Cinemaniac Reviews

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Archive for the month “July, 2012”

30 Jul 2012
27 Comments

The Empire Strikes Back

A continuation of my Star Wars review from not too long ago. I guess I’ve made it clear that I love the series, and the original trilogy is one of my favorite trilogies ever made. I do also enjoy the prequel trilogy and its back story, despite the massive hate that has been established for it. There’s no doubt that not only is The Empire Strikes Back a magnificent follow-up to one of the greatest sci-fi movies ever made, it’s one of the greatest sequels in movie history. So please, read my review…or destroy you I will. (That was “Darth Yoda” speaking…)

Bottom Line: Not quite perfect, but still wondrous.

Directed by: Irvin Kershner
Starring: Alec Guinness, Anthony Daniels, Billy Dee Williams, Carrie Fisher, David Prowse, Frank Oz, Harrison Ford, Kenny Baker, Mark Hamill, Peter Mayhew

“The Force is with you, young Skywalker, but you are not a Jedi yet.” –David Prowse and the voice of James Earl Jones as Darth Vader

When George Lucas created STAR WARS just three years before, he wasn’t constructing a film but instead a universe. A sequel to further the story was inevitable and vital to the timeless tale’s legacy, and after being received well by both critics and audiences alike, a sequel was confirmed. If THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK were the primary entry in this three-part legend, it would not have stood out. After all, it was released in 1980–the year responsible for an overwhelming number of unforgettable classics. THE BLUES BROTHERS, AIRPLANE!, THE SHINING, ORDINARY PEOPLE, RAGING BULL, and many more. Considering this is one of the greatest sequels ever made, it stands out in its own unique respect.

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Posted in Action, Adventure, Epic, Fantasy, Science Fiction, [Film Reviews] and tagged
30 Jul 2012
16 Comments

Happy Birthday, Christopher Nolan!

Today is a special day.  It is the birthday of my blog (1), Hilary Swank (38), Arnold Schwarzenegger (65), and director Christopher Nolan (42).  Non-film fans who are reading this, you may not recognize the name, but there is no doubt that you will recognize quite a few of his films.  So let us honor some of this filmmaker’s works.  The use of three asterisks (***) denotes a film I still have to see, and I’ll try to link to my reviews whenever possible.

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Posted in [Birthday/R.I.P.]
30 Jul 2012
30 Comments

Happy Anniversary, Blog!

It was one year ago today that I decided to start reviewing movies.  I started on BlogSpot, with a review of Cowboys and Aliens.  All my reviews from BlogSpot, up to when I moved to WordPress on October 7th, have been archived here on my blog.  I was not even fourteen years old when I founded this blog, so I feel like I’ve finally done something fully productive with my time.  I’m sure every blogger should feel just as excited as I am when his or her blog celebrates its first anniversary.  So I will be celebrating by going over some notable things that have happened to me over this past year as a blogger and as a critic, by month:

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Posted in [Miscellaneous]
30 Jul 2012
13 Comments

The Seventh Seal

Bottom Line: Far from a masterpiece.

Directed by: Ingmar Bergman
Starring: Bengt Ekerot, Bertil Anderberg, Bibi Andersson, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Gunnel Lindblom, Inga Gill, Inga Landgre, Maud Hansson, Max von Sydow, Nils Poppe

Have you ever talked with someone who makes it clear he or she has a point to make, but instead rambles on and on endlessly and only once or twice makes a brief remark relevant to his or her point?  If there’s a film that represents that person, it’s THE SEVENTH SEAL.  The picture–often considered one of the all-time great films, as is filmmaker Bergman–opens with a title card and begins with about fifteen minutes devoted to an interesting story.  In Sweden, during the time of the Black Plague, a young man (Max von Sydow) plays games of chess with the figure “Death” (Bengt Ekerot) as he furthers into his questions about life, death, and God.  With that philosophical premise, one would hope for a moving, thought-provoking story.  Sadly, the story barely moves on; instead, it meanders while featuring silly, monotonously spoken characters, unintentional humor, and quizzical plot points.

