Cobpyth's Film Reviews

Reviews of the day:

Happy Gilmore (1996)

I'm having a hangover day again and I'm not really in the good mood for something of high quality (as I wouldn't be able to catch all of it), so I decided to watch a Sandler comedy.

It was nothing special and besides maybe a few small laughs, some minor good moments and a fairly good soundtrack, it's a film just like every other lame comedy.

The film is about an agressive guy, named Happy Gilmore, who wants to be a professional hockey player but lacks the skating skills. He has a very good shot, though, and when he accepts a random golf challenge, he finds out he has a lot of talent for the sport.
When his beloved grandmother is kicked out of her house, because she didn't pay taxes for ten years, and needs 275000 dollars before a certain deadline, Happy decides to earn the money by playing golf tournaments. In the world of golf he meets a hot reporter, a black former golf player who lost his hand to an alligator and the big golf champion, named Shooter McGavin (well played by Christopher McDonald), who is a bit of a cock...

If you're in the mood for something stupid or if you're a fan of Adam Sandler or maybe Ben Stiller (he has a small, but funny role), this is the movie for you! Otherwise, not so much. It is still enjoyable enough to not be complete ****, in my opinion.
My rating:

I'd give it the same rating, but it's funnier if you know who Bob Barker is.

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Happy Gilmore is one of a few Sandler films I liked. I say in my humble opinion. But lets face it he has made a s**t ton of crap.

I have nothing against the guy, honestly. He makes innocent funny movies and I actually like some of them. He still didn't bore me in Happy Gilmore or something, but the film just has way too many flaws to be considered something more than a lame comedy for me.

@Mark: I knew he was a television presenter, but I guess it must indeed be pretty funny to see one of your country's famous quiz masters fight with Adam Sandler on the golf court.

Neither do I. In fact I am probably one of the few people who will say he enjoys a few of his movies. But some of his movies are indeed s**t. Then again even s**t I can enjoy.

The Waterboy was funny and IMO not s**t.

I can tolerate some of Sandler's comedies, they know what they are and never intend to be intelligent comedies.

The Waterboy however I thought was absolutely dreadful and annoying.

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I have not seen That's My Boy, but I avoided it solely because it looked horrible.

Yes, but there was one redeeming feature.

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

Reviews of the day:

Princess Mononoke (1997)



This was my fifth Miyazaki film and it certainly is his most serious and violent picture so far. I liked it a lot! The greatest thing about it is obviously the created world full of tree spirits, gods, demons and visually stunning locations. Miyazaki's imagination truly knows no limits.

The movie starts with the introduction of the character of Ashitaka. He's the prince of a decaying village, which is attacked by a giant boar with a demonic curse on him. Ashitaka kills the boar and becomes infected with the curse.
Because of that, he has to leave the village and on his quest to find the tree spirit, who can cure him, he gets mixed up in a war between nature (the spirits and the gods) and humanity. In that war, there is a kind of wolf girl involved, named Princess Mononoke.
Both sides have evilness and both sides have goodness and Miyazaki creates a main character that doesn't really judge, but rather helps to solve the conflict, although he's constantly repressed by his curse.

The main question is of course: Is this Miyazaki's best movie so far for me?
The answer is "no". I personally thought Spirited Away's story and characters were more involving and I also was a bigger fan of its style. I also thought the climax in this movie was a little overexposed. Everything was growing towards it and when it finally came, I wasn't completely satisfied with the way it went. I may have to rewatch this movie again, though, to fully get what Miyazaki tried to do there.
I still liked it very much and it was a magical experience from a very high quality, so I rate this movie a well deserved:

(-)

Reviews of the day

RoboCop (1987)

This was a pretty enjoyable flick with some classic bloody action scenes and a quite dark atmosphere in a sci-fi version of Detroit. This film also deserves a thumbs up for its great special effects and more particularly for the convincingly real looking main character (certainly in the ending scenes where we can see his whole face).

The story starts with the introduction of a guy, named Alex Murphy. He has just been replaced to a new police division in Detroit where crime seems to rule. When he's on a mission with his partner, he gets killed by some mob guys, while his partner is able to escape.
Meanwhile in the higher offices of the city, there is a meeting of a sort of private security firm (who bought out the police of the city), named OCP. There is a demonstration of the ED-209, a machine who has to serve as a cop or a military weapon. The machine doesn't really seem to be working well, though, and one of the less important guys of the meeting takes his chance and asks the big boss to listen to one of his ideas, the RoboCop plan.
He basically uses a human body, in this case the body of Alex Murphy, revives it with the use of a computer program (with some basic rules the robot has to follow) and protects it with a nice armour, so he can function as a 'very hard to beat' cop.
The system isn't completely faultless, though, as it slowly seems that RoboCop still has some human aspects that define his behaviour strongly. He also starts to remember some small fragments of his former life and he tries to look for his own identity.

