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george-rolph
Reviews
The Tree of Life (2011)
A father bashing fest
Just another Hollywood father bashing movie. It seems they lack to the guts to do the same to mothers.
It's well acted. The dialogue (or rather, lack of it) is awful at times. It is well shot. It bored the crap out of me. Seen it all before. Would not want to see it again. Am sick of the Hollywood male bashing going on and the stupid male actors who take on the scripts that do it. I am getting equally sick of the public that pay for this crap and so encourage it. I did not pay, someone else did, so I sat through it out of politeness. Give up the father hating Hollywood. It is getting old real fast!
Revolver (2005)
The Devil In You
The greatest enemy hides in you. He makes you think he does not exist by pretending to be your friend. By pretending to be you. He drives your evil passions but he tells you that you are in control. Really, he controls you. You listen to him as he makes choices for you and lets you believe that you are making those choices for yourself. Once you know who he is and how he operates, defeating him is simply a matter of saying no.
That is the message of the movie. It is not a message I agree with with because I do not believe that we can just say no all on our own. The devil within is a spiritual being controlling the drives of a flesh and blood being. To defeat him requires a spiritual birth. It requires becoming a new person. That requires a power higher and more powerful than the devil within and as people, we simply do not have that power.
But...., God does.
We cannot be born again of the will of man. Only by the will of God by the Son of God.
This is a powerful movie that gets close to the truth but never sees the truth. If you watch it and get it, then you are in the same place as the movie (the story) itself..., unless you have met, the Son of God. If that is the case, then you are in a higher place and know more of the story than this movie tells.
Quantum of Solace (2008)
Goodbye Mr Bond. We are neither shaken or stirred!
James Bond is in dire danger. Not from Russians, nor from Koreans, or any other International group of terrorists. The threat to bond comes from International Socialism and their stupid political correctness that infests everything like a plague. Bond is now facing the same stupidity. It will surely not be long before Bond is transformed into an environment loving Hippy homosexual, or even, a feminist lesbian getting her own back on the male race.
Groan!
Leaving that aside, this has to be the worst Bond film in years because of an incompetent director, terrible writing and a rubbish editor. The opening sequence, so vital to all James Bond movies, was ruined by blazingly fast cutting that leaves the viewer fearing an epileptic attack, even if they are not epileptic. Your eye wants to look away because following the action is impossible. Your brain just cannot cope with the quick fire images and sounds and make sense of what is happening on the screen. By the time your head recovers you have to readjust your mind to try and follow the story again.
Pretty soon you are introduced to the so-called villain. A two dimensional "nasty" with a history of problems from his childhood.
Oh Boy!
Then we are treated to a dialogue between the villain and the leader of the rebel forces that reeks of socialist political thinking about corrupt business corporations. O.K. We get it! Capitalism is bad now get off the soap box please! This is followed by a boat chase sequence that looks like it should be in a computer game. The movie goes downhill from here.
Bond has been a favourite for years because it focused on action and not second rate politics. It seems that all of that is changing and in the process it will kill Bond off. Maybe that is the idea? Forget this rubbish. It is nothing like Bond as Fleming made him. This is more like a left wing political activists idea of a character the rest of the world loves but they hate.
Ho Hum. Welcome to tedium and goodbye Mr Bond.
License to Wed (2007)
Ham Fisted But Honest
Licence to wed is a movie that could have been so much better if everyone in it had worked harder. Perhaps the time has come for the makers of movies to include a clause in contracts that lets the actors know, that if they screw up, they will lose four fifths of their fee. It might stop the kind of lazy, half enthusiastic performances this movie is plagued by. Having said that, it does not deserve the panning that some here have given it.
The premise of the story is a very good one. Too many people get into marriage without understanding exactly what it is they are getting into. This is not helped by the single mom culture that haunts the western world like a vampire that feeds on immorality. It is this failing that this film tries to address.
You get the feeling when you watch this, that comedy was chosen as the vehicle because if a serious movie were made on the subject, people would feel preached at. To get around this, yet still make the point that any attempt to give advice to people is seen these days as "preaching" the main character is a priest. Nice. Clumsy, but nice. However, comedy, for this story, was not the right genre. Mainly because the "comedy" script writer/s were so poor at the job and the caster crew got it hopelessly wrong. Williams needs other comedians around him on the big screen. People to feed off and feed. People who understand his timing and where he is going. Like minds, if you like. The two leads in this story would not have recognised timing if a clock had fallen on their heads.
The film sets out with a noble idea but it got lost in the making. The characters are weak and you get the feeling that it was a conservative theme directed, written and produced by liberals. Having a little boy with the priest was not funny, nor called for. Not every priest is a paedophile, by the way. (I am a protestant, what am I defending them for?) I don't really know what else to say about this. The idea is one that needs serious exploration by talented people. This was not that but this was worth watching because no one else in Hollywood has the guts to tackle it. Having said that, wait for it to come out on video and then watch it. The entrance fee to the movie house will be too steep to merit watching it there.
3:10 to Yuma (2007)
Sometimes the line between good and bad run close together.