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Posted in Drama, Fantasy, [Film Reviews] and tagged
30 Jul 2012
4 Comments

Desperately Seeking Susan

Bottom Line: Seeking this film is recommended, but not so desperately.

Directed by: Susan Seidelman
Starring: Aidan Quinn, Anna Levine, Laurie Metcalf, Madonna, Mark Blum, Peter Maloney, Robert Joy, Rosanna Arquette, Steven Wright, Will Patton

As is perhaps suggested in the title, the film does not center mainly on “Susan”. Roberta (Rosanna Arquette) is a bored housewife, fascinated with reading personal ads about Susan (Madonna), a woman living a life she could only dream of, and her boyfriend Tim. While traveling along the city, Roberta is struck unconscious, and when she wakes up, she is mistaken for Susan and in her state of amnesia, she goes with the idea of being her idol–until her husband goes looking for her, and the real Susan goes looking for her own belongings, which Roberta has acquired in order to pass for Susan.

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Posted in Comedy, Drama, [Film Reviews] and tagged
28 Jul 2012
5 Comments

Silent Movie

Special thanks goes out today to Ckckred for reminding me to revisit this film. I must have been about ten or eleven years old when I first saw Mel Brooks’s Silent Movie, right after finding his underrated Spaceballs to be a wild hoot.  Clearly, I remembered not much of it from that long ago, as I discovered when I gave it a second shot tonight.  I tried to laugh in silence to remain the purpose of the movie, but it was extremely difficult at times to do so.  So please…shut up and read my review!!!

Bottom Line: Very, very funny Mel Brooks comedy.

Directed by: Mel Brooks
Starring: Anne Bancroft, Bernadette Peters, Burt Reynolds, Dom DeLuise, James Caan, Liza Minnelli, Marcel Marceau, Marty Feldman, Mel Brooks, Paul Newman

It seems some of Mel Brooks’s most creative ideas turn out as either overlooked or underrated, both to ridiculous amounts.  He’s an utter genius, but when you have people that pay no mind to HIGH ANXIETY, his Alfred Hitchcock lampoon, or critics who find SPACEBALLS, his STAR WARS parody, far more stupid than funny, we’re left with ideas like YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN and BLAZING SADDLES that are equal parts successful and hilarious, but definitely more innovative than inventive.  Of all the pots of gold that have been overlooked, SILENT MOVIE is the czar, without a doubt.  I’m confident in saying that millions of people who enjoy slapstick humor and farcical ridicule have no clue what they are missing out on.

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Posted in Comedy, [Film Reviews] and tagged
28 Jul 2012
6 Comments

The Secret World of Arrietty

Bottom Line: The Secret World of Arrietty is actually one of Miyazaki’s less marvelous worlds.

Directed by: Hiromasa Yonebayashi
Starring (United States dub): Amy Poehler, Bridgit Mendler, Carol Burnett, Dale Sison, David Henrie, Frank Marshall, Gracie Poletti, Karey Kirkpatrick, Moises Arias, Peter Jason, Steve Alpert, Will Arnett

Preface: For all my followers from the U.K., you likely know this as simply Arrietty, just as anyone from Japan knows it as The Borrower Arrietty.

Hayao Miyazaki, who wrote, planned, and executive produced 2012′s THE SECRET WORLD OF ARRIETTY, has some potential to create a Japanimation that is a brilliant, dazzling classic.  He did this profoundly just a decade ago with SPIRITED AWAY.  The reason that film is such a memorable piece of art is because it is a high fantasy that puts us into the young female lead’s shoes and gives us an experience of equal parts exhilarating adventure and bewildering fear.  Although the picture is well done in terms of entertainment, and there is a decent amount of escapade as well as a sense of worry, especially near the end, it seems to handle the fantasy genre in a too much more upbeat, wholesome manner.  I don’t mean to cast any aspersions on G rated movies; you know that when the MPAA slaps a PG certificate on thoroughly harmless family movies such as UP and THE MUPPETS, this may just be one of the very last films to carry a G rating before it disappears.  The story seems to be plotted out quite uneventfully, to the point where I can’t see anyone over the age of nine finding it as altogether mesmerizing as SPIRITED AWAY.  Hence the title: it’s her secret world, not her awe-inspiring world.