The film also is very satiric. It uses some fictional news reports and commercials to show the viewers the atmosphere of the future world and what precisely is going on.

Besides all these good things, the story still is pretty cliché and predictable, with the exception of one or two surprising moments and a few more graphical violent scenes that weren't completely ordinary and expected.

Luckily, there were some small things that made the story a little more interesting, such as some symbolic scenes where we can fantasize about the resemblance between some events in RoboCop and those in the bible (his hands also get pierced in a certain way, we see a shot of him walking on water and he literally turns water into red with his bloodshed). They aren't necessarily important, but these kind of small references are always fun!

I had a good time watching this flick, so I rate this movie:

+

Notorious (1946)



Alfred Hitchcock entertains me yet again with an extremely good movie full of suspense and sophisticated directing skills. This film surely belongs in my top 10 best Hitchcock movies.
Besides Hitchcock's wonderful directing, we also have Ingrid Bergman, my favorite actrice of all time, Cary Grant and Claude Rains, playing some of the best characters out of their entire filmography.

The film starts in Miami, where Alicia's father has been sentenced to 20 years in prison, because of conspiracy with the nazi regime.
When she gives a home party, a drunk Alicia notices a party crasher, named Devlin. He seems to be a secret agent, who tries to convince her to work for the government as a double agent and a spy in Brazil, because the nazis would probably trust Alicia because of her father.
At first she doesn't want to, but she changes her mind and together with Devlin she flies to Rio, where they wait together untill they get their assignment. During that stay, they fall in love and start an erotic affair.
After spending some lovely time together, Alicia finally gets her assignment. She has to infiltrate into the family of a certain Alexander Sebastian. They chose Alicia, because Alexander used to have a big crush on her and they hope that she can get some inside information by seducing him.
She asks Devlin for advice, but he wants her to make her own choices and when she doesn't feel enough support from Devlin, she decides to do it.
Things really get complicated when Mr. Sebastian asks Alicia to marry him. When she also agrees with that (because of Devlin's cynicism), she slowly comes to know some very interesting information.
During a party at Alexander's house, Alicia and Devlin finally hit the jackpot when they discover uranium in the wine cellar, but they make some small and possibly fatal mistakes...

This film was of a very high quality and I was nailed to my seat during its whole running time. It's certainly a film I will revisit in the future and I immediately put it on the list of brilliant Hitchcock 'gems'!
I rate this movie:

-

I fully agree. Notorious kicks butt in every respect.

It certainly does. The more I think about it, the better it gets. It's a marvelous piece of filmmaking.

Reviews of the day:

The Producers (1968)



This movie is outrageously funny! It has a hilarious script and the acting was superb! Gene Wilder stole the show with his odd excesses of hysteria and Zero Mostel was very convincing. I also liked the extremely sexy appearance of Lee Meredith.

The movie starts with the introduction of a theater producer, named Max Bialystock. He has no money, so he tries to earn it by 'prostituting' himself to older women.
When an accountant visits him, they get the idea to collect way too much money for a cheap play that will certainly flop, so they can run away with the rest of the money that they didn't invest.
Problems arise when their play, Springtime for Hitler, seems to become the biggest hit on Broadway and when they have to pay back all the so called owners of the play.
Another notable character was Franz Liebkind, the writer of the play, who is still a nazi at heart and wants to kill the two producers when he sees his original Hitler praising script is ruined by funny sketches.

I enjoyed the film a lot, but I don't really know if it is the big masterpiece some people say it is. The dialogue is undeniably well written, of course, but I don't know if this film offers enough to be called 'one of the best ever'. So for now, I'll give it:

Reviews of the day:

Carrie (1976)

This was a great thriller! Brian De Palma's way of directing is really fresh looking here with his regular use of nice camera movements and it completely fits this wonderful horror story by Stephen King.

The main character of this film is Carrie (perfectly played by Sissy Spacek). She's a timid 17-year-old schoolgirl who lives with her extremely religious and crazy mother. We get introduced to the character in a stunning scene where she has her first periods while showering in the girls changing room after gym class. Her mother never told her about periods, so she completely flips out and because of that all the girls start laughing and throw tampons and pads at her.
After that we get introduced to some other characters.
Sue is one of the girls that bullied Carrie and because she feels sorry for her, she asks her boyfriend to go with Carrie to the prom in stead of her, so she can also have some fun in her life.
Another one is the main bully girl, Chris, who hates Carrie, because she can't go to the prom because of her (indirectly). She decides to pull an extremely mean prank (together with her boyfriend, played by John Travolta) to pay Carrie back at prom night, but what she doesn't know is that Carrie has telekinesis and is not afraid to use it...