Nobody, from the director and writer, to the actors on the screen, put a foot wrong in this movie. Beautifully shot, with an unobtrusive music score and a deep and powerful story, this is one of the best and most intelligent movies I have seen this year.
Crow and Bale are perfectly cast, whereas Bale and Cruise (originally wanted for the part of Ben Wade), would have been a disaster in my opinion. I can't look at Cruise on film without thinking of him jumping up and down on a couch like a performing monkey, so his image has been wrecked in my mind.
OK. The story.
Bale plays the part of a small time farmer (Dan Evans) caught up in circumstances that overwhelm him but give him a chance to rise above what fate has handed to him. It is a part that Bale plays to perfection. His role is that of the good guy trying to make a honest days living in a corrupt world full of greed. Opposite him is Crow. Rotten, vicious, ruthless, smart and very dangerous, because he is so smart. Yet, each are two sides of the same coin. Were past circumstances different for these men, it would be easy to believe that each of these two characters could have turned out like the other. It is this fascinating and deep idea that makes the story work so well.
Watching the interplay between these two main characters is the farmers son (played superbly by Logan Lerman) William Evans and throughout, you get the feeling that whatever happens to his father will determine the way the boy develops. A fact that is as true today as it was in the time of the old west that this story is set in. Barely trying to conceal the contempt the boy feels for his father, he is drawn to the exciting world of thief and killer, Ben Wade (Crow). Though I long for the day when Hollywood will once again portray fathers as decent and hard working men, this movie does not sink to the level of dad bashing that so many other productions do. The boy has a boys understanding and no move is made to comment on it one way or the other. That is a mark of the excellence of the writing. The audience is given the honour of being smart enough to work that out. In Hollywood movies today, that is a rare honour indeed.
Into Dan and Williams already hard life crashes Ben Wade and his gang of killers and robbers. Abandoned by his mother as a child and cynical to the point of the near psychopathic, Wade has no time for sentiment. Women are used and discarded. Men are useful if they do what he says, but no use if they do not. As head of his gang, Ben Wade is more a lion tamer than a leader of men and he knows it. He has trained them the way circus people train dangerous animals and they do his will right, or they don't make it. his manipulation skills are finely honed and he uses them well to figure out others and find their weak spots. Yet, despite all of these character flaws, his intelligence and respect for bravery in others manages to make him a likable villain.
Almost hidden in the background of this story there is a thread running through it that intelligent viewers will pick up on and hopefully think about. That thread is the vital importance of family life and the need for all of us to make certain we allow space for parents to be able to make a good job of bringing up their kids. Raising children is too important a job to be left to governments and no matter how much they try to take over that role, they should be resisted. If not, what you see in this movie is what you get. Fathers must be cut some slack and mothers supported, not by government alone, but by all of us. We have to end the cynical, hate filled attitudes of many of our young, by teaching them that law abiding parents are good people and not weaklings. We also have to tell governments, in no uncertain terms, to take their grubby hands off of our kids and family life. Stop listening to Oprah, parenting books and tapes and start listening to granny and granddad is my advice.
All in all this is a great movie and one that deserves to win Oscars all around. I doubt it will, but I hope I am wrong. Oscars these days tend to be tools of politics and those that are not go to movies that are full of sentimental slush. Rarely, it seems, do films like this get the recognition all deserve.
The tension in this movie is wonderfully built up by the director and writer alike. At no point does it have one of those Hollywood moments of sheer idiocy, where one of the characters does something superhuman and instantly kills the believability of the story. No strange camera angles to ruin the flow and jar the mind and no screaming music to distract you from the action on screen. Just plain and simple good craft throughout, with superb supporting roles from the rest of the cast.
I give this 9 out ten. Excellent work all round.
The TV Set (2006)
Great Fun!
7 out of ten.
Why? Because it works as a send up of TV and because, the ice sculpture looked like the alien Sigorny Weaver once did battle with. (I think it was supposed to be a polar bear but the shooting angle was carefully chosen to make the joke. Then the Hollywood machine -- rating us all with zero intelligence as they like to do sooo often -- got Sigorney to virtually tell us the joke in the dialogue. Ho Hum). Now, I am a fierce critic of movies, as anyone who had read most of my "reviews" on here will know. (If I hate it I don't review it I just stone it to death). This however, was a delightful change and a pleasantly funny movie.
Apart from some of the background characters going over the top, everyone played a great part. David Duchovny as Mike, was superb as the suffering writer having his entire script stolen from him and re- written in dumb down mode (Something Hollywood would never do, of course!) played his role to perfection. No, that it is not a spoiler! Sigourney Weave as Lenny, a sort of, emotionally dead, pseudo-logical, ratings obsessed monster, played the role of her human version of the Alien perfectly. If she had dribbled some slime she could have been that very monster.
Everyone did their part and everyone did it well (Except for the O.T.T. background characters on the TV sitcom set).
This is not a movie to tax your brain and not one to kill it off like many Amercian "comidies" (sic)are today. It is exactly the kind of thing to watch when you are too exhausted to think too much and way too bored to want to. It will deliver just the right amount of pick me up.
Watch it! It is worth the money and the time.