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Posted in Adventure, Animation, Family, Fantasy, [Film Reviews] and tagged
28 Jul 2012
11 Comments

The Purple Rose of Cairo

Bottom Line: It’s a purple rose to the cinema.

Directed by: Woody Allen
Starring: Danny Aiello, Deborah Rush, Dianne Wiest, Edward Herrmann, Jeff Daniels, John Wood, Mia Farrow, Stephanie Farrow, Van Johnson, Zoe Caldwell

Writer-director Woody Allen’s mind is like a conveyor belt, quickly churning out mostly high-quality products right before our eyes.  There’s something odd about the gears that run his conveyor belt of a psyche, however, which is that they seem to be inverted.  We see this without a thread of blanketing in THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO, where Woody envisions films not as projections on the walls of cinemas, but rather worlds on those walls, where the characters often recognize and are annoyed by their duty to give the same contrived story three or four times a day.

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Posted in Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Romance, [Film Reviews] and tagged
27 Jul 2012
22 Comments

The Silence of the Lambs

Bottom Line: Quite possibly the greatest thriller ever made.

“A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.” –Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lecter, M.D.

Directed by: Jonathan Demme
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Brooke Smith, Frankie Faison, Jodie Foster, Lawrence A. Bonney, Masha Skorobogatov, Scott Glenn, Stuart Rudin, Ted Levine, Tracey Walter

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is a tastefully grim, unforgivably suspenseful thriller. Opening up, it is simply harmless, with absolutely nothing that would so much as foreshadow any particularly violent plot until at least fifteen minutes through. Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is a trainee for the FBI, who seems reluctant but ultimately willing to do her job. Starling is sent on a case that involves hunting down a serial killer nicknamed “Buffalo Bill” (Ted Levine), who flays his victims to sew skin suits for himself. Yet little information about him other than the vague newspaper articles. Carefully, Starling confides in Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), a brilliant psychiatrist and manipulative criminal who is imprisoned for cannibalism. Lecter has a connection with “Buffalo Bill”–one of his patients, murdered before the film’s story begins, was good friends with “Buffalo Bill”–and steadily hints Starling to where she needs to be.

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Posted in Crime, Horror, Thriller, [Film Reviews] and tagged
27 Jul 2012
2 Comments

Troll 2

Bottom Line: Truly classic B-movie.

“They’re eating her! And then they’re going to eat me! Oh my Goooooooood!” –Darren Ewing as Arnold

Directed by: Claudio “Drake Floyd” Fragasso
Starring: Connie McFarland, Darren Ewing, David McConnell, Deborah Reed, George Hardy, Jason Steadman, Jason Wright, Margo Prey, Michael Stephenson, Robert Ormsby

When it comes to movies that are conscious of how awful they are, I strongly believe in a very thin line that separates those that are so bad they’re good, and those that are just plain terrible. Whereas PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE is often considered the “King of the Z-Movie” for its ability to sufficiently entertain despite being terrible in every possible respect, CHILD’S PLAY and JAWS: THE REVENGE don’t go far enough over the top to achieve an adequate level of entertainment. That line–though very thin–is perfectly straddled by TROLL 2. It’s like watching a group of professionals (CHILD’S PLAY and JAWS: THE REVENGE) struggle over a barely fraying tightrope, and later on seeing a mere amateur (TROLL 2) flawlessly cross the distance between two buildings on a line of thread. I mean, I’m not saying the film is flawless. Quite frankly, it’s a ninety-five-minute flaw that takes liberty in creating its own apocalyptic clichés rather than relying on others to keep the story going. Sometimes when I watch terrible films, I tend to wonder how they are so meticulously entertaining, but not here. Plain and simple, it’s not the story that fluently progresses the film, but rather the rampant flaws that are so excessive, they could gather into a story of their own.

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Posted in Cult, Fantasy, Horror, [Film Reviews] and tagged

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