Dell's Good, Bad & Ugly Movie Reviews

[I LastWish I]

I wish you would update the first page with your favorites all time so I wouldn't have to read through all these posts lol.


and you should do up a best of 2009 list (if you already havent...)

[Sharkweather]

and you should do up a best of 2009 list (if you already havent...)

He just did his best of 2008 not to long ago.

He is a little behind with those, which I can understand. Takes a lot of time to watch a whole years worth of movies.

[Buzzman]

I just watched Moon it was so good. Check it out.

[dell71]

I wish you would update the first page with your favorites all time so I wouldn't have to read through all these posts lol.


and you should do up a best of 2009 list (if you already havent...)

All reviews will be archived on the first page by Jan. 2.

He just did his best of 2008 not to long ago.

He is a little behind with those, which I can understand. Takes a lot of time to watch a whole years worth of movies.

I won't do a true best of 2009 list for at least a few months. However, since the decade is coming to an end I will include it as much as possible in what I'm doing over the next couple of weeks.

I just watched Moon it was so good. Check it out.

In due time.

[Senser81]

What kind of homo doesn't like Gladiator? One of the best movies made since I was born.

I enjoyed Russell Crowe (does THAT make me a homo?), but the movie itself was actually retarded. The story is very dumb.

[dell71]

The Hills Run Red
2009. Rated R, 81 minutes.
Director: Dave Parker.
Starring Tad Hilgenbrink, Sophie Monk, William Sadler, Janet Montgomery.

Plot: Avid horror movie buff Tyler (Hilgenbrink) convinces his girlfriend and best friend to go on a journey deep into the woods to find a long lost slasher flick from the 1980s.

The Good: It knows what it is and what its purpose is so it keeps the pedal to the metal right from the start. What that means is even during the early parts we would expect to be slow the director is doing everything he can to hold your attention. Every minute or two we get random shots, supposedly from the missing movie, of someone getting an axe to the head, or their body torn in half or otherwise mutilated. And of course, there's a fair amount of female bare-chestedness. Gratuitous isn't a strong enough word for what's going on here. Narratively, its actually pretty solid as meat grinders go, setting us up nicely for the twist at about the 2/3 mark.

The Bad: With that twist comes huge, gaping plotholes that are never closed. Worse than this is like most hack 'em ups, it never engages us on any intrinsic level so actually scaring its audience is out of the question. It just repeatedly tries to jolt and/or repulse you. The problem than becomes there's so much of it early on, we've already become numb to it by the time the movie wants to shift us into overdrive. Another issue is our hero, Tyler. The movie wants you to empathize with him but its hard to because he's both a moron and a jerk. About five minutes in, I started wishing hard for his not-so-swift and extremely bloody death.

The Ugly: How our homicidal maniac, Babyface (Danko Jordanov), gets his name is ugly. How he came to be born is far uglier. Ewww.

Recommendation: This is absolutely, positively strictly for slasher/gore fans. If you're the type of person who just has to see every Saw movie and got excited when you found out the remake to My Bloody Valentine was not only going to be indeed bloody, but in 3-D, this is for you. If you're not, don't even think about it.

The Opposite View: You know the drill. Slasher flicks get a pass, here.

What the Internet Says: 5.6/10 on imdb.com, 50% on rottentomatoes.com, NA on metacritic.com[/url]

MY SCORE: 4/10
SLASHER MOVIE SCORE: 7/10

[nflman2033]

first off dell about Enemy of the State, it is underrated, but what is awesome is the Gene Hackman character is almost straight from the classic Francis Ford Coppola movie The Conversation, anyone who hasn't seen it, it is a must.

as far as my sig goes, it Free Enterprise, one of my all time favorites, if you like Star Trek and sci fi movies, then it is a must watch, but be prepared for lots of star trek jokes, its sort of like a Swingers for Sci Fi fans

[Maynard]

first off dell about Enemy of the State, it is underrated, but what is awesome is the Gene Hackman character is almost straight from the classic Francis Ford Coppola movie The Conversation, anyone who hasn't seen it, it is a must.

good post.....i totally agree that its a must for anyone who hasnt seen it. I love hackman in the movie.

