Just a small public service - saving YOU from bad movies, one review at a time!
3 Watch Checks
I had to really think about where to put this review, finally I decided here because I really couldn't recommend this movie to anyone, for any reason.
It's disturbing, violent, graphic and left me sad and depressed. I would have turned it off entirely, but Viggo Mortensen's performance was incredibly compelling -- when he was on scene, I couldn't look away. So, I guess it has that to recommend it - but really, for the most part, it's ok to just skip this one.
September Dawn
watch checks - N/A
I don't know how old I was when I saw my first movie -- but I remember mom taking me to see star wars at the theater when it came out so it's been at least 30 years...and this is the first movie I've ever walked out of and asked for a refund!! (and I see a lot of movies).
This is an absolutely HORRIBLE film. The Mountain Meadow Massacre is a very interesting subject (for those of you that don't know, in the late 1800s, a wagon train going through southern utah was slaughtered - all but a group of about 20 children, under 7, that survived, were taken into local homes and returned to their relatives a few years later -- it's a very controversial event and the bulk of the controversy is around whether they wagon train was killed by local indians or local Mormons, and if the latter, was it a group acting on its own or was it under orders from Brigham Young). Anyway, given the controversy, this could have been a very interesting movie, covering both the event in question and the trial that took place about 20 years after the event.
Regardless of what you think about the controversy, this movie does everyone a dis-service! It distorts facts, paints the entire Mormon religion with a very black brush, creates a feminist wagon train leader that didn't exist just to be able to throw some misogyny into the script, and I had to leave when the two teen leads(!) got into a "my religious leader is better than your religious leader" conversation. ASININE!
In the short amount of time I could stomach this movie - the acting was pretty bad, the
dialogue trite (but wherever it was filmed is gorgeous).
If this is a subject that interests you, there are much better books, check them out and skip this movie.
Babel
9 watch checks
I've been trying to think of something good to say about this movie...and so far all I've been able to come up with is "I didn't hate it as much as Syriana", it's the front runner for my least favorite movie of 2007!
Let's see....there is no point to the movie...it does that really annoying jump through time thing that I hate (Sissy pointed out I always give bad reviews to any movie that does this and that's true, I really hate it).....you never know if things are happening concurrently, before or after the scene prior, it's just lame.
Many of the camera angles are disorienting and jarring; they cut back and forth between all the groups so much that you don't care about any of them, you just want it to hurry up and finish. There is no real resolution to the movie because there's no real point to it.
Oh, and there's not even enough of Brad Pitt in the movie to make it worth watching for the eye candy factor. There are, however, some very gory scenes, quite a bit of violence, children in jeopardy, gratuitous nudity and a couple of very icky scenes between one of the female leads and any older male she interacted with, including her father.
I'm sure there's supposed to be some deep meaning, that my shallow self isn't accessing ....It's probably going to win a ton of Oscars because no one wants to admit that they found it pointless too!
AND to top it off it's such a downer of a movie that I walked out depressed. I'm going to go watch something with Adam Sandler to get the depressive aftertaste out of my mind.
I stopped counting at 7 watch checks (there were more after that).
The best thing about this movie was .......the new Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix trailer that preceded it. The second best thing, was James Franco as the New Goblin. Is it bad when you'd really prefer the main character of the superhero movie just shut up and go away? I'm thinking yes...and about 15 minutes into the movie, I remembered why I skipped the last installment of Spiderman; should have stuck with that! Although I've liked him in other roles, I simply cannot stand Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker...he's too whiny, too earnest and too message-y. I didn't even like him when he was going Dark Willow -- and I usually like it when the hero's turn bad (I did think it was funny that while he was "edgy" he looked like Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy but with less eyeliner). I think the entire movie must have been shot green screen; I think there may have been 3 or 4 scenes without CGI -- it was way over done -- and a few of the action scenes made me dizzy, which I don't THINK is what they were going for. I did like James Franco and his cool flying snowboard; Bryce Dallas Howard was pretty much unrecognizable as Gwen Stacey; Topher Grace was excellent, although not in the movie very much; and the whole Sandman story line was lame --although I did like the effects of how he became the sandman and the FIRST time you saw him after that....unfortunately, they then repeated that effect EVERY time you saw him. It's 2.5 hours long and seriously felt like it would never end, but it's not the worst movie (Babel is still a clear winner in the worst category to me) but all in all, I'd recommend watching an episode of Heroes or Supernatural rather than watching this movie! Heck, I'd rather watch Xmen 1,2, or 3 rather than this. (In addition to Harry Potter, they played the trailer for the next Bourne movie -- it's going to be cool!!. They also showed a very strange movie called "Across the Universe".....as far as I can tell, it's got a Beatles soundtrack, I saw puppets (I think) and there were several musical sequences and some very willy wonka things...it was pretty surreal)
