Not Recommended

I really found very little to like about this. Bad casting, a muddled screenplay and direction that leaves a lot to be desired. Jamie Foxx is not believable as the leader of the FBI team, Jennifer Garner looks concerned and cries a lot, and Jason Bateman doesn't do much of anything. Even the great Chris Cooper can't save this mess of a film. The violence is realistic for sure, but I felt like I was being hit over the head with it. The film comes on like it's trying to make some deep, meaningful statement on the current state of terrorism in the world, but I have no idea what that statement might be. In my opinion it's just a bad action movie, where our 'heroes' spend most of their time walking around looking confused. And then we get this sad, beautiful music playing over the closing scenes and end credits to try and make us believe we've seen something significant. Well we haven't. Not by a long shot.

Director Terry Gilliam does an introduction to the movie on DVD, and if you're like me and you haven't seen him for a while, be prepared for a shock. He's unkempt and unshaven, and looks like a homeless person who was just dragged in off the street. Either that or a character from one of his bizarre films! He definitely looks like someone you'd run away from if you were to encounter him on a dark street, but I digress. We're here to review Mr. Gilliam's most recent bizarre film, Tideland. It starts out interestingly enough, as we're introduced to the young girl Jeliza-Rose (Jodelle Ferland), her father Noah (Jeff Bridges), and her mother (Jennifer Tilly, I think). Tilly is listed in the credits as playing a character named Queen Gunhilda, and if that's the mother, she's completely unrecognizable. The family lives in squalor, and the father is a musician and heroin addict who has his daughter prepare his fixes for him. Nice. The mother is not a whole lot better, but she's out of the picture early on, so father and daughter decide to hit the road for Grandma's house, which is located in the middle of a prairie somewhere. They eventually arrive at Grandma's but the lady of the house is nowhere to be found, and the house is in a state of disrepair, to put it mildly. Not in the least bit discouraged by this turn of events, our intrepid travellers take up residence in the abandoned house, and continue as if they were normal. I don't want to give anything away, but Noah is eventually out of the picture as well, and the young girl is left to fend for herself. I don't know how she survives, since she's not seen eating anything until the very last scene, but I'm probably nitpicking. Anyway, from then on, there's really no plot to speak of, but we're treated to many whimsical conversations between Jeliza-Rose and her collection of doll heads, which she puts on her fingers and uses as puppets! Eventually she meets two more strange characters, Dell (Janet McTeer) and Dickens (Brendan Fletcher), who I believe are brother and sister, but don't quote me on that. I'd pretty much lost interest by this time. Of course, all the characters are strange in this film, which we've come to expect from Mr. Gilliam. But none of them are even remotely likable other than Jeliza-Rose, and her charm wears thin before very long. Young Dickens is mentally handicapped and has a large scar over most of his head from a brain operation, so you can just imagine the edifying conversations that he and Jeliza-Rose have. And they go on, and on, and on. Get the picture? And the scenes where they start kissing, and calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend will make you cringe. But don't worry, nothing happens. In fact, that statement can be applied to pretty much the entire film. Like all of Mr. Gilliam's work, it's visually stimulating, but that only holds your interest for so long without a good story to go along with it. And a good story is nowhere to be found in Tideland.

Whenever I see a movie like this, I immediately start questioning the motives (and intelligence) of everyone involved. Especially people like Nic Cage and Julianne Moore, who I know for a fact are fantastic actors who have done brilliant work in the past (Adaptation, Leaving Las Vegas, Far from Heaven, Magnolia). Jessica Biel is young, so I'll give her the benefit of the doubt, but she was 15 when she appeared in Ulee's Gold, and that's a great film, so maybe she should be held accountable as well. The plot, and I use the word loosely, goes something like this. Cage plays Cris Johnson, a man who has the power to see two minutes into his own future. The only time the 2 minute rule doesn't apply is when the event has to do with a woman he meets named Liz Cooper (Biel). This is so obviously a plot device that will be necessary later on that it's just laughable. But, to continue, there are a group of terrorists (or something) who have managed to get possession of a nuclear weapon (how original!), and are planning to obliterate the city of Los Angeles. Their motives are unclear, and how they managed to get the device we don't really know. I guess someone left it lying around, because they don't look like they could do much of anything without adult supervision, which they're lacking since they don't seem to have a leader. Now, apparently both the terrorists and the Feds, led by Agent Ferris (Moore) know about Mr. Johnson and his power (who knows how?), and they're each trying to track him down. The terrorists want to kill him so he can't reveal where the bomb is hidden, and the Feds want to save him for the exact opposite reason. I swear you can actually hear the plot creaking as it lumbers along. Our hero and heroine get into many tight spots, so the director can crank up the mindless chase and action scenes involving snipers, helicopters, and an avalanche of giant logs (I'm not kidding). There's even a sequence where, out of nowhere, Johnson becomes the reincarnation of Kwai Chang Caine, and physically defeats 4 armed attackers! And there are so many instances where you think you see things happening that are actually not happening, you'll want to scream and throw large heavy objects at the screen. I think this movie may actually be directed by Michael Bay, masquerading as Lee Tamahori. But enough about the so-called plot, I don't want to spoil it for you. Let me just say this - when it comes to the scene where it appears that the nuclear device has been detonated, and the city destroyed, I was actually hoping it was true and that Hollywood was at the epicenter of the explosion, so I would never again have to sit through something as idiotic as Next. One final note: if the thing on Cage's head throughout the movie is his hair, someone should be sued for allowing him to look like this, and if it's a bad wig, as I suspect, I hope to God it was burned immediately after the film was completed because I never want to see that frightening thing again!

