The Dilated Pupil's Reviews

Hot girls in fetish outfits fighting steampunk nazi helghast using katanas, guns and...is that big daddy!?  Watching this movie makes you realize how good Last Action Hero really was.  Actually, it makes you realize how good Howard the Duck and Phantom Menace are.

*** - Paul Newman plays a slightly creepy private investigator caught in a web of southern small town politics.  Not as good as may of his other movies, the cast is very good and it's worth a watch.

One of the worst movies I've ever seen.  H.O.T.S has more inspiring qualities.  You remember that scene in Jurassic Park 2: The Lost World where the T-Rex gets all hopped up on freedom and runs rampant through L.A.?  The last 2 hours of this movie are like that without any of the good parts.  If you're interested in being slapped around with metaphors, video game quality narration (lazy storytelling) and horrible editing then A.I. is the film for you.

*** - A thriller that eschews the stereotypes and has a strong female lead until she makes some completely annoying and ridiculous decisions down the stretch to setup a Craven trademark "girl running up and down stairs" scene. Predictable but Cillian Murphy is fantastic so I'll give it a three.

This movie of which the name will never be uttered from my mouth again, was a bad attempt at stereotypical 1960s rip-off of West Side Story complete with overacting, painful musical score and ridiculous editing.  It's as if the editor said, "seriously? this is what you're giving me? OK, screw it, you're the Coppola."

I couldn't believe what I was watching when the homoerotic rain soaked fight scene that had absolutely no setup whatsoever (including blue-skies the entire day leading up to the fight!) occurred as if by magic spewed forth from the miserable scene in a car outside a diner.  Brutal.

Also, the writing was on par with Carnosaur or Piranha.  It's my opinion that with the exception of Dillon and Lane, the only actors to become famous after this movie did so due to the fact they didn't have any dialog in this one.  It's right up there with such timeless classics as Hottie and the Nottie and 10,000 B.C. only it has no redeeming qualities.  That's right, both of those movies deserve Oscar nominations for writing before this movie deserves anything more than a Netflix 1 star rating.

Lost 1:31 and I'll never get it back. 

One of the strangest casts I've seen in a while with Cage, Boyle and Hopper playing out a noir style thriller in the desert.  It's a case of mistaken identity for Cage who does a decent job in not pissing me off with his lazy dialog style.  Normally, I get really frustrated with these types of movies where characters cause more problems for themselves by not communicating (Man Who Knew Too Much) but Red Rock West does a great job of forcing fate on the characters and not on the viewer.  This is probably my favorite Dahl film and it's an early Cage film so it doesn't suffer too badly from his usual "Cageness".

Thanks to my Netflix instant queue for prompting me to check out this little gem.  If you're not familiar with Walter Matthau this is a great intro to a great actor.  It's a spy movie like many others but done with a little mischievousness and a lot more class.  Matthau plays an undervalued and under appreciated Cold War spy that goes rouge to upset his manager making this an instant classic if you've ever wanted to really prank the hell out of your boss... There was only one really annoying gap and it comes at the end of the movie.  I might have to re-watch the ending just to see if I'm crazy.  Other than that it was great.

Before Hardboiled (below), John Woo made the killer which is probably the best of his HK flicks.  The new Blu-ray was just released and I hear the transfer is much better then what's come before.  I love this movie but I can't bring myself to buy it again as I already have an original and a counterfeit Criterion version laying around the house.  If you haven't seen it, I'm pretty sure we're not actually friends.  Sorry to break it to you this way.

***** - Back in the early 90's a guy named John Woo made movies that weren't completely watered-down trash.  The last of those movies was called Hard Boiled and it was amazing.  A young Chow Yun-Fat plays a cop named Tequila and he's out for revenge.  If you listen to the commentary, you learn that they actually started filming without a script as the guy writing the movie died before sending in a final version.  As far as I'm concerned the movie features the best shootout scene of all-time, it's roughly 45 minutes long and features a nursery ward evacuation.  If you're a fan of action movies you should look no further than Hong Kong cinema in the late 80's early 90's.

*** - It's hard to qualify but Hot Tub Time Machine is both amazing and forgettable.  Crispin Glover plays out one of the best repeat jokes of the movie but his performance is completely flat as are all of the scenes with Chevy Chase.  The script was plagued by "hey, wouldn't it be funny if we did x instead?" writing and direction.  John Cusack plays the "grown up" version of his character from Say Anything, Rob Cordrey continues his role as the ugly-bald-white-drunk that he owned for his time on the Daily Show and Craig Robinson gives the best performance as Craig Robinson.

So with a predictable plot, flat performances and an homage to Ski Patrol, why would I give it a 3?  Because Rob Cordrey is an awesome ugly-bald-white-drunk, John Cusack was hilarious in Say Anything and Ski Patrol freaking rocked.  So long as you turn off your brain before hand you'll enjoy this great white buffalo.