pruepp Reviews

Ravage (2019)

Bad writing and worse execution

[2/10 · 18 July 2022]

Revenge horror is great. Bad guys do bad things and get their just reward, the hero/heroine gets their vengeance. Sometimes things don't turn out well for the hero/heroine and that's cool too.

But this movie fails at every possible level.

We don't see what the bad guys do or who the bad guys really are, so when they're made to kick the bucket one after another, the emotional response is zero.

The heroine switches from being a heroic fightress to swinging girly punches from one scene to the next, from smart survivalist to blind/deaf/stupid victim and back.

Most of the movie shows the female lead running with no suspense. I appreciate the female form as much as the next guy, but it does not carry an entire movie. The camera man must have been very aroused though, his hands were shaking the whole time.

The heroine's boyfriend appears from the ceiling (literally) and disappears into the floor (literally) in an instant - emotional response from the viewer: Zero, because you go from "Who is that" to "Who was that?" in the blink of an eye.

No character building, no chemistry, almost no suspense or gore. Boring and frustrating, an utter waste of time.

Book of Blood (2009)

"But sad to say, I'm not moved. I don't feel anything."

[2/10 · 12 March 2012]

As the gentlemen towards the end of the movie says "You tell a good story, friend. But sad to say, I'm not moved. I don't feel anything." This movie does not do justice to Barker's writing in any way.

The downsides:

The acting is wooden - Facial expressions are practically non-existent, especially the leading lady appears to be in a constant daze. Body language does not match the action or the words. The main character overcompensates by acting as if he were part of an amateur ensemble told to really get into it. His pecker totally steals the scene.

The script-writing makes me cringe - Exchanges between the characters mostly consist of lined up one-liners with no natural flow or credibility. Saying things like "I don't want to lose you" and the excessive grieving after the break-up of a relationship that was not really one to start with is just not believable. And why does the lady suddenly go blonde at the end of the movie?

The pace is slow - I'm fine with slow movies, if the pace is required to establish relationships, motives and characters, but the acting and script allow for none of these to develop, so the results is..... BORING!

Special effects - The dragonflies scream CGI. Loudly.

Redeeming qualities:

Special effects - The writing on the young man's skin looks really nice when it first appears.

The pecker shot - Not really my thing, but it firmly establishes that this is not a Hollywood movie.

The sex scenes - Well..... they're good. They're the only time the actors actually show some emotion, albeit of the physical kind.

Conclusion: The sex scenes were the best thing about this movie - How bad must a horror flick be to elicit such a statement?

Grozovye vorota (2006)

Avoid the 2-hour version "War Fighter"

[2/10 · 21 September 2009]

Not having seen the full-length miniseries I can not comment on the merits of the original version, but the 2-hour version sold under the title "War Fighter" on DVD is really not worth the money you might spend on it... even if it's sold out of the bargain bin...

The biggest flaw is the random editing - e.g. people who are in one place one second, all of a sudden show up in a completely different place the next moment; many scenes are non-coherent, with a little side-storyline being set up, then abandoned immediately.

Assuming that the acting and FX do not miraculously improve in the miniseries version, the characters' motivations do not make a lot more sense (Why do the "bad guys" stand cheering in a line to be gunned down by machine gun fire at one point of the movie?) and the mysterious lone soldier (Shah) continues to do a poor people's Steven Seagal-impersonation (wooden acting and spouting pseudo-philosophical platitudes), I think I'll pass on the long version.

Elvis Has Left the Building (2004)

Very entertaining and several laughs

[9/10 · 10 March 2006]

Call me sick, but seeing bad Elvis impersonators get offed by the score is my idea of fun. How many times have they offended our eyes, ears and occasionally even our noses - It was high time that someone would pay them back! My wife and I laughed out loud in several instances and she kept rewinding the mailbox scene so many times that I thought she was trying to kill me as well, rolling on the floor and choking on my laughter as I was.

