Posted May 1, 200619 yr I have always kept several films books of the films I have seen at the Cinema since I sterted to go regularily in 1994. I have often wanted to record them on-line, so I thought that this here forum would be a cool place to do it! What I will do seperate posts for most years, or after a few films, and will try and restict posts to years until I get to 2006. I will post a review (from Empire probably) some pics, how many times I saw the film at the cinema and what dates, and my own star review (1 star being awful, 5 being great). Of course, feel free to comment on any of them or ask questions, I hope this may be a winner for this forum :P matt :D --------------------
May 1, 200619 yr Author OK, lets start then!! All reviews from Empire Online :) 1994-1995 ALADDIN 15 January 1994 http://www.msstate.edu/Images/Film/Aladdin.jpg Plot Smitten by the Sultan's daughter, soft-hearted street thief Aladdin is tricked into retrieving the fabled magic lamp by a wicked vizier. But the lamp's resident genie has other ideas. Review At the beginning of the '90s, Disney's animation division was fully enjoying its time at the top, contentedly tanning itself in the glow of a new golden age. The Little Mermaid had dragged it back from the tedium of The Black Cauldron and Oliver & Company, while Beauty And The Beast had heralded Disney's most adoring reviews since a pasty princess shacked up with seven midgets - not to mention the only ever Best Picture Academy Award nomination for an animated film, a feat which will likely never be repeated due to the new Best Animated Film category. Yes, the Mouse House was justifiably brimming with confidence. So something was bound to go wrong. Right? Enter Ron Clements and John Musker - the animation directors responsible for starting the Disney revolution with The Little Mermaid - who came in and screwed up Aladdin with astonishing panache. Suggested as a project by composers Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, the directors' take on the story about a street boy who finds a magic lamp was an undeniable mess. The title character's pubescent naivety sat uncomfortably with the determined sensuality of the princess, his exasperated mother sapped the film's energy and the villain was upstaged by his parrot. It was as clumsy and aimless as all the '80s trash the studio had been trying to sweep under the carpet... Fortunately, Disney animation head Jeffrey Katzenberg was no longer prepared to accept such shoddy workmanship, and that particular version never limped past storyboard stage. Katzenberg had been brought to Disney in 1984 and told by Michael Eisner as they passed an unprepossessing building: "That's the animation department. It's your headache now." After the analgesia of recent success, he wasn't going to let it start thumping again. On what came to be known among the Aladdin animators as Black Friday, Katzenberg told the team to scrap virtually everything they'd been working on for months and start again. And to further add to their Arabian nightmare, he refused to move the movie's release date. Musker and Clements were faced with blank storyboards and the imminent arrival of the animation A-team from Beauty And The Beast, who'd have nothing to do but sharpen their pencils. With the only other possible option to shut the production down, the directors bit the bullet and with the help of their crack team completely reinvented the feature in eight days. Writers Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott (who would go on to pen Shrek and Pirates Of The Caribbean) were brought in to work on the script and iron out the many plot flaws. Aladdin was aged a few years, in line with KatzenbergÃÂs request to make him "more Tom Cruise, less Michael J. Fox", his mother was bumped off and the assembled team were sharply reminded to "bring the funny". One element, however, remained constant: Robin Williams. Celebrity voices were nothing new to animation - Phil Harris and George Sanders were stars of their day when they voiced The Jungle Book - but the trend had died off as the material declined in quality. The directors had the former stand-up in mind as the only person who could inhabit the Genie from the early stages of development, and lured Williams in by presenting a test animation of the Al Hirschfield-inspired blue spirit lip-synching part of his "Reality - What A Concept" album. Through tears of laughter, the actor happily signed up for what would become animation's single greatest vocal performance. Williams' inability to stick to a script carried his scenes off on tangents of vaudevillian bizarreness that inspired supervising animator Eric Goldberg and upturned the Disney ethos of some 55 years. Up until Williams let rip with a dizzying repertoire of pop-culture gags and celebrity impressions, Disney's fairy tales had refused to acknowledge a world outside the land surveyed by Sleeping Beauty's castle. Each took place in a parallel universe where men wore tights, women had eyes that made Bambi look beady and animals chatted away like furry little housewives. That was all well and good for selling dreams and duvet covers to little girls, but in a film industry where superheroes were becoming the big draws and computer effects were starting to provide animated dazzle in live-action films, Disney needed to bring itself up to date to secure a larger audience - which, crucially, would include more boys. Of course, Musker and Clements didn't want to alienate their core female audience, and they were very clever in hiding from males the fact that this was the greatest musical that Disney had yet made. In the past, the song-and-dance numbers that were the studio's touchstone had often become small productions in their own right, not necessarily serving the story. Even Beauty And The Beast, certainly a more ambitious and technically superior film, put the plot on hold for showstoppers like Gaston and Be Our Guest - wonderful, witty creations both, but not key to the plot. Aladdin, however, uses every song - bar the Genie's Friend Like Me - to move the plot along. They serve as bridges between scenes and locations: the thunderous Prince Ali marching Aladdin from his isolated street life to the opulent bombast of the palace, or