Change Your Image
FargoFan
Reviews
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Get over it. Kubrick wasn't that good a director
Just because someone was a perfectionist doesn't mean that his movies are good. Kubrick always found some way to make his movies extra stupid near the end. And so, continuing the tradition, Steven Speilberg does the same. A.I. was Best Picture material until the last 25 minutes. Then, in true Kubrickian style, he manages to absolutely destroy his film by turning it from a dark, scary pic into an infinitely stupid fairy tale piece of crap. Don't get me wrong, the movie is still a B, but it could have been so much more.
Pearl Harbor (2001)
hhhmmmmm
A 135 million dollar beast. Three hours long, but you'll feel as
though you've been sitting in the theater for 12 hours. Nothing happens
for 1 and a half hours. Battle scenes good. Love story atrocious.
Could have had a more consistant story, by tying in minor characters
such as Cuba Gooding Jr. into story. Instead, the writer chooses to
make the story less believable. Worth seeing for battle scenes.
Gladiator (2000)
How can you compare this to Traffic?
As for the Oscars, and the whole debate on which is the better movie...
Okay... Traffic was hardly even a movie. It was a mistake from the
start. Gladiator was well-orchestrated. Steven Soderbergh botched a
roll of film, which cost the studio a ton of money and days of reshoots.
Traffic: 1 acting nom. (Supporting) Gladiator: 2 Acting Noms. (Lead, Supporting)
Q:Where's Michael Douglas' nomination? A:Maybe someone actually recognized the fact that he wasn't even
acting...
He's a great actor, but that doesn't mean that any film he's in a is
good.
Gladiator was far superior, even if it is the "weakest" film to win Best
Picture in a whil
The Pledge (2001)
Absolute Torture
I guarantee that if you showed this movie on an airplane, people would
be leaping for the exit, only this time with grave results. Sean Penn
takes what could have been one of Jack Nicholson's best performances and
screws it up with the worst ending to a movie... EVER. It is beyond
bad. It is bad AND stupid. It is bad AND Stupid AND, it drags on for
about two minutes. You sit the in the theater for two hours getting
wrapped in a brilliant crime story, then, the movie takes a turn for the
worse-> It completely derails. This movie is absolute dysphoria. When
it comes out on video, put it in the masochism section, because that's
all it's good for:
Snatch (2000)
Works on every level... except one.
Here's to my first review that's not negative! This movie was
surprisingly rock solid... except for one thing that came as an absolute
shocker; IT RAN LONG! I expected this movie to be 1 1/2 hours long, not
close to 2. Other than having a drawn out ending, it was thoroughly
enjoyable. It's one of the only movies where LOADS of swearing are in
context and expected. The plot steals a bit from Pulp Fiction, but
that's okay. This movie is just a good time. I found myself smiling
when I walked out for the first time in about a
Cast Away (2000)
Put a gun against my head. Pull the trigger, now I'm dead...
Here's a suggestion for Bob Zemekis: END YOUR MOVIE. Two and a half
hours and all I get is some idiot looking at a road! Man, he should have
gone back to that house with that hot chick! Okay, something else. Tom
Hanks' Jeep Cherokee is a 98, or later, edition car. He leaves on his
quest in 95. What's up with that. You spend millions of dollars and
take a year's break in shooting, but you can't get a simple (and
pivitol) prop correct. That car thing negates his adventure's timeline.
To me, he just fell down some stairs and dreamed his little adventure.
The acting is good, but who cares. Tom Hanks is so consistant that you
almost don't care how good his acting is. Saying that Tom Hanks is not
a good actor is like saying that The Godfather is a bad movie: it's not
true. Acting good. Movie d
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
Brilliant vs. Vomit Inducing Filth
Maybe something along the lines of "Why, O God, Why?" would be a better title for this awful, disgrace of a movie. Like many other movies released in the year 2000, this pile of rubbish tries to pass itself of as entertainment. This one by means of two brilliant filmmakers, whose asses have been kissed far too many times since they released (my favorite movie) "Fargo" in 1996. Haven't reviewers heard of the saying 'give praise when praise is due"? It means that if a movie "sucks", you give it a bad review, no matter who made it. Just because the Coen brothers have made a bunch of great movies in their career, it doesn't mean that they will all be masterpieces. This movie had a terrible, redundant script, that reiterates over and over that the main characters are: 1. Dumb 2. Screwed 3. Out of luck. After an hour, this becomes what is known as "ANNOYING". Enough of that, let's talk about why the critics, and anyone who liked this movie, are wrong.