Billy Madison (1995)
So bad it hurt
This was so insultingly dumb I switched off the DVD before the credits finished rolling. Sandler has made a fortune out of playing dummies. The problem is that his roles give people around the world the feeling that all Americans are this dumb. (You overseas policy does not help much either) This makes people shudder to think that guys like this have their fingers on the bomb trigger. Let's face it folks, you voted for Bush! OK Seriously... Hollywood does no favours to the people of the USA by releasing this sort of garbage. They seem to have three pet favs at the moment: Sick violence. Sick horror and stupid. On the fringes there are movies playing up to females hate men stereotypes that give feminists wet dreams and gung ho crap about America winning every war since 1914 despite losing over 40 of them. Oh I nearly forgot, the American war on fathers seems to be plodding along in Hollywood too. (Seems you are winning that one so hip...hip!) Why you guys don't speak out loudly until they stop this crap really worries the rest of the world. I guess, if you can eat popcorn in it then it must be good ...right? This movie is screamingly, insultingly, crazily stupid. It is actually beyond stupid....it goes way past moron and down into 6 year old mentally backward by 5 years country. Now, I want you to know that this is someone who also sat through the Police Academy movies. I squirmed in those but this is gut wrenchingly bad. Do you want to know the worst of it? Every time you people pay your dollars over the counter to watch Sandler it encourages him to make more! Think about it...PLEASE!!! Don't pay to watch this stuff. It rots your mind faster than crack. Unless that is, you don't mind being thought of as America the dumb by everyone else on the planet.
Norbit (2007)
Norbit pushes against PC.
Norbit is great. Not because it is funny....it is not. Nor because it is a good movie....it is not. Neither is it a good vehicle for the talents of Eddie Murphy. What makes it great is that is represents a mild backlash against all things PC and that HAS to be good news.
In Britain, movie critic Johnathon-(Im so PC when I Wake in the morning I hear the windoze theme tune) Ross hated this movie with savage venom. He slammed it. That, in my book, makes the movie great. Anything that sets out to poke fun at the lefty, "everyone's a poor victim" mentality that sits on all of our heads nagging at our brains like a psychic and psychotic woodpecker, has got to be great.
When the British Channel four version of Big Brother recently had a woman on it that took the michael out of a Pakistani woman's accent, they received 44,000 complaints. Yet I watched "Training Day" today and listened as a Denzel Washington's Character called his white buddy a "nigger" over and over again and I am willing to bet, not one complaint was ever lodged. Racism is wrong! Period. But, on the other hand, enforced sensitivity and double standards are wrong also and that is another thing that makes "Norbit" worth watching. It taps into all of the fake taboos and exposes them for the nonsense they are and rubs our faces in them.
Johnathon Ross called the movie, "misogynist." Presumably because a huge, ugly black woman (Murphy in costume) was portrayed abusing a male. From where I was sitting, that would be misandry in display, not misogyny and therein lies the rub. PC brainwashes people to the point where they can no longer see the truth because their thinking has been messed with by the lefty "we hate everyone" brigade.
Watch it. You may not laugh but if you have any part of brain not fried yet in PC oil, you may also rethink a few things. If you find it "offensive" it is probably too late for you.
Stranger Than Fiction (2006)
Breathtakingly wonderful story well told.
It is rare that one sits down to watch a movie and stands up again when it is finished, to find that your own creativity has been stirred into life and something else, something deep inside of you has been touched by what you have just experienced. Unless you are dead, or have been brought up believing that "Rocky" movies, "Friday the 13th" and "Police Academy" represent the zenith of talent and wonderful story telling (in which case, you are all but dead)this movie will find that "something" deep inside of you.
A truly wonderful, compelling, and original story, beautifully told and wonderfully acted. Stranger than fiction is the antidote to all of the mindless pap pumped out by the slasher and stupid, pointless, fake "comedy" machine of Hollywood. Somewhere within that monster in Beverly Hills people who are smart enough to recognise a wonderful story still exist. That fact should brighten all our days. 10 out of 10.
Troy (2004)
Hissy Fits In Troy
I have just been watching the movie Troy.
Unable to control fits of uncontrollable laughter as the two main protagonists in the movie Hector and Achilles fought with girly boy fury in a swirl of long locks and within a cloud of Por Homme. The whole thing was a sorts of "poofs4justice" movie that at times resembled a gay pride march. It must be a sign of the times. The speeches before battles were some of the finest comedy moments I have ever seen. At times resembling an army being "inspired into battle" by dialogue that could have been written and delivered by Benny Hill. Never have I seen such terrible miscasting. The sort of acting that is fine in TV crap like Hercules but has no place on the big screen in something purporting to be an action movie. The money must have been good to attract so many big names but they did themselves no justice by allying themselves to this rubbish.
I have heard a rumour that Johnathon Ross and his troop of "Four Poofs And A Piano" are going to headline the cast in Troy Two (The Eyeliner Years) coming to a cinema soon.
There is little doubt that this disaster of a movie should be confined to the dustbin of B movies along with "Carry On Camping."
To quote the girly boy "Prince of Troy" when faced with the Trojan Horse in a scene from the film, "I think we should burn it."
George Rolph