Change Your Image
Liam-4
Reviews
Amber Sunrise (2006)
Words fail me.....
Where do I start? I first heard about this years ago when Kevin Smith (Dogma, Clerks, Chasing Amy) himself referenced it in a blog posting. I checked out the trailer and actually thought it sounded funny enough. Sure, it looked low budget, but the premise was intriguing. Of course, then I forgot the title of the film, and tried in a vain to find it a year later, until randomly stumbling across the blog posting on Smith's site.
To my delight I found I could order the movie from createspace, which I promptly did so.... now I'm a writer myself, and after a couple of years of messing with the premise in my head, I really hoped the film would live up to expectations.
No. No it did not. Initially yes, it showed promise, and perhaps future endeavors by the film makers will be a good film, but after watching this... I wanted the previous 90-ish minutes of my life back. Most of the funny jokes fall flat and far more humorously arranged in the trailer, the movie is predictable, the characters are stereotypes, and I now understand why it was self released.
However.... it did show promise. There are some generally funny lines in here, and the effort put into the film's production is obvious. While I will be checking out to see whether the quality by this crew improves I'd probably give this one a miss.
Strange James (2004)
Shows potential, but not much else.....
On my first viewing of Strange James I was lucky enough to miss the warning at the beginning of the movie, which basically said "Cut us some slack! We worked for beer!" I'll compare it to Clerks: a movie shot with similar budget and circumstances (okay, Clerks probably had more financial backing), but they were both filmed by people who use their friends and personal resources to fund the movie.
Unfortunately what fails Strange James most is the script. Sure, most of the actors were most definitely not professionals, and as such the dialogue was not greatly delivered, but had the script been better written, it could've been okay. Most of the dialogue in the script is bland, particularly in the scenes in the media class.
The twist at the end was not great nor original.
The film does however show excellent potential. As stated before, even with the actors who'd never acted before, the film could've been brilliant with an excellent screenplay. The direction is of a high standard, as was the producing of the material.
Unfortunately though, the film does have it's flaws. But I do look forward to what the crew come up with for their next feature.