Reviews by madstalk

Heaven's Gate is a beautiful film. Almost every frame perfectly captures the allure of the classical romantic West. Sadly, the rest of the film is essentially a disaster. If one looked up maniacal ego trip in the encyclopedia there would likely be a portrait of director Michael Cimino slapped on the page. The beauty of the film is hindered by a mess of a story, countless wasted minutes, horrible sound design and boring unrelatable characters.

It would take a while to document this film's crimes against cinema but some are so egregious they have to be mentioned. Important expository dialogue is drowned out by unrelenting "arty" background noise. Every scene seems to drag on longer than necessary and some sequences, like the near 30 minute prologue, are almost entirely unneeded. The immigrant characters you are supposed to root for are annoying and "fleshed out" via tediously long dance and cockfighting sequences. The core personal conflict of the story (the love triangle between Kris Kristofferson and Christopher Walken's characters) isn't introduced until the last third of the film and is poorly explained and unrealistic. By the end it's hard not to root for the heartless mercenaries to massacre every major character introduced in the film.

It's sad because Cimino obviously has considerable skill as an artist. He chooses amazing locations and builds wonderful sets. But the core important elements of the film are so flawed that instead of being noted for its beautiful imagery it stands as a testament to misguided self indulgence and excess.

One of the best pure baseball simulations out there. Its not at all flashy and can be less than user friendly but it has tons and tons of options to match any imaginary GM's play style. You can start a career mode in any year of MLB history, run expansion drafts, use real historical players, work your way up from a single a manager to a big league job and that's only scratching the surface. This is the best baseball business simulation out there.

With this cast, this director (Greg Mottola from Adventureland and Superbad)and an interesting concept this should have been, at the very least, a great comedy. Sadly, it disappoints. It's only funny in small non-sustained stretches and the comedy potential of a rude, pop culture obsessed alien is mostly wasted. Most of his humor is way to obvious pop culture references (how many tie ins can you you have to E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind) and blatantly telegraphed. The core story of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost taking a road trip is the most interesting but it often feels as if the film is vacillating between the raunchy comedy of Superbad and the more straight forward storytelling of Adventureland without ever choosing a consistent approach. One second Paul is dropping f-bombs and showing his ass out the window the next he is a selfless life saver with no real character exploration given to explain his random life changes.

Its odd to say - especially based on the Paul centric advertising - but the human story here is far more interesting than anything Paul brings to the table.

This movie reeks of the 80s and not in a good Amadeus kind of way. The special effects are often brutal, the acting is in the alley of an off off off Broadway play quality and the story makes random unexplained leaps. Not of the he's immortal so now he's flashing back to Scotland kind of leaps. More like the let's just shove a girlfriend who's supposed to be the love of his life into this story with absolutely no exposition or she loves him even though she just tried to stab him to death with a knife kind of leaps.

The highlights are the sparky swords (though they only sometimes spark for some reason) and a very brief appearance by Sean Connery doing all kinds of scenery chewing. The core concept is also pretty interesting and some of the set pieces work pretty well but overall the movie feels like the creators just threw cool ideas at a dartboard and kept them even if some of the darts missed the mark by 27 feet. It is recommended if you like campy as hell high fantasy action flicks but if you're looking for anything deeper there might only be one and this is definitely not it.

This is an amazing beginning to Kobayashi's trilogy. It follows humanist Kaji's assignment to a Japanese ore mine staffed mostly with Chinese laborers. The story follows Kaji's trials and tribulations as he is put in charge of the "special laborers" (aka Chinese prisoners of war).

Despite the fact that it is only one part of a trilogy the emotions and human experience No Greater Love touches on are sweeping. The film is filled with searing social commentary, highly politicized character battles and more personal dramatic stories. In the hands of a lesser craftsmen the inclusion of all of these story elements would likely leave quite a bit to be desired. At least one story arc would feel inferior or under developed. In the hands of Kobayashi, however, the mixture works beautifully. It helps that Tatsuya Nakadai gives an amazingly emotive performance in the lead role - giving what probably should be a one note character depth.

The film looks beautiful, deftly tells a complex story that touches on everything from the difficult history between the Japanese and Chinese to the complications of war to gender roles to (no matter how hokey it sounds) the power of love all the while serving up some great acting performances. It is three and a half hours long but the tale it tells is so gripping that it is really hard to turn it off or take a break. One of the best wartime dramas I've seen in any language.

It's a nice piece on a lesser known artist. What's here is your pretty standard documentary fare but the subject is so interesting that it keeps you going. The major flaw of the film is that it seems like a bit of a fluff piece at times. When the film begins to set the stage for Ochs' death it feels like the mental problems, alcoholism and daddy issues come suddenly from left field and are only briefly examined. I would have liked to see more examination of Phil Ochs the man as opposed to Phil Ochs and his musical output. It's a good music documentary but by the end I didn't feel like I knew much more about what really made him tick then I would have by reading wikipedia.

A unique little western film. It clocks in at under an hour and a half and the majority of that is Marshal Will Kane failing to rally the town to defend from the devious Frank Miller who's been released from prison to enact his vengeance.

The time leading up to the final battle is interesting with the passage of time (all leading up to the noon hour) on clocks being a big visual motif. Gary Cooper puts in a pretty good turn as a marshal who refuses to abandon a town that won't stand by him. As he repeatedly fails to get a posse together you can see the desperation and fear of mortality creep into his performance. He's almost an unlikely movie hero. He does the right thing but he's not the "Man With No Name" - he can't gun down 4 super villains at once. This makes the final showdown the most interesting yet least satisfying part of the film.

The box art and inflated expectations lead one to believe that the final showdown will be a classic one on one duel. It isn't. It's interesting in its own way but the conclusion of the showdown is quite sudden and unexpected. Realistic perhaps, but it lacks the high drama I was expecting.

Still, Cooper is great and this is as fine an examination of a man facing his mortality while his loved ones turn their backs as you will see in any film, let alone a Western.

This is one of the best sequels ever made. It takes the core game elements of the previous Rollercoaster Tycoon games and exports it to glorious (for 2004) 3d. It also adds the ability to ride all of your rides in first person view which makes the excellent coaster building mode all the more immersing and addicting. There's tons of mods and 2 expansion packs available as well making it possible to make a amazing amusement parks.

This is not close to being the best of the series but it survives the transition from 2D animated adventure gaming to 3d animated adventure gaming relatively well. The humor, voice acting and characters are still top notch but the controls and puzzles are lacking in certain instances. At certain points it takes ludicrous puzzles to new must search the internet for answers extremes.

A horror comedy that's less horrifying and funny and more totally insanely bizarre. The bare bones story here is that a group of practically named Japanese school girls heads to a house in the country for summer vacation. Then strange stuff happens.

In all reality all that plot and characterization is not at all important. This film is all about the crazed vision of director Nobuhiko Obayashi. It's filled with odd storybook painted backdrops, weird visual camera effects and strange shot framing. It's less a film with a cohesive storyline and deep characters and more a unsettling trip into Obayashi's imagination. If you're looking for a film that makes you laugh AND shake in terror this really isn't for you. If you're looking for a cheesy, imaginative, immensely weird visual project then House might fit the bill. It's not for everyone but it's one of a kind.