kletkeman Reviews

Desperate for Love (1989 TV Movie)

terrible print, horrible editing, acting pretty good, plot interesting

[6/10 · 31 July 2005]

Paid less than the price of a rental for the DVD, but it was clearly printed from a VHS tape in mediocre condition. The editing was brutal, but I'm not sure that it was the tape's fault, I think the software used to master the DVD was crap. The result is a very chopped (jarring) feeling ... I felt like the last 10 seconds of every major segment was lost.

Anyway ... the acting is quite good in my opinion. Christian Slater gives a good account of himself, but it's another dark performance, which is his specialty. The girl emotes well, as does the mother. All in all, I found it easy to get and stay in the story.

The plot is pretty standard, but since it is based on true events, it would be kind of hard to criticize on that anyway. I have to say that I enjoyed it. It is certainly worth the low price being charged these days, especially if you like Christian Slater.

S.W.A.T. (2003)

enjoyable despite some serious flaws in the final big action sequence

[6/10 · 10 April 2005]

Very enjoyable the first time you see it. Lots of fun, interesting characters, a little sexual tension, and very nice to see "Knox Overstreet" from Dead Poets Society becoming visible again.

I saw it a second time today and found that the technical flaws in the final sequence were kind of painful.

*** spoilers follow ***

1) I doubt that a Lear could land on a bridge and take off again. Especially with the cars cutting off a lot of room on one end. Minimum landing distance at maximum weight is something like 811 meters, which might actually fit on a really long bridge, but take off distance is around 2400 meters ... way too long for most bridges.

2) The girl gets hit with a high powered slug in the Kevlar vest. Moments later someone stands over her and she yells in a perfectly clear voice "I'm OK". I'm thinking she's in a huge amount of pain since these are high powered rifles and even in movie land that's gonna make a young sound pretty injured for a while.

3) The biggie ... Colin Farrell is climbing onto a train to chase the bad guy, who rushes at him and pins his hand to the car's floor with a long knife. Ouch! He then runs off yelling "you might want to get that looked at". So Colin rips the hand off the car with brute force! No way anyone can do that with a knife through the hand and all those tendons slashed. Then, he chases the guy down and beats the crap out of him with lots of right handed hay-makers. By now he's in shock from the pain and damage, and there is no way he can take such a repeated pounding to that hand. Finally, he gets the drop on the guy and stands 5 feet from him pointing a gun. he unloads the chamber, chucks the gun to the ground, and jumps right back into the fight with his damaged hand. On what planet would a well trained SWAT officer give up the advantage like that just to prove his manhood? Sheesh ... of course he wins and the guys dies and all is well.

4) When the team is driving back to the station, another call comes over the radio. Samuel L. Jackson says that their shift is technically over for 12 hours ... so they naturally mount up to take the call. Again ... on what planet is a SWAT team that has been awake for over 24 hours (and has just had a terrible evening where they killed some of their friends) given the discretion to answer any more calls? They are called in instantly for hours of debriefing and paperwork.

Luckily ... it's a fast action movie and so is still easy to like. But these are so blatant .....

The Emperor's Club (2002)

another Kevin Kline masterpiece

[9/10 · 9 August 2003]

I have to say .... I like pretty much everything Kevin Kline has done. I've found his last two movies (Life as a House and this one) to be utter masterpieces.

Minor spoilers follow.

This movie is always compared to Dead Poets Society because of the setting, but it is in fact quite different because it explores what matters to the teacher more than the students. This movie is, in fact, much more like Mr. Holland's Opus in tone, although again EC explores disappointment in other people while MHO explores disappointment in one's self. That's what I like about this type of movie, there is so much disappointment out there to explore :-).

Anyway ... you are taken through a long span of time (excellent makeup by the way) and you are introduced to a brilliant teacher who cares about his students to a fault. The latest class looks to be filled with achievers until a young, arrogant fellow is brought in to disrupt everything. Kline almost has him with a few months, but he slips away - a fact that is underscored several times in painful fashion. In fact the sleaze does not stop with this student ... it comes also from a supposed friend on the faculty.

But they pull it out in the end ... truly uplifting without the bittersweet feelings a la Dead Poets Society.

