titanic much. not enough science fiction. I am a hard-core science fiction fan.

Hoipa
 
R

Riva Iron-Grip

Guest
yo man, drunken master is almost 25 years old. i have the version from the eighties. it was better with sub titles. i hate how america is bringing all this dumb old sh** back. i.e. Charlies Angels, OLD Chan movies. it sux. it's like we can't make anything orginal anymore( D&D movie). it sux. that is why i stick with anime.
 
D

Duel

Guest
He he he,
want something original so you look at ANIME? Man, that's really pretty sad.... all but maybe 2 or three anime movies are identical copies of something earlier....

And Leonardo DiCaprio WAS FANTASTIC in "What's eating gilbert grape"
 
Z

Zadok001

Guest
Unbreakable: 6.5 OR 9.5, see below.

Ladies and Gentlemen. For those of you who haven't seen The Sixth Sense, you're missing a lot. Go see it. Until you do, don't finish this post. I'm so not kidding. Go rent it. Now.

Moving on.

Unbreakable has been dubbed the unoffical sequel to The Sixth Sense, starring the same actor, with the same director leading the show. This has two effects on the movie, one is positive, the other is absolutely horrible.

The first effect is that people will see Unbreakable. They have to - Sixth Sense was good enough to make Unbreakable a requsite of continued existance. That's good, because Unbreakable is worth seeing, no matter what.

Unfortunately, it also means people know what to expect. What, Bruce Willis? In a movie by the same guy as Sixth Sense? Gee, whiz. I wonder if they'll have a twist at the end... If you read reviews of Unbreakable online, you'll find a large majority of people who were rather dissapointed at the ending. This is solely because Sixth Sense was first. The 'suprise' ending is much less of a suprise if you've seen Sixth Sense.

Thus, the two ratings I gave it above. The movie is a 6.5 if you can't put Sixth Sense out of your head for 107 minutes. If you CAN forget Sixth Sense, however, you're in for a treat. Unbreakable is brilliant.

The entire movie is filmed through a dirty lens, it seems. Dark, shadowy corners abound, blocking visibility of a certain segment of the screen (an old trick from horror films; always frame the characters with an obstacle), and figures with their faces partially or completely obscured. Several entire scenes are accomplished without Bruce Willis showing his face to the crowd at all.

And yet, despite this dirty approach, Unbreakable succeeds on many, MANY levels beyond the norm. One character is repeated shown as a reflection, literally, in the glass of a mirror or a blank television screen. This aspect eventually becomes key to his entire persona as the movie develops. Likewise, several other minor characters are filmed in ways specific to their purpose to the film, in shadow, in light, behind curtains, framed in windows, etc... All of this combines to make a visually unique movie, one that requires a lot more attention than the average action flick.

Speaking of action flicks. :) Unbreakable succeeds in being a the first movie, ever, to be an action movie with a minimum of action. Yes, you read that correctly. In a reversal of standard roles, what we have here is a movie about human nature and development, shadowed by a background of comic-esque action and adventure. How screwy is that?

Unbreakable is a rare movie. Like Sixth Sense, it draws new boundries on the movie world as a whole - entire new archetypes can spring from this one work, and entire worlds formed around its characters.

It seems like a comic book, sans cheesy lines, shallow characters, and dull plot. If that isn't a good reason to go see it, this is (a line from the movie, one with implications far outranging the context, the scene, the movie, and the world as a whole):

"I hear this one has a suprise ending."
 
N

nodnarb24

Guest
6th Sense
4/10
I think 6th Sense SUCKED. It was WAY OVER hyped.

I should see unbreakable and see if it is any better.
 
Z

Zadok001

Guest
Gotta ask... Why do you think Sixth Sense was bad? :) Personally, I rank it as one of the best films I've _ever_ seen. Unbreakable is not better, but it is on-par.
 
N

nodnarb24

Guest
The main reason is that people over-hyped it. People were saying it was extremely suspenseful and scary.I found fairly boring. I bet if people didn't over hype so much, I probably would have gave it a better rating.
 
T

theorgg

Guest
I'm supprised noone mentioned this:

Fight Club
10 of 10.

This film, the first time through, is a bit confusing and disorenting. However, I believe that I must tell you, since most people don't recognise it, that it is allogorical.

If you don't know what an alogory is, It's a book/film that represents somthing else; The Crucible represents the red scare of the american 50's-- That's probably one of the most famous cases.

Since telling you doesn't ruin the moovie, I'll say a few basic things:

The moovie is a representation of a man's emotions/needs/ and feelings. One thing represents his concience, one the agressive urge that turns to a need for control and power, another a person's concepts and insecurities. Keep in mind that this isn't really applied to the characters in the moovie directly: they are mostly representations of different things.
 
A

arachiron

Guest
*I meant Monty Python's Holy Grail and Mel Brookes History of the World Part I...
 
B

Baskil

Guest
Stigmata - 7/10 Pretty decent. Of course, I've always been a fan of Patricia Arquette, even in Beyond Rangoon

Sixth Sense - 9/10 Have you ever watched a painting show on PBS? Small lines drawn on canvas, not making complete sense until the entire picture is done. This movie is like watching Monet paint. Small dots and glimples until you see the beauty that is inside it.

