croco-dopolis

After watching "The English Patient" and "The Constant Gardener", I swore I would never watch another movie with Ralph Fiennes again as long as I lived. My girlfriend said she liked it, and being snowed in the last few days I figured I'd give it a shot. I found this to be surprisingly good cinema. Very well done, with good talent, great cinematography, albeit a somewhat slowly evolving storyline. That, however, is perfectly in tune with 1939 Britain - bad cooking and all. I'm only submitting this review so that those who happen to click on my other reviews don't get the impression that I hate everything - it's just that I find most modern cinema poorly written, horribly acted, and ridiculously childish. This one was made for adults and it is well worth the two hours viewing time.

I only clicked on this one because I've been snowed in for two days and was bored to death. Most of the over-dubbing is so bad it reminded me of some of the low-budget Spaghetti Westerns of the mid-1960s. It's almost as bad as some of the early Japanese "Godzilla' movies. For something that's supposed to be "action packed", most of the characters seem like they're eating Xanax. Somebody spent a lot of money on fancy costumes, sets, and props, but it's too bad they didn't shell out more money for decent writers. The whole "liberated warrior princess" thing is laughable at best, and an obvious very poor attempt at re-creating "Lagertha" in a Teutonic setting. The anachronistic stirrups and other out-of-place props are insulting to one's intelligence. I find it hard to believe this has gotten a 7.2 rating here, but I guess kids who pay money to watch "Avengers" and "X-men" just can't get enough of this sort of pap. I'm going back to my online "solitaire" game.

We endured this turkey in its entirety last night after watching "Destination Moon" (1950), so we were certainly in the right frame of mind for a good dose of hokey 1950's "B" sci-fi. This is a disappointingly dull and uninteresting pot-boiler, obviously intended for no other purpose than being run as a second feature. I am baffled by the reviews here claiming that this is "ahead of its time" and comparing it with old "Outer Limits" or "Twilight Zone". I have to wonder if I was really watching the same movie. The acting could have been done as well by wooden cigar-store Indians. The dialog (for the most part) is insipid. The only "special effects" are a shaky and out-of-focus camera on a few shots. While the director had a great location to work on - a massive old mansion - he failed miserably in using it to his best advantage. He could have used the setting to really ramp up the tension (as was done with "Saltair" in "Carnival of Souls") but instead about half of the movie is shots of the two main characters wandering around and back and forth, seemingly lost on a large estate. When the best things about a movie are the cars (a 1954 MG TF, a 1962 Plymouth Fury Wagon, and a 1960 Plymouth Taxi Special), and it's NOT a movie about cars, you know it's a loser.