Popcorn-28 Reviews

Changing Lanes (2002)

A breath of fresh air

[10/10 · 23 June 2004]

I have not been this captivated by a movie since I first saw The Shawshank Redemption.

No CGI, no fancy fights, or pathetic sex or nude scenes to try to keep your attention. If you're looking for mindless eye candy.........you will be disappointed.

Some people have said that it is a thriller. I do not agree. It certainly was not edge of the seat stuff. I think that it was simply a powerful drama but there was alot more going on under the surface 'road rage'.

Just a well directed story line and superb acting.......and surprisingly, one that I've enjoyed watching over again.

The scene near the end of the movie where Gavin Banek is at a restaurant with his wife and in-laws is absolutely superb.

Its been a long time, but this one gets full marks from me.

Brainstorm (1983)

I've been wanting to watch it again since 1983

[8 December 2000]

The first and last time I saw this movie was back in 1983 and I've wanted to watch it again many times since then. I just couldnt remember the title , until someone here on IMDB reminded me.

I used to explain the plot to the guys at video rental places, and they would just stare at me as though I had gone nuts......

I then recently saw Flatliners and felt the urge to watch Brainstorm again.....so I did..... and I found it just as good as when I first saw it.

Of course there are a few bad points, but it is the idea behind the movie and the way it is projected that leaves you .......feeling......and thats rare for a movie these days.

If you're tired of the usual stuff being churned out by Hollywood, watch Brainstorm.........you wont see anything like it.

Flatliners (1990)

Something different..........??

[7 December 2000]

I think I liked this movie for the subject that it dealt with more than anything else. I think most people just put their own very inevitable death at the back of their minds, but most if not all people wonder............what happens when we die?

Not only does the movie provide only a pretty simplistic view, but also projects an idea that goes against any research conducted so far on the subject. Still its nice to see a movie that has some morally decent message for a change.

Also, since I have watched this movie, I have been racking my brains to think of a similar movie I saw in the early nineties which deals with the subject of death as well. I just cant think of the title. In that movie someone invents a device that can record your thoughts and replay them........someone then actually dies while wearing the device so the experience is recorded. I cant remember what happens in detail, but if anyone remembers the title, please let me know........

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)

Now do you understand everything I've said? Because if you don't, I'll kill ya

[9/10 · 12 December 1999]

I've avoided this movie for sometime now. Firstly because friends told me that it was 'Pulp Fiction'-ish (and boy do I hate that movie). Secondly, because its British and although I'm from South East London myself and love British television comedies, I have rarely found British humour well translated onto the big screen. Normally it is toned down to plain slap-stick goofy uncomplicated Inspector Cleuseau type humour tailored for American audiences.

But to find not just British, but straight-faced East London cockney-slang and swear filled humour in a really stylish movie was a revelation.

I have always believed that British humor, especially East London humor is much more sophisicated than American humour. Maybe the reason why American audiences have been more forthcoming with LS&2SB is that despite the accent, they finally 'get it' without having to have it remade into an American version, ala Faulty Towers and Threes company and other British comedies. Yet, I believe Tom Cruise is remaking the movie with an American cast. I suppose for those who just cannot understand English unless its spoken in an American accent. That is really a shame as there are so many diverse accents all around the world and LS&2SB could not have been done in any accent other than cockney.

Still, there are bits only the British will get, like the scene with the three guys pouncing on the traffic warden in the back of the van. That scene had me clutching my sides. Only someone living in London can feel true loathing for a traffic warden, the most hated person in Britain.

Cinemtography was superb. I wont go into who's already done the slow-mo's and stop action argument. It is near impossible to do anything in a movie today that has not already been done. You can either do nothing - or do whatever you can as long as it suits the mood and the flow of the movie, and Guy Ritchie just cannot be faulted. He projects the seedy, thin laned, miserable weathered London, yet with such style that you want to see more. The camera work could not have been better. Just see the projection of Eddy's unsteady, light-headed wooziness as he gets up from the gambling table having lost everything and owing even more. Brilliant.

The Soundtrack was as diverse and yet brilliant as I have ever heard in a movie. I dont want to look like waving the Union Jack here, but this movie shows that the British have a more diverse taste in music. From Reggae, to Ska, to Rock, to Mikis Theodorakis every track played just added to the scene showed.

In short, LS&2SB is a movie that just does not stop for a second, is full of refreshing humour, filmed with style, has a lively soundtrack, some violence thrown in for good measure, and a story with more twists and turns than a bowlfull of spaghetti.