The whole movie was very entertaining and plain fun, the actors seemed to understand that this movie is not to be taken as a dead serious comedy either and overplayed their roles suitably. I loved the gay receptionist - Yes, clichéd, overplayed and absolutely unrealistic, but he was portraying the quintessential caricature of a gay receptionist with a lot of warmth and good natured humor. The other characters reactions to him were a sight to behold.

The only thing that could have improved this movie would have been another few dead Elvis impersonators offed one by one, not all at once. Oh well, one can always hope for a sequel?

Along Came Polly (2004)

I like comedies, really, I do, but this....

[3/10 · 13 June 2005]

.....is boring and trite.

We know what's going to happen the moment the diving-dude shows up, the moment Stiller lays eyes on Aniston, the moment his "wife" returns, etc, etc - WE KNOW. It's predictable. It's boring. It's not funny.

While I'm fully capable of appreciating juvenile humor of the lowest variety (eg hair gel in "Along comes Mary", any given scene in "American Pie") this whole subplot about irritable bowel syndrome is just not funny. It could have been funny, if Stiller had made use of the ferret instead of Grandmother's knitting in the toilet scene, but I assume the film makers were afraid of grossing out their viewers, so they opted to go for lame instead of funny.

Any scene Stiller's failed-actor-sidekick was in, was decidedly unfunny and rather tedious. I can see why this guy can portray a failed actor very convincingly.

The film has its funniest moments when the ferret runs into things. I actually doubled over laughing each time this happened. I guess I was really desperate to have something to laugh at by then....

3 out of 10. One point for every time the ferret ran into something. It's pure luck for the ferret that the producer's did not aim for a 10 out of 10.

Torque (2004)

If you love motorcycles - Don't watch this movie!

[1/10 · 14 February 2005]

This movie delivers a lot of goods that you'd expect: Gratuitous violence and scantily clad women - Ain't nuthin' wrong with that. Harebrained story - Gotta get from one action scene to the next. Clichés, clichés, clichés - OK, OK, I get it: The good guys ride streetbikes, the bad guys choppers. Miserable acting - Goes with the territory. Unbelievable characters - The FBI guys is completely over the top, which is exactly what some of us want to see in a movie like this. Predictable ending - One more reason to watch stupid action movies, The Bad Guy always gets it in the end.

As much as you'd expect these things, the movie still manages to overdo each one of them, going from "Ok, that was to be expected" to "Wow, even worse acting / more clichés / worse story / etc than Steven Seagal's (Insert name of any Seagal movie here)".

Unfortunately it only gets worse, as it also contains a lot of things that you don't expect: Bad CGI - Come on, guys, you can do better than that. Horribly stupid fight scenes on motorcycles - Doing a stoppie and smashing your rear wheels together? Hello? Are you fighting or performing a motorcycle ballett? Badly made fight scenes on motorcycles - The chicks are hitting and stabbing each other while going something like 734 mph and their motorcycles don't budge or swerve, they just don't move at all and keep perfect distance from each other. They look as if they're bolted to the ground, which is not surprising as they probably are. Action scenes that do not require suspense of disbelief, but suspense of all rational thought - We know that the good guy can perform a stoppie with one hand, fire his gun with the other and kill seven bad guys with one shot. We've seen it in MI:2, so we know it's possible. But - Jumping from one trainwagon to another without your front or rear wheel getting caught - Going from 100mph to zero and dropping in between two wagons - Racing through a train and opening doors that actually open TOWARDS you by ramming them with your front wheel - Racing through construction sites, taking out the wooden barriers with your unhelmeted head - For anyone who has ever ridden a motorcycle this is just beyond ridiculous. This kind of action gets boring because it loses all sense of suspense or surprise, it's just arbitrary. You would simply not be surprised if the good guy sprouted wings and started shooting death rays from his eyes.

But the one thing, the one single thing that really, really ticked me off completely: Good guy and good chick are talking/flirting on a children's playground, with the good guy drinking a Bud (Can you spell Product Placement?) - When he's done he throws the bottle over his shoulder and it smashes on the ground. On a children's playground. Let's give that caveman a big round of applause.

The movie should get a 1, but I rated it a 2 out of 10 because it has motorcycles in it. I know - I'm too sentimental for this world, sue me.