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mrroscoe2000
Reviews
Holy Smoke (1999)
yip-PEE
Kate Winslet pees herself! Kate Winslet pees herself!
Kate Winslet stands outdoors, naked. Normally that's good, but it gets soooooo much better. The camera pans down to her bare legs (legs only), then pee cascades down her legs and pooling at her feet. This is the second most appropriate metaphor possible.
Because I like Kate, I choose to believe it was simply a subconscious reflex to pee on this piece of crap of a movie. You know, like an excretory force of habit.
Harvey Keitel fans, prepare to second-guess yourselves. And quite possibly, pee yourselves (the aforementioned reflex).
Did I mention this movie is not good??
Crash (2004)
Do the Right Thing, this ain't
This movie has a good message: Don't be racist. But stop with the fawning already. This movie is worse than awful. It's awful disguised as deep and meaningful.
There is ZERO character development. Every character is either a racist or victimized by a racist. Or both. See how racist everybody is. That's bad, right?
The same point could have been made by developing just one of these story lines into something intelligent. But, no, we need umpteen story lines involving separate incidents of Rodney-King-level racial injustice, happening over no more than a few days, among a small handful of characters. And if that's not ridiculous enough, these characters cross paths all the while.
I know, I know -it's a movie. Okay, then, In the Heat of the Night, A Soldier's Story, Driving Miss Daisy, American History X, To Kill a Mockingbird, Bamboozled, Jungle Fever, Do the Right Thing, and the episode of Star Trek with the half-black/half-white faces are all infinitely better efforts delivering the same message without clubbing you in the head and force feeding you morality.
Crash ?? Crap.
The Big Sleep (1978)
The Big Stink
This stinkbomb is currently getting a lot of airplay on the digital cable stations. Don't waste your time with it.
This movie spares ALL expense. It has the look and feel of early 70s-TV crime drama, but with cheaper production values. The clumsy editing is a constant distraction, and removes any possibility of the fast-pace repartee normally expected from Chandler characters.
If you're a fan of Mitchum, Stewart, or Reed, I urge you to pass on this. All three phone it in on the rotary-dial phones of that era. Unfortunately, Clark does not phone it in. Her nude scene is sub-par -even by 1978 standards- and cannot redeem the worst acting ever recorded.
Film adaptations rarely, if ever, do a book justice. In no instance is this more true than in the case of The Big Sleep. The book is fantastic and a relatively short read. In fact, you could get through most of it in the time it would take you to watch either film version.
The Grudge (2004)
A Steaming Pile of Horse Dung
Truly good horror movies are hard to come by. And this is not one of them.
This is just a series of "jack-in-the-box" scenes. By this, I mean that somebody opens a door/lifts a bed sheet/peers around a corner and BOO, something scary pops out -usually a young boy (the creepy boy seems to have replaced yesterday's masked slasher). This gets old. Fast.
And in between, there is bad, insulting-to-the-viewer writing.
The good horror movies employ actual suspense, which is the result of understanding the story and caring about what happens to the characters. There is none of that here. Considering she is the "star," SMG has a very low percentage of screen time and lines. Whether she is disemboweled, possessed, or reads the dictionary while standing on her head is ultimately of little interest. The same applies to every other character.
Save your money.