Dont let this movie slip you by. You'll either love it, or hate it.

If this movie was not British, I'd give it an 8/10, but since it is, it gets 9/10 from me.

Favourite dialogue: Rory Breaker: If you hold back anything, I'll kill ya. If you bend the truth or I think your bending the truth, I'll kill ya. If you forget anything I'll kill ya. In fact, you're gonna have to work very hard to stay alive, Nick. Now do you understand everything I've said? Because if you don't, I'll kill ya.

The Truman Show (1998)

What a load of tripe!!

[26 November 1999]

I dont know which is worse. The movie itself, or the fact that people actually like it.

I never really liked Jim Carrey anyway, and this movie did not make him any more appealing to me.

It's funny how people try to find a philosophy or a message or a 'deeper meaning' in every other movie that comes along. Are we really getting that desperate?? Someone will be saying that 'Tom and Jerry' projects the continual stuggle between good and evil next.

Can we just have some decent entertainment please without trying to be too clever??

The Matrix (1999)

I need to get out of this 'zoo', this 'reality' whatever you call it.

[6 November 1999]

I enjoyed this movie for what it was, a spectacular special effects, action packed sound managed extravaganza.

But was it really such a good science fiction movie? No way. A good science fiction movie or book always requires you to suspend belief to some extent in order to make the story believable. But it has to at least follow a logical order and rules set within the movie for it to be remotely believable. But the plot behind the story of the Matrix falls flat. Badly.

Take The Terminator. For a moment you believe that time travel is possible, and the rest of the story follows a logical progression that makes it believable.

If you really follow science fiction like 2001, 2010, Contact, Terminator and some of the more thought provoking Star Trek movies, you will sit throughout 'The Matrix' thinking to yourself every five minutes 'hey that doesnt make sense', 'that cant happen', 'what nonsense'.

A few big holes. [SOME SPOILERS HERE SO KEEP OUT]

"The humans 'scorched the sky' in order to destroy the machines who relied on solar energy." well, Human beings rely on the sun just as much in order to survive. No matter what we eat, vegetables, fruit, meat, fish, its available because the sun gives heat and energy to our planet. You scorch the skies, and you commit suicide. Bad idea.

The machines used humans like duracells and maintained their energy by liquifying the dead. Sorry not on. You cannot just endlessly circulate a fuel and use it as well, especially when you have to waste energy to liquefy it.

The agents can infiltrate anyone who has not yet been unplugged from the system. What about the first scene when Trinity was being cuffed and a dozen cops were standing around her? Did the agents have a migrane or a hangover at that moment in time? But when Morpheus has to be captured, the Agent decides to make an entrance. So convenient. Also when Trinity and Neo are in the Lobby shooting off rounds like there was no tomorrow, what was keeping the agents occupied, were they listening to their favorite radio station on their com sets. If you make your villains ominous like the Terminator or Darth Vader, you cant pull away their power just to keep the action flowing.

If the Matrix is a simulation, then the programmers have complete control. No use running around frantically looking for a telephone. And what has the Matrix got against using a cell phone anyway. Its all a simulation so there is no difference. Also being a simulation, you can have the entire system crawling with thousands of agents, not just three. Hell you dont even need agents for a simulation. Didnt the machines have the latest Norton Antivirus update?

The effects, action etc were all spectacular, but surely the story has to hold together somehow. I think we are all in the Matrix anyway. 'Born in to a prison you cannot see or smell or touch'. Everytime I see people mindlessly raving about a movie without actually sitting down and thinking about what they saw, it just shows how we are being systematically numbed into unthinking zombie-like creatures.

The Matrix is an enjoyable movie no doubt. But effects aside, one of the most enjoyable features of this movie I found was the character of Agent Smith. Agent Smith has a character all of his own which is very unusual in movies nowaday. His dialogue in the interogation room is superb, 'You have a social security number, you pay your taxes........and you help your landlady carry out her garbage'. Absolutely brilliant. For me Agent Smith was the star of this movie.

Anyway, if you want to enjoy this movie, just switch your brain off for the best part of an hour and you will love it.

I'll give 'The Matrix' 6 out of 10. For me 'The Thirteenth Floor' handled the matter in a more thought provoking and logical way. But dont anyone here watch it, you will only curse me afterwards for it being to slow and boring.

Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987)

This is a classic comedy movie. Seriously.

[10/10 · 21 October 1999]

I have not seen many comedy movies called 'classic', or 'great' or 'the best movie I have seen'. There arent even that many comedies in the IMDB top 250. Planes Trains and Automobiles definetely deserves to be in there somewhere.