[dell71]

Powder Blue
2009. Rated R, 106 minutes.
Director: Timothy Linh Bui.
Starring Jessica Biel, Forest Whitaker, Ray Liotta, Eddie Redmayne.

Plot: A stripper (Biel), a mortician (Redmayne), a widower (Whitaker) and an ex-con (Liotta) all lead depressing lives full of varying degrees of tragedy that intersect with each other.

The Good: This is an actor's movie. I'm sure it's impressive cast was drawn to it because the roles offer them the chance to showcase their craft and possibly generate some Oscar-buzz. This makes it precisely the type of movie Biel would feel comfortable enough to do nude scenes for - the type of dark, brooding affair the Academy seems to love. For that same reason, it can get such established but not currently "hot" commodities as Kris Kristofferson, Sanaa Lathan, Lisa Kudrow and the late Patrick Swayze to take roles much smaller than they're accustomed to. Therefore, its no surprise there are excellent performances all over the screen.

The Bad: It falls into the indie-film trap of everyone and everything about them being utterly sad while living in a world filled with despair. On top of that, none of our four heroes are particularly likeable. The stripper is a horrible mom, her son is in a coma yet she only seems to visit him when she gets a bout of guilt. The widower is trying to pay people to kill him so that he doesn't commit the sin of suicide. The ex-con keeps visiting his daughter at her job...minor spoiler, but not really because we figure it out in the first fifteen minutes...she's the stripper (that's just too creepy). The mortician's actually not that bad a guy but a little old to still be totally freaking out around women. Not being confident and having trouble with it is one thing but this guy wouldn't be able to satisfy himself if he had to talk to his hand first. All four of them have the decision making skills of mentally ill mule (again, the mortician is a bit of an upgrade over the rest). Finally, the whole thing is a pointless stock-piling of unfortunate events that don't seem to change anyone nor how we feel about them though the movie obviously wants to do both. When it starts, we think 'these are messed up people in messed up situations.' When it ends we think 'these are messed up people in slightly less messed up situations.'

The Ugly: Failed cleverness. To drive home the point the mortician is a lonely nerd, his name is Qwerty (ya' know, like the keyboard) Doolittle. Har har.

Recommendation: If you're into "gritty" indie films and think I just might not get it, this might be right up your alley. If you're just a horndog for Biel, have at it. For me, it starts with great potential, gets great performances and wastes it all. It blatantly wants to be another Crash but just crashes, instead.

The Opposite View: Kam Williams, Sly Fox

What the Internet Says: 6.5/10 on imdb.com (12/16/09), 25% on rottentomatoes.com, NA on metacritic.com

MY SCORE: 4.5/10

[dell71]

Dell's Classics Presents:


Paths of Glory
1957. Not Rated, 87 minutes.
Director: Stanley Kubrick.
Starring Kirk Douglas, George Macready, Adolphe Menjou, Ralph Meeker.
During World War I, a unit in the French army fails to take over a German stronghold know as the Ant Hill. Infuriated, Gen. Moreau (Macready) decides to try several of them for cowardice, punishable by death. Their commanding officer, Col. Dax (Douglas), serves as their counsel. Douglas gives an amazing performance as a man fighting an uphill battle. The cast as a whole is outstanding. Two other standouts are Ralph Meeker as Cpl. Paris and George Macready as our villanous general. By the way, Macready is sporting one of the meanest scars in cinematic history. PoG is a bit unique because its both a great war movie and a great courtroom drama. The one war scene we get is surprisingly well done given the era in which it was made and the trial that follows is excellent. Best of all, this movie doesn't take the easy way out. It invites us to think about what we've just seen and that's always a plus in my book.
MY SCORE: 10/10

[dell71]

Terminator Salvation
2009. Rated PG-13, 115 minutes.
Director: McG.
Starring Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Moon Bloodgod, Anton Yelchin.

