A couple quick movie reviews: may be fleshed out when I get the Webstation running again. Some of these have been compiled in a prior edition, but are re-added here for the sake of compilation.
WAR OF THE WORLDS: THE TOM CRUISE EDITION
I hate Tom Cruise. I don’t know why, but I hate the guy. He icks me somehow. I can’t deny that his latest movie, a remake of HG Wells’ famous novel, is a good popcorn flick. I thought the Martians were well done, although their heat rays kinda sucked. That’s just me though. I hate how everything got Americanized for the sake of Americanization, but it’s still a good flick in spite of it. Still, nothing beats the book.
STAR WRECK: IN THE PIRKINNING
If you need to satisfy your Trek craving, go get the DVDs. This is for the rest of us; a well-produced Finnish parody you can download for free. This is essentially a fanfilm that pits Star Trek ships against Babylon 5 ships, but the CGI effects and overall presentation is above and beyond all other fanfilms. Not to mention the movie’s funny as hell. Best of all, it’s free to download legally. I highly recommend this movie.
STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL
I’ve actually gotten my hands on this gem last year and got a chance to watch it in all its glory. In spite of all the negative reviews and claims that George Lucas wants to destroy every existing copy with a hammer, I found this to be a fun look back at a definitive recipe for disaster. About the only high point was the cartoon that introduced the world to Boba Fett, although that isn’t really saying much. It’s not a high quality piece of animation even for its time. I’d say go for it, but be prepared to get a whole lot of suck.
GODZILLA: FINAL WARS
Boldly declared as the final Godzilla movie for the next few years, Final Wars attempts to bring the series to an exhilarating end, only to come out as simply average.
While I had previous seen this flick in a raw format, I had the chance to rent the DVD of the movie. My thoughts on it now are pretty much the same as they were back then; a fairly decent, well-produced flick. But as a Godzilla movie, it’s lacking. Don’t get me wrong. The monsters are well done and just the visual of seeing the tuna-eating Godzilla from the US movie getting his due from the true King of Monsters is a delightful treat, but there isn’t enough of it. Instead, most of the fighting in this movie are done by the humans with all sorts of action choreography better suited on a Power Rangers show (my brother’s quote, not mine – though I’d have to agree). In any case, like I said, it’s a good movie, but just an average Godzilla movie.
DESTROY ALL MONSTERS
Speaking of Godzilla movies, here’s one from the early sixties. The DVD version I got was the definitive version of barebones; no special features, scene selection, or even a menu. On the other hand, it included a soundtrack, but that’s sort of repetitive (even if it was catchy for a while).
So yeah… the movie. Considering the time that this was made and considering that this is the only sixties ‘Zilla movie I’ve seen (thus having no point of comparison), I thought it was pretty cool to have monsters pretty much running amok all over the world. The plot is rather throwaway; aliens come and take over or something. This was a good movie for the time, although no doubt it got outclassed by later incarnations. Still, a good viewing even despite the bad dubbing.
But even a movie with bad dubbing has to be better than…
GOZILLA (U.S. VERSION – 1998)
The best Godzilla ’98-related quote (in my book) stemmed from a discussion with a friend while watching the movie. He felt ripped off because “Godzilla never appeared in the flick to kill the frickin’ lizard who stole his name.”
It shouldn’t have been like this, really. Godzilla was supposed to be true to its Japanese origins – anyone who had read that original script (or even IMDB’s fact list) can tell you that. Instead, Tri Star brought in the guys responsible for Independence Day and replaced the familiar King of Monsters with a giant lizard that eats tuna and named him Godzilla. Just so that they’d have their own little disaster flick. Well… it was a disaster flick. It was mind-boggling bad.
In all honesty, the movie isn’t as bad as everyone makes it out to be – it does have its brief moments in the sun. But other than that… it was just a disaster movie with a giant lizard.
So that’s it for the green lizard reviews. I’ll either post today or tomorrow with more goodies.
Oh… one last note.
According to some blurb on the Internet, “executives at Universal Pictures are mystified this weekend after box office returns showed the gross for the DOOM movie declined by roughly around 73%, from $15 million to a relatively puny $4 million.”
Now, I haven’t seen the movie. The movie doesn’t have enough appeal for me to go out and watch it. But this is only because I generally prefer to watch popcorn movies at home. But this is just sad. When the movie opened up, it was the number one movie. A week later, it drops to number seven, according to the-numbers.com. This sums up to a total over roughly $24 million. That sucks, but that’s partly what happens when you change the original plotline around. Yes, there’s demons in there, but they’re not FUCKING DEMONS FROM HELL! They’re… I don’t know. They’re idiots.
Good news, though: it’s fucking Universal, so they won’t be in any danger of bankruptcy. It’ll be another money-loser from the start and perhaps Doom might recoup its losses in DVD sales… it’s not all that all bad.
I mean… how hard is it to make a decent movie true to the source? I’ll address this in the future.
dtm666 