I loved the book 'Point of Impact' that this is based on, so I was quite prepared to love 'Shooter' as well. But unfortunately, that was not the case. First of all, why they changed the name is a mystery to me. In my opinion 'Point of Impact' is a much better title than 'Shooter'. But that's not really important, I suppose. It just bugs me, is all. Secondly, having read the book, i guess i had a visualization in my head of what Bob Lee Swagger looked like, and Marky Mark ain't it. It's not his fault, but that's just the way it is. The movie itself is really just your garden variety, run-of-the-mill thriller, with nothing to distinguish it from millions of others of its ilk. Right from the beginning, when Bob Lee agrees to take the mission offered by Colonel Johnson (Danny Glover) when he has no logical reason to do so, I knew that trying times lay ahead. It just never grabbed my interest, and if a thriller doesn't do that, then what is its raison d'etre? I admit I nodded off during certain key parts of the movie, but that in itself is an indictment against it. I didn't catch how Swagger got together with Sarah (Kate Mara), or how he and FBI Agent Nick Memphis (Michael Pena) ended up on the same side, but I saw enough to know that none of that matters. If you want to meet the real Bob Lee Swagger, read the book by Stephen Hunter. You won't find him in this movie.

Everything seems to have been done right for this movie to be a huge success. Thomas Harris wrote the screenplay, based on his novel. It's directed by Peter Webber, who did a beautiful job on 'Girl With a Pearl Earring'. And the cinematography by Ben Davis, who recently did Layer Cake, is just incredible. But it all adds up to a whole lot of NOTHING! There just seems to be something missing. I didn't read the novel, but since Harris adapted his own work, I'm sure it sticks very close to the source material. The revenge-driven plot is a tried and true one. See any western from the '50s for evidence of this. The cast is fine, especially Gong Li as a friend of Hannibal's parents that he goes to live with in France. Gaspard Ulliel does a decent job as Hannibal, but he's not Anthony Hopkins and he never will be. He certainly has the hair down pat, though. But, no matter how much he broods and goes on about what happened to his sister, I found myself not caring about his character. And if you don't care about the lead character, then the movie has failed. Gong Li's emotion-fuelled performance makes you care about her character, but it also makes you wonder why she cares about Hannibal.

This is a stinker from start to finish. Well, I shouldn't say 'from start to finish', because I was sound asleep before the credits rolled. There's not one original idea to be found in this so-called 'thriller', and I have no idea what Al Pacino was thinking when he signed on. Does he have financial problems? I can't imagine any other reason for him appearing in this piece of junk. And the idea that all the hot young women in this film would be interested in 67 year-old Al is just a bit ridiculous, dontcha think? I don't know what happens in the end, and I don't really care. But I'm hoping Pacino dies when his 88 minutes are up. He deserves that or worse for subjecting me to 90+ minutes of agonizing torture.

I was expecting a lot of things from this film, but I was not expecting to be bored, which is what I was. Where's the suspense? Where's the terror? It's certainly not to be found here. And other than veterans Geoffrey Lewis and William Forsythe, the acting is just plain bad. Sherri Moon Zombie has fun with the role of Baby Firefly, but husband Rob, who wrote and directed the film, comes up empty. This is just an exercise in overindulgence. If a flick like this leaves you bored, it kind of defeats the whole purpose, doesn't it?

The word that comes to mind when watching this is 'smug'. There's a smugness that permeates the whole film, starting with the plot, and trickling down through the whole cast, including Denzel Washington. And all the technological bullshit, and flashy direction by Tony Scott can't overcome the rampant smugness, or the fact that the movie has no soul. We're supposed to believe that there's some kind of satellite technology, or something, that can see into the past life of a girl who's been murdered, and the cops are actually able to watch the events leading up to her murder. I'm sorry, but my suspension of disbelief just doesn't stretch that far. But, I guess we're supposed to think it's really cool, and be just as impressed with it as everyone in the movie seems to be. Well, I didn't buy it, and when it comes to the scene where the cops are virtually drooling over the girl while she's in the shower, I said enough's enough. In my opinion, that scene is creepier and more disturbing than anything in a film like Grindhouse, because with Grindhouse, there's no pretension, but Deja Vu wants to be seen as a 'serious' film, instead of what it is, which is trash.