the soaring A Whole New World carrying the romantic leads away from their troubled lives to a place alone above the clouds. The numbers don't just dance, they run. Boys, however, didn't come for the hummable tunes. Some perhaps came for the slightly unsettling sexuality of Princess Jasmine, a royal dressed like a theme hooker, but primarily they came for the action - best exemplified by the knuckle-bleaching cave escape scene - and for a comedy of unpredictable wit. It had De Niro, Nicholson and Rodney Dangerfield impressions thrown in with confident casualness and maintained a tone that poked fun at itself, referencing past Disney films (and even a couple of future projects, with nods to Mulan and Hercules during A Whole New World). Yes, Aladdin was the big-screen family animation that boys introduced to the world of "mature" cartooning by The Simpsons would happily admit to liking, and that adults could go and see without feeling the need to have a five-year-old in tow. It's not going too far to say that Aladdin is the progenitor of the current big-screen 'toon boom, being enjoyed everywhere but Disney's traditional animation department, which took a downturn thanks to a neglect of story rather than any failings in the medium. Pixar's sparkling output may not have come along as soon had Aladdin not primed an adult audience to look at animation as a genre as exciting as any other, and shown that Simpsonian sophistication could work when stretched to feature length. If you need to test its influence, just try to think of five live-action films of the last ten years as consistently funny as the Toy Story or Shrek movies. Post Aladdin, animation has become the breeding ground for great comedy writing talent and lays claim to the highest hit-rate of any genre. It's just a shame more of the magic didn't rub off on Disney. Verdict The movie that brought a hip new sensibility to animated features and which still stands up in the age of Pixar and DreamWorks thanks largely to a blistering improv turn from Robin Williams. MY VERDICT: * * * * *
May 1, 200619 yr Author MRS DOUBTFIRE 5 February 1994 http://www.filmhai.de/kino/kinoplakat/bilder_0009/mrs_doubtfire/gallery1/mrs_doubtfire_001.jpg Plot After a bitter divorce, an actor disguises himself as a female housekeeper to spend secret time with his children held in custody by his ex-wife. Review Whatever you may think of Chris Columbus' directorial abilities, there's no denying his ability to turn out hits (expect him to work similar magic with Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone), and Mrs.Doubtfire is no exception. Here, Robin Williams dons the fat suit and prosthetic make-up to play the titular nanny, with Field as the uptight mom who has no idea that her new, perfect employee is her ex-husband in disguise. Although the broad comedy of the first half soon gives way to a tidal wave of entirely uncalled for sentimentality, this is still a laugh riot - the sight of our hero setting fire to his falsies never fails to amuse. Verdict Although the broad comedy of the first half soon gives way to a tidal wave of entirely uncalled for sentimentality, this is still a laugh riot - the sight of our hero setting fire to his falsies never fails to amuse. MY VERDICT * * * * THE LION KING Summer 1994 (I lost the stub!!) http://anaksunamoon.blogs.sapo.pt/arquivo/Walt%20Disney%20-%20Lion%20King%20family%20dim-thumb.jpg Plot A lion cub is fooled by his ambitious uncle, who is next in line to the throne, that he has killed the Lion King, his father and flees their land in shame. As an adult he is persuaded to return to try and claim the throne that is rightfully his. Review We must assume that The Lion King is the first Disney animation to contain a fart joke, albeit one aimed over the heads of the younger members of its audience and towards their Baby Boomer parents. There's also a moment when you could swear that our leonine lovers are about to make the two-backed beast, as they no doubt would if this were live action. Before the end of the century something similar will occur; the recent string of Disney animations have not become the biggest successes in movie history without understanding the importance of ensuring that parents don't come along reluctantly. Here the computer animation that made Aladdin too frenetic and pleased with itself meets the vanished serenity of The Jungle Book (still the one to beat) and gets maximum spectacle out of Africa's landscape and livestock. The wildebeest stampede that kills the hero's father, thereby attracting much criticism in the US, looks like treated film footage rather than the work of human hand, and the drama throughout hits very hard indeed. The Elephants' Graveyard sequence in particular may well have very small children watching through their fingers, although they are never too far from laughing like drains at the antics of Timon the meerkat and Pumbaa the flatulent warthog. The sequence where the pair of them break into a Hawaiian dance to distract a whole bunch of hyenas is funny, big time. The Lion King really scores on the soundtrack, with outstanding characterisations from Jeremy Irons as the evil Scar, wrapping threats round his tongue like long notes on a cello, Rowan Atkinson sardonic and pompous as the courtier bird Zazu and Whoopi Goldberg at the head of a trio of hyenas, 90s descendants of the crows in Dumbo. Elton John and Tim Rice's chart-topping music matches the movie gag for gag, sob for sob, African choirs swelling as the sun rises over the savannah and soupy lurve duets accompanying the canoodlings of the mating pair. This being 1994 you are never far away from the terrifying thwack of a synthesised bass drum, included as much because it's feasible as because it's appropriate. It's that kind of picture. Verdict This is more a favourite of the children than adult Disney fans. It has a few memorable songs and has spawned a very popular stage production MY VERDICT * * * *
