Reviews by Prelude

Movies don't get any cooler than this. The storylines are riveting, the dialog is perfect, the violence is off the scale, and the the blend of real actors with black & white effects, a touch of color where needed, and comic book animated backgrounds is mesmirizing to watch and absolutely beautiful.

The story is actually 4 short stories, and they all very loosely interconnect. The first story is very short, starring Josh Hartnett, a ladies man who seduces and kills women. By itself, it just sets the tone of the movie, but it really seems way too short, until you see how it wraps up the very end of the movie. Next, you have the story of Hartingan who saves little girl Nancy, from a rapist, but get falsely imprisoned and does everything to protect her. When he gets out, the story takes a wicked turn as the rapist is still at large, horribly disfigured, and hell-bent on revenge against both Harting and Nancy, who is now 18 and working as a stripper.

There is also the story of Marv, played by Rourke. Marv is a brute beastly man, and his only love is a prostitute name Goldie. One morning, he wakes up and finds Goldie dead. Someone killed her and framed Marv, and the police are after him. Its one of the longest stories in the film. And there's also the story of an incident between a corrupt cop and prosititutes, which threatens to shatter the peace in the city and cause full out war.

On the DVD, you can view the stories seperately, but best way is to watch the film in its original way, with the movie progressing by jumping from one story line to another.

They should've just ended it with the Matrix. Sure, there was a lot of unaswered questions at the end of the first Matrix, but thats ok. that's what makes an awesome film. it leaves your IMAGINATION to fill in and try to finish the story, or you can just leave it be as a 'hope for future' now that Neo found his power. But to make two more films that try to explain what happens afterwards just make it all into a mess. Reloaded and Revolutions just distract the audience with absolutely useless new characters, ridiculous fighting sequences, idiotic one-liners like "Neo, I Believe!", and introduce two new plot holes everytime they try to explain a plot hole from the first Matrix.

To all the Matrix sequel fans, imagine these movies WTIHOUT the first one. By themselves, they would be in the bottom 100 at IMDB. The sequels have no structure, no smart dialog, overly complex plot, and dull characters. They are just hollywood cash cows to a film that never needed a sequel in the frist place.

It seems like the Wachowski brothers, after being pressured to turn the masterpiece 'The Matrix' into a trilogy, got a bunch of stoned dropouts to write up the script ideas for them. Wow, what a let down.

To sum it up, its just some stupid crap about Neo being superman flying around, fighting off a thousand mr. smiths in a pathetic obvious CG-whore-fest, jumping around on bikes and trucks, lots of explosions, some drivel about a 'keymaster', some drivel about the oracle, some drivel about love between neo and trinity, and some fighting in some weird nightclub. that's all i remember. plot? who needs that when making a sequel to a blockbuster film.

The only good thing about this movie is that it isn't Matrix Revolutions.

Final destination rip-off gorefest, where one character after another die, and each die in a gruesome way.

It had potentail until all the plot holes and ridiculous killings started occuring. Take the first killing, for example. These are all FBI trainees that are all supposed to be ultra-smart, yet they just bust into a room, and then they all watch like deer-in-headlights as they follow a domino that got trigger by door being open, and after a long drawn out domino-effect of contraptions, the end results is it triggers a nitro cylinder to shoot and bust into Christian Slater, killing him off. That's when i knew this movie was going to be 100% garbage. Come on, a room full of FBI geniuses, and not one of them looks ahead to see where domino ends, or tries to stop the domino effect? grrrrr. and then the rest of the killings just got even more idiotic.

After attempting to see this movie (I had to shut it off within half hour, to save my brain cells), I wondered wether Ford had to make this movie as a favor to someone, or payback for something, or maybe extortion. I cannot comprehend how else Harrison Ford could've chosen this role. I think he realized just how bad it is too, since he just walks around and reads off his line monotonely, with about as much enthusiam for acting this role as my teen brother has in doing yard work at my parent's cottage. I mean, Hartnett, I expect him to have such roles in these idiotic movies. He's a talentless hack that only gets roles because of his looks. But I did not expect Ford to willingly choose such a bad movie to be in.

Was it supposed to be a sarcastic comedy? If so, where was the sarcasm? Heck, where was the comedy? Was it supposed to make fun of Bush? If so, don't they watch Daily Show or Colbert Report, to know how to really make fun of Bush? (hint, show bush using his own words, that does the trick). And what the bloody hell was that suicide bomber arab kid contestant near the end? what the ??? was that for drama? was that for satire? Is this movie targetted at arab youth, trying to show them NOT to commit suicide via bombings? Aren't people tired of seeing that wretched Dennis Quaid in starring roles? He seems to be in everything these days, and still sucks as bad as he did back in the 80s. And Mandy Moore. For the love of god and the country, STOP ACTING. Please. I beg you. STOP!

Devito + Schwarzenegger in a comedy with outrageous unbelievable plot (TWINS) = pure gold

Devito + Schwarzenegger in a comedy with outrageous unbelievable plot (JUNIOR) = disaster

I don't know why. Maybe partly because it almost feels like a sequel to Twins, but obviously it wasnt. Or because the screenplay simply wasn't funny. or maybe devito and schwarzenegger tried too hard to recreate the magic formular that made Twins such a classic. Something is missing in this film.

I never finished this movie. I had to turn it off. Casting director just killed this movie from the get go. Mix in a much over-used Dakota Fanning, and then throw in De Niro as her dad, and it was too much for me to swallow. Probably one of the worst mis-cast movies I've come across in a long time.

Some movies expect us to have certain amount of Suspension of Disbelief as TrekBody points out in his review, but when a movie sucks you in with a decent cast, a potential for a decent thriller, and then throws so many plot holes at you that you start to feel your IQ drop the longer you watch the film, that ain't cool.

I could list a hundred 'Why didnt the guy just do this?' type of questions, but that would just force my brain to have to re-visit this film mentally, so I'd rather just leave it as a warning to anyone; please shut off your brain via drugs or alcohol before watching this film. It will be better for you in the long run.

We all know that Kevin Bacon is a has-been wash-up these days, but it suprised me to see Colin Firth join him in this mess of a film. Alison Lohman is typically painful to watch, but after a dull dry start, with the occasional explicit sex scenes (wife looked at me like I rented a porno), I'm glad I skipped to the end and found out what the whole 'murder mystery' plot line was, (and it has a sick GAY twist to it at the end) so I could just shut off the film and not waste 2hrs of my life on such crap.