FrogGlace
In other words,this film is a surreal ride.
KnotStronger
This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.
InformationRap
This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.
Phillida
Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.
Rosabel
This is without a doubt the worst movie I have ever seen outside MST3K. In fact, it would have been a perfect candidate for Mike and bots to snark on, and I can only hope that the Film Crew might discover it one day and give it the appropriate treatment. The writing is terrible, and the film doesn't even TRY to make any of the characters likable. From sullen, duck-billed Gabrielle Anwar to scruffy, chip-on-the-shoulder Craig Sheffer, to Rutger Hauer, who looks astonishingly like Michael Moore in this film, there is not one character I wouldn't be happy to see stung to death by killer bees. Ann Bauer is supposed to be a sexy reporter who has men falling like ninepins everywhere she goes, but she absolutely no chemistry with anyone in the movie, neither her loathsome soon-to-be ex-husband or the laughable Lothario, Scotty. Anwar mutters her dialog half the time, and Sheffer seems to think that grumbling sarcasm denotes strong masculinity.These two characters are supplemented by Hauer's Ezekiel, some nutcase American commando who lurches about waving a pistol in one hand and a little black book in the other. One guess what THAT is supposed to be, and I don't think it's the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice. There is also a U.S. State Department official named Scotty, who mysteriously seems to be running the entire Brazilian Amazon, with just one office and no secretary. According to this movie, Brazil has no real government, because Americans have moved in to eradicate native tribes, carpet-bomb nice upper-middle class towns, set up military no-go areas and take home all the oil. I'm guessing they picked on the State Department to run this operation, because trying to pin it to the better-known CIA and Department of Defense would have been too unbelievable.This movie gives the term "ugly American" a whole new level of meaning. The must insulting suggestion is that American soldiers don't seem to know how to shoot when confronted by loincloth-wearing bushmen armed with spears and bows and arrows. Wave after wave of machinegun-toting American commandos are mowed down by flying spears and flaming arrows before they can manage to get off a single shot. Of course, they obligingly stand upright and go running across clearings even though they are surrounded on all sides by bushes and buildings, so it makes it a bit easier for the natives to take aim. And boy, can they aim! Every dart kills a soldier, and every flaming arrow hits a can of gasoline, causing an explosion which kills a few more Americans. I guess in basic training, these guys were told that if their clothes catch fire, they should go flailing across country, until they find another barrel of gasoline to catch hold of for support. It's like watching 4 Denethors charging across the screen. "Oil" seems to be the magic word here, which smooths away inconvenient facts and excuses the most ludicrous plot device, in this case, killer bees that will ethnically cleanse the Amazon of inconvenient natives so Americans can systematically rape the land. Actually, I think the writers deserve an award for their restraint: they managed to get through the entire movie without once using the word "Bush".The movie also uses a hoary old cliché, which is that natives are well-meaning but disorganized. They need a white man to turn them into a potent force, and this shows up in the shape of the mysterious leader of the 'Shadow People', an American doctor named (I kid you not) 'Savior' (Duncan Regehr), who righteously lectures Ann on America's polluting ways, citing this as "one small example of your government's policy of sacrificing the environment for corporate greed." Half the idiocy takes place on the ground, and the other in the air on a bee-infested passenger jet where Ann's husband Martin gets to prove what a hero he is. He is accompanied by Easily-Led Captain ("You're in charge out there"), Feisty Black Stewardess, Nerdy Kid, Surfer Babe and Bill Maher Wannabe. Everyone else is just ethnically diverse background chorus.
Jack
Wow, this is the most poorly made thing I've ever seen in my life. The story is like...I don't know what. Sometimes when you're watching a cheap B movie, something will happen that's just so stupid that you almost want to yell at the TV screen. Now, imagine a movie that consists of nothing but moments like that, one after another. It starts with a bunch of guys with machine guns fighting some guys with spears. Even though the guys with spears stand still, right out in the open, the guys with machine guns can't hit them. Every time a spear is thrown, it lands right in a barrel of rocket fuel and kills a dozen of the guys with machine guns.Then some guys attack the village where the "shadow people" live. (Aren't those the folks from Anaconda?) The helicopters fire missiles which only hit the grass huts. Then they attack with hand grenades, which only hit the previously blown up grass huts. Though they're not blown up anymore until the hand grenades hit them. Then we see a waterfall blow up, you know, from one of those Rambo movies when the Russians dropped a big bomb on Stallone. Then there's a plane that has a 727 for coach, and a DC-10 for first class. Heck, first class is as big as a restaurant or something. They put all the coach passengers in first class, and it's still half empty. Someone fires a missile at the plane, but luckily there's a nerd on board who, in a couple of minutes, reprograms the plane's computer to emit a false radar image. It's also a GCI passenger jet, and it does turns which must pull about 30 g's.And that's just a small portion of the obvious screw ups. The story of this thing makes that seem like nothing in comparison. I feel the need to repeat that - all those screw ups are absolutely nothing in comparison to the story. Imagine some ridiculously preachy environmentalist propaganda piece mixed with a horrible B movie adventure type thing, and throw in some "killer bees", which are actually just regular cute little honey bees. I really loved the part where the guy named "Saviour" (yes, I'm not kidding) starts preaching about how the female lead's government is responsible for destroying the rain forest. I mean, they're in South America, and she's obviously from Britain. The movie opens with "Tensions are high due to the United States refusal to sign the Kyoto agreement". But the point of contention is about building a highway through the rain forest. I wasn't aware that global warming is responsible for highway construction. But what does it matter...once you get preaching, it's hard to stop even if you quit making sense a couple of hours ago. As far as the mega super highway through the rain forest - it doesn't go anywhere. Are there a lot of super highways built that just sort of end out in the middle of nowhere? And then our characters find a tractor out in the middle of the jungle and conclude that it is proof that they're going to extend the highway at least as far as the position of the tractor. I guess it's inconceivable that a small tractor, 100 miles from the construction site, might be used for anything other than building a super highway. The apparent theory is that they airdrop the equipment out in the middle of the jungle so that it will be available for use when the highway gets there.There are lots of really terrible B movies out there, but they all pale in comparison to this grand accomplishment. Someone should create a research project to find out what in the world goes on inside the heads of the people who made this. It's unfathomable.
duntrune
but no matter the title, it's still a lowbuck, horrifically written flick. Gabrielle Anwar running around in a jungle is amusing for about 3 minutes, but you have to watch 100- odd minutes of garbage to get it.....it does get bonus points for it's Ed Wood styled same stunt from three different camera angles stretching of the budget, and loses the bonus points just as quickly for it's "Shadow People" with Prince Valiant haircuts..... truly bad, completely ludicrous, and on the Cheez-o-meter, it gets; 3 out of 10, bad, but not lovably so....
Kim Harris
Well... only worth watching if you really have nothing better to do. The story is ludicrous, the dialogue embarrassing and the special effects cheesy in the extreme. However, it did provide some laughs. It is worth watching just for the aeroplane sequences. How they persuaded Rutger Hauer to appear in this is hard to imagine and while Gabrielle Anwar is not the greatest actress in the world she would have been hard put to do much with this dialogue. I would love to know how much the budget was for this movie. They can't have shot more than one take of anything and I should think the whole thing was made in a week. Have fun!