When I heard the song 'Natural's Not In It' by Gang of Four playing over the opening credits, I said to myself, "Self, this is not gonna be your typical costume drama!" Not only that, but it's directed by Sofia Coppola, who directed one of my favourite films of recent years, 'Lost in Translation', so I was doubly psyched. Well, that sucking sound you hear is the sound of all the life being sucked out of me as I tried again and again to make it through this snoozefest! It is so painfully SLOW! OK, so the Palace of Versailles was a decadent place, and all its occupants were bored out of their minds. That doesn't mean I have to be!

It boggles the mind how bad this is. And I don't mean bad as in good, I mean bad as in BAD. I can't think of one good thing to say about it, and it's perplexing that actors I admire like Jim Caviezel, Barry Pepper, Peter Stormare and Greg Kinnear read this script, and actually thought it was worth doing. It basically has them shouting at each other for the majority of the time they're on screen. I found it boring and virtually incomprehensible. A monumental waste of time and talent.

This movie can't decide whether it wants to be a thriller or a romantic comedy, so it tries to be both, and the result is disastrous. Robin Williams was so good in The Night Listener, but here he just mails in his performance and picks up his paycheck. Same goes for Christopher Walken, although it's a step up from his last movie. But when your last movie was Click, that's not saying much. Even the usually reliable Laura Linney (Kinsey, The Squid & the Whale) is left floundering. All in all, a huge waste of time for everyone involved, but at least the actors got paid. The viewer is left holding the bag. And it's empty.

This movie has an interesting premise - that the dumbing down of the human race continues to the point where intelligence is eventually bred out of the species altogether. When an average Joe who has been frozen wakes up 500 years later, he's the smartest person on the planet. The problem is that stupidity is only funny for so long and after that it becomes very boring, very fast. This is basically a one-joke movie, and although ther are some funny moments, even with a running time of 84 minutes, it just goes on too long. It's a funny skit stretched out to feature film length, and that stretches it way too thin.

My expectations were high for this, but I found it to be a disappointment. It's competent, of course. But when you have Christopher Nolan directing a cast that includes Jackman, Bale, Caine and Johansson, you expect something special, and this just doesn't deliver. For my money, The Illusionist is the better of the 2 'magic' films released last year.

OK, it's official. Josh Hartnett is the KOD (Kiss of Death) for any movie that he's in. If you don't believe me, check out Pearl Harbour, Wicker Park, The Black Dahlia, or this incomprehensible mess. The only reason 'Sin City' escaped the curse is that he's only in the first and last scenes. I think he either needs acting lessons, or help with career choices! Even Ben Kingsley & Morgan Freeman can't save this one, but because of them I was generous with my rating!

TOO MANY flying daggers, TOO MANY flying people, and it goes on way TOO LONG. There's no doubt it's beautiful to look at, but I got tired of seeing people on horseback riding through a forest of bamboo trees. By the end, I was wishing everyone would hurry up and die and be buried under an avalanche of fake snow.

Tries to be a Canadian country music version of This is Spinal Tap and fails miserably. Not for a minute is any of it believable, it's not funny, the so-called acting is awful and the music is not very good. Kind of makes you wonder how or why it ever got made. The people with actual talent, like Kris Kristofferson and Levon Helm, who tell us of their experiences with Guy Terrifico, look like they wish they were somewhere else. Why they would give their time and lend their names to this piece of rubbish is a mystery to me. Just horrible!

What a waste of time. I didn't like any of the characters or believe any of the relationships, so I really didn't get the point of this film. I found the relationship between the old lady, whoever she was, and the burglar who was trying to rob her apartment, particularly ludicrous. Now, David Wenham and Joseph Fiennes are fine actors, but they are just laughably bad in this. Maybe it's the script, or their hilarious American accents, but they are not believable for one second. Several times during the movie, I felt like giving them both a good, swift kick for subjecting me to this travesty. There are so many ridiculous scenes, like the one where the burglar attacks the refrigerator (I'm not kidding), or the one where the Macedonian village is under siege, and Luke sits calmly on the balcony watching, as people are dying all around him, it's just laughable. At one point in the movie, when Elijah (Fiennes) puts a gun to Luke's (Wenham's) head, I was praying for him to shoot and put us both out of our misery. I can't remember the last time I was so happy to see the words THE END.