James Berardinelli Quotes

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen will make a ton of money, Michael Bay will be lauded as the greatest director of our generation, and the accountants at Paramount will have their second collective orgasm in as many months. As for me, I will try desperately not to weep — not so much for what the success of a movie like this means to motion pictures, but for the simple fact that I'm going to have to do this all over again in two or three years for Transformers 3.

Michael made his debut in John Carpenter's 1978 horror classic, Halloween, possibly the best scare movie to come along in the last twenty-five years. … [W]ith the release of the sixth (and hopefully final) movie to bear the Halloween moniker, we see how far the mighty have fallen. … In the final analysis, The Curse of Michael Myers is a horrific motion picture — just not in the way the film makers intended - Directed By Joe Chappelle.

The only thing as bad as bad comedy is bad action. Bad Boys II has plenty of both. In fact, those two things are all it has, unless you count the small helping of bad drama. When it comes to this movie, the word "bad" initially seems highly appropriate. But Bad Boys II isn't just bad — it's a catastrophic violation of every aspect of cinema that I as a film critic hold dear. It seems to have been constructed with terms like "unwatchable" and "godawful" as its slogans. There are motion picture failures every year — the resumes of Hollywood players are littered with them. But, when something this big — a would-be blockbuster with recognizable names in the cast and crew — collapses in such a spectacular fashion, it's worth taking note. Think of how many starving children could have been fed with the money that was poured into [director] Michael Bay's latest sinkhole.

Despite his reputation as one of America's foremost "serious" filmmakers, Oliver Stone's name under the "director" caption does not guarantee a good movie. I learned that lesson while enduring the seemingly-endless tedium of The Doors, and was reminded of it during some of the long, drawn-out portions of JFK. However, nothing that Stone has directed — or misdirected — prepared me for the grotesque mess that is Natural Born Killers.

Like everything else, James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) has had to change for the nineties. The venerable 007, coming off a long hiatus, has taken on his sixth face (the other five being Sean Connery, David Niven, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, and Timothy Dalton), changed his mode of transport from an Aston Martin to a BMW, and now answers to a female "M" (played dryly by Judi Dench). Bond's attitudes towards women have been modified — although not greatly. Also, there's more action in GoldenEye than in previous 007 entries — enough to keep a ninety-minute film moving at a frantic pace. Unfortunately, this movie isn't ninety-minutes long — it's one-hundred thirty, which means that fully one-quarter of GoldenEye is momentum-killing padding.

As vampire movies go, few are more memorable than Nosferatu, which is not only the first screen version of Dracula, but, in some ways, remains the best. Unlike many of his predecessors who dabbled in the vampire genre, Murnau was a craftsman, and the care he lavished upon this production is evident in each shot and every scene. Alongside The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, few motion pictures have had a more profound impact upon an entire genre than Nosferatu has had upon the legion of horror movies that trailed in its wake.

I can't figure out who might appreciate this movie. Those who are expecting to sit back, stop thinking, and watch cool wall-to-wall battles are going to be disappointed. Those who yearn for a movie to recapture the long-lost horror and glory of the original creatures are going to be borderline suicidal. … Simply put, [Alien vs. Predator: Requiem] is trash.

Die Hard represents the class of modern action pictures and the standard by which they must be judged. Few films falling into the "mindless entertainment" genre have as much going for them as this movie. Not only is it a thrill-a-minute ride, but it has one of the best film villains in recent memory, a hero everyone can relate to, dialogue that crackles with wit, and a lot of very impressive pyrotechnics.

This is the fourth film from hot Swedish director Lukas Moodysson. Two of his previous three movies, Show Me Love and Lilya 4-Ever, made my year-end Top 10 lists. So it was with great anticipation that I settled into a seat on the first Friday night of the 2004 Toronto Film Festival to see A Hole in My Heart. 98 minutes later, I felt like I had been dragged through a vat of raw sewage laced with Sominex - Directed by Lukas Moodysson.

Transformers is so belabored that it makes Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End seem like a masterpiece of pacing. It makes that "classic" midsummer alien invasion movie, Independence Day, seem like a template for inventive plotting and solid character development. Even by Michael Bay standards, this movie is vapid. Yes, there are plenty of explosions, but those are a dime-a-dozen these days; even Discovery Channel's Mythbusters has them. Transformers isn't clean, big-budget fun; it's clean, big-budget tedium. For Transformers fans, I suppose this is a dream motion picture. For everyone else, it's a nightmare.

It's useless to advise people not to see Independence Day, so I'll issue a warning instead: curb your enthusiasm and don't expect much. With suitably low expectations, you're likely not to be too disappointed, unless you make the mistake of actually thinking about what's taking place on-screen while it's going on. The last half hour is built on a series of contrivances and implausibilities that even a six-year old could find serious flaw with, so be prepared to use the "brain off" switch. But Independence Day isn't about logic and intelligence. It's about space battles, mass destruction, and a laughably "rousing" speech by the President. This is a spectacle, pure and simple. Unfortunately, because the filmmakers mistakenly tried to inject a load of weak dramatic elements, Independence Day turns out to be overlong, overblown, and overdone. For alien invasions this summer, give me The Arrival instead.

I could start this review by stating that Dumb and Dumberer lives up to its name, or by calling it stupid, moronic, and idiotic, but I believe that approach is a trap, since a movie like this might relish being the object of such bland invectives. Instead, let me try a few that can't possibly be misconstrued as twisted praise: unfunny, boring, torturous, and unwatchable. … [N]o movie could be more aptly compared to raw sewage than this film - Directed By Troy Miller.

If you thought it was impossible for a film to contain less effective comedy than Date Movie, here's evidence to the contrary.

Those who delight in bad movies and enjoy producing their own unfilmed versions of Mystery Science Theater 3000 may gain a measure of semi-masochistic enjoyment out of Van Helsing. There are quite a few unintentionally funny moments, although the overall experience was too intensely painful for me to be able to advocate it as being "so bad, it's good."

Although The Terminator is arguably the more visionary of the first two films, [Terminator 2] is the more visually and viscerally satisfying. It's an exhausting experience and, even 18 years after its release (as I write this review), few films have matched it within the science fiction genre for sheer white-knuckle exhilaration.