Posted by miss d at cwilbur.commsrv.indiana.edu on July 08, 2003 at 16:47:16:
In Reply to: My movie reviews posted by Charlton Heston on July 08, 2003 at 16:44:05:
: I would like to preface this by saying that Pirates of the Caribean is an amazing movie, maybe the best I've seen all summer. Ok onto the reviews:
: T3
: Yes, Ah-nold is back as the Terminator. This third time around,
: Schwarzenegger is a bit more willing to make fun of his character, which
: has become an indisputable icon of our pop culture. The irony is aided by
: director Jonathan Mostow's breezy pacing, which plays up the laughs.
: In Terminator 2, John Connor and his freedom fighters were only able to
: push back Judgment Day, when all machines were programmed to take
: over the world. The androids, still fuming, send a mean fighting machine
: back to the year 2003 to kill young Connor (Nick Stahl) and anyone else
: destined to become valuable members of his future resistance group.
: The assassin is the T-X (Kristanna Loken), a leather-clad, liquid-metal
: construct who identifies victims by tasting their blood--she has her own
: internal DNA database. She is also, of course, nearly indestructible.
: Walking through fireballs and getting hit by tractor trailers is just a day at
: the office for her. Another model of the aging T-800 series of terminators
: (Schwarzenegger) is found by the resistance, reprogrammed, and sent back
: to protect Connor. This all proves more than a bit confusing for Ellen
: Brewster (Claire Danes), a young woman caught in the crossfire with some
: unknown future connection to Connor.
: All of the slam-bang sequences are creative and well-executed. One of
: them surely qualifies as an all-time great. When Terminator 3 isn't
: delivering edge-of-your-seat thrills, it falls back on self-effacing humor. The
: sight of a "Good Sam" sticker behind Schwarzenegger on a camper he
: commandeers is a hoot, as are his deadpan responses to the most dire situations. Danes' near-hysterical
: response to all the chaos she stumbles into adds to the comic relief.
: Though strong acting often isn't the focus of action films, all of the performances here are very good, with
: Schwarzenegger at his best when his character has a crisis of conscience and wrestles with conflicting
: commands. The glimmer of humanity he slips into this machine is poignant.
: 28 Days Later
: According to the producers, director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) wanted to "reinvent the zombie horror film."
: What he really does is suck the life right out of it (if there was any life left in it). This art film "twist" on a genre
: staple takes itself far too seriously, with more than its fair share of axes to grind about animal rights, the threat
: of manufactured biological contagions, and man's inhumanity to man.
: The end of the world is brought on by a raging virus that wipes out London, and presumably most of the world,
: after a group of militant animal right's activists free some infected chimps from a laboratory. Ingestion of one
: drop of infected blood will do the trick: Twenty seconds later, you're a flesh-eating zombie prone to projectile
: vomiting. Jim (Cillian Murphy) comes out of a coma 28 days after the chimp's release and finds an eerie and
: empty London, haunted by the undead and a few survivors. He runs into Selena (Naomie Harris), a tough-nosed
: young woman who plans to survive no matter the cost. They team up with Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and his
: daughter, Hannah (Megan Burns), who are heading to the country after hearing radio messages from a military
: outpost that promises shelter and a cure.
: The trip proves too long. The action sequences are muddled and poorly shot. While shooting on digital video
: does give the film an immediate, documentary-like feel, Boyle simply can't resist panning it back and forth,
: inducing whiplash among the audience. His editing at a machine gun's pace doesn't help. As a result, the zombie
: attacks are far more frustrating than horrifying.