May 1, 200619 yr Author DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE http://www.ofilmie.bool.pl/recenzje/die_hard_with_a_vengeance_gumis/die_hard_with_a_vengeance2.jpg Plot Another very bad day begins in the life of Detective John McClane, when a bomb goes off on the streets of New York. Then a man named “Simon†calls the authorities demanding McClane joins in a game of Simon Says otherwise more bombs will go off. Review While most of us were pondering the next urban cage in which John McClane will be reduced to his vest, facing off against some nefarious criminal scheme (shopping mall? Subway train? Oilrig?) original director John McTiernan and the writer of Die Harder decided to spin the basic idea on its head. For the third, and to date final, Die Hard the boundaries are New York itself, McClane’s home turf, and the deadly game is entirely personal. It was considered thinking, but in partnering McClane with irascible Harlem shop owner Samuel L. Jackson, immediately reduced the lone wolf qualities of one of Hollywood’s most worthwhile franchises. This is a buddy-buddy romp of good order but scant inspiration and not quite the Die Hardest we were looking for. The idea is that the villain of the first (and still best) blitzkrieg of action, Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber, has left a brother keen on exacting revenge. McClane is forced into dashing about Manhattan, picking up Jackson as a passenger in the process, to solve various riddles. It’s a structural conceit that keeps the film hurtling along, and McTiernan ably contrasts the nightfall of the previous film with the sweltering glare of a New York summer day (a better reason to get down to that vest). This is Die Hard inverted. Therefore, for all its consummate actioneering, and the film opens dramatically with a sudden screen-shuddering explosion like a gung-ho calling card  we’re back!  it lacks the vital claustrophobia and that wry notion that, more than the baddies’ devilry, the fates themselves are aligned against Bruce Willis’ plaintive hero. The soap opera that is McClane’s life remains in full gear, he’s back on the booze, suspended from the force and his marriage is in tatters  although Bonnie Bedelia, his on-off wife, opted out of a third film and her absence is felt. Vengeance lacks the spare design of before, that McClane must overcome these ridiculous odds ultimately to mend his relationship. And while Willis has the role down pat and Jackson does his loud, proud thing, Jeremy Irons’ sneering and snorting Euro-git is long way shy of Rickman’s gleaming villainy. It’s fun, in that crazy-hectic, no-expense spared approach of good action movies, McClane remains a very likable hero, he has Indiana Jones’ why-me exasperation, a man who would rather be anywhere else. It’s just that this time, his day just got that bit too complicated. Verdict Die Hard With A Vengeance is better than Die Hard 2, but not as good as the peerless original. Though it's breathless fun, the film runs out of steam in the last act. And Jeremy Irons' villain isn't fit to tie Alan Rickman's shoelaces. MY VERDICT * * * Not as good as the other two Die Hard films! GOLDENEYE 11 December 1995 http://www.swschwedt.de/kunden/bondnet/pictures/goldeneye.JPG Plot James Bond (Brosnan) is sent to a Russia that is still feeling the effects of the Soviet breakup to investiagte the theft of Goldeneye - a pulse emitting, jamming device that orbits the earth. Running into danger, chases and girls, he finds that the real villain is someone much closer to home. Review Considering the identity crisis the Bond series suffered in the 80s when competitors like Indiana Jones and Arnie were denting its credentials, this movie is pleasantly sure of itself. If you love the Bond format, it's all here: an amazing stunt before the opening credits; a semi-surreal title sequence with naked women and broken statues, and Tina Turner belting out a song; a car chase involving an Aston Martin and a Ferrari in Monaco; a suggestive face-off with the villainess over a game of baccarat at the Casino Royale; a megalomaniac mastermind with an earth-orbiting super weapon; four or five top-notch action sequences; and - best of all - an explosive finale in which the villain's underground base is blown to pieces. Martin Campbell, brought in to get the series back on track, gives more than his best. It is impossible, especially if you've grown up with Bond, not to be seduced by the loving recreation of the old style, albeit with topical politicking about the break-up of the USSR (one big confrontation takes place in a yard filled with abandoned, broken statues of Lenin and Stalin) and a gruff new M (Judi Dench) who chides Bond for being a sexist dinosaur. Moneypenny (Samantha Bond) even suggests that all that suave stuff might be considered sexual harassment in the 90s. Yet following a series of TV movies and straight-to-video-duds, Pierce Brosnan, Lazenby-handsome as he is, is still finding his feet as Bond. He may not be up to the standard of Sean Connery before or after 1969 (then again, who could be?); on this first outing, he doesn't appear to have the heart for 007 (although to be fair, neither did Roger Moore) and looks awkward when the script tries to probe the psyche of Ian Fleming's hero. "Do all those vodka martinis drown out the screams of the men you've killed?" asks the villain, "and does taking refuge in the arms of all those willing women help you forget those you couldn't protect?" When Bond tells the winning Izabella Scorupco that his cool detachment is what keeps him alive, she snaps, "No, it's what keeps you alone." But Brosnan's stiffness is more than compensated for by the rest of the film: a terrific chase (with the Bond theme almost drowned out by falling masonry), modestly daring plot twists (the surprise villain, though tipped off by the billing, is a mould-breaker) and, most of all, by Famke Janssen as Xenia Onatopp, who coos orgasmically as she guns down innocent men and snaps spines with her thighs. The best woman in the series since Lotte Lenya in From Russia With Love, Janssen is the character you most want to see reappear when the producers make good on their closing credits promise that James Bond will return. Verdict This is the best bond movie since On Her Majesty's Secret Service. On the evidence of Goldeneye, the shaken-not-stirred secret agent can more than hold his own against True Lies, the Die Hard series, Under Siege or any of the other action hero franchises. MY VERDICT * * * * * This remains one of my favourite James Bond films!!
