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| EFC STATS |
| Movies Listed: |
17647 |
| Total Ratings: |
213146 |
| Total Reviews: |
21542 |
![[51909349 Hits]](/cgi-bin/gd.cgi?51909349)
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| BANGKOK DANGEROUS (2008) |
"Cage is still worth watching."
Rob Gonsalves says... ""Bangkok Dangerous" is as dark and blue as the inside of a gun. It’s a hit-man thriller of the Existential Crisis variety, in which an assassin (Nicolas Cage) is starting to feel sick of what he does so well." (more)
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| BANGKOK DANGEROUS (2008) |
"When Nicolas Cage is bored, all hope is lost"
brianorndorf says... "There was a time not long ago when a Nicolas Cage film would command swirling industry buzz, a spellbinding marketing push, and demand the most prestigious spot at the area multiplex to placate the stampeding masses. Today, Cage is relegated to movies that barely make a splash on the pop culture canvas, are released over one of the worst weekends to unload a feature film, and are held from the greasy grasp of movie critics out of sheer panic that word of dispiriting quality would be unleashed prematurely. This is not the Nicolas Cage I used to adore, and “Bangkok Dangerous” is not the type of dreck the once mighty prince of strange should be wasting his time with." (more)
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| MISTER FOE |
"Jamie Bell is watching you"
brianorndorf says... "Holden Caulfield syndrome is given poignant, unexpected psychosexual touches in David Mackenzie’s “Mister Foe” (“Hallam Foe” outside of America). An engrossing, provocative drama, the feature sniffs out just the right level of lurid behavior to keep the viewer in concert with the mounting domestic woes. It’s a feature of unpredicted, and quite thrilling, discomfort." (more)
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| ROCKNROLLA |
"You'll need a shower."
Eugene Novikov says... "It's ironic, in an unpleasant way, that Guy Ritchie keeps hammering on the theme of small-timers (gangsters, usually) trying to be bigger than they are. That -- minus, perhaps, the gangster part -- is Guy Ritchie in a nutshell. With ROCKNROLLA, his incoherent, inhuman follow-up to the Kabballah-influenced "Revolver," he continues to twist and writhe, attempting to replicate the success of his violent and ultra-hip freshman and sophomore efforts. The new film is all posturing and artifice -- not cool or funny, though sometimes scary in its nihilism and flippancy. As I said in my "Revolver" review, I never much liked Ritchie anyway. But surely now he's sunk low enough that even admirers of his early films will turn tail." (more)
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| SONIC YOUTH: SLEEPING NIGHTS AWAKE |
"The sleeping part is right."
Lybarger says... "Viewed for CineVegas: The story behind new concert documentary 'Sonic Youth: Sleeping Nights Awake' is sadly more interesting than the film itself. The film was shot and recorded by a crew of seven teens at a 2006 Sonic Youth show in Reno, Nev. The septet called Project Moonshine caught the veteran noise rock band on a good night, but the film might have been more enjoyable if they’d simply filmed the show." (more)
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| BABYLON A.D. |
"Will leave you stupified at its abject awfulness. Seriously."
Mel Valentin says... "The word “execrable” doesn’t begin to describe…wait, that phrase’s been already, so let’s try this again. The word “abysmal” doesn’t begin…stop, that’s sounding familiar too. Let’s move on then. Vin Diesel’s latest film (as star not director, of course), "Babylon A.D.," a science-fiction actioner set in a familiar post-apocalyptic future, is an incoherent, muddled mess not worth the price of admission. 20th-Century Fox made the right call not to screen "Babylon A.D." in advance for the press. How could they when director Mathieu Kassovitz ("Gothika," "The Crimson Rivers," "La Haine"), angrily disowned the theatrical cut as profoundly compromised by studio interference. Studio interference aside, "Babylon A.D." really deserves every negative adjective used in describing its many failings." (more)
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| BABYLON A.D. |
"Pretty Riddick-ulous"
Peter Sobczynski says... "Arriving in town with some of the worst advance buzz in recent memory--reports of a troubled production were recently exacerbated when director Mathieu Kassovitz publicly disowned the film and blamed all of its failings on the heavy hand of distributor 20th Century Fox--and without any advance screenings on Labor Day weekend, a time when the studios traditionally dump their weakest and most misguided projects (you think it is just a coincidence that “Disaster Movie” is opening this weekend?) in the hopes of squeezing a couple of bucks out of them before turning their sights towards the upcoming Oscar derby, the new sci-fi epic “Babylon A.D.” is a film that is practically reeking with the unsavory perfume of unmitigated failure. And yet, as I sat there watching the first hour or so of the film before a fairly sparse Saturday night gathering people who seemed to have come out of some vague sense of obligation than out of any real interest, I was somewhat taken aback by the fact that it didn’t seem to be nearly as bad as I was expecting it to be. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t exactly great by any means but it was nowhere near the unmitigated disaster that seemed to be in the offing. After all, it had a relatively nifty look and a reasonably interesting cast and everyone once in a while, a neat image or idea would momentarily float onto the screen and offer additional tantalizing details into the film’s future world-gone-wrong. While I probably wouldn’t have gone so far as to actually recommending it to anyone at this point, maybe two-thirds of the way in, I might have at least deemed it to be an interesting failure and wondered why this movie, of all things, would be deemed such a disaster when there were so many other films currently in release deserving of such anti-accolades. Alas, it was just at this point when the film’s final third, for lack of a better term, lurched into gear and whatever minor enthusiasm I was able to work up quickly flew out the window thanks to one of the most ill-conceived and sloppily executed denouements to come along in a while, a stretch of moviemaking so lacking in coherence and competence that Ed Wood himself would have been embarrassed to have had his good name attached to the results." (more)
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| BABYLON A.D. |
"Okay, what did I just watch, and who thought it was ready to release?"
Rob Gonsalves says... "There’s not much I can do about "Babylon A.D." except to advise you not to see it until there’s an uncut DVD, if even then." (more)
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DVD REVIEWS FOR 9/5: THE DARK ENDS OF THE STREET
by Peter Sobczynski |
| "This week’s collection of DVD releases includes a slew of TV shows (both new and old), a trio of film noir classic, some soft-core sleaze and a couple of smaller titles that you probably missed during their brief theatrical excursions. However, if you have the time and inclination, you should try to watch at least one of the “Smokey and the Bandit” films (either the unfathomably complex original or the brilliantly surreal “Part 3”) this weekend as a way of paying tribute to the late, great Jerry Reed." (more) |
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DVD REVIEW: HECKLER
by Brian Orndorf |
| "In all my years of critiquing movies, I’ve never come across a more hot potato title than “Heckler.” Ostensibly a documentary regarding the bruised feelings of entertainment folk who suffer verbal excrement flung from the great unwashed masses, “Heckler” instead reveals itself to be an attack piece on critics and their general befuddling uselessness." (more) |
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'SO YOU'RE THE ALCOHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL BUDDY SHIT FOR BRAINS.'
- Paul, Beautiful Girls
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