|
|
January 2004 GOTHIKA Krapola - even Halle Berry's acting doesn't deserve this. GOTHIKA had me longing for movies that I didn't like but weren't as crappy. While director Kassovitz's CRIMSON RIVERS showed occasional playfulness, GOTHIKA is a lazy patchwork of amnesia, THE SIXTH SENSE and snuff films. Someone please stop Kassovitz's slide to hackdom. D OPEN RANGE If metrosexuals could be movies OPEN RANGE wouldn't be one of them. OPEN RANGE is no frills, although there is an unfortunate romance. It's spare. Earnest. Aw shucks don't mess with 'im though if you did you'd soon be down for the count with not an atom of testosterone wasted - OPEN RANGE is that spare. OPEN RANGE is a doleful acknowledgement of the end of a way of life and limited time ahead. Maybe this is Kevin Costner's midlife crisis flick, even a muted apology for the excesses of WATERWORLD, hopefully? C+ SECONDHAND LIONS There was a reason I never heard of this one, quite possibly the worst in-flight movie I've endured. Mind you I usually avoid the stuff, but curse you anyways, China Airlines. SECONDHAND LIONS isn't inept though it never surprises (well, maybe seeing Berkeley Breathed's work in the closing credits. And seeing the Haley Joel Osment growing up to be... Matthew McConnaughey). Worse than the feeling of having seen it all before is the cutesy sugary coating it comes in, a recipe which doesn't go down well with me. It doesn't go up well, either. D 21 GRAMS Hey, let's chop our scenes up and replace them in some random order to heighten drama! Wonder if the DVD for 21 GRAMS will have a feature, like I hear about the MEMENTO DVD, where the film is shown in chronological order? 21 GRAM's current structure, or lack of, is an affectation that doesn't work along with that silly explanation for the title. C 28 DAYS LATER THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS meets mad cow disease. I half-expected this to be a reworking of the zombie genre but it's really fast-acting rabies. The whole "infected with rage" bit at the start seemed promising but soon doesn't matter a whit. C- UNDERWORLD Judging by the everpresent scowls here, a smile must be like disinfectant to crap computerized effects. The concept is novel enough but the execution is derivative, even poor, especially for something of its ambition: the CGI is uniformly bad and the final fight scene - werewolf goes WWF - is worse. C- WHALE RIDER Winner of the audience award at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival, I thought the TIFF audience was savvier than this. Imagine your twin and your mother dead, an absent father, your grandfather disowning you, all within hours of your birth - surely a catalogue of miseries even Lars von Trier would applaud. A lumpen, beached behemoth begging to be washed away in your tears, WHALE RIDER is DANCER IN THE DARK meets save the whales: indefensible, intolerable cruelty is inflicted upon our saintly young cruelty-soaking sponge (press here for tears) until an unnecessary, supposedly transcendent event bitchslaps her tormentor into something that was obvious all along. Insisting on miracles to arrive at the obvious conclusion is like insisting on an inventory of items under every grain of sand in Iraq to be convinced that, oops, there may be no WMDs after all. Surely there are better things to do with your time. D+ |
