Day: March 26, 2010

All righty, time for another amazing review of a movie. I’m sure you are all familiar with H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. Well, this is the most recent video adaptation of it, at least that I’m aware of. Anyway, it starts out with Tom Cruise and two whiny kids hanging out with him (their separated dad.) So while that’s happening, there’s this weird storm, and something cool falls to Earth. It falls in multiple places, too. What could it be? Gold? Transformers? Health care? No! In fact, it’s a bunch of killer tripod robots, manned by aliens. (They are not from Mars, read the wiki.) They start laz0ring everybody, and woe and despair fills all. Mr. Cruise and bratty kids try to escape to Boston, but are defeated by an angry mob tearing their car apart. The bratty boy goes running off with the army to help die, and the bratty girl goes with Mr. Cruise to continue to Boston to get to mom. They encounter a few more surprises (which I won’t ruin for you), and then eventually reach the end, yay, happy ending. It actually followed the book somewhat well, I thought. I mean, it stayed within the general plot lines. But whatever.
The effects and camera work were fantastic (It’s Steven Spielberg here), and I thought that the fact that people got blasted into little bits of dust by a giant laz0r was AWESOME. (Also the part with Tom freaking out that he was covered in dust and that dust was people made me laugh). I give it a 4 out of 5, mainly because the bratty kids wouldn’t stop whining.

It is the Vietnam war, American citizens are creating an outcry for peace and the army/government refuses to yield. Meanwhile, our young men drafted from across the U.S. are dieing to guerrilla warfare, in battles that are almost meaningless to our country. This is a prelude to Full Metal Jacket, written by Stanley Kubrick.
As the movie begins Joker, Pyle, Animal Mother, Rafterman, etc… are all attempting to make it through the USMC boot camp. However, they are quickly taken to Vietnam to help support our troops out there. Fraught with danger, they are dropped down and entered in with the Tet Offensive, making their way through I.E.D.’s, snipers and guerrilla fighters.
Throughout this, instead of a sense of excitement and adrenaline packed fight scenes, you actually get a feeling of depression as you slowly see a platoon of men getting slowly decimated for a cause which none of them really understand. Then we see Gunnery Sergeant Hartman’s predictions come to life, as he trains and leads them throughout the movie he foresees Pyle as being one of the best marines to be. Pyle lives up to most expectations as he starts becoming in himself a deadly weapon of war. However Joker seems to be a slight let down as he is afraid to act when the time comes where he is needed.
Now we find ourselves entering the second section of this two-part film. Joker then takes the lead roll yet again, as we delve into his personality and reasons for joining the Marine Corps. He describes how he wanted to be a killer, but when he was tossed head over heals into the Tet Offensive, he finds it difficult to kill another live human being. In total he must decide if he is the killer he wanted to be.
Reverting back to the Marine Corps. Training we see Pyle and Joker as they progress from untrained, unskilled men into somewhat fighting machines. Pyle is shown as being a slightly obese and very simple minded man, screwing up throughout boot camp, Pyle is then assigned as his tutor. Although this does help for a short time, It all comes to a head when group discussions and help turn into abusive sessions, where Pyle is the target.
Overall this movie is a great piece of American film and all should watch it. If you “enjoyed” Platoon, this movie is another good watch for you. Personally I would give it a 4/5 and I must say I am impressed how much it did affect me since I watched it for the first time around five years ago.

The other night, I was with some friends and we decided to watch The Island. I hadn’t seen that movie in ages, and I forgot how much I loved it. Now that I’ve been watching movies with a critical eye, I knew that I might not like it as much.

Simply put, the movie has some amazing shots and effects, but the dialogue makes it suffer. If I can predict what the actors are going to say before they say it, something’s wrong there. I was able to do that multiple times. But there’s a lot of cool angles and breathtaking shots, so that makes up for some of it.

This isn’t going to affect my overall rating, but can I just say this: Scarlett Johansan has the voice of a MAN! You’d think that she was meant to be the male lead, not Ewan McGregor! We had so much fun just mocking her screams and whatnot.

I give The Island a 7 out of 10 for its cool effects, shots, and action sequences – the dialogue was almost painful to listen to.

Samstar