megaman821 Reviews

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

A movie as epic as the first two installments.

[9/10 · 17 December 2003]

The story begins with a flashback of Smeagol when he still looked like a halfling. This lets you in on his true nature.

The plot then picks up where it left off. Frodo, Sam, and Golum are still on their long journey. The rest of the gang is busy preparing as another great battle looms.

Although our heros get a majority of the screen time there are a few new and some old characters that were nicely developed. The visuals in this movie are breathtaking as anyone who has watched the first two films in the series should know. The battles were even more massive than in the second film.

I do a few minor gripes though. First most noticable is the extrodinarly long ending. Trust me you could leave the movie when it should have ended and not miss anything (you will know when it should have ended when you see it). Second, maybe this was just me, but the orc seemed to have a lot of strategy to their attacks instead of just bumrushing their outnumbered opponent. Third, this is somewhat related to the second, despite their strategic decisions they seem more easily defeated than in the second movie.

Finally, Aaragon's sword should have played a bigger role other than proving he is the king. Overall, this is a great film. Anyone who enjoys epics or action will surely enjoy this movie. 9/10

X-Men (2000)

X-men the Movie needs to mutate into something better.

[1/10 · 21 April 2003]

The X-men had the potential to be a great film but it wasn't. FOX budgeted 75 mil for this film and Singer was able to produce detailed sets, hire decent actors, and have great special effects in this movie for that money amount.

My first grievence of this film is lack of plot. The movie utimately spends more time introducing characters than advancing the plot. I agree character introduction is important for the non-fans of the x-men comics but SInger should refer to other comic-to-film movies like Batman(1989) for how to introduce a character and still have an abudence of plot.

This leads to my second grievence the lack of quality even when a plot was present. (A few minor spoilers) Wolverine crashes through his car and immediately gets up and heals but later when he is hit by a log he is out cold for hours until he arrives back at the mansion. Since the focus of this movie is on Wolverine he shouldnt have big plot discontinueties. The protaganist of the story was Magneto, a good choice for a first movie, but his method of "evil" was a doomsday device that would turn the world's population to mutants. Wow that is hoaky. If you want to use a doomsday device in your movie watch Star Wars and pay attention to the Death Star scenes.

My final grievence comes from knowing a little about the comics. (Some major spoilers) Why is Wolverine getting beat up by Sabertooth without putting up a fight? Rouge has had her story line completely changed? Why is Jean Grey so old? You never get the sense of Magneto's power and that he only spares the X-men out of respect for Xavier. Although Mystic can fight, she is generally outclassed by all of the X-men and avoids physicall conflict with them. She uses her cunning to foil the X-men. Why is Iceman, one of the original members of the X-men, just a kid? Maybe this one is just me, but Wolverine seems calm and rational, it doesnt feel like Wolverine.

The Brothers (2001)

Insightful..No, Entertaining...Yes

[6 January 2003]

Wow i saw this movie and thought is was quite fun to watch, and then look at the ratings here and see the majority of them are ones. Serious black films get critique harder then other films because black viewers want to have a great black film. So a movie with like this with well-to-do men, exagerated characters, and lots of mood lightening humor wont win any academy awards. But thats not to say this is a bad film. Its very good at what it tries to do. This film is enjoyable whether you are white or black.

Magnolia (1999)

Dont watch

[1/10 · 29 November 2001]

This is one of those movies that people say they like just to look smart, like they can see something deep and wonderful in everything. Thats a load of cr@p. This is a movie, what you see is what you get. And I saw the most boring movie in years, just waiting for the end to come so that maybe the movie could redeem itself. But the movie instead gets worse ending with frogs falling from the sky.