"Miami Vice" - (film)
Yeah there was none of the Crockett and Tubbs friendship from the show, there was none of the occasional humour, we all missed the original cast to some extent, the rst of the squad had little to do (and were often never called by name) and the first 50 minutes was rather a lot of not much really....
BUT it picked up, it looked great, it had solid enough performances (i sure missed old Edward James Olmos though!), Gong Li was as yummy as hell, the action was delightfully brutal and as always with Michael Mann's own films exceptionally well crafted.
The wandering plot (which was simple really, but made complex by the chaotic structure and muffled dialogue) settled down to make a satisfying whole in the end and all in all...although it was not what almost everyone was expecting...it was a good, dark, solid and violent action thriller made with all of mann's technical skills.
"Hannibal Rising"
Why did this get so much hate?
It was far better than "Red Dragon" and "Hannibal".
It looked gorgeous (as did Gong Li), it was exceptionally well made, had an epic scope, was solidly acted by all (Gaspard Ulliel was very good indeed and thankfully left the Hopkins ham in the fridge), delivered the nastiness and was always compelling.
I also fail to see the criticism this gets for supposedly changing Hannibal from serial killer to vigilante hero.
First off (to escape or to evade capture aside) he always only ever seemed to kill people who were either deviants or just generally annoyed him or were counter to his warped sensibilities anyway.
Secondly he was shown in "Rising" to enjoy the kills far more than on just a vengeance level. He was loving 'the game' (a very Hannibal trait), the sadism and the drawn out deaths for their own sake.
He was obviously severly damaged mentally even at this early age due to what had happened to him and his family as a child (I also don't think this was a psycho-babble cop-put either as he was given chances to change by the Policeman who understood his reasons and by the only person in his life - who also loved him - Gong Li - but he chose to not be helped out of his own accord), so add the grotesque manner of the killings he carries out, add the fact he was loving the deaths and the sadistic games with his prey more and more (above the revenge level), add the fact we see him get more uninged as the film goes on and I think the movie made it very obvious at the end that Hannibal was one tiny step away from simply killing for his own pleasure and killing those who have not really done anything wrong to any normal mind...but have offended his now mortally damaged one in some way.
Good stuff all round.
Ignore the haters and enjoy this serious, well made, striking looking, violent and well acted entry in this very hit and miss franchise.
"Heartstopper"
Oh why bother! The most dire decade for American mainstream horror was by far the 90's.
So why does a 21st century horror film want to pretend its some 90's cheap-ass horror flick?
An electrocuted psycho pops back to kill a few people and do something with some girl he has a link with or something and oh....who cares?
Crap gore (in a film about a psycho who rips out hearts - how does he manage to do that anyway? - it's a big mistake to have rubbish rubber hearts for the FX) , tired direction, bored actors, dull characters and just...oh....deathly, heartless stodge.
Who the hell would want to almost re-make something as truly dire as "Shocker" anyway?
Do we need more moronic, dull-fest , 90's type horror dross along the lines of "Dr Giggles"?
The late 80's/90's was a dire time for straight-forward horror film making with lame sequels, already dead in the water attempts to start new horror franchises, endless smart-ass one-liner spouting psychos designed to sell t-shirts to mall rats who shout "dude" at each other and all round boredom!
"Heartstopper" tries to be such a film (here the psycho spouts pretentious garbage instead of jokes) and only a smallish turn by Robert Englund as a could have been interesting character makes the film even remotely watchable.
In a very rare event for me I gave up after 40 minutes, skipped to the (just as I thought, dire) ending with it's obvious, nonsense 'shock' ending, removed the disc and got on with my life.