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Reviews
Shaft (2000)
I don't dig it
Shaft is nicely put together but ultimately unsatisfying. Just another vigilante-out-for-justice flick with uninspired dialogue, tepid pacing, dull action sequences,a disgusting use of race baiting, and one of the worst endings ever. John Singleton's new version of an old classic has the always cool, ultra-talented Samuel L. Jackson as a violent detective who is waging a war against anyone who does anything wrong to black people. Jackson is one of the best actors around and is especially good at playing bad motherf'ckers so it was a huge dissappointment that a character that he was born to play turned out to be a hypocrite with an indifference to white people and the centerpiece of this lousy film spewing lame lines and mowing down inept bad guys. Christian Bale gave the stand-out performance of the film(in my worthless opinion) as the primary villain, even though his role was a pretty bad stereotypical character. I felt sorry for his character by the end of the movie due to everything he had to go through. Enough has made about Jeffery Wright so I just say I liked his performance too. Vanessa Williams and Toni Collette were criminally under-used in thankless supported roles. But Buster Rhymes...I couldn't stand him.I hated him in Higher Learning(another bad Singleton movie) and I hated him even more here and if I listened to his music I'd hate that too.He was such an idiot talking like, "Whuuut chuuu tawwwkin bout daauwg?" For once I'd like to see a movie like this where the race roles were reversed, but of course it would labeled as a racist. Anyway lots of people liked and it made money so I guess it accomplished what it set out to do. Hopefully the sequels will have good scripts, better action sequences(something beside quick cuts of Shaft and the bad guys taking turns shooting at each other) and eliminate the racial under-currents.One more thing: Racial tension is not a one-sided problem anymore!It p***ed me off how almost all the characters who weren't black were pompous bigots and the blacks were shown at heroes even if they were just as bad.
In Your Wildest Dreams (1991)
Typical 'Feature Films for Families' crap
IYWD is another bomb from Feature film for Families. Like their other movies, this is trite and annoying. The story centers around a boy who accidentally gets a large sum of money and can now live out his wildest dreams.But wait, he must decide if the right thing to do is more important and return the money. What do you think he's going to do? They just pour on the melodrama at times which becomes very irritating.The cast is comprised of a group of unknowns and the story is pretty predictable.The movie's antagonist seems to be enjoying his role of the villain and delivers a somewhat decent performance. The same cannot be said about the protagonist. He is extremely annoying and his forced delivery of lines during the 'serious' parts makes them even worse. He's a hypocrite too, since he goes around telling people to always do the right thing and then he wants to keep the money because "I got it and it's mine." On a technical level its not much better,as the direction is barely competent, the music REALLY sucks, the dialogue is terrible. Maybe I'm just biased since stuff like this doesn't interest me. People are always complaining why more good, clean, family movies aren't made. The answer is that either nobody will see or they'll turn out like this.One positive thing I can say about this movie is that its good to show to impressionable young children who are easily entertained.