I have read numerous reviews, all, except for one, almost four stars. They all say that the movie has jokes, SOME good acting, and a song that carries the movie. The only difference between the good reviews and the bad one is that the bad one says that the movie is an adbomination of mankind.
Some facts:
No reviewer has gone into detail about any of their reasons for liking the film.
A movie carried ONLY by a song cannot be worth four stars. Anyone who liked this movie is dumb. This movie will be named as one of the best of all-time. The people who give it that honor will not have seen the movie.
Traffic (2000)
Summary: Non-stop jerky camera. Bad color. Cliché-ridden.
The good news. Kids who see this movie will not want to do drugs; and you care about the Mexican cop. The rest is bad news. This movie has "Important Movie about Drug Problem" written all over it. Every other spoken line is a cliched message about some aspect of the drug problem, accompanied by non-stop jerky camera motion, and followed by the same funny noise that substitutes for a film score. The color is artsy.
Bleached yellow for Mexico and bleached blue for the US. The political message is so broad in scope that Democrats will be able to embrace it as politically correct, and Republicans will not be offended. The plot is cliched and predictable beyond belief. It steals broadly from all the drug movies you've seen. Big chunks of the plot are stupid. Rich judge searches ghetto for daughter. (Why didn't he think to hire a PI?) Cops can't protect key witness. (They trust anybody.) Politicians argue in vain about how to/differ ways to stop the flow of drugs across the border. (But of course no one suggests asking Pat Buchanan or the Israeli Army how to do it.)Another thing the movie does is point out how quick family members are to save their loved ones after they do something stupid. Catherine Zeta-Jones(Douglas)' character's husband is arrested. She yells at him, but then suddenly changes her mind, and sets out to have a bunch of guys killed. Too many abrupt changes in story line makes movie hard to follow. Stephen Soderbergh should have made this movie without all of the jerky camera garbage, color changes, and actually have a film score. Please, for god's sake, change the movie when you release it on DVD. Then again, judging by how many theaters this film is playing in, people may forget that it was ever released
Quills (2000)
Summary: Beware: Utterly fake history. Complete garbage.
I saw the movie. I liked it. I loved Michael Caine's performance. Michael Caine is always great. I was also stunned by the stomach-turning depravity of the French legal and medical system of the time. Then I read the book. The first half of the movie is typical Hollywood bad history: composite characters, events out of sequence, a devoted wife where there should have been a devoted mistress, etc. But the second half is fiction. In fact, De Sade (b. 1740) spent the last 10 years of his life, 1804 - 1814, living in relative comfort, with a mistress boarding in an adjacent room, at his family's expense, in the Charenton Asylum. By this time de Sade had spent a major part of his life in and out of prisons and asylums for sexually abusing prostitutes and servant-girls, and also for complicated reasons connected with prison escapes, bad debts, and the French Revolution. He had even been sentenced to death at one time (1772). The pretext for his final imprisonment (he was now 63) was publishing pornography. But the real reasons were complicated. He was notorious and infamous, both for his crimes and his pornography. Napoleon wanted him put away, because he believed de Sade had written a pamphlet defaming him and his family. The family wanted him put away to protect the family honor. The asylum was under the control of the French Ministry of the Interior. It was run, except for the last 7 months of de Sade's life, by an Abbe' Coulmier, and at one time a Dr. Royer-Collard was the medical director. There was also a 17-year-old worker in the asylum, Magdeleine Leclerc, with whom de Sade had (by his count) 57 sexual encounters during the last year of his life. The Abbe viewed himself as a humanitarian not a jailer and respected de Sade as an intellectual. The Abbe has been described as despotic but enlightened. While de Sade was in the asylum, he continued to write and publish (anonymously) pornography; but he also wrote and published ordinary plays, many of which were performed at the asylum, and choral pieces, some of which were performed at the asylum's church. There were sporadic attempts to curtail his writing activities. In 1807 police seized one of his pornographic works during a search of his room. It was dutifully returned to his family after his death. (They destroyed it.) In October 1809 he was briefly placed in solitary confinement and deprived of writing materials. In 1813 the Minister of the Interior banned the performance at the asylum of the plays. But all things considered, de Sade was pretty much left alone. He was in failing health during the last 4 months of his life and finally died of natural causes at age 74. His surviving son was visiting at the time, but missed the last moments. What is particularly troubling about this movie, is that it uses the correct names of people and places. >