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Eban and Charley (2000)
A portrait of a sexually sick country
To start with, the completely distorted definition of the word pedophilia. Pedophilia is not a legal term. It is not defined by what the age of consent laws are in a given country or state. Pedophilia is a medical term, and its meaning does not change according to laws. Quoting one of the most respected works in psychiatry, the Comprehensive Textbook Of Psychiatry, vol.1, by Harold I. Kaplan, MD, and Benjamin J. Sadock, MD: "Diagnostic criteria for pedophilia: Pedophilia involves preferential sexual activity with children, either in fantasy or actuality. Adult sexual activities or fantasies involving prepubertal children, the essential behavior in pedophilia, may be exclusively homosexual or heterosexual, or a mixture of both, and may occur within the family, among acquaintance groups, or between strangers." This is not the case in this film, as it isn't the case in most relationships incorrectly classified as pedophilia in sexually sick America. The British puritan heritage certainly plays a role here, but I've always wondered why and how the hysteria about intergenerational relationships got so bad in the USA. And that's the greatest achievement of this film. The characters are real and humane for a change. The director and the screenwriter just went and told a honest, true to life love story, one like hundreds of thousands that happen everyday, everywhere. It's a slap in the face of the hypocrite American society, a wake-up call.
Recommended readings: "Harmful To Minors - The Perils Of Protecting Children Against Sex", by Judith Levine (winner of the Book Of The Year award of the Los Angeles Times in 2000).
"Sexual Panic - America's New Era Of Witch-Hunting", by Jerry Steinbach.
"Adolescent Sexual Health in Europe and the US" - www.advocatesforyouth.org/publications/419
The Incredible Hulk (2008)
How much dumber can American script writers get?
I have to admit I've never been much of an Ang Lee fan, but this pathetic B-movie disaster just pales in comparison to Lee's film. To begin with, the plot (if it can be called that) is so shallow and full of holes that it's embarrassing to see respectable actors like Edward Norton and Tim Roth involved with this mess. An American military airplane heading towards Rio? Brazil is not Iraq. It would have been put down by the Brazilian Air Force in a minute. A vehicle with half a dozen armed guys in a Brazilian favela? The local drug bosses would have gladly used them as target practice. And the cream of the crop, a "for export" bottled juice factory INSIDE a favela? This will become the joke of the year in Brazil. As to the reviewer from Singapore who wrote "(...)the crowded streets and cluttered housing on the streets of Rio De Janeiro(...)" - for mercy's sake, get a clue and your geography right before writing this kind of nonsense. The scenes take place in a FAVELA, which are poor, isolated parts of the city, not the city itself.
There are far FEWER action sequences than on Lee's film, and what there is is so pointless, badly executed and less exciting that the average popcorn eater above 6 years of age will be bored to death. Any self respecting fan of the Hulk comic books will rate this abomination of a movie as low as possible. I gave Ang Lee's film 9 stars, and this one gets 2 only because the CGI work on the Hulk is very well done, otherwise it would have gotten 1 star (since IMDb doesn't allow a 0 star rating).
AVPR: Aliens vs Predator - Requiem (2007)
A lesson on how to destroy a franchise
Don't be fooled - this is THE pits. Actually, even calling this a movie is an overstatement. It's just a collection of (mostly boring) scenes with almost no connection between them. There's no real storyline, no reason for anything, basically some ships fall from space for no apparent reason (why can't they just land?) and a Predator creature starts stalking some of the alien creatures, taking out some humans in the process. Most basic concepts of the series are simply ignored, like the alien reproduction - originally a mother alien would lay eggs, and from these eggs baby aliens would come out and look for a host to develop themselves. Now it seems that any alien can just insert baby aliens inside anyone. Acting is as poor as can be, character development is null, and all that's left to watch are some reasonable creature models. But the lack of any kind of sense to anything makes it painfully hard to keep watching till the end - which is, of course, an atomic bomb dropped on the infested town and that's it.
War of the Worlds (2005)
Utterly pathetic
This is one of the most utterly pathetic movies I've ever seen. Apart from a few nice special effects, everything else is pure trash. There's no real plot, as the script jumps from one unrelated event after another; the characters poorly developed (if at all) and ridiculously superficial; the sound score is uninspired and derivative. Tom Cruise's character seems to spend most of his time yelling his daughter's name (Rachel), who in turn spends most of her time annoying viewers with her high-pitched hysterical screams. It all comes as a real shock since we've all grown accostumed to Steven Spielberg's usually top quality output. As a sci-fi fan, I'm used to seeing lots of Z-quality films, but this one doesn't even deserve a letter, or a star - I'm giving it one only because IMDb forces me too. Not even worth renting when it's released on video.
Long Time Dead (2002)
Best thing about it is that it's short!
I've always been a fan of horror movies and must have seen hundreds of them. Some are badly done, some done on a tight budget, but most have at least something to keep you interested. The only thing I kept doing during this one was checking how long it would be before it ended, because this is AS BAD AS IT GETS. Avoid it at all costs!
Signs (2002)
Boring and disappointing.
This must be on my list of the 10 all-time greatest movie disappointments. The potential of the story's concept was so great that it was just infuriating to see it spoiled by mediocre acting, cheap emotional drama and a script that must have been written by some kind of story generation computer program.
Resident Evil (2002)
Finally a great game-to-movie conversion!
Movies based on video games do tend to be disappointing, to say the least, so I was very pleasantly surprised that "Resident Evil" is so good. I wasn't expecting much from the film, but then it got my attention from the very first minutes and just kept the adrenaline level high all through the story. Nice special effects, good acting and atmospheric music all add to the tension from start to end. The locations do look more like those in the game "Half-Life" than "Resident Evil" the game, but that will just make things more interesting for "Half-Life" players too.