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Reviews
Sayônara, Jûpetâ (1984)
A Waste of Time and Money
I first thought the film was okay, but I enjoyed it only because of my curiosity stemming from the film's rarity. Not too many people in the Godzilla fan community have seen it, and it should stay that way. When I rewatched it, I started getting bored within the first minute. Many scenes drag on needlessly (e.g. the sex scene against a space backdrop), stretching the film's running time to an unbearable 2 hours, and no "good bad" movie can be 2 hours long. Many scenes are inane (e.g. the sex scene..., the hippies). The characters trying to sabotage the Jupiter Solarization Project are horribly annoying because their merely brats who want to be responsible for the deaths of 200 billion people. They have no motivation for this. They're just stupid, annoying, selfish, sanctimonious punks (and of course their leader is French-looking). Despite the running time, you barely know most of the characters, and then they try to milk some tears from you by some pointless death scenes. It breaks the "don't show a good movie in the middle of your crappy movie" rule by intercutting a fistfight with scenes from GHIDRAH THE THREE HEADED MONSTER in what I assume is a vapid, nongermane, and utterly pointless social commentary. The music is something out of a high school graduation, repetitive and grating. There's gratuitous cruelty to animals mixed with a laughably bad rubber shark and dolphin. The only good part of this movie are the excellent special effects (excluding the shark and dophin), but they are too few and far between.
This entire movie just ticks me off, especially since it took money and good special effects people away from GOJIRA (1984). It just tries to grasp at your heartstrings, but it's filled with stupid, dull, annoying characters you'd just love to beat the crap out of and filler on the level of the refueling scenes from THE STARFIGHTERS. Absolutely one of the worst movies I've ever seen.
1/10 (It'd be 0 if IMDB's ratings went that low)
Gojira ni-sen mireniamu (1999)
Kaiju-rific!
When I heard Godzilla 2000 was coming to American theaters, I was really excited. For the first time ever, I'd get to see Godzilla on the big screen. I was not disappointed. Godzilla looks great with a meaner, leaner look. The special effects, although not without their bad shots, are generally very good. The enemy UFO/Monster is really cool and the final fight is fantastic and exciting. The dubbing is fine, but it did have its bad moments. Tristar's edits were fairly unobtrusive, so I didn't mind. Would've liked it if the they did make a few shots grainy. Oh well. And the movie dragged a little. Despite its bad points, though, Godzilla 2000 is a very fast paced and exciting entry into the Godzilla. It's one of my favorite Godzilla movies. And I the movie left me with a big smile on my face. I can't wait to see it again. 10/10
(kaiju = monster)
Mission: Impossible (1996)
It could have been better...
I'll spare you a set up the story and just get right to the review:
Mercifully, the movie has a very nice, quick pace so it's not as bad as it could have been. The first 20-30 minutes are just plain boring and there are a lot more boring parts to this movie. But besides, quick pacing it does have other shining points. Some of the cast delivers. Vanessa Redgrave is great as Max, the crime boss that wants the NOC list. Her first scene with Tom Cruise is very well done and humorous. It's a shame she wasn't in more of the movie. Tom Cruise is good as Ethan Hunt from when he meets Max to the end of the movie. For the first half hour, he was just awful. And that crew cut just looks awful on him. Very distracting. Ving Rhames adds another good performance into the pile, though he hasn't much to do, he does well with what he has. The rest of the cast is very mediocre.
The 2 only action sequences are thankfully fantastic. The first is in IMF HQ in Langley, VA where Hunt tries to obtain the NOC list is very suspenseful as he has to pass 3 security systems to obtain the NOC list. The other is when he must chase down the bad guy (I ain't sayin' who it is for those who haven't seen it) on top a high-speed train, while the bad guy tries to get on a helicopter. And the train is about to go in a tunnel! The mayhem was so exciting!!
While it had these good things, there are a lot of bad things to overshadow them. First of all, the overall mediocre acting and the fact that there are only TWO action scenes!! Just two!? No wonder this movie got so boring! They only come in the last 30-40 minutes of the movie! Which brings me to another point, this movie should not have been an hour and 50 minutes. They should have cut out 15-20 minutes of the boring dramatic scenes. The score by Danny Elfman is also incredibly bad. In the very few instances he used the famous M:I theme, it was good and added to the scenes. And Brian De Palma uses some weird camera angles to "enhance" the drama, but it's really just distracting, like Tom Cruise's haircut.
To sum up, it had some very good moments, but there were too many boring sequences and bad acting to make it good. It just winds up in the mediocre. It's too bad because this could have been a fantastic summer flick. Barely worth seeing. **½/****
Excalibur (1981)
Disjointed and Lacking
*½/****
After reading the Arthurian legends in my English class, we were treated to a viewing of the movie Excalibur. It wasn't much of a treat. I don't think that 1 movie about Arthur can EVER be really good. The major problem is that there's way too much to fit in to 2 1/2 or even 3 hours. The only good way is to make a TV miniseries out of them. This forces Excalibur to become too quick paced and disjointed to effectively tell the story. It rushes going through all the motions of the important stories while missing out on other parts. Events come flying out of nowhere. One moment Arthur is eating dinner the next he's at a lake and in less than 30 seconds he pisses someone off and starts fighting him. Then in another 45 seconds, surprise(!), it's Launcelot. When it takes moments of ACTUAL character development, the acting and dialogue is so bland, it's hard keeping awake and I did fall asleep for 15-20 minutes. Didn't miss much though. The whole movie, especially most of the ending ends up like a series of clips they show on TV shows like Leno. My advice, get off your lazy a** and read a book about them. It's much more satisfying. I know from experience, and usually I hate reading! You'll get to enjoy stories like Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Gareth, Knight of the Kitchen, and Sir Tristam and Iseult. They're great stories that were nowhere to be seen in the movie (although, there'd be no reason to put them in, but, you know).