Fight Club - 10/10 I will always have a special place on my video rack for this movie, and an ever bigger space for the book. Excellent from almost every standpoint. It's a shame this didn't win best editing last year.

Army of Darkness - 8/10 The best of the series will always be Evil Dead 2, but this one comes pretty close. IMHO, they should have kept the alternate ending in.

Star Wars: A New Hope - 7/10 By far not the greatest movie ever made, sorry. Good, but I've seen better. See Empire Strikes Back (10/10) if you want a close runner to best movie ever.

Green Mile - Haven't seen (shame on me)

History of the World, Part 1 - 9/10 Not Brook's best (High Anxiety or the Producers), but really, really funny.

Gattacca - Not seen

High Fidelity - 7/10 Good run of the mill romantic comedy. Was not suprised to see John Cusack as one of the writers on the film with all of the internal monologues.

Thirteenth Warrior - 6/10 Better than I expected, but still only a dry, ultra-violent, predictable action movie.

Phantom Menace - 5/10 Lucas essentially just spit his spunk on film. I would rather watch Kate and Ashley Olsen movies than this. Ahmed Best must be stopped.

Matrix - 8/10 Great action movie.

Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery - 7/10 I like this movie, even if it is just toilet humor.

Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me - 8/10 What makes this better than the first is the fact that they increased the screen time for Doctor Evil.

Men in Black - 5/10 Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

Shanghai Noon - 7/10 Owen Wilson will hopefully get more roles as a result of this movie. He's a very underrated comedic actor. And of course Chan is great as usual.

X-Men - 6/10 Entertaining, but nothing special. And yes, I am a huge fan of the comic.

Titanic - 4/10 Sappy and sticky, this movie is the largest ego trip ever taken. The movie is manipulative, and the dialogue sounds like it was written by a thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters.

Legend of Drunken Master - 9/10 Want to see a great, cheesy fun movie? Skip Charlie's Angels and see this. Chan will never be as good as this, and I am hard pressed to find another martial-arts movie that holds up to it (besides Fist of Legend and Once upon a Time in China).

Perfect Storm - 7/10 It looks better on video, but the CGI work in this looked so wrong on the big screen. So bad in fact, that it completely took away all believability for me. Kudos for the acting work though.

Mission to Mars - 3/10 Brian de Palma must stop, right now. This movie is so, so terrible. Major dramatic scenes are ruined by lapses of Logic that would have MC Escher confused. "There's only three graves, that means he's still alive!"

Erin Brokovich - not seen

What's Eating Gilbert Grape - 7/10 Good movie, kind of sappy but doesn't drown you in it. DiCaprio's best work probably.

Basketball Diaries - 8/10 Loved the book, Loved the movie. I doubt it caused Columbine like people say it did, but who knows.

Marvin's Room - not seen

Unbreakable - 9/10 if it stands alone, 10/10 if there's sequels. Unbelievable movie. I was glued to the screen for the entire thing. Read Zadok's review, it is pretty accurate.

Requiem for a Dream - 10/10 I'm fairly certain that most of you have never heard of this film. Chances are, most of you won't be able to see this (It's rated NC-17). However, if you do get a chance to see it, see it. You will never forget it. You can read a better review here: http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=7122

Later.
 
K

krichaiushii

Guest
All these special effects extravaganzas mentioned, yet none of the classics...

Highlander I (III had good effects, but was moot, given the ending of I -- technically, the entire TV series should have ended with Duncan Mcleod being beheaded by the Kurgan in 1984 (year of the film), if you think about it. And Connor would have never given up his sword unless he died).
(9/10 thumbs)

Excalibur (8/10)

The Outlaw Josie Wales.
(9/10)

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
(9/10)

Dawn of the Dead. (The one in the mall)
(6/10). The most amusing part is when one of the characters tries to explain why all the zombies come to the mall.

Silverado.
(9/10)

I agree with Army of Darkness, though.
(8/10)

Rocky Horror Picture Show?!
(I enjoy audience partici-------pation. 7/10)

Nearly anything MST3K has done gets at least a 5, though rarely more than an 8.

Matrix was fun (9/10), and in defense of MIB, it was a fun 90 minutes, even if childish. (8/10)
 
B

Baskil

Guest
I imagine, from your rating for Dawn of the Dead, that you have only seen it recently. True, the movie loses a lot over the years (zombie makup looks terrible, etc). I would give it at least a 9/10. The claustrophobia, the humanity of it all. It isn't a slasher flick like Halloween, this is a disaster film. My choice for best horror movie of all time.

And speaking of audience partici pation, a real fun thing to do is get a bunch of buddies over and rent and riff. It's a great test of improv skills. Rent films like Nail Gun Massacre (1/10) or Brenda Star w/Brooke Shields (2.5/10) or Liquid Sky (4/10). It's great fun (I do it weekly) and it makes you appreciate better movies that much more.

[Edited by Baskil on 11-30-00 at 08:09 AM]
 
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