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captainamazo
Reviews
Tom yum goong (2005)
Plot? Screw you, man.
The main complaint that people seem to have against this film is the incoherent plot and poor continuity. Now, the 40+ minutes of footage cut for the English release may have contributed to this problem, but that's not the point. It's not the point because the PLOT isn't the point. The film critic in me is upset that, but the martial arts fan in me is considerably more muscular and can make him shut up.
Do you dig? The point of this movie is not to watch a movie. The point of watching this is to see Tony Jaa invent 5,000 new ways to break a guy's arm, and if you can't accept that, maybe you oughn't be watching this in the first place, hmm?
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
THIS is how we make a superhero movie.
Spider-Man 2, is without question, the best of Marvel's current crop of films. All of the others each had their own problems. X-Men lost the scope and personal feel that is Marvel's trademark. Hulk lost itself in plot extravagance. Fantastic Four suffered from poor casting. But where all others failed, Spider-Man 2 excels.
The effects, of course, are wonderful. In particular, Spider-Man and Dr. Octopus' train battle is beautifully executed. But the true strength of Spider-Man 2 is in its characters. They are not just the hollow archetypes of X-Men (a problem admittedly remedied in THAT film's sequel). Each has a personality that is understandable, tangible, and real. That has always been Spider-Man's appeal; he's Everyman as much as Spider-Man. And as such, he shares the pathos, frustration, and occasional joy of being a realistic hero.
HEY EVERYBODY GO SEE SPIDER-MAN HE SWINGS ON WEBS!!!
Fantastic Four (2005)
Not as good as the comic that inspired it.
An adaptation of Marvel's bickering first family, "Fantastic Four" has its moments, but fails to capture the magic of the comics. Part of the problem is the casting. Mr. Fantastic is bland, and the Invisible Girl, irritating. The film's Dr. Doom, the nemesis of the clan, is also VERY lackluster. Instead of a regal villain in a hulking suit of armor, we are treated to a petty megalomaniac in a trench coat. The saving grace? The Thing and the Human Torch, both of whom distill their comic analogues very well.
Bottom line: I am sure that if you are not familiar with the comic book version of the Fantastic Four, this movie was entertaining enough, but it is a step down from its printed page roots.
Miami Vice (2006)
Miami Vice is the worst film ever made by humans.
I am entirely serious about this title. I have never seen a movie that is so profoundly awful. To be frank, it's simply horribly made. First of all, Michael Mann apparently has become the first director to film a movie entirely in close-ups. And he also thinks that transitional shots are a waste in this day and age, as scenes jump back and forth with no explanation. Character development (even character DEFINITION) is totally absent. There are many other faults; The dialog is almost exclusively in police jargon, the sex scenes are awkward and confusing, and at one point, the female lead admonishes Crockett by saying, "Your ideas are too big for your skin". What does that even mean? TELL ME WHAT YOU MEAN, Miami VICE! I want an apology for this movie.
The Arctic Giant (1942)
The best Superman cartoon ever? Yes. Why would you ask that? What a stupid question, stupid.
This cartoon, as learned from the titled of this comment, is the best Superman cartoon ever ("Mechanical Monsters" being a close second). It is very refreshing to see my favorite superhero in a situation where his powers are actually useful -- without inventing any ridiculous, previously unmentioned powers (see "Superman: The Movie" and any episode of the "Superfriends" shows). Basically, a frozen tyrannosaurus rex is accidentally thawed (and obviously misidentified. Whoever labeled this either does not know what a t-rex is, or thinks a t-rex looks a lot like Godzilla), creating panic in Metropolis until Superman shows up and punches it in the neck.
Bottom line: A giant dinosaur getting beaten up by Superman + great animation = BEST SUPERMAN CARTOON EVER.
King Kong (1933)
A classic.
King Kong is the damnedest picture I have ever seen. Sure, in the long run, it's an insane story about gassing a giant monkey and then shooting him off a building, but the story itself has a timeless quality to it that make it stand the test of time. Since the birth of fiction, there have been stories involving monstrous beasts and the women who love them. And in 1933, Ernest Shoedsack and Merian C. Cooper got the idea for a movie based on that concept. With the help of the special effects pioneer Willis O'Brien, they brought to life one of my favorite movie of all time.
King Kong was a milestone in special effects; it included the use of revolutionary processes like stop-motion animation, rear projection, and matte shots. Of course, each of these processes had already been used in other films, with varying degrees of success, but King Kong was the first time that all of them had been used at the same time. There's one scene, in particular, that shows this unique synthesis: King Kong, the stop-motion model, is matted in in such a way that he's grabbing at a rear projected image of the character Jack Driscoll. The impact of such visuals on audiences back in 1933 is just unimaginable for me, because to them, what they were seeing was patently impossible. In today's world, anything you can imagine, odds are, someone with more money than you has already put it on the screen, but for the time, a giant ape interacting with real people must have been the cinematic equivalent of the president calling you to let you know he bought you a robot.
Why is King Kong still such a powerful film? Well, aside from the special effects, and the fact that it started a trend of fantasy picture that continues to this day, the movie is tragic, in a way. As Dino De Laurentiis said: "No one cry when Jaws die. When monkey die, everybody cry." And you know something? Despite seemingly doing his best to drag the film industry to its death through the 70's and 80's (including a ridiculous remake of Kong in 1976,) the man was right about one thing. When the monkey dies, everybody cry. Uh, cries. I didn't get it when I was kid, though. To me, he was just another monstrous invader that had to be stopped. But now, I can look back and see that he wasn't an invader. We were the invaders. Hell, we were the kidnappers and the killers, too. Not only did we take this animal away from his home, we took his woman away from him, and we killed him when he decided he wasn't going to take it anymore.
Of course, I don't want to give the wrong impression. Sure, I appreciate the movie for its cinematic significance, but there is another, just as valid reason: It's a movie about a giant monkey fighting dinosaurs! How cool is that? It's why I loved the movie as a kid, and one of the main reasons that I still love it today.