In 2009 a cure for cancer was fond. Three years later that cure has all but wiped out humanity. While many of the people who survived became zombies, there are some people who are immune to the virus. Dr. Robert Neville is one of the few that are immune and he's spent the last three years trying to find a cure.
Pros: The movie does a good job of showing one person's struggle to survive in a city where he fells like he's the only person alive. During the daytime Neville hunts for food with his German Shepard Sam, exercises, tries to contact other survivors, and conducts experiments on mice in his lab. At night he has to board up his house to keep the zombies out. The zombies don't appear until Robert goes searching for Sam after she chases a deer into a tunnel. The doctor manages to capture one of the zombies, and takes her back to his lab so that he can try to cure it.
There are a few comedic moments in which Robert talks to manikins. In one scene Robert finds the manikin he named Frank standing in front on a tunnel. At first he shouts at Frank, then he shoots him. The other moment occurs when Robert tries to talk to a female manikin in the video store, because he promised that he would.
One of the most suspenseful moments occurs when Robert gets caught in a trap set up by a zombie hunter. Robert manages to escape, but after he does he and Sam have to fight the zombie and his dogs. During the battle Robert's dog is bitten by the zombie dogs. He tries to cure her, but he fails.
Cons: I Am Legend would be better if it had more moments of suspense, but those moments don't occur very often. Most of time I waited for something exciting to happen, but nothing does. Watching this movie is like playing a video game. You want to skip the long boring cut scenes to get to action, but you can't. You have to watch them before you can start playing again.
Another problem is the ending. When Robert meets Anna, another survivor she tells him that there's a colony of survivors in Vermont. I'm not sure that's the way the book the movie's based on ends, because I haven't read it.
I also have an issue with the flashbacks that occur at random points during the movie. They show what happened the night Robert's wife and daughter left New York City in a helicopter. Those scenes should have appeared during the beginning of the movie.
Final Verdict: While I Am Legend isn't one of Will Smith's best movies, it isn't one of his worst. He's the best actor in this movie, but he can only carry it so far. Like the Tom Hanks movie Castaway, I Am Legend has a good beginning, but the lack of suspense, and conclusion are a disappointment.
Scores (Out of 10):
Story: 6.0
Acting: 7.0
Direction:7.0
Visuals: 6.0
Final Score (Out of 10): 6.5
How the rating system works:
9-10.0=A
7-8.9= B
5-6.9= C
3-4.9= D
0-2.9= F
This year so far
Scores out of 10
Ghost Rider 4
300 8
TMNT 7
Fracture 5
28 Weeks Later 4
Shrek the Third 7
Ocean's Thirteen 8
Live Free or Die Hard 8
Transformers 8
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 8
The Simpsons Movie 9
The Bourne Ultimatum 9
American Gangster 9
Hitman 3
The Golden Compass 6.8
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Friday, December 21, 2007
The Golden Compass
The Golden Compass is the first book in Philip Pullman's trilogy "His Dark Materials".
Over a decade after its first publication its finally made into a movie. The Golden Compass has a great cast, and it does a good job of following the source material, but it also has has a few flaws.
Pros: The best thing about The Golden Compass is its cast, because the actors fit their characters perfectly. For example, Nicole Kidman does a fantastic job of portraying the wicked Mrs. Coulter. Ian McKellen provides the perfect voice for the armored bear Iorek Byrnison. The role of air ship pilot Lee Scoresby is played persuasively by Sam Elliot.
I could go on, but I feel that it's time to mention the movie's other strength: the plot twists.
One of the biggest plot twists occurs when Mrs. Coulter tells Lyra that her uncle Lord Asriel is really her father, and that she is her mother. Its hard to believe that Asriel and Mrs. Coulter were married. The other twist occurs when Lyra finds out that her mother is the leader of a organization called the Gobblers. The Gobblers job is to assist the Magisterium in its attempt to separate children from their daemons before they can learn about dust.
The dust mentioned in the book is not the type that you find in your house, its cosmic dust. Lord Aserial believes that this dust can open portals to other worlds, but he needs to go north in order to do more research. Lyra wants to go north as well, so she decides to travel with Mrs. Coulter in her zeppelin. Its at that point when the special effects start to get in the way of the plot and characters.