Plot: In the year 2018, during man's ongoing war against machines, John Connor (Bale) tries to lead the resistance to victory and ensure that his father, Kyle Reese (Yelchin), survives long enough to go back in time and conceive him.

The Good: Post-apocalyptic Los Angeles certainly has the Mad Max feel to it and the machines are nasty concoctions outfitted with all sorts of weaponry. The transport, made up of several large robots attached to a giant one, is particularly nice. As a result, we get some nice action sequences and great visuals. Sam Worthington, as Marcus, does a nice job with the role and gives the movie a little much needed depth. Finally, our look at the original Terminator is scary realistic. Its so much so, you might think the special fx team went back in time themselves and came back with Arnold Schwarzenegger from his body-building days.

The Bad: Chronology is of supreme importance to the franchise and this one screws the pooch in that department. It wouldn't be so bad if a certain someone were from the future and not the past. The reason being our Terminator is obviously a technological leap forward from anything in the previous three movies (but don't go looking for any body parts changing into sharp objects this time). Still, here it is at the same time as original Terminator prototype leaving us to deduct that it was created first. More troublesome is because the movie is det in the future, we as an audiecnce don't experience the same paranoia of our own pending demise at the hands of things we've created that fueled its predecessors. We're too detached. Combine that with all the different robots zipping around and it feels more like a Transformers movie. Not to mention, fans of Christian Bale might be disappointed simply because they get a movie which he's merely in, not a movie he stars in and its not nearly the movie in which he was last relegated to such a role, The Dark Knight.

The Ugly: As good as the Arnie-bot looked, I couldn't help but snicker about the convenient yet totally unrealistic shadow that covered his privates for no apparent reason, other than preserving the movie's PG-13 rating.

Recommendation: Chances are, you already know if you want to see this. If you don't already have a working knowledge of The Terminator universe, i.e. have seen the first three movies, this isn't the place to jump in. If you do, see it and form your own opinion. In mine, its pretty easily the worst of the four, but it is entertaining if you're just looking for action.

The Opposite View: Philip French, Observer (UK)

What the Internet Says: 6.9/10 on imdb.com, 32% on rottentomatoes.com, 52/100 on metacritic.com

MY SCORE: 5.5/10

[Fox1994]

I agree with Star Trek. Didn't watch Miss March, not planning to it - male teen-ness be damned. No one in my school has fucking mentioned it, so stop blaming these stupid movies on us being juvenile... Goodness, I watch more horror movies because of bitches than I do terrible comedies because there are bitchess in them... [/rant?]

Anywho, my little sister sorta made me watch G-Force last night. That was the worst piece of shit I've ever seen. You should watch it just to give it your first (second? third?) 0. Anywho, watching G.I. Joe for the second time (first all the way through)... I don't know if you've seen it... I'd give it a 6/7 out of ten, except for the flashbacks. The story isn't great, but they really interrupt it.

Flashbacks counted, I give it a 4 or 5. Don't feel right doing any better than that...

Very few summer action/comedies are any good. I think Iron Man, was, but it had Robert Downey as a lead... If you can't do decent with him, you don't deserve ANYTHING!!!...

Anywho, in this GIJ movie, Marlon is a tad vaudevile-esque, but not anywhere near close to being as terrible as the two niqqas in Transformers. That shit was fucking terrible, but people hardly remember, because it was a damned Summer comedy...

Keep it up.

[Buzzman]

the flashbacks in GI Joe were the best part, specifically of Snake Eyes and that chinese ninja.

[Fox1994]

^You're not serious.

Japanese, not Chinese.

They fucked with the source material way too much, anyway...

[Buzzman]

what is the chinese charcters name anyway?