May 1, 200619 yr Author 1996 TRAINSPOTTING 23 March 1996 22 May 1996 http://www.pt.britishcouncil.org/graphics/pt-0835-330x220.jpg http://images.movieeye.com/store/images/trainspottingfilmscore.jpg Plot Renton is a Scottish youth with a problem...a big, scary, dirty heroine problem and so have most of his friends. He wants to give up, but how? Review Trainspotting doesn't glorify heroin. It glorifies youth. Youth at its worst, mostly, but youth trying to sort things as only youth can. Watch it again on video and it's still, in parts, hilariously funny. But whereas in the cinema peer pressure helped everyone laugh as the junkies got it all wrong, sitting on your own sofa, heroin looks more serious than ever. This doesn't spoil the film, but it destroys the idea that Trainspotting could ever glorify heroin. No way. It begins with Renton (McGregor) giving up "that $h!te" but falling at the first hurdle, right down the worst toilet in Scotland. Truly one of cinema's most disgusting sequences, and perfect to introduce the rollercoaster rush of an unforgettable first half hour. Rich, earthy dialogue gushes like a ruptured sewer, etching characters deeper than any laughter lines. Sick Boy (Miller) mixes Connery's Bond with cod philosophy, Spud (Bremner) mixes dorky geekdom with the world's worst interview technique, while Begbie (Carlyle) mixes psycho sensibilities with impressive dexterity using the wrong end of a pool cue. But these personalities, like the settings  bile green apartment walls, the blood red den of their dealer Mother Superior  are stylised and get a sudden and shocking reality injection straight after a catalogue of hilariously catastrophic sexual encounters. The morning after, everything's changed. Renton's already classic rant against fresh air and the English can signal one thing only: a return to heroin, to crime and to hell. Director Boyle allows roughly two minutes before throwing the viewer into the pit, and it's a stunning turnaround. A baby dies, Spud goes to jail, Renton goes cold turkey  humiliated by his parents, tormented by ghosts and lectured, bizarrely, by Dale Winton about HIV. Once again Renton gets his life back on the rails, but the nightmares of his past follow him even to London where he snatches despair from the very jaws of hope. Fittingly, he and his unwelcome flatmates Begbie and Sick Boy return briefly to their Edinburgh roots to bury another heroin statistic, before a coach trip back south for an amateurish, pathetic drug deal  selling rather than buying, for once, and for one last thrill. It all goes pear-shaped, naturally, and no one is surprised, because by now the message is sinking in: heroin is for losers. For useless, unreliable ****-ups, But in the hands of Boyle and this fantastic cast, and with a stunning soundtrack, it is possible to receive that message in an unprecedented and unrivalled piece of entertainment. Something Britain can be proud of and Hollywood must be afraid of. If we Brits can make movies this good about subjects this horrific, what chance does Tinseltown have? Choose life? Get a life  choose Trainspotting. Verdict This films does not glorify drugs it glorifies film. MY VERDICT * * * * * Fact - the first 18 film I saw at the cinema - still a wonderful iconic film. TOY STORY 2 April 1996 http://www.digitaldreammachine.com/blogimages/luxo/ToyStoryBestPals.jpg Plot Woody, a jovial cowboy doll, is the happy and contented boss of all the toys in Andy's room and young Andy's clear favourite..until the arrival of Buzz Lightyear, a Space Ranger toy, who is, as yet, unaware that he is 'just' a toy... Review Disney's 1995 animated extravaganza came with a gimmick: this was the first ever full-length computer animated feature. In the wrong hands this could merely have been a novelty stretched to film length. In the more than capable digits of computer wizards Pixar and director John Lasseter, however, the result is triumphant. A hilarious, original, terrifically entertaining movie refreshingly free of sentimentality and a resounding box office success both here and in the US. The plot centres simply, and to enormous effect, around the concept that toys have a life of their own. Six-year-old Andy's favourite toy is Woody (superbly voiced by Hanks), a cowboy doll, who lords it over his plaything colleagues until the arrival of Buzz Lightyear (Allen), an arrogant "Space Ranger" action figure whose technological accoutrements and "impressive wing-span" quickly steal Andy's affections. Apart from the growing jealousy, Woody and Buzz's relationship is hindered by the latter's conviction that he is a real superhero instead of a mass-produced plastic figure. It takes a string of mishaps that culminate in the pair becoming ensnared by next-door neighbour Sid - a pint-sized psycho who blows up toys for kicks - for them to bury their differences and escape back to their squeaky-clean extended family before an impending house move. While the younger set can't fail to be entranced by all this, there are more than enough parent-pleasing moments on offer: a cripplingly funny Close Encounters pastiche; a finale guaranteed to cause fingernails dug into palms; and an undercurrent of innuendo-laced humour that'll go whizzing over the tots heads. That's all before you consider the animation. Excepting some purposefully fake looking humans, no detail has been spared, from the kiss-curl on Buzz's chin down to the rain water meandering down the outside of a window. The result proves so breathtaking that two-dimensional cartoon fare will never seem the same again. Which offers further, glorious proof that movies aimed at junior cinemagoers are sometimes miles better than those directed at their adult counterparts. Verdict Just perfect. Script, character, animation....this manages to break free of the yoke of 'children's movie' to simply be one of the best movies of the 90's, full-stop. MY VERDICT * * * * * The