Maybe I’m too old or have the wrong ethnic makeup (or a combo of both) to appreciate live-action anime. Visually this packs a wallop, truly audacious, but that wears thin after a while and there’s not enough of a coherent story to carry it. I understand the anime version ran in the neighborhood of 25 hours, so the narrative naturally gets chopped up. Satomi Ishihara managed to stand out in a cast of stock characters.
FF=3.5
FF=3.5
MONGOL
The first of a trilogy about Genghis Kahn. This one covers his boyhood and rise to power, uniting the Mongols. The kid had a rough life. Great scenery, but I was not engaged.
FF=3.5
COP OUT
The usually dependable Bruce Willis (I’ve been a fan since “Moonlighting”) is flat here and he and Tracy Morgan have zilch chemistry. Morgan’s cop is simply too needy to care about. The only bright spot is Sean William Scott as the demented Dave. The plot (if you can follow it) hops from cliche to cliche, which is okay in a funny cop buddy movie. But when you enter that subgenre, you’re going to be compared to “Rush Hour” and “Bad Boys” and “Hot Fuzz,” so you’d better deliver on the =funny= and the =buddy=. This did neither. Director Kevin Smith’s fault? I dunno. I’ve already wasted too much thought on it.
FF=3.5
APOLLO 18
Another found-footage film that dragged for me. One standout/disturbing visual (when the guy on EVA says something got inside his suit) but otherwise hard to take seriously.
FF=3.5
SHOOTING GALLERY
Not as good as it should have been, not as bad as it could have been. I like pool movies. This one was pretty dark. I tend to like dark, but I wasn’t engaged.
FF= 3.5
THE ISLAND
This wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad. And certainly nowhere near as awful as 1979’s The Clonus Horror with which it has litigation-worthy similarities. (My apologies for that ugly sentence.) Some of the action scenes are terrific, but there’s nothing new here, and even the attempts at plot twists are visible from miles away. (You just knew Djimon Hounsou’s clone hunter would undergo a sea change.)
FF= 3.5
DECADENT EVIL
I started off FF-ing through this because it looked just plain bad. Then I realized it was good-bad, and watched. A cheapo-cheapo that’s perfect for Bad Movie Night – some laughs are intentional, many are not. If you have a group that doesn’t mind nudity (a fair number of bare breasts here), break out the six packs and the wisecracks and watch.
FF= 3.5
DANCE WITH THE DEVIL
Still not sure how I feel about this one. Some parts I loved, others I hated. I saw it in two sittings. It ran 2 hours which, for me, was about 30 minutes too long. James Gandolfini was good though. And the lead bad guy/anti-hero – Javier Bardem – had great presence despite a very bad haircut.
FF= 3.5
F. Paul Wilson's Fast-Forward Movie Reviews 