Todd Smith

It seems what makes this movie stand out to most of its fans is the fact that Mulan is a female action hero and not a rich princess, she’s Asian and not white and it shows little girls that they can and should be treated equally as boys. However, I’m not a kid, I don’t have kids, I’m not a sexist, or a racist, so none of these things affects me looking at this as anything more than just a cartoon. A cartoon that’s the intellectual property of a multibillion-dollar company that had nothing more in mind than making the most money they could by exploiting a market of fans dissatisfied with the status quo that Disney themselves perpetuated with movies that had white women waiting for a rich handsome prince charmings to save them. They did those movies when it served them and stopped when it didn’t. I don’t say that try and sound like I’ve found out their big secret, I say that to say this movie is just okay to me, because of [my] perspective. However, I do respect and understand that there are other ways of looking at this movie that would elevate it to others. But just not me, Eddie Murphy was funny, the villain was pretty forgettable and the love story was so tacked on that if felt like something done in protest, as if they filmmakers said, this is my movie and if you cut it off here it’s done, but let it play a few minutes more and you have the studio mandated ending, but I also could be way off. Not bad, not great, good.

A very middle of the road slasher film that’s saved by the third act as it focuses more on the leads Ben Johnson and Jamie Lee Curtis, who both give good performances. The train location is a nice change of pace from a house or the woods where most slashers generally take place, the costume party does make it more plausible for the killer to be on the loose without people catching on, the cinematography is good, also surprise appearances from Vanity and David Copperfield are a plus. However, with ever good thing there is about the film there’s also a bad, the characters are generally unlikable, there’s very little to no sex or nudity and the kills are mainly off screen and what is shown is unimaginative, especially considering magic was a big part of the movie. Some of the decisions the characters make, the leaps of logic in the story and the “twist” at the end are eye rolling and cringe inducing. There are better slasher movies, there are better Jamie Lee Curtis slasher movies. You definitely won’t regret watching this, but you’re not missing much if you skipped it either.

This movie has potential on paper, but this isn't a book. The budget, the script, the cast and the special effects would work well for a campy low budget horror film, but the direction and pacing is so slow and deliberate it makes it hard to stay engaged. No tension, no suspense, no humor. This movie aimed too high and the talent just wasn't good enough to pull off a serious thought provoking horror film. If they would have aimed for an entertaining movie that made fun of itself and the horror tropes and cliches that they painfully go through this could have been a cult classic.

At times it feels more like a collection of music videos than a movie. With paper thin characters, no real plot, forward movement, drama or conflict. Sure, things come up that seem like they put our heroes in a difficult spot. Pressure to have sex, dropping out of school, teenage pregnancy, a potential deadly drag race, a gang fight, but then you look down at your phone for a text or tweet and you completely missed the 5 seconds of runtime the filmmakers took to resolve said issue before the next musical number. So why do we or I all love this movie so much? I think when you have really likable characters you don't want to see anything bad happen to them, especially teenagers. Because we've all been at that point in our lives where our future is ahead of us, we think we know it all, we think the friends and loves we have at that time will be there for the rest of our lives. However, we now know almost all of those things are false and our parents that we rebelled against so much for telling us what to do were right about almost everything they warned us about, but man oh man wouldn't it be cool if our past selves or these characters were right? So yeah, much like, "may the force be with you" and "I'll be back." "Grease is the word!"

Back in the 1990s a boss having sex with his younger employee was a love story. A female reporter in a men's locker room was used for comedy. A professional athlete playing through multiple concussions for a big contract was heroic. Obviously, none of those things would be accepted in a mainstream studio movie today. However, if a modern viewer gives this movie a chance they'll find it to be a heartwarming tear jerker, with memorable scenes, lines and catchphrases that live on today. To name just a few, "Show me the money!" "I love black people!" "Help me, help you." "You complete me." "You had me at hello." See Tom Cruise at his best, Cuba Gooding Jr. in his Oscar winning role. The world introduction to director Cameron Crowe and actress Reneé Zellweger. If you haven't seen it I highly recommend you do and if you have I highly recommend seeing it again soon because it's worth a revisit.

I've seem a lot of Avantgarde experimental films in my life but this would have to be at the top of that list. A true masterpiece of art, because that's what this is, art, not film. The animal attacks seem very real, the result of a person trying to ride a buffalo as a horse are exactly what you'd expect. Both humans and animals were harmed in the making of this art, it shifts from documentary to narrative and back again. Does this review confuse you and seem all over the place? Good, then I'm hopefully giving you and idea of what it was like to experience it.

A good amount of gore and a lot more nudity and sex than you'd expect from a mainstream film. The ending was good in theory, but not executed as well as it could have been. Pretty good overall, but its hurt by the fact that there's no mystery as to who the killer is, lack of creativity in the kills and zero tension in the film.

The premise isn’t anything new, but given that at the time of this review the movie is 40 years old that shouldn’t be held to much against it. The performances are fine and it does have some familiar faces in the cast. It’s a very homogenized film with a melodramatic ending which makes sense since it was made for TV. It’s not the worst choice you could make, but there are a ton of much better “someone invades a family” movies to watch. Fatal Attraction, The Hand the Rocks the Cradle, Lolita and Fear to name a few.

I didn’t hit her! I did not! Oh, hi review. I’ve seen the rifftrax version of The Room a few times, saw interviews with some of the people involved, watched YouTube reviewers take their stabs at it, ready the Disaster Artist and saw the adaptation of it as well. I’m honestly entertained by all of it. The book being at the top of the list, not sure how much of it is accurate, but it does give you a different outlook on Tommy Wiseau who in The Room gives one of the best, worse performances of all-time.

4 episodes of a TV show put together to form a movie much like forming Voltron, but this isn’t nearly as good as that show. From what I’ve read the show got better, but that still doesn’t change the fact that this was tough watch and I would not recommend unless it’s the rifftrax version or you and your buddies want to hang out and riff on it yourselves.