Cons: The heavy use of special effects is one of the movies major flaws. They draw the viewer's attention from the most important aspects of any movie, which are the plot and characters. While the characters are one of the movie's strong points, the plot sadly is not.
The movie rushes from one place to the next so fast that its hard to keep up. As a result the plot becomes disjointed, and the characters don't become a developed as they should be.
Final Verdict: The Golden Compass isn't a bad movie, but it could have been better. Hopefully the next movie will be longer and won't rely as much on special effects.
Despite all the twists and turns in the beginning the plot of The Golden Compass becomes predicable towards the end. Which is sad considering how well the movie stuck to the events in the book.
Scores (Out of ten):
Story: 6.0
Acting: 8.0
Direction: 7.0
Visuals: 6.0
Final Score (Out of 10): 6.8
How the rating system works:
9-10.0=A
7-8.9= B
5-6.9= C
3-4.9= D
0-2.9= F
This year so far
Scores out of 10
Ghost Rider 4
300 8
TMNT 7
Fracture 5
28 Weeks Later 4
Shrek the Third 7
Ocean's Thirteen 8
Live Free or Die Hard 8
Transformers 8
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 8
The Simpsons Movie 9
The Bourne Ultimatum 9
American Gangster 9
Hitman 3
Over a decade after its first publication its finally made into a movie. The Golden Compass has a great cast, and it does a good job of following the source material, but it also has has a few flaws.
Pros: The best thing about The Golden Compass is its cast, because the actors fit their characters perfectly. For example, Nicole Kidman does a fantastic job of portraying the wicked Mrs. Coulter. Ian McKellen provides the perfect voice for the armored bear Iorek Byrnison. The role of air ship pilot Lee Scoresby is played persuasively by Sam Elliot.
I could go on, but I feel that it's time to mention the movie's other strength: the plot twists.
One of the biggest plot twists occurs when Mrs. Coulter tells Lyra that her uncle Lord Asriel is really her father, and that she is her mother. Its hard to believe that Asriel and Mrs. Coulter were married. The other twist occurs when Lyra finds out that her mother is the leader of a organization called the Gobblers. The Gobblers job is to assist the Magisterium in its attempt to separate children from their daemons before they can learn about dust.
The dust mentioned in the book is not the type that you find in your house, its cosmic dust. Lord Aserial believes that this dust can open portals to other worlds, but he needs to go north in order to do more research. Lyra wants to go north as well, so she decides to travel with Mrs. Coulter in her zeppelin. Its at that point when the special effects start to get in the way of the plot and characters.
Cons: The heavy use of special effects is one of the movies major flaws. They draw the viewer's attention from the most important aspects of any movie, which are the plot and characters. While the characters are one of the movie's strong points, the plot sadly is not.
The movie rushes from one place to the next so fast that its hard to keep up. As a result the plot becomes disjointed, and the characters don't become a developed as they should be.
Final Verdict: The Golden Compass isn't a bad movie, but it could have been better. Hopefully the next movie will be longer and won't rely as much on special effects.
Despite all the twists and turns in the beginning the plot of The Golden Compass becomes predicable towards the end. Which is sad considering how well the movie stuck to the events in the book.
Scores (Out of ten):
Story: 6.0
Acting: 8.0
Direction: 7.0
Visuals: 6.0
Final Score (Out of 10): 6.8
How the rating system works:
9-10.0=A
7-8.9= B
5-6.9= C
3-4.9= D
0-2.9= F
This year so far
Scores out of 10
Ghost Rider 4
300 8
TMNT 7
Fracture 5
28 Weeks Later 4
Shrek the Third 7
Ocean's Thirteen 8
Live Free or Die Hard 8
Transformers 8
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 8
The Simpsons Movie 9
The Bourne Ultimatum 9
American Gangster 9
Hitman 3
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Hitman
There have been a lot of movies based on video games lately. Some are good, some are bad. Hitman is falls firmly into the latter category.