first full length computer animated film - some of it looked real at the time!! RICHARD III 8 May 1996 http://www.mckellen.com/images/1428.jpg Plot The classic Shakespearean play about a murderously scheming king staged in a alternative fascist England setting. Review Since Richard III, Shakespeare’s classic dissection of power politics and evil’s allure is, rather than history, an outrageous piece of Tudor propaganda, there really is no reason why it can’t be removed from the 15th century. And so several years ago, Richard Eyre gave us an arresting, sharply written, intelligent interpretation of the play, starring Ian McKellen and staged with 1930s Fascist trappings at London’s National Theatre. That production was the inspiration for Richard Loncraine’s daring, flashy film, for which he and the actor worked as screenwriters and in which McKellen authoritatively revisits one of the greatest roles in the English language. Opening deliberately in the style of a Die Hard action yarn, this Richard introduces its bitter, twisted protagonist as the military genius victorious in a civil war that has rent a fictitious England in the 30s. His first sour soliloquy becomes a public toast at a victory ball; the court is composed of pinstriped gents, officers in black, and women in slinky satin. Hawthorne’s touching Duke Of Clarence is assassinated in a steaming bath; Richard’s lady in red, Lady Anne (Scott Thomas), is a tortured dope fiend, and his nemeses the Rivers, Queen Elizabeth (Bening) and her brother “Earl†(Robert Downey Jnr., cheekily stealing scenes as a Panama-hatted sport) are American arrivistes. This provocative stylisation serves the content well and emphasises the steamroller effect of evil, from one deviant’s resentful power lust to a popular movement. McKellen, rejecting the comic temptations contemporary actors commonly snatch in the hunchback, conveys the sardonic, savage wit but plays the dark malice to the hilt. Everyone in the cast is a strong Somebody, from Queen Mother Maggie Smith to assassin Adrian Dunbar. The only drawback of this “re-imagining†is that it is dispassionately cold in its sustained artifice, despite the splashy nods to modern cinemagoers’ frames of reference  sex, violence, explosions  which do pep up the popular appeal without condescension or gutting the text. Largely this is a fascinating, cerebral exercise, one that is acutely interesting rather than emotionally involving, but absolutely a notable cinematic tackling of the Bard. Verdict Rigorous adaptation of the notoriously "difficult" play. MY VERDICT * * * I actually understood Shakespeare watching this! :lol:
May 1, 200619 yr Author You know the day you went to the cinema 12 years ago !! :o :lol: I have kept a book, and have the cinema stubs :P
May 1, 200619 yr Author MISSION IMPOSSIBLE Summer 1996 (lost the stub) http://briandepalma.online.fr/mission%20impossible3.jpg Plot A spider's web of stolen computer disks, moles, mayhem, double-crosses and murder. Review It begins as it means to go on: with a bang. A fuse is lit and the credits literally explode in a rapid-fire barrage of images and music. After a trailer that promised so much, this is, thankfully, a summer blockbuster that really delivers. A revisitation of the famous 60s TV series with that impossibly cool theme tune and a cachet of catchy catchphrases ("This tape will self destruct..." etc), this treats its inspiration with just the right amount of respect, while at the same time managing to reinvent the premise of a group of undercover agents, working in what is now the Cold War-less 90s. Throw in a $60 million plus budget, a major league star, and a director who can, given the right material, work miracles and you've got the first unmissable movie of the summer. The plot is a contortionist's delight: a spider's web of stolen computer disks, moles, mayhem, double-crosses and murder that begins in Prague with Cruise's Ethan Hunt and his Impossible Missions Force (including Beart, Emilio Estevez and Kristin Scott-Thomas), under the direction of Jim Phelps (Voight in the Peter Graves role), called in to intercept a traitor and a disk containing the identities of every Western spy in Europe. When the mission goes awry and his team is annihilated, Cruise suspects he's been set up, only to find himself accused of being the mole. As Washington, London and finally the Channel Tunnel all go by in a blur, the rest of the film is taken up with Cruise, aided by Béart, all lips and tits, out to prove his innocence. There are, of course, gadgets galore, Cruise peeling off various cool disguises, and that piece of music at regular intervals. De Palma, undisputed master of the set-piece, pulls out all the f-stops this time around, with edgy camera angles and a series of extended tension-building nerve-jangling sequences - including one in a white-walled vault resembling something out of 2001, where Cruise is suspended on wires above a touch sensitive floor. At a little under two hours this fair zips by, but when the script, by David Koepp and Robert Towne, moves from action to plotting and concerns itself with upping the levels of paranoia, you'll be left scratching your head trying to decipher the twists within twists within twists. Verdict If you unravel it, it won't fit back in the plot. But it doesn't matter a jot. This is, for the most part, enormous fun. You will not be disappointed. MY VERDICT * * * * Pretty confusing if thrilling film :) TWISTER Summer 1996 (lost the stub) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/59/Twister_cover.PNG/200px-Twister_cover.PNG Plot A group of scientists chase tornadoes across America in a attempt to learn more about them. Review So tornadoes pass into the muse of one Michael Crichton, the reigning techno-king of Hollywood. And they make for rich pickings, indeed, for the science obsessed scribe: nature out-of-control, loads of accompanying technobabble, and the