Movie Review

Pretentious, ponderous, and patronizing. If I had to confine a review to a matchbook that would be it. As the third of a trilogy, The Matrix Revolutions suffers from the effects of The Law of Threes when it comes to movies.
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It’s been years since I’ve seen the movie that started it all and I have to admit that I’m not sure why. Despite being more than 20 years old, Alien moves at a pace that would match even today’s films. I do admit that it’s been long enough since I’ve seen the original, theatrical release, or even what has been available on video, that I can only guess at the restored footage. What the director’s cut made me realize is that Alien has for many years been wrongly labeled a science fiction film. The reality is, Alien has all the classic hallmarks of a Grade-A horror movie.
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The Zucker brothers must be laughing their asses off at the current crop of parody films, especially considering their close involvement with them. Given that the Scary Movie series is a parody of what was one of the most clever parodies of all time (Scream), you’d think it would improve with age. Given, as well, that Scary Movie 3 specifically skewers two of the most ridicule-worthy films of the past two years, Signs and The Ring, you’d think there would be more laughs. Sadly, there aren’t.
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Like most of Tarantino’s films, Kill Bill, vol. 1 is a sensory assault. From the volume of the very eclectic soundtrack to the overwrought sprays of blood that accompany each and every one of the many amputations and beheadings, and there are so very many. Despite all this, the film fails to deliver on its many over-hyped promises.
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While Underworld is full of a lot of simple, and some not so simple, sensory pleasures the first thing that struck me about this movie was just how loud it was. Bullets ricocheting off tile, subway train screeching to a halt, some very large, scary guy growling like a dog that’s just scented its first meal in weeks.

I have to agree, to a certain extent, with the reviewer at The Washington Post. She found this movie to be derivative, not only of other vampire and werewolf movies that have come before it but also of the host of neo-gothic epics we’ve seen in the past five years (The Matrix to name one). What the reviewer missed was that, at its core, this movie is even more derivative than that. Essentially, Underworld is the story of a vampire Juliet and a werewolf Romeo.
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