Isherwood

The second film suffers from the same ailment as its predecessor. Watching Paul Vitti's softened mobster, divinely played by Robert De Niro, brilliantly parodying his most famous tough-guy mafia poses, means that you will be swept up in never-ending humorous intoxication. Yet the moment a more serious level comes into play (the rivalry of the Italian families for power), Ramis suspiciously starts to have issues because it is clear that he is not very confident in these waters. The ending is such a below-average attempt at a combination of action, wit, and some sort of point that drags the whole previous effort down into mediocrity.

Desert, Death Star, Chinese carnival costumes, red bears... trash! Forget Ed Wood because this goes beyond all limits of the audience's imagination. Star Wars: Episode X - Turkey Strikes Back or the top position for THE BEST bizarre bits of YOUR personal film library! :)

Lustig understands that he’s going to make a dark murder look like a couple of shootouts, and he does put decent effort into it. On the other hand, no one explained to Cohen that he can’t keep on writing the same thing and expect it to be relevant, and so the entire film is in the spirit of shamanic rituals, loving outpourings, and toothless tension. There’s also a lot of dialogue, the topics of which are hopelessly stuck in the first film, stretching the 85-minute runtime to an unbearable limit, with the film eventually falling flat with the director's resignation and the director’s unabashed stealing from his past works. A sad end to my childhood serial killer legend.

I figured that the hand on the pier at the end of the first film wasn't the best idea... A car chase or the shootout at a police station (a weaker copy of the one from the first Terminator) certainly don't replace the gloomy atmosphere of nighttime New York, and that’s even more true in the case of the chilling feeling of Matt's confrontations with innocent fellow citizens. The script also gives him a strange alliance with a pervert and a certain amount of repentance at the end. The director clearly lost his judgment during the 2-year hiatus. Instead of the introduction, he shows us the final two minutes of the first film and for good measure a flashback explanation of Matt's scarred face - and the work of the make-up artists is otherwise probably the only good thing, given that they really pulled their weight. One of the most glaring examples of the early 1990s of what a sequel to a classic should definitely not be.

A typical late 1980s B-movie that went straight to video, with all the pros and cons that come with it. Cohen's script is not great, but director Lustig learned a lot from Sam Raimi, and so the dark atmosphere of nighttime N.Y., where innocent citizens are mowed down by a uniformed officer, is ultimately the film's greatest asset. There’s a decent amount of blood, the murders are well thought out, and only the final hand on the pier doesn't bode well. Normally, it would have left my mind after a few days, but for my distant nostalgic memory of begging to watch this film (as the title and original VHS cover had already inspired a sacred terror in my childhood soul), I'll give it 4 stars.

Instead of proper psychology, we get a lot of verbal filler, and instead of exciting action, we only get digital ridiculousness in the desert. Ang Lee wanted to take the untrodden path, but he took a wrong turn with this film because it is simply impossible to carry a nearly two-and-a-half-hour colossus only with conversation. The formal games (editing, split-screen) get stereotypically boring after a while and don't suit the film at all. It's as if someone was adding their own psychedelic insertions to it in Lee’s editing room at night. The cast is excellent, and Elfman's ethnic-themed soundtrack is very nice, yet this whole farce still takes a downward turn given that the main villain doesn't show up until ten minutes before the end... in a comic book movie! Oops!

This time Cronenberg fully subordinated his classical trademarks (gynecology, psychiatry, body deformation) to the effect of self-efficacy. As a means of doing so, he chose little men in winter overalls with hammers in their hands and lots of long-winded chatter. The suspense is solid only up to the first two visits of the hissing kids, then after the finale (typical gradation) there is once again plenty of verbal filler, which is not even helped out by an incorrect scene of a school class standing around a teacher lying in a pool of blood. But I’ll give it 3 ½ stars for the drops of icy sweat on my back.

A phenomenal conversation film that, despite its occasional stumbling in the cadence of punctuated dialogues, entertained me so much that I don't have the heart not to give it five stars!

Insights gleaned from reading trash mystery novels and watching B crime dramas in a heavyweight mix of apt verbal shootouts and indiscriminate slaps at the stars of today from Dream Factory. Shane Black earns full marks in his main discipline, but not everyone is given the ability to give more than a grey routine shape to a brilliant script from behind the camera. It would take either old scoutmaster T. Scott or the younger Joe Carnahan. That’s unfortunate and it doesn't deserve 4 stars the first time, and sadly, it also doesn't entice a second watch.

The positives end with the subject matter, which is quite decent (but incidentally stolen from the literary classic J. F. Cooper). The rest is a mix of retarded cluelessness of both the screenwriter (half a page of the main axis, about 10 lines for the main character’s dialogue, and a handful of terrible dialogues) and the director, who should have it explained to him that there is no darkness like darkness and that the de-colored filter, together with the chaotic editing and the constantly thundering music are not particularly in fashion. Pathfinder lacks charisma (Karl Urban is bored instead of being a tough guy), insight (there really is a lot of marble here), and most of all balls. The opening credits and the atmospheric prologue, which is relatively well handled, are perhaps the most interesting parts of this whole charade. This is probably the worst high-budget blockbuster currently available.