chance for huge screen-filling set-pieces. But instead of channelling his premise of weather geeks careering across middle-American farmland in chase of the swirling masses of destruction into one of his populist novels, he decided (with the help of his wife Anne-Marie Martin) to make it straight into a movie. Computer generated tornadoes interacting with real-life actors? Cool idea. But could it be done? Rope in one Jan De Bont, last seen whipping a bus through LA's rush hour traffic, and the boys at Industrial Light & Magic and - hey presto - visual effects to smack the collective global gob. Their "mission impossible" was accomplished. It's a shame such an effort was not afforded to the rather plodding storyline and lacklustre script. Twister is about one thing, and one thing alone: a thrill session. In that, it delivers tenfold. The central hook is that a group of weatherfolk, dressed nattily in grunge gear, their four wheel-drives loaded with state-of-the-art equipment, are aiming to do the impossible and launch some sensors up inside a twister. This, for the sake of mankind, will allow them to predict their movements more quickly and hasten advanced warnings. Luckily for them, and the movie, it's about to be a double whammy of a tornado season. And that, really, is all there is to it, plotwise. The team, led by the feisty Jo (Hunt) and her estranged hubbie Bill (Paxton), chase the tornadoes, getting seriously up close and personal in the seemingly vain effort to get the early warning ultra-sensor "Dorothy" in the twister's path. There are attempts to add dimension: the spiky relations between the couple with Bill's new girl Melissa (Gertz) along for the ride, a formulaic but under-used bad guy in Elwes' corporate-funded competitor and the rum nuttiness of the science-school dweebs of the team (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Alan Ruck, Sean Whalen and Scott Thomson as comic relief). But they're fooling no one. This is about the twisters, five of them, building up to the rip-roaring (literally) wham-bang conclusion. Apart from the odd spot of shoddy matte-work, the effects do for wind what Jurassic Park did for dinosaurs. From the get-go we're launched into a high speed chase - no buses, just jeeps and wind masses arbitrarily destroying farm buildings - and from there they just get bigger. The last 20 minutes predictably roll out that big gun, the F5 (top of the Fujita-Pearson Tornado Intensity Scale) leaving the audience suitably rapt by the sheer dynamism and flawless believability of it all. De Bont knows about kinetics, he just lacks the skill to instil any lasting emotional level. Hunt and Paxton, valiant as they are, are simply ciphers to deliver us to the next thrill. Twister is a disaster movie - houses collapse, cows fly, death looms - but a strange one where the victims are not unwittingly forced to face death, but, rather happily almost drunkenly imperil themselves like high-risk junkies (the compassionate subtext just doesn't rub). While it's hard to stir any sympathy for them, their excitement is infectious. Hence this film encompasses everything that is both grating and great about the blockbuster: it gives scant regard to character depth or dialogue while still being a must-see hoopla of computer trickery that weakens the knees and raises the neck-hairs. Verdict Like all white-knuckle rides, once you're done you fancy doing it all over again. MY VERDICT * * * Still dont really like it. INDEPENDENCE DAY 16 August 1996 19 August 1996 http://www.fantascienza.com/cinema/independence-day/media/11.jpg Plot From deepest space, a fleet of alien ships arrives undetected, and places their (15 mile wide) craft over various key structures around the globe. And then proceed to blow them all to hell. Leading the fightback though, is the Prez of the good ol' U.S. of A... Review The high concept of Independence Day (or ID4 as the merchandising has it), is War Of The Worlds meets Earthquake, and the film certainly delivers on the spectacle and disaster front. Flying saucers, each 15 miles wide, appear in the skies over the world's major cities and, after a tense countdown that only genius cable TV engineer Jeff Goldblum understands, huge zappo rays blast said metropoli into smoking rubble (although the only ones we see destroyed are Los Angeles, New York and Washington). US President Bill Pullman, an ex-fighter pilot struggling with a wimp image, leads the fight back - but the aliens' impenetrable force fields mean our planes get knocked out of the skies. Yet all hope is not lost. Hotshot pilot Will Smith, big brain Goldblum, big heart Pullman and sundry other "representative" human beings get together at that secret US base (where an alien ship has been kept since the Roswell incident) and come up with a harebrained plan "that might just work" to save the world. Avowed athiests start praying, many-clawed aliens sneer at our pathetic resistance and the once UFO-abducted goon Randy Quaid looks forward to payback. As Pullman makes a patriotic speech, the audience feels a warm glow prompted by the sure and certain hope that the last reel will see monster butt stomped on a solar system scale as overworked effects men try to come up with a climax to top the devastation of the first two acts. What the film doesn't manage is to make our inevitable victory over the aliens as convincing as their initial crushing of the Earth. Instead it falls back on such implausiblities as Smith being able to work the controls of a spaceship designed for a species with eight-foot tentacles and everyone in the world doing what the US President says is good for them. Independence Day comes close to being a great film even though it violates the so-called First Rule Of Hollywood that you can't make a good film without a good script. It not only has a truly ridiculous script (utilising such corkers as "they'll never let you fly the Space Shuttle if