duckmang Reviews

The Village (2004)

Extremely bad

[1/10 · 31 July 2004]

When I was eight years old, my family went to see "The Hunt for the Red October" together, and it was one of the most agonizingly boring experiences of my life; being a restless child watching a movie full of subtlety and intrigue. Now, 15 years later, I have an experience to top that, and I can't use a short attention span as the excuse this time.

When "The Village" started out, I could already tell it would be horrible because of the dialogue. The movie supposedly takes place in the late 19th century, but all the characters talk like a bunch of volunteers at a second rate Renaissance Faire.

Then, as usual, there is the "twist" ending that makes Mr. Shyamalan's movies his own. I must give the filmmaker credit. It only took me 2 minutes to figure out the secret ending of "The Sixth Sense." It took me a whole half-hour to decipher this one. However, the minute I though I had figured it out, I spend the rest of the movie hoping against all hope that I was wrong, because it was such an insanely contrived idea. I've never been so dismayed to be right.

Despite its flaws, there was one funny part of the movie that came at the end, and that was the retelling of the story of the woman whose husband had been killed, stripped naked, and thrown into the "Dirty River". I laughed out loud when I realized what she meant.

Pitiful Movie: 1/10.

The Faculty (1998)

ten year old movie stereotypes and cheesy special effects don't work anymore.

[1/10 · 23 January 1999]

I'm not sure what i hated more about this movie, the fact that everything was stolen from somewhere else, or that the writers didn't even do that right. The tagline "The Breakfast Club meets The X-Files" couldn't be further from the truth. To even mention The Faculty in the same sentence with those two degrades them both. The Faculty's plot is full of holes and scientific oversights that keep it from being a respectable science fiction film. Also, it uses the same stereotypes for high school students that were beaten to death in the eighties. There were several pitiful attempts to raise emotion in the viewer by portraying the poor high school student suffering some grave injustice at the hands of his elders. Overall it was a poorly made film cashing in on the newly revived teenage market.

On the other hand, it did have few cute girls.

Tank Girl (1995)

what were they thinking???

[1/10 · 4 December 1998]

I'm not sure where to start. The script was putrid backwash from some writer's subconscious. I could have made a better movie using action figues in my back yard with a super-8 camera and a box of cheetos. That chester cheetah, what a guy. Malcolm Macdowell must have been eating out of dumpsters to accept this obviously half-dimensional role. Where did all these moronic one-liners that poured from Tank Girl's mouth come from? She would act ten times more skillfully if she got a lobotomy. There's only thing i can say about casting Ice-T in this movie: Why? I hope the madness will end someday. There was only one redeeming characteristic about this movie, and that was jet-girl. She was a babe. Too bad she was covered in grease for most of the movie.

The Birth of a Nation (1915)

moondog is an idiot

[4 December 1998]

This film changed everything. It may have been a racist, illiterate, and sexist look through the eyes of a megalomaniac. But it far more deserved and AFI's 100 best films of all time [although i believed this is the stupidest thing ever made. the decade isn't over yet let alone the century] than Pulp Fiction. And why do you feel it necessary to spread your ignorance throughout the internet systems. God knows there's enough of it already with all these porn sites everywhere. That's all i have to say about that.