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Sci-Fi-Fantasy
Tuesday, 20 November 2001 |
Written by
Bill Warren
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First of all, be guided by the title: this movie is in extremely bad taste. There are eviscerations, brains blown all over the place, gallons of blood, vomit being passed around as a refreshing beverage, and yet more and more. At the climax, Derek (Jackson himself), who has been losing his brains throughout the movie, leaps into the alien leader while carrying a chainsaw, and emerges from his butt.
That being said, the movie is also amiable, goofy, nearly plotless and, for those with the stomach for it, very entertaining. Jackson directed and wrote the film, paying for it with his own money; he shot it over a period of two years, carefully segmenting the script so that he only needed a few people -- sometimes only himself and the camera/sound crew -- at any given time. But those who don't ...
Tuesday, 09 October 2001 |
Written by
Abbie Bernstein
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title:
The Fifth Element: Superbit Edition
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studio:
Columbia/TriStar Home Entertainment
MPAA rating:
PG-13 (intense sci-fi violence, some sensuality and brief nudity)
starring:
Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, Ian Holm, Chris Tucker, Milla Jovovich
release year:
1997
film rating:
Three-and-a-Half Stars
sound/picture:
Four Stars
reviewed by:
Abbie Bernstein
Big, colorful and brash, "The Fifth Element" is a science-fiction film
that has its tongue firmly in cheek and its narrative hand in the
pockets of practically everything in the genre that has come down the
pike before it. Not to worry – director Luc Besson, who co-wrote the
script with Robert Mark Kamen from Besson’s original story, fills every
last frame with a mind-warping array of images, then sets everything
hurtling by at a pace so fast that questions are beside the point.
Tuesday, 21 August 2001 |
Written by
Abbie Bernstein
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title:
Planet Of The Apes
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studio:
20th Century Fox
MPAA rating:
PG
starring:
Charlton Heston, Kim Hunter, Roddy McDowall, Maurice Evans
release year:
1968
film rating:
Five Stars
reviewed by:
Abbie Bernstein
Here’s a little confession from one of your friendly AudioRevolution.com reviewers –
‘Planet of the Apes’ changed my life. I don’t mean this in a coy,
figure-of-speech, gee-that-was-nifty way – I mean it literally. I first
saw the film when I was eight years old and it proceeded to promptly
seize my imagination in a way no movie had done before and few have
done since. On repeat viewings, as I became aware of the concepts of
metaphor and analogy, ‘Planet’ began to actually affect how I saw the
world – not that I expected apes to speak, but in how I understood
things like entrenched prejudice, defensiveness, curiosity and
conviction. Odds are that an adult seeing ‘Planet of the Apes’ for the
first time now won’t get quite as ...
Tuesday, 12 June 2001 |
Written by
Bill Warren
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Science fiction writer Michael Moorcock is highly regarded, partly because of his series of novels about hip scientist Jerry Cornelius, but so far, 'The Final Programme' is the only Jerry Cornelius novel to be filmed. Moorcock hates the results, and it's hard to blame him.
Director Robert Fuest (pr. fyoost) was coming off both of the Dr. Phibes movies, and several years on 'The Avengers' TV series; rather disastrously, he brought the send-up approach of both the Phibes movies and the TV series to his adaptation of the Moorcock novel. The Phibes movies and 'The Avengers' tend to work quite well because, for the most part, their plots are standard genre stuff; we know the conventions, we know the structure. It doesn't matter if we can't take them seriously most of the time -- they're deconstructing clichés.
Tuesday, 12 June 2001 |
Written by
Abbie Bernstein
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title:
2001: A Space Odyssey
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studio:
Warner Home Video/MGM
starring:
Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood
release year:
1968
film rating:
Four Stars
sound/picture:
Three Stars
reviewed by:
Abbie Bernstein
It’s no accident that the only time I felt I understood director
Stanley Kubrick’s ground-breaking, monumental ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’
was the fourth time I saw it, seated dead center in the front row of
the enormous Cinerama Dome theatre. While ‘2001’ is open to any number
of interpretations, one of Kubrick’s primary goals appears to be
overwhelming the audience with the sheer size and depth of his images.
There’s nothing quite like seeing that black monolith towering at
skyscraper height directly in front of you. Unless your personal
viewing facilities happens to include a screen big enough for use in a
1,500-seat venue, this aspect of the movie doesn’t really translate. If
there was ever a film designed exclusively for viewing in theatres,
‘2001’ is it.
Bearing this in mind, the DVD release of ...
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