Tape (2001)

superb dialog, engrossing

[9/10 · 9 August 2003]

Possible minor spoilers ....

This movie seems to split people down the middle. Those who watched it, and those who were immediately irritated by it and ignored it.

I fall into the former category and thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. Ethan Hawke (EH) and Robert Shawn Leonard (RSL) are brilliant, although I have to give the nod to Hawke overall. The dialog is witty and cutting and EH's timing is perfect throughout. One commentor noted that it was all very repetitive (implying I think that it was more like an argument between children), but in fact Ethan played his part perfectly by persisently pounding RSL into admitting more and more by hitting him with "why" or "how" immediately after any simplistic attempt to brush him off with a convenient answer. Uma Thurmon added just that little bit extra as she got into reacting to EH's obsession with and RSL's indifference to her.

I especially like the fact that the audience is left to draw their own conclusions about what really happened that night. There are no clear cut or convenient answers. Brilliant.

Dead Poets Society (1989)

superb acting and excellent ambience ...

[10/10 · 9 August 2003]

It remains a favourite because it is at once entertaining, uplifting and utterly tragic. Don't be fooled by the naysayers, the plot and acting are superb. The ambience is amazing.

By the way .... I think people who utterly hate this movie are well-represented by Neil's dad :-(

The One (2001)

superb special effects

[29 March 2002]

Crouching Tiger and Matrix set a pretty high bar for special effects -- and I hadn't seen a movie yet that could really be said to have improved on them. But I think this movie has done it. High leaps, stop action, bullet dodging, and some really interesting high speed action following the freezes that I won't describe in detail. If you like this kind of movie, I think you'll really like what they've done to extend the genre.

The choreography is seemless. I was completely absorbed in the action scenes, and I found the scenes where he fights himself to be totally believable. Well done.

The plot is quite good, once you get over the basic premise of parallel universes (but that's a pretty well travelled road in science fiction so it's no stretch here.) The acting is much better than I expected (I was expecting Van Damme or Chow Yun Fat, but Jet Li seems to be a better actor.) I hadn't seen much of Jet Li, and I now plan to see more.

This movie qualifies as drama even though it is an action vehicle.

Minor spoilers follow. Stop here if you want to be surprised completely.

There is a sad plot twist near the end. The ending is uplifting, though, fixing the twist. A nice way to play it out. The poetic justice for the antagonist is well done.

The Musketeer (2001)

technically flawed, but watchable

[3/10 · 29 March 2002]

I'll open by discussing the technical flaws, which totally dominated the movie for me. They are easily classified into three main problems:

1) Poor choreography and equally poor execution of the fight scenes. 2) Absolutely embarrassing editing. 3) The most obvious continuity error I've ever seen.

1) I was anticipating Crouching Tiger-style fight scenes, and was very disappointed. I had just seen "The One" with Jet Li the day before. "The One" incrementally improves on Crouching Tiger, Matrix and others of that ilk, while this movie is a huge step backwards. Score negative for the choreography. I hated the ladder fight and the rappelling tower fight was as dull as dishwater. The swordplay was slowed down by the need to insert fancy moves and the swords just got in the way when they tried Matrix-style stuff. It never meshed. Too bad, really.

2) The editing was painful. I never quite felt that I was able to "grok" a scene before it cut to the next. I always felt like they were rushing me through the movie. And a lot of scenes just didn't play, for example the attack on the castle. Just about unwatchably confusing. In a word: choppy.

3) Continuity mistakes take you out of the movie. At one point, a tunic is left on a floor and you just know it will come back later. You wait and wait for someone to present it to the hero, and he's suddenly wearing it! Then he's not! And then it's presented to him. It's a little too late at this point to get emotional about it. I was stunned and quite disgusted by this point (I was already ranting to my fellow watchers about the editing.)

One more thing to consider: the plot is unique, in that it does not follow the Three Musketeers plot from the book by Dumas. So be it. But some will hate that.

Now the good stuff.

Despite being one of the most technically flawed movies I've ever seen, the story is actually somewhat watchable, because the acting is ok and the characters are likeable. If you are totally insensitive to bad technical qualities, you may actually enjoy this movie. And if you like to really rant and rave over bad movie making, you may love it :-).