I loved the whole movie. There wasn't a single dull moment and De Palma really knows how to move his audience. I think the story is extremely well told, in the sense that it really plays with the emotions of the viewer. At one point you're extremely happy for Carrie, but at the same time we know everything that's being built up during the movie will become ruined later. It's one of the most brutal films I've ever seen because of that.
I had a great experience, so I rate this film:

+

As long as you enjoyed my nomination that is all that matters.

Brazil (1985)



MASTERPIECE ALERT!
This is an extremely well made movie full of imagination, breathtaking music, great directing, sometimes hilarious situations and some very sharp dialogue! I'm still shaking from the brilliance of this movie. It was astonishingly awesome!

Terry Gilliam takes us to a retro-future world lead by a very repressive government.
In the beginning of the film, we see how a man tries to kill a fly and how this fly ends up between his typewriter and because of that incident one of the automatically typed names becomes barely readable.
This little incident causes an administrative error and an innocent man gets arrested by the ministry and is later executed.
Meanwhile we meet a daydreaming bureaucrat, named Sam, who is part of an important family, but doesn't really seem to have much ambition. He has to solve the problem by handing over a refund check to the innocent man's widow to 'cover' the government's mistake. When he arrives at the apartment, he sees the 'angel girl' of his dreams (literally), who happens to live in the same building and from that moment on his sole purpose in life is to find and be with her. Because she witnessed the arrest, she forms a potential danger to the state, however, so he also has to save the girl from the bureaucratic regime.
This adventurous quest develops both in the real world as well as in his own metaphorical daydreaming world.
Will he ever find peace with the woman of his dreams in this dangerously controlled world or will his increasing problems lead to his downfall? There's only one way to find out...

If you want to go on a spectacular trip through one of the most interesting sci-fi worlds ever and meet a bunch of great characters who also happen to be funny, you shouldn't wait much longer and see this masterpiece.

I rate this movie:

Reviews of the day:

Blow Out (1981)

Brian De Palma does it again! This is a great stylish thriller with a fantastic performance by John Travolta, great music usage and one of the most intense and captivating endings I've ever seen.

The story has a similar plot to the 1966 movie Blowup (which is also an excellent film), but changes the concept a tiny bit. In stead of discovering a murder on images, the main character in this film, a movie sound recordist called Jack Terry, accidentally records the sound of a so called car accident he witnessed. He also saves one of the two passengers, a girl named Sally (played by the beautiful Nancy Allen), from drowning.
In the hospital, they ask Jack to shut his mouth and never talk about the incident again and certainly not about the girl he saved, as the male victim was in fact the main contestant for the upcoming presidential elections and they don't want to hurt his image right after his dead, because that would be ungraceful.
When he rewinds the recorded sound tape and listens to it again at home, he notices a gun shot right before the car starts to slip. From then on, Jack starts an investigation on his own and becomes obsessed with the case. Piece by piece, he unravels the puzzle, while he starts to fall in love with Sally.
But just like my second favorite film of all time, Chinatown, Jack (the same name) makes a capital mistake that he (more or less) already made before...

I was glued to the screen during the whole movie and the ending was so wonderful and yet so horrifying that I sat through the whole credits, thinking about the shockingly beautiful final scenes. You just know a film was great when that happens.
Despite some minor plot difficulties I had with the movie (some small inconsistencies in the storyline), I liked it so much that I rate it:

-

Blow Out is a very good thriller, I just wish De Palma didn't pick Nancy Allen for that role. I probably would've cared more about her character or had another actress played the part. I just found her very annoying at times. Travolta's performance was pretty good though.

SPOILER ALERT!!!

I think I liked her so much because she was so dumb and flawed. Sally is just a simple girl, who is used by everyone all her life and now there is Jack, who wants to help her and actually cares about her.

You probably didn't care about her because of her supidity and you probably wanted a stronger performance by a stronger actress, but I have a weak spot for weak women and that's why I think Nancy Allen was just right for this role.

Done, sorry.

There are three reasons why I didn't care about her.

1) Her stupidity
2) I wanted a stronger performance
3) I wanted somebody more beautiful. I didn't find her attractive at all.

Imo, the movie's biggest flaw is Nancy Allen.