The weirdest shot in that movie is when Roarke returns to his hotel near the end, and passes a nun (or a woman in a long dress -- its been a while since I saw the film) and "she" looks up and is revealed to be none other than Robert DeNiro! Not quite as strange as Sean Connery in a wedding dress in Zardoz, but up there!

I didn't really understand that either. He keeps seeing the "woman in black" throughout and then just passes her at the end before walking into the apartment room -- I didn't even realize it was DeNiro, I'll have to go back and look at that. I just thought it was some clean shaven guy (the real Devil?) and was symbolic for that reason.

There was also a shot of Dann Florek (who plays the lawyer at the beginning of the movie who accompanied DeNiro) getting offed in the trailer it looked like, which wasn't in the movie I believe.

AndyDursin wrote:I didn't really understand that either. He keeps seeing the "woman in black" throughout and then just passes her at the end before walking into the apartment room -- I didn't even realize it was DeNiro, I'll have to go back and look at that.

I'm pretty sure it was DeNiro (obviously sans the beard!).

Yeah, I'm guessing you're right Paul, but it must be the angle, because even this screenshot doesn't make it incredibly obvious.

http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/3231 ... nblack.png

2012 (2009): 1/10. I did go see it wth some friends who wanted to see it (the line out the door for NEW MOON was extremely long). Dumb movie that is a bit too repetitive with its special effects. I would say this is the KING KONG of disaster movies...paid a lot of homages to the "originals" but went on way too long and way too over-the-top (as Jackson's KONG was in some places). Lots of things in there that made no sense as well. It got one point because of some of the special effects and because the acting wasn't as offensive as I thought it would be.

-The Karate Kid (1984): 7.5/10

-Young Elisabeth Shue with 80's hair: 10/10

Monterey Jack wrote:-The Karate Kid (1984): 7.5/10

While this movie is entertaining, there is NO WAY anyone could become a black belt in Karate in a couple of months. It takes YEARS to attain to attain that rank. I've been at it for two years and I'm only a green belt, which is the forth belt at my dojo (and I have eight more to go before attaining black)!

7.5?? The movie is at least an 8 or 8.5.

Good stuff that holds up well -- and a great score by Conti.

Screw the KUNG FU KID with Will Smith's son and Jackie Chan -- GARBAGE.

BTW sorry for putting this in the wrong thread. Too many open windows

As entertaining as Karate Kid is, it's so relentlessly wholesome and squeaky-clean in a sunny, Reagan-era way it's a tad ridiculous. Yeah, it's a wish-fulfillment fable, but William Zabka's bully is a bit too one-dimensional. Plus, I kept expecting that Team America "Montage" song to start up at any minute.

And I call bullcrap on Ralph Macchio being 22 when he made that. He barely looks older than 12.

NINJA ASSASSIN (2009) - Although the story is pretty bad and the acting is pretty bad, I had a blast watching this over-the-top gore fest of ninjas killing everyone they can. People get sliced in half, body parts fall everywhere, and despite the film's many flaws it is still pretty entertaining (if you like that kind of thing). The film has super-fast editing in it so some of the fight sequences were too blurry to keep up with, but I liked it anyway. Story was 2/10, gore was 10/10, fun factor was 9/10 for me.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox: 8.5/10

The first Wes Anderson movie I've legitimately loved instead of just chuckling politely at. Funny how his live-action movies reduce talented comedic actors to posing marionettes, yet it took Anderson making a movie with real puppets to finally get some genuine emotion on the screen. And the soundtrack is great, with Anderson's typically eclectic collection of pop music working nicely in tandem with Alexandre Desplat's score. A real charmer, and another entry in the lineup of unusually good animated features we've been getting this year.

[whistles, clicks]

I was a big fan of RUSHMORE but Anderson's movies have been pretty much too self-pretentiously "eclectic" ever since. I hated, HATED, "The Life Aquatic" in particular.

This one sounds good, but I think the release strategy -- going wide on Thanksgiving weekend with all kinds of competition out there -- was a mistake. The box-office projections I've seen are really disappointing.

AndyDursin wrote:This one sounds good, but I think the release strategy -- going wide on Thanksgiving weekend with all kinds of competition out there -- was a mistake. The box-office projections I've seen are really disappointing.

Yeah, I doubt this will do solid Coraline numbers, due to the number of "family" movies out right now or within imminent release (like The Princess & The Frog and that hideous-looking Alvin & The Chipmunks "squeakquel". Honestly, they're advertising a children's film with the tagline "'Munk Yourself"?!

Anderson cultists will show up for it (at least the ones who don't think it'll be too "kiddie"), but today's kids will probably think it's deliberately herky-jerky visual style looks too "primitive" or whatever. Then again, that Planet 51 movie tanked, proving that not all CGI animated features are critic-proof.

On a side note the early reviews on THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG seem to be quite disappointing -- and most cite Randy Newman's bland score as being one of the movie's biggest letdowns. I don't know myself, but the trailers don't look very appealing.

The smartest thing Fox could've done with MR. FOX is to screen it in limited or "platform" release, let it grow with reviews and word of mouth over a period of time (like the month of December), and then bring it out nationally in January once the dust has settled and all the other holiday movies have played themselves out. Going wide at a very busy time of the year isn't smart at all, and it looks very much like the film is going to get buried out there. Not a wise move, again, at all.

AndyDursin wrote:On a side note the early reviews on THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG seem to be quite disappointing -- and most cite Randy Newman's bland score as being one of the movie's biggest letdowns. I don't know myself, but the trailers don't look very appealing.

88% at RT right now. That might go down or up within the next week or so, but that's hardly "disappointing" in my book (it got an "A" in Entertainment Weekly). Anyways, I want to see this just to support a return to the 90's heyday of hand-drawn Disney animation, which I dearly miss. Aside from the farting lightning bug joke in the trailer, the movie looks entertaining enough, although I agree that Newman's animation work has been generally uninspiring since Toy Story. I wish Alan Menken had done this (his return to The Mouse for Enchanted was delightful).

I've edited out my rant about RT. Let's just say I don't treat it as the gospel and never have. I mean, SUPERMAN RETURNS was rated "76% fresh" -- what does that tell you? lol.

That said Variety could well be in the minority on this film, and you might be right MJ, but I'm just going by what they said, plus the trailer, which I did not find interesting, and also Newman's involvement -- I haven't really liked any of his Disney scores to be honest, TOY STORY was fine and all, but this is supposed to have some musical numbers and that's not his forte.

I do agree that I'd like to see hand-drawn animation stage a comeback -- and I will definitely see it at some point -- but it does not look like a classic Disney animated film on the level of the Menken-scored '90s films.