Pros: I like the fact that the movie Hitman doesn't rely heavily on special effects. It also doesn't have a lot of blood and gore.
The best part is the fight scene in the subway between Agent 47 and the assassins the Organization sent to kill him. It reminded me of the subway fight scene from the first Matrix film where Neo fights Agent Smith.
Cons: The plot is really hard to understand due to it's inconsistent pacing. In the beginning it's fast and confusing, because there's no explanation as to why the Organization sent assassins to kill Agent 47, or
why 47 has a barcode on the back of his head, or how he got the cross he carries in his briefcase. As the flick progresses the plot becomes slow and predictable. Which is sad, because after I saw the trailers I thought the movie would be awesome. You really can't believe everything you see on TV.
One thing that puzzles me the most about the movie is the casting. I thought that Agent 47 would be played by Vin Diesel or The Rock. Instead he's portrayed by Timothy Olyphant, an actor very few people have heard of. The same can be said for the rest of the cast. The actors barely show any emotion and look like androids.
Final Verdict: After seeing awful movies based on the Doom and Mario Bros. franchises, I was hoping that the Hitman movie would be better. Unfortunately, it's not.
While Hitman doesn't rely as heavily on special effects as the majority of action movies these days. Enough though the movie doesn't contain loads of blood and gore, it lacks the visual pizazz of The Matrix. It also has an unevenly paced plot, and questionable casting and directing. The ending leaves an opening for a sequel, but I don't intend to see it.
Scores (Out of 10):
Story: 3
Acting: 3
Direction: 3
Visuals: 3
Final Score : 3
How the rating system works:
9-10.0=A
7-8.9= B
5-6.9= C
3-4.9= D
0-2.9= F
This year so far
Scores out of 10
Ghost Rider 4
300 8
TMNT 7
Fracture 5
28 Weeks Later 4
Shrek the Third 7
Ocean's Thirteen 8
Live Free or Die Hard 8
Transformers 8
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 8
The Simpsons Movie 9
The Bourne Ultimatum 9
American Gangster 9
Pros: I like the fact that the movie Hitman doesn't rely heavily on special effects. It also doesn't have a lot of blood and gore.
The best part is the fight scene in the subway between Agent 47 and the assassins the Organization sent to kill him. It reminded me of the subway fight scene from the first Matrix film where Neo fights Agent Smith.
Cons: The plot is really hard to understand due to it's inconsistent pacing. In the beginning it's fast and confusing, because there's no explanation as to why the Organization sent assassins to kill Agent 47, or
why 47 has a barcode on the back of his head, or how he got the cross he carries in his briefcase. As the flick progresses the plot becomes slow and predictable. Which is sad, because after I saw the trailers I thought the movie would be awesome. You really can't believe everything you see on TV.
One thing that puzzles me the most about the movie is the casting. I thought that Agent 47 would be played by Vin Diesel or The Rock. Instead he's portrayed by Timothy Olyphant, an actor very few people have heard of. The same can be said for the rest of the cast. The actors barely show any emotion and look like androids.
Final Verdict: After seeing awful movies based on the Doom and Mario Bros. franchises, I was hoping that the Hitman movie would be better. Unfortunately, it's not.
While Hitman doesn't rely as heavily on special effects as the majority of action movies these days. Enough though the movie doesn't contain loads of blood and gore, it lacks the visual pizazz of The Matrix. It also has an unevenly paced plot, and questionable casting and directing. The ending leaves an opening for a sequel, but I don't intend to see it.
Scores (Out of 10):
Story: 3
Acting: 3
Direction: 3
Visuals: 3
Final Score : 3
How the rating system works:
9-10.0=A
7-8.9= B
5-6.9= C
3-4.9= D
0-2.9= F
This year so far
Scores out of 10
Ghost Rider 4
300 8
TMNT 7
Fracture 5
28 Weeks Later 4
Shrek the Third 7
Ocean's Thirteen 8
Live Free or Die Hard 8
Transformers 8
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 8
The Simpsons Movie 9
The Bourne Ultimatum 9
American Gangster 9
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