SynthLord
12-13-2007, 11:26 PM
Don't waste your time on Next ... this movie is bloody awful.
So there's this deliberate hack of a Vegas magician (Nicholas Cage) who can see a couple of minutes into his own future. The FBI wants to recruit him to help them stop a nuke from being detonated. He decides this is a stupid idea, and instead follows his one long-term vision, meeting Jessica Biel in a diner. The FBI agent (Julianne Moore) after him is too busy PMSing at her colleagues to notice that the nameless sort-of Eastern-bloc-ish terrorists she's really trying to stop are pretty much looking over the FBI's shoulder to catch Cage, too. How they know about him is a mystery, as is their reason for wanting blow up LA ... so is Biel's instant switch from ambivalence to passion over Cage ... so are a dozen other things in this movie.
That's the setup ... then a bunch of stuff happens rather causelessly (how do you pull that off in a film about an oracle?) and the movie just kind of stops.
This movie has no real plot, the characters are less than one-dimensional, the acting is deplorable (Julianne Moore was particularly disappointing; she's usually a good actress), the script was shallow, the direction was clunky and disjointed, the effects inconsistent ... I could go on for hours.
I won't "spoil" the ending, but it's safe to say anyone who invests 90 minutes in this travesty is going to be pissed right before the credits roll.
Next rates nothing more than a :rolleyes: and a :bor:
- - - -
Redeeming my bad Netflix mistake was Pathfinder. Gotta say, it's like a better, less cartoon-ey (and less gay) 300.
Pretty basic plot: Vikings come to America 1,000 years ago and slaughter a bunch of Natives. A Viking boy is left behind after refusing his father's demand to kill an infant, and is subsequently raised by a Native tribe. Fifteen ears later, the Vikings return for more bloodshed and plunder, and our fish-out-of-water protagonist fights back.
Not exactly original, but the production value is good, the scenery amazing, and the battle scenes quite brutal. It's nothing you need to pay a lot of attention to, but it's a little deeper than your average hack-em-up flick.
I give it a :thu:
So there's this deliberate hack of a Vegas magician (Nicholas Cage) who can see a couple of minutes into his own future. The FBI wants to recruit him to help them stop a nuke from being detonated. He decides this is a stupid idea, and instead follows his one long-term vision, meeting Jessica Biel in a diner. The FBI agent (Julianne Moore) after him is too busy PMSing at her colleagues to notice that the nameless sort-of Eastern-bloc-ish terrorists she's really trying to stop are pretty much looking over the FBI's shoulder to catch Cage, too. How they know about him is a mystery, as is their reason for wanting blow up LA ... so is Biel's instant switch from ambivalence to passion over Cage ... so are a dozen other things in this movie.
That's the setup ... then a bunch of stuff happens rather causelessly (how do you pull that off in a film about an oracle?) and the movie just kind of stops.
This movie has no real plot, the characters are less than one-dimensional, the acting is deplorable (Julianne Moore was particularly disappointing; she's usually a good actress), the script was shallow, the direction was clunky and disjointed, the effects inconsistent ... I could go on for hours.
I won't "spoil" the ending, but it's safe to say anyone who invests 90 minutes in this travesty is going to be pissed right before the credits roll.
Next rates nothing more than a :rolleyes: and a :bor:
- - - -
Redeeming my bad Netflix mistake was Pathfinder. Gotta say, it's like a better, less cartoon-ey (and less gay) 300.
Pretty basic plot: Vikings come to America 1,000 years ago and slaughter a bunch of Natives. A Viking boy is left behind after refusing his father's demand to kill an infant, and is subsequently raised by a Native tribe. Fifteen ears later, the Vikings return for more bloodshed and plunder, and our fish-out-of-water protagonist fights back.
Not exactly original, but the production value is good, the scenery amazing, and the battle scenes quite brutal. It's nothing you need to pay a lot of attention to, but it's a little deeper than your average hack-em-up flick.
I give it a :thu: