Change Your Image
darkvalleyrecords
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
The Lost Tribe (2010)
Blatant rip off with an unnecessary sub-antagonist
First off, with the exception of a few goofs, this movie is actually made very well. Camera work is excellent, the settings are great, sound is original. And the acting is far better than the rest of the reviewers are giving credit for. There are movies with higher ratings with worse acting.
That being said, now I can inform you that the script is total crap. They obviously had no money left for a script writer. It is a blatant rip-off of Predator (as well as some other films).
-The creatures are tribal.
-They use the trees to get around.
-Shot of a python in a tree? Check!.
-One character startles another with deep whispered "Over Here!"
-When we are shown what creatures see, we hear heartbeats and the vision is a chroma warp black and white version of the Predator's vision.
-Instead of mud, grape juice smeared on you will keep from being seen by the creatures.
-The leader unmask himself for the final battle. (I was expecting her to say "You're one ugly mofo.")
-In the climax of the battle, she gets picked up by the neck and they gleam each other eye to eye.
This movie also steals ideas from "Lost" and "The Descent". The creatures faces were stolen from Brahm Stoker's Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola) and jump around like "Planet Of The Apes" .
On top of all this, the subtle motive for the human antagonist is a plot by the Christian agenda to cover up evolution. This is completely unnecessary and would have only worked 20 years ago before evolution was a proved fact. When you make a science fiction movie that includes future events as the catalyst, it's probably best to do your homework and make sure those events are still science "fiction".
Death at a Funeral (2010)
Reverse Racist Rip-off
I'm not going to get into how this movie is bad, just read the other reviews and you'll get everything I would be typing. But I am going to iterate something I only saw mentioned once in these reviews. I knew it was going to be a mixed cast the second I heard there was to be a remake. I said to my friends "What the frig!? Just you watch, because the cast of the original is all white, someone in Hollywood feels they have to remake the movie so it'll be PC and go all affirmative action." Boy was I wrong, they went with an all black cast. They even threw in a token white guy to just to load up an arsenal of mixed couple jokes. (As if him being stoned wasn't enough reason for a father's disapproval) And they didn't even try to "remake" the movie, they just handed the old script over to the new cast after having some urban script writers add in the stereotypical urban talk.
If someone remade Barbershop in 2005 with an all white cast and ruined all the jokes with redneck accents, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson would be holding a march in Washington.
Outlander (2008)
Groundbreaking Indi-film
When my friend brought this over and described it to me my first reaction was "What the hell!? Man, this is going to suck." But I'm a sport and usually will give indi-movies a chance. You never know when they will surprise you. Equalibrium is a good example of this. Shortly into the movie I knew this was turning out to be pretty good. By the end, I realized this film was a complete gem.
OK, so the CGI wasn't major budget for 2008, fire was made obviously by a mid-grade generator. It was still well within my acceptance level of good CGI and some of the background compositing was awesome. I know that the artist who worked on this put nothing less than love into what little they had for tools.
I call the story Groundbreaking in that NO ONE ever before has truly combined Sci-fi and Vikings, and pull it off so well. Yes, I could see a lot of Borrowed ideas such as Predator, Pathfinder, Alien and Beowulf but that only added to the fun, beauty and down right authentic, Pagan and Scientific styles that are blended. The story was in depth enough to keep you interested and well mixed with action. Ron Perlman once again demonstrates how great an actor he is. Like always, you do not see his prior roles (There's no Hellboy or Reinhardt here). Also the very HOT Sophia Myles made a great love interest to create a spiritual pull between the two heroes.
This is the best Straight-to-DVD movie I have seen in years.