Hortense Vasucchi's movie reviews | home
Don't bother
Don't bother
Wing Commander One of my friends let me borrow this one. Wow! It's incredible that it can go on for as long as it did and still make no sense. There is no story, characters pop in and out of the movie and you don't know their motives or their placement in the movie. But that's okay, because after the first five minutes you start catching up on things to do around the house and come to your senses and turn it off. Don't even think about this one, you will lose IQ points watching it. If you wonder why the director and the writers took long bathroom breaks during the filming of Wing Commander, it was to write the next cool line for all the "hotties" in the movie. Where do these kids come from? Does Fox have a cloning process to loan out bad actors for movies?
Alien Resurrection The first movie was awesome! The second movie was a little cheesy. The third movie, I didn't understand. And with this one, you kind of wish the Aliens would have won at the end of the second movie. The only saving grace for this movie was the matte backgrounds and CGI graphics. The story , if you call it that, made absolutely no sense, they clone Sigourney Weaver and the Alien DNA is interlaced with her own DNA... uh-huh. Then around the middle of the movie, I was looking for loose change in the couch, and the movie took a bizarre twist. The writers took off and let the staff at High Times magazine write the rest of the movie. Somebody was chemically inebriated when they thought of this sequel. Shame on you Ridley Scott!
Escape From LA The first time I watched this, it was called Escape from New York and it was a really good movie. John Carpenter is one of my favorite directors. This time Kurt has a couple of years under the belt and the tough guy attitude he sports, is sad and pathetic. I am not really sure why they made a sequel, most of Carpenter's
work ends with lots of questions and leaves you hanging. Maybe Kurt has some compromising pictures of John, and needs a check. Captain Ron probably didn't pay the light bill. Who knows? Pass this by and go for the original, not the sequel.
The Thin Red Line Some people compare this movie to Saving Private Ryan , however this movie was released before S. P. R. and there are large differences between them. S. P. R. had a story. Thin Red Line had scores of people milling about not really doing anything. If you want to see Nick Nolte screaming at people till he is red in the face, watch 48 Hours . There were too many non-related scenes, that didn't flow smoothly, with the point of them taking Guadal Canal. I thought maybe Quentin Tarantino wrote this, but I was mistaken, his movies actually have some story ending in a bizarre manner. The formula of squeezing dozens of known actors into a movie and being senseless, only worked for Cannonball Run.
Mystery Men I thought this would be funny, because Ben Stiller stars alongside Hank Azaria(he does most of the character voices on the Simpsons.) The only "Mystery" is why I stayed awake for this movie. They seem to make up the lines as they go along and everyone acts confused. They also don't relate well to each other as they try to struggle through the script, if there was one. Paul "Pee Wee Herman" Reubens also had a small part, but I think he just heard the name and figured it was an adult movie and went to check it out. Poor Pee Wee! He didn't have a chance to escape, before they cast him and sealed his fate. This movie is just plain stupid.
The world is not enough My friends and I talked about this movie at great lengths, just the other night. We decided that: a) it had no story. b) the special effects were done by a ten-year old named Billy. c) The movie had some cute girls in it that should not have opened their mouths and ruined the scene, I like the old cheesy "Bond" movies, it's just the original writers and most of the creative ideas are gone. Now all they do is cram as many CGI created effects into the movie and they don't rely on any acting ability to carry their fair share. Rent the old Bond Movies.
Screwed This was the condition of the movie from the start. I used to watch the clock on Saturday night's to see 12 o'clock roll around. I would flip the channel to see Norm McDonald do the news on SNL, afterwards I would turn it back to avoid the rest of the show. I love his deadpan sense of humor and random style crudeness. But this movie dragged on and on, it seemed like forever. The movie was not well written. However, if one of your friends happens to rent it, check out Danny DeVito's part. This is the only part where I laughed out loud, he plays a whacked-out mortician. This is one of the funniest things I've seen him do on film.
Godzilla When they tell you on the trailer that these guys made Independence Day , watch out. This tactic usually means that the movie can't stand on it's own. Godzilla started out all right, but then it dragged on too long. Most of the film should have ended up on the cutting room floor. Near the end, they totally ripped off Jurassic Park's CGI Raptors. Godzilla had laid eggs and they were hatching out full size, the Raptors looked nearly identical. They also were trying to pass off that Godzilla was a "She", haven't we done enough to the Japanese? First we bombed them, then we make fun of them as tourists and finally, we try gender reassignment with their big lizard.
Congo This was a story about really intelligent monkeys, no, that was probably the script writers themselves. For a sack of peanuts, they would also write another "SPEED" movie. I tried watching this at the theater when it came out, it was quite possibly the dumbest thing I'd ever seen. First the story: There wasn't one or if there was a story, they concealed it cleverly in bad acting and terrible monkey suits. This was one of those lost treasures movies, but when they couldn't find the treasure, all you got was this stupid movie.
The patriot I remember this movie from the first time I saw it, when it was called Braveheart. If you are going to do something noble and fitting of a leader, stop doing period pieces and do action movies, at least they're believable.
Mission Impossible 2 I tried something the other day that almost killed me. I kept trying to convince myself that this wasn't another Tom Cruise "formula movie." Do you know how to make a good sequel? If you do, please contact the writers of this movie. The whole thing with him and the girl was nauseating and I feel sorry for her. He's what? 4' 11? I know they took her real legs off, so he could look in her eyes. What's a formula movie? Everything he has ever done, for the most part. Here you go: Get my butt kicked, lose face, have some girl believe in me, accomplish insurmountable goal, end up with girl and now I'm everyone's hero. Also you have to exploit all the good parts of the first film. Like the rip-off of the hanging from the ceiling bit. The added bonus this time is you know what's going to happen before it happens. How? The bad guy gives a play by play in the movie of what's happening next. Terrible.
Shame on you, Tom!