you marry a stripper") but has a deadening dose of religiosity and an even more crippling orgy of red-white-and-blue patriotic pride. The likeable, second rank all-star cast try hard - Brent Spiner gets Man Of The Match award as a comical mad scientist - but there's little that can be done with characters such as the Stalwart General (Loggia), the Gutsy First Lady (McDonnell) and the Screaming Queen Who Calls His Mother (Fierstein). Early on, the film exterminates memories of the feelgood UFOs of Close Encounters as an attempt to communicate with the aliens is greeted with a raygun blast, but the Spielberg film it borrows from most is 1941 (with Quaid even doing a Belushi impersonation). What you get for your money is not depth but breadth, and here is where Independence Day delivers. From its eerie opening as the unshifting sands of the moon are disturbed by the passage of the alien mothership to the astonishing images of mass devastation - fireballs erupting through entire cities, hundreds of flying cars in flames, hordes of extras scythed down like wheat - this delivers all the stuff 1950s films (Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers) and 1980s TV series (V) had to leave offscreen. Like 2001, Star Wars and Jurassic Park, it ups the special effects stakes and gets closer to putting on screen the images you've had in your mind while reading epic sci-fi. By the time it comes out on video, we'll feel guilty about revelling in the film's silly flag-waving paranoia and this is one movie that will lose much when it goes to tape. Enjoy it now, while it's absolutely huge. Verdict Taking Hollywood ridiculousness to unscaled heights, this may well be the biggest guilty pleasure of all time, but what a guilty pleasure it is. MY VERDICT * * * Good for the first half an hour, once everything has been blown up, its just too gungo ho. ERASER 11 September 1996 http://www.laserdisken.dk/billeder/forsidealm/34088.jpg Plot A Witness Protection specialist becomes suspicious of his co-workers when dealing with a case involving high-tech weapons. Review As this season’s “Arnie movie† that sub-genre of the action film or, indeed, that film costing the price of a small African nation and featuring the Austrian behemoth chewing cigars, smirking and blowing up battalions of nameless extras to the tune of a pithy comeback  Eraser is oddly, well, understated. It is big (reports say $100 million big). It is loud, violent, sporadically funny, slickly directed and way up-tempo on the action set-pieces and cool hardware. What it lacks is a spin. In Terminator (and T2) Arnie was a robot, in the Conans he was Conan, in True Lies he was Bond with a bad marriage. Even his comedies were huge on concept (Arnie and Danny are twins, Arnie teaches pre-school, Arnie is preggers), but here he is just a guy who wears black, explodes buildings and kills people without remorse. It’s been boiled down to the ultimate conceit: this is just a movie because Arnold Schwarzenegger is in it. That said, it’s not a bad reason. Eraser, with its thumping score, cheerful lack of political sensibility and gloriously overdone stunts, rests squarely on those broad, overpumped shoulders and they heave the film straight into the base camp of popular entertainment. Schwarzenegger is an elite US Marshall John Kruger, the “eraser†who removes all trace of state witnesses and fits them up with new identities. Virtually unbeatable, he works alone deep undercover  a fact hard to swallow given that this actor is about the most recognisable person in America. Anyway, with nil ado Lee Cullen (Williams)  busy grassing up her hi-tech arms firm for black marketeering to global terrorists  gets her cover blown and bad apple Marshall Robert Deguerin (Caan) is about do his bit of rubbing out. In steps Arnold. Out fly stupefying numbers of dead people. It’s thin stuff; an excuse to tie the rip-roaring action pieces together. These range from the sensational to the silly  wrestling alligators in Central Park Zoo, come on  but The Mask director Russell delivers them without a moment’s doubt (or sincerity) and a whole lot of CGI excess. There is a reason Arnie kicking ass has become part of movie culture: it can be crackingly good fun. The big man still delivers his lines in that familiar Morse-code jitter but his timing has got mean and he beats all-comers when it comes to automatic gunfire. Williams is attractive and spunky, and Caan, with a career’s worth of scumbags behind him, delivers his sneering best. On the Schwarzenegger career curve, this is one step forward and two giant steps back. As an action movie, it is ABC simple and very 80s. In a way, it is a good metaphor for the star himself: expensive, efficient, at times extraordinary, but always one-dimensional. Having had our fill of hi-tech spy craft, whooshing tornadoes and alien invasions already this summer, buying into such numbskull machismo just gets so much harder. Verdict Totally OTT, but undeniably enjoyable. MY VERDICT * * Why did I see this?! :lol:
May 1, 200619 yr I have always kept several films books of the films I have seen at the Cinema since I sterted to go regularily in 1994. I have often wanted to record them on-line, so I thought that this here forum would be a cool place to do it! What I will do seperate posts for most years, or after a few films, and will try and restict posts to years until I get to 2006. I will post a review (from Empire probably) some pics, how many times I saw the film at the cinema and what dates, and my own star review (1 star being awful, 5 being great). Of course, feel free to comment on any of them or ask questions, I hope this may be a winner for this forum :P matt :D -------------------- why dont you just save yourself the trouble of putting the whole review from empire down and put their rating and you review, no doubt if anyone wants to read the whole review it's easier just to click to the site?