Unless you seriously lack a sense of humor, you will laugh yourself to tears. There is something about this movie that I just cannot put my finger on. I am not a great fan of Steve Martin although I loved him in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. In this movie, they simply act out their characters, and boy does it work. They do not 'try' to be funny which is a sure way to make sure that you come out as 'unfunny'.

There are so many films which are billed as comedies, and you spend the best part of 2 hours waiting to actually laugh. This isn't one of them. You will laugh from start to end (even after the end). Has anyone seen till after the credits?? See it now and vote for it.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

The best movie, ever!! Two thumbs up + eight fingers 10

[10/10 · 18 October 1999]

I dont really think anyone can put into words the greatness of this movie. This is a movie that truly makes you feel for the characters. No special effects, no action scenes, no big budgets, no dance floor soundtrack. This movie is sheer genius.

So many prison movies have been made before but you never get a hint of a feeling of how is must really feel like to be jailed for life. This movie got me well and truly depressed. I really felt for the characters of Andy and Red. Two decent human beings with a true friendship, stuck in jail watching their lives go by within the inescapable prison walls. The projection of the prison, its guardians and its system was superb. You realise that the prison is a world of its own, and with time, in order to survive you have to learn to accept that world and forget about the outside, or do you? This movie in a way tests you. 'Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things' says Red at the end. But near the end, I found myself losing hope altogether. I felt that this movie would end with Red and possibly Andy dying in prison. I do not get at all emotional when watching a movie, but the closing scene brought tears to my eyes and a lump in my throat, and I still get choked at that scene everytime I watch it. The scene and narration with Brooks in the half-way house is also very powerful.

The discussion between Andy and Red after Andy's time in solitary is spell-binding. Some scenes are shocking. By the way I have probably seen this movie 30-40 or so times and still watch it.

The music (especially when Andy arrives at Shawshank in the prison bus shown in an overhead shot, simply beautiful!!), the story, the direction, the acting, the cinematography, the characterisation. I honestly cannot fault this movie and I think it is simply criminal that this movie did not win any Oscars. I think that by comparison, Forrest Gump was a load of rediculous mindless trash. I just could not understand what the fuss was about with Forrest Gump. But thats another story. Another example of Big Budget nonsense over-shadowing good quality movies. The Shawshank Redemption is in a league of its own and Tim Robbins deserved an Oscar for best actor as did Morgan Freeman for supporting actor in his portrayal of Red.

This movie is also an eye opener for so called 'expert critics'. Just go back and see the initial reviews this movie got when it was first released. I personally never go on what these critics have to say and movies like The Shawshank Redemption remind me why. No wonder they're always giving 'two thumbs up' for every half baked movie that comes along. They're probably all thumbs and no fingers.

The Shawshank Redemption is my all time favourite and I'll give this movie two thumbs + eight fingers = 10 out of 10

The Thirteenth Floor (1999)

Has 'thinking' gone out of fashion.

[14 October 1999]

Is it just me or are people missing the point? This movie is not a Matrix clone. Matrix is science fantasy. Thirteenth Floor looks at something that is theoretically possible in the future. This is a very deep movie. Its only down side is that it is a very difficult movie to make and comprehend. Just try to think about it for a second.

Computer simulations have been around for a while now. You can simulate wars to work out strategies, you can simulate aircraft for flight training, you can simulate explosions to work out the resulting damage. The list is endless. You have played video games at some point in time have'nt you? Well when you think about it most games are basically simulations, be it flight simulator, FIFA 99, quake, doom, red alert etc.

As computing power increases, the quality, realism and accuracy of simulations is improving all the time. At the moment, characters in a game fake 'intelligence'. Say you fire a gun in a game like quake, an enemy 'hears' you turns around and shoots back. A character in a game falls on the ground and holds his arm where he has just been shot. But he is not programmed to feel pain, or to bleed or to fear his own death. But what if he was?

Now say we approach such a level of programming, that characters in a computer simulation are programmed with real intelligence and awareness, their world is fully programmed to appear, feel, smell and touch as real to them, as our world does to us. Say we want to see the reaction of the people of a city to a nuclear leak at a power plant. We create a city with a power plant on the outskirts, populate (program) this simulated city with simulated people and objects from the sub-nuclear level right up to frozen pizza. These simulated people move and think independently within this environment. They sleep, eat, have sex, go to school, steal and watch television. They breathe what to them is air, they 'think'. They worry about bills, jobs, security, money, the weather, traffic jams...'. Then we program the nuclear leak, sit back and watch as these poor characters run for their lives!

