Sleepless in New York
Category Archives: Reviews
X-Men: The Last Stand
This is one series that has to try to “out do” itself with each successive release – the fate of the country… no world!, no UNIVERSE! Depends on… well, you get the point. Anyway, I did enjoy the eye-candy, and actually the acting and script was pretty darn good – an easy thing to dismiss in such a movie.
X-Men 2: X2
Wow, what a surprise… I wasn’t expecting much from this, but I think I liked it better than the first one. They didn’t have to spend so much time “explaining who the X-men are”, and could get to more plot & action. Plus, I liked the multi-dimentional characters and the way this movie plays on the fine line between good & evil. There were a couple little bothersome things – like why did the one girl have to kill herself? With all these superheroes, that’s the best plan they could come up with? And what happened to all those kids who escaped the “school”? It would’ve been neat if they had just one follow-up scene with them “doing something”. But all-in-all, I found it quite entertaining.
X-Men
It was entertaining, and that’s about all I was expecting from this movie. This is the kind of movie that could easily spawn countless sequels… just wait! I only hope they don’t go rapidly downhill in the quality department.
The X Files Movie
I never watched the TV show, but this movie still worked. I was able to figure out what was going on. As for what WAS going on.. yes it was completely ridiculous, but entertaining all the same. I just don’t get the whole x-files addiction-thing though.
Volcano
“Let’s see… what kind of natural disaster haven’t we made a movie about? Hmmm… I got it! volcanoes! Let’s have a volcano erupt in… ummm… downtown LA!” And thus, a really dumb movie was born. I think this “conceptual moment” happened at two studios at the same time. Dante’s Peak came out around the same time.
The Virgin Suicides
This movie tries to be really stylish and, um, “bold” or something… it almost succeeds, but only almost. There are a couple brief scenes in the movie, but even those just don’t fit. The narrator (who’s never really identified), treats the whole story like some kind of Shakespearean tragedy or something. Teenage boys are never so philosophical about beautiful girls living next door, they just want to see them naked. (Also, the movie’s sound was really annoying – very quiet dialogue with roaring music).
A View to a Kill
James Bond saves Silicon Valley from an evil megalomaniac. Damn.
A Very Long Engagement
A beautifully filmed piece of art, but unless you speak French, this was so hard to follow! Also, I felt a bit cheated by the ending. It’s a totally over-used cliche. I won’t say exactly what happens, because despite that major flaw, it’s still very much worth seeing just to “see”, in fact it may be worth seeing twice so you can “understand”.
A Very Brady Sequel
Completely warped. Perhaps even better than the first Brady Bunch movie. The casting director should have won some kind of award for these movies. This movie is hilarious for all kinds of reasons… of course, almost all of those reasons require that you have memorized at least a dozen episodes of the original show.
Vertical Limit
This is how it goes: The characters get themselves in trouble. Then, something happens to make the situation worse, then something else happens to make the situation unbelievably hopeless, then, just when you think it’s going to be ok, the outlook gets seriously bleak indeed. Finally, out of nowhere, the whole situation resolves itself in an instant. If this is the new action movie formula, we’re all in for a big boring spell at the movies. Bring your umbrella, because it rains pretty hard during this one.
Vanity Fair
Once I figured-out who everybody was… the movie was over.
Vanilla Sky
I think I’ve decided that Tom Cruise movies are OK if you don’t see two of them back-to-back. This was a lot better than I thought it would be – lots of interesting direction & scenes that just leave you confused. What if you were trapped in a dream? What if that dream became a nightmare? Ok, so I’ve just ruined the whole “surprise ending”… sorry. I had the good fortune of having no idea what the plot was before I saw this. If you just read this, I guess you won’t be so lucky. This movie was based on an original Spanish Movie (don’t recall the name), I’d like to see the original.
V for Vendetta
Much better than I’d anticipated. Just all good stuff from start to finish – I liked the pacing as well. The only thing I didn’t get was what “charisma” the leader had – what a slimy dude. It’d have been more realistic if he looked & acted like a TV preacher.
U Turn
I wasn’t expecting much from this movie. I thought it would be “Oliver Stone does Pulp Fiction”, and it was… but it was done well. Sure, all the characters were wacky, full of hidden secrets, and somehow linked to each other. Sure, some pretty unbelievable things happened. Sure, there were enough double-crosses and plot twists to scramble your brain. But in the end, it all came together. It all sort of made sense, and everybody got what they deserved (well, almost everybody). It was definitely an Oliver Stone movie… (I loved the twister scene near the end – YUK!) Anyway, this movie was entertaining – not awesome, but pretty good.
Uncle Buck
I don’t know what to say about this movie. I have to tell my “driver school” story though. A few years back, I got a speeding ticket. It was a sunny California day, and I was headed to Santa Cruz down highway 17. The cop said I was going “80+”. He wrote me a ticket, gave me a speech, got back in his vehicle, and pulled-over another car before I could even figure out what was going on. In order to keep the ticket off my insurance record, I agreed to go to a day of traffic school. It was essentially one day of jail – I was stuck in a hotel conference room with a dozen others and couldn’t leave – a day down the toilet. A strange thing happened there though… Throughout the day, the “instructor” played the movie Uncle Buck on the video player. Every time we got back from a break, we’d see another 15-20 minutes of the movie. I wasn’t sure if it was some kind of way to keep us coming back (after all the movie is so compelling!), or if there was some kind of subliminal “drive safely!” message contained within Uncle Buck. Maybe it worked, I haven’t had a ticket since then.
Unbreakable
The slow pace of this movie just about made me scream. Ok, I understand that some movies have an intentionally slow pace for effect, but this movie didn’t need it. For example, there’s a 5 minute scene where Bruce Willis figures out he can lift more weight than he thought. It just didn’t need to be so damn long. I dunno, maybe I’m just an impatient media glutton.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Great cold war movie about the every-day dreariness behind the iron curtain. I especially liked the gloomy ending, very non-hollywood. Life is filled with sad endings, I wish people had more of a pallate for them in the movies.
U-571
I had really expected this to be a good movie, it was entertaining, but I’d hesitate to call it good. It was really predictable & overplayed the tension – like the actor’s tension was more important than what was going on in the movie… I guess that means I think it was overacted? I dunno. If you want to see a good WWII submarine movie, see Das Boot.
Some Kind of Wonderful
A bunch of high-school kids think they’re mature, and instead are just clueless.
Twister
Nobody had made a tornado movie (I’m not counting the wizard of oz), so I guess it was just a matter of time. I heard that a tornado actually hit a drive-in movie theater in Toronto while this movie was playing. I don’t know if it was during “that” scene though
Twilight Zone: The Movie
It was Ok, but it could just as easily have been a TV special. So many have tried to redo Rod Serling’s famous formula, but I have yet to see it work. What made the original show so special was Rod’s commentary at the start and finish of each episode, not necessarily the episodes themselves. He had a way of pointing out the essence of the story without talking down to the audience or coming across as a nerd.
Twelve Monkeys
Terry Gilliam is a genius again. I think he could make a film about paint drying and I’d love it.
The Truman Show
Jim Carey is an arrogant dork. He was funny once, but now he’s just so damn full of himself that I can’t even stand to see him. This was supposed to be his big breakthrough role or something, but I just thought it was dumb. It just didn’t get past my suspension of disbelief filter. The plot of this movie would never EVER happen!!! NEVER! I had a hard time taking anything in it seriously since I just couldn’t get past that simple fact.
True Romance
Man, which one was this? It was one of those slick bad-boy road movies. I think it had Christian Slater in it. I do remember that I liked it.