Doom

Review by Michael Jaffe

I have mixed feelings. I love the game, and like the game the plot in the movie is worthless and pointless. In the movie, people die on mars, so an elite group of marines, each with their own personalities go and kill monsters. The film is two halves. The first half, a sneaky thriller with nary a shot to be seen, while the second half is bloody brilliance. A variety of awesome decapitations and fights that come en masse. For fans of shit exploding, the 2nd half is perfect. The first half is too good for the movie, with two much The Rock is charismatic for the first 75% of the movie, but at one point his character loses continuity and becomes good, then bad, then good until you have no idea about what the character is anymore. Karl Urban, a character baddy from such films as Chronicles of Riddick and The Bourne Supremacy, plays the emotionally torn Reaper. But really, who cares about the plot or the acting? I like the 2nd half, but a great half doesn’t make a good whole. 5/10

Mouldy's Movies

Review by Taylor Helgren

As a film aficionado, I have reviewed this website for the past couple of weeks. In these past weeks, I have found myself oscilating between obsessed admiration and unchecked hatred. Mouldy demonstrates a fresh, young perspective; you can almost hear the pimple-faced, afroed, socially inept sixteen-year-old shouting his reviews at the screen as the film flickers past. His reviews are a sensational blend of knowledge, emotion, and vivacity. Despite his eccentric passion and admirable opinions, Mouldy fails miserably as a writer. He shows minimal, if that, attention to grammar. His reviews are cluttered with run-on sentences, misspelled words, and blatant proofreading mistakes. His writing resembles his reviews; eccentric is the only word to describe it. You can never tell if he means their, there, or they're. If his neglect for simple English was his only flaw, he would be a reasonable, readable critic. However, his need to review a grammar book is almost as glaring as his need to hire an editor. He demonstrates a remarkable tendency to incessantly ramble. His failure to distinguish paragraphs indicates that he lacks any ability to separate his thoughts. Courtesy of Mouldy's writing style, his eccentricity degenerates into pure, raging lunacy. My advice to this young critic is to review his high school English text book and to look up "paragraph" in the dictionary. 5.5/10

Serenity

Review by Michael Jaffe

I love Firefly. No question it is one of my favorite shows ever. It combined sci-fi and western film genre’s beautifully with a heavy dose of humor and sorrow. Serenity is just that. When I saw the ship appear on screen for the fist time I felt a chill go up and down my spine, and the rest of the film did not disappoint either. It was like a 2 hour episode of the show. The plot is that Captain Malcolm Reynolds, Mal, and the crew of his firefly class ship pick up some new passengers, little do they know that these are fugitives hiding a great secret. They are then pursued hotly by The Operative, played incredibly by Chiwetel Ejiofor. The crew then in classic fashion joins together and helps the mentally disturbed, yet “gifted” River and her doctor brother Simon Tam. The international governing body, The Alliance, the governing, evil international body, wants River back after Simon rescued her from a research facility. This whole film is just good ole’ fashioned ass kicking fun.

The cast from the show is so used to their characters, they play them so well, especially Nathan Fillion as Mal. Alan Tudyk, better known as Steve the Pirate from Dodgeball is great comic relief as the pilot and husband to first mate Zoe, played by Gina Torres. Morena Baccarin plays “companion,” a polite word for expensive whore, and Jewel Staite plays mechanic Kaylee. Chiwetel Ejiofor is brilliant and perfectly restrained as the operative, the alliance’s assassin believes so strongly in what he is doing, hunting river, is the right thing to do, he sees no flaws in his actions. The writing and directing by Joss Whedon is flawless. It is obvious that he loved this movie and nurtured it with all of his heart. The only problem I have with this work of brilliance is that the theme song from the show doesn’t play during the opening credits. 10/10

Domino

Review by Michael Jaffe

Her name is Domino Harvey and she was a bounty hunter. That is the movie. The story is about how Domino, played by Keira Knightly, a spoiled, rich girl from Beverly Hills who is bored with her life and hates everything. She then by chance answers an ad for bounty hunter training. She then joins with Ed Mosby, Mickey Rourke, and Choco, Edgar Martinez, and becomes a bounty hunting trio. The three work for a bondsman, played by Delroy Lindo, who comes up with a scheme to get $300,000 from a wealthy casino owner. He uses the three bounty hunters and their Afghani driver Alf to steal $10 million, and then return it with the three hundred grand as a finders fee. Things of course go very wrong with the mafia, three loud black women, a gay Puerto Rican man and a one armed bus driver.

Tony Scott gets a lot of crap for his fast cuts and lighting techniques, but I feel that they are fine, not bad, not good, but keep the viewer on their toes. Man on Fire I felt was one of the best films of the last couple of years, and while Denzel carried that movie, the only person in Domino who could carry this movie was Mickey Rourke and the special came person. The cameo I wont give a way because the surprise was the highlight of the film, but Rourke was totally one dimensional. I have been a huge fan of all of his work, and I love that gritty, often comic presence to films, but Ed was so one dimensional of a tough guy character, even Mickey can’t bring sympathy to the character. Knightly, also gives a good, solid performance. The whole film is about her, so her and her body double are on screen 90% of the time. The character of Domino was confusing, as she is sometimes gritty tough broad, other times the sweetest, kindest person in the world. The total lack of continuity in her character I disliked. Also, about ¾ of the way through the movie, she becomes the leader of their trio, not the veteran Ed. Why she would be allowed in charge left me in the theatre actually asking what the heck was going on. The writing by Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko was Awesome) is OK, nothing special.

I feel the film as a whole is a mess of sloppy dialogue and bad characters. The acting is OK, and the direction if above average, but they couldn’t save this mess. If this movie was supposed to be the least bit believable, not as many buildings in the middle of Las Vegas would explode. I wanted to love this movie, but the numerous flaws, the way-to-long running time, and the twisted plots make me feel very down on the whole movie. God bless awesome cameos. 6/10