Now are there any ethics to creating such a simulation? Are we responsible for their continued existence? Are they 'real'? "I think therefore, I am". Well if they did 'think' then are they? What if Microsoft or Electronic Arts brought out 'Virtual World 2050' for Windows? You slot in your CD, enter setup and create a world on your system full of 'intelligent' characters in their own world. Perhaps a better name for this game would be "GOD 2050" for Windows, because as far as these characters are concerned, that is what you would be.

How about input/output methods? Keyboards, mouse and pen pointers, voice recognition, monitors and VR sets? Our brain waves, senses and optic images are made up of impulses. Isnt it theoretically possible to link up to a computer so that what we feel, sense and see is computer generated? Say this interface disengages your senses and links you to one of the characters in a simulation so that you now feel, sense and see what this character does in his virtual reality world.

The problem with this movie is that when you really think about it, this subject is difficult to comprehend because unlike timetravel (impossible), space travel (nothing can travel faster than the speed of light so forget about the warp drive and space exploration) and alien invasions (is there really anyone out there?) it will happen and may create more of an uproar than genetic engineering. You can either make something spectacularly outlandish (like Matrix) or realistic? You cannot do both.

Another problem with this concept is that it is virtually impossible for a virtual character to figure out for himself that he is simulated. The bits where these characters drive to the end of their simulations are pretty stupid. But how can a simulated character find out that he is a simulation in a simulated world? If you program a world well enough, your characters will never know. You could throw earthquakes, hailstorms, a solar eclipse everyday, even keyboards raining from the sky and these poor characters would just watch scared, helpless and totally confused.

And one day you find that you are running out of hard disk space and you decide to delete the virtual world on your system? Would you or would'nt you? What if your own world was simulated? What if you were a simulated character? How would you react to finding out that you were just a simulated character? How would you react to finding out that your existence was totally at the mercy of a programmer who is just a mortal? Would life loose its meaning?

I was intensely dissappointed with 'The Matrix', mainly because I was expecting this very issue that has been taken up by 'The Thirteenth Floor'. For me 'The Matrix' was a spectacular special effects show with stylised slow motion shots, and cool techno music. As far as substance was concerned 'The Matrix' was pure nonsense. It had no hole in the story as the story itself was a hole. If this world is simulated and the real one has us all kept alive in incubators by some evil life form then stuff reality, I'll stay right here thank you. Also if this world is a simulation then the programmers have complete control. No need to send in 'Men in Black' lookalikes (and why not send in three hundred instead of 3), no use running around looking for telephones. The programmer just has to run Norton antivirus. Similar mistakes are made in Thirteenth floor, but only become apparent when you think about them. For instance if you are a simulation and you find out the truth, so what? You can never pose any threat to your programmers? No need to download and kill the simulated character.

The atmosphere of the movie is right as it deals with a serious issue like self awareness. The acting is suited to the movie, sober. The romance could have been toned down or left out but the supermarket checkout scene is beautifully done and is very touching (only if you think about whats happening and realise what Douglas Hall is realising) and the ending could have been much much better. What if the movie ended with the simulated worlds being switched off? No more school from tomorrow. This is a movie, not a special effects extravaganza with hyperactive gun toting heroes saying 'lets kick some ass'.

I figured out exactly where the story was leading as soon as Fuller came out of the 1930's simulation into the 'real' world. It does not take much genius to work it out. It is really difficult to fool people nowadays or keep people in suspense. In 'Saving Private Ryan' everyone knew that the first Ryan was the wrong one, in 'Seven' everyone knew what was being delivered in the FedEx van. But I wanted to see how things unfold.

If you like to use your brain now and then, you will love this movie, as I did. Also if you tend not to be influenced by hype and publicity, you may appreciate this movie. I think that this movie could easily have been a classic. I am a science fiction fan and I was intruiged. I read Stanley Kubrik, Arthur C. Clark and other sci-fi novelists. My favourite sci-fi movies are Blade Runner, Contact, 2001. Non sci-fi favourites are The Shawshank Redemption, ANTZ, Some like it hot. For me 'The Matrix' and 'Phantom Menace' were incredibly overated. A movie is not just about special effects and a bunch of hip overconfident cocky characters wearing Raybans in the dark.

I was definetely a minority when I loved 'The Shawshank Redemption' and everyone was calling it crap, and the same looks true here too. I'll give 'The Thirteenth Floor' 8/10.