May 1, 200619 yr Author BRASSED OFF 6 November 1996 http://www.harrogate.co.uk/harrogate-band/brassed2.jpg Plot While their local pit faces closure, a Colliery Band take some comfort in entering a national music competition Review Swapping onscreen drug addiction for brass band music, Ewan McGregor joins another ensemble for this Channel 4 presentation combining hard-hitting social realism, boy-meets-girl tribulations and gritty comic vignettes, coming up with an enjoyable slice of grim-up-northness. The action follows a colliery combo whose fervour for music is dimmed by the overhanging threat of pit closures. Enthusiasm is rejuvenated with the arrival of Gloria (Fitzgerald), who soon catches the eye of former childhood sweetheart Andy (McGregor). The plot subsequently interweaves the fight to save the mine with the band members' personal stories: Andy and Gloria's rekindled affair; band leader Danny's (Postlethwaite) dreams of winning the upcoming national championships; his troubled son Phil's (Stephen Tompkinson) slide into desperation. While there are funny moments - mainly arising from Gloria's banter with the otherwise all-male band - what impresses most is the powerful portrait of a community doused in defeat yet refusing to lie down. However, writer-director Mark Herman never really achieves a balance between the serious and the feelgood. Verdict An uneasy tone prevails, while the small-screen style and supporting cast of familiar TV faces suggests this would play more comfortably on the box. MY VERDICT * * * Saw it on a whim, but enjoyed it! Not as good as Billy Elliot, which is set in the same timeframe :) STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT 16 December 1996 http://www.wsfa.org/journal/j96/b/6.jpg Plot Capt. Picard and his crew pursue the Borg back in time to stop them from preventing Earth from initiating first contact with alien life. Review Just as they saw The Wrath of Khan rescue the Star Trek franchise from the deathly pomposity of the first movie, Trekkers will be looking to First Contact to set the tone for the second phase of the series  Generations having had the benefit of the reassuring presence of William Shatner, and the novelty of seeing him offed. Unfortunately, left alone on the big screen, distinctly thin characterisation and a plot that looks like a distended television episode, let the new crew down slightly but there are still enough classic moments to keep fans happy. First Contact finds Jean Luc Picard (Stewart) aboard a new Enterprise heading off to do battle with the Borg, a rapacious cyber "collective" intent on assimilating the human race into its "hive", a process which involves slicing off limbs, drilling into eyeballs and generally mucking people about. Having had his own brush with Borgification in the telly series, Picard is uncharacteristically vengeful. After plunging through a bargain basement optical effect, the crew finds itself on 21st century Earth, as Riker (Frakes) and Geordi (Levar Burton)  now sporting a dinky pair of electronic eyes  fight to ensure that man's first warp jaunt goes off without a hitch. Debut big screen director Frakes wisely saves his special effects budget for two key sequences  a battle with the Borg and a spacewalk on the hull of the Enterprise. Using these, a truly impressive opening shot and enough in-jokes and series references, he aims to distract Trekkers from the distinctly cheap-looking remainder. But what he loses is the cosy sense of family which the TV series drew upon, with most characters looking thin and lost on the big screen, and some (Dr. Crusher and Councillor Troy, in particular) almost totally ignored. And with a script that plunges right into the action, there's nowhere near enough time for those not familiar with the series to get to know and care about the characters. The exceptions are Stewart as Picard, who gets his own scenery chewing big speech, and Brent Spiner as Pinocchio-esque android Data who has long had the most interesting role and for whom assimilation has its own attractions. However, with so many series showing simultaneously on televisions the world over, there's a sense that a movie is nothing all that special. Paramount execs may want to consider rationing their output a bit more rigorously if they're not going to overdose its audience. Verdict Where Star Trek is concerned, less may well be more. MY VERDICT * * * * * The best Star Trek film, hands down!! 101 DALAMTIANS 18 December 1996 http://www.collectorsconnection.com/new_rt.gif NO REVIEW AVALIABLE! MY VERDICT * Why why why?!?!?! :lol:
May 1, 200619 yr Author why dont you just save yourself the trouble of putting the whole review from empire down and put their rating and you review, no doubt if anyone wants to read the whole review it's easier just to click to the site? Fair point, but I will leave it as it is for now :)
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