Film Reviews by ME

Are you an intolerant, racist, misogynistic, bigot? Then this is the movie for you. (I would add homophobic, but I didn't watch the whole thing, so I don't know if that's a feature of this "film")

I saw a review for this, claiming that hours of their live were lost due to watching this because they found the movie "unrealistic". Because obviously a movie about a pair of hopelessly straight-laced guys who must impersonate ruthless killers in order to infiltrate a street gang to get the kitten back is based in reality.

Fortunately, this movie was spot on for my sense of humour, and I found the ever escalating absurdity of the situation the hapless pair of individuals found themselves in to be thoroughly enjoyable. I can't remember the last time I laughed so much!

Probably helps if you like cats. :)

The first two thirds of the movie were a bit on the slow side, with the on and off marital problems being a bit tedious to sit through. The last third though, was when the horror element shines. It was like watching a decent into madness, watching on as two individuals desperately attempt to get out of their situation as nature fights back. Clearly inspired by Hitchcock's The Birds (which I have not seen) and worth getting through the first two thirds of the film to reach its conclusion.

A note of warning to potential renters though: Jackie Chan and Arnold Schwarzenegger do not "team up", despite what the synopsis misleadingly says. The insinuation is that they will be on this "adventure". In fact, they and Charles Dance all only have minor roles bookending the movie. This is English explorer Jonathan Green's (Jason Flemyng) story. Sort of.

Pretty much all dialogue has been dubbed in after, meaning even though the English speaking actors are speaking English, the lip syncing can make the film difficult to watch. I, being hard of hearing and relying on subtitles did not have a problem with dubbed the audio. Sometimes the plot seems to advance rather rapidly and beyond belief, for example, when the English explorer maps out the palace grounds, investigate the enemy's source of magic, and invents a design for a vehicle made out of umbrellas for the grand attack, appears to achieve all this within a day. But this is a fantasy movie with a flying, magic-tea-making dragon in it, belief can be suspended easily enough to overlook these dubious plot moments. This is not a movie to be analysed with logic. Saying that, I have no interest in watching Forbidden Kingdom (2014) of which this is the sequel, nor the sequel to this one due to be released in 2022 (at the time of writing this).

This movie seems to have been a series of absurdly over-the-top action sequences stitched together with the basic outline of a plot, which was then filmed without bothering to write the bits in between the action sequences. A couple of times I was left confused by the sudden advancement of the story with little to no explanation of what was going on. The action sequences were enjoyable, but having a coherent story would really help its rating from me.

A Brazilian Portuguese language film with English subtitles, which thoroughly entertained me from beginning to end. Doesn't spend a lot of time faffing about with a build-up and promptly gets into the story.

An obviously low budget movie (nothing wrong with that) with an interesting concept. Unfortunately it takes waaaaaaay too long to get to the point. 4 stars for the end, 1-2 stars for the film preceding it.

I didn't enjoy it. Gave up about half way through due to it being full of bodily function humour, which I do not find funny, to skip to the end. It wasn't worth it.

I can certainly appreciate this as a piece of art, it is wonderfully shot but slow, tedious imagery just isn't enough for me to keep up an appreciation for the medium of film. So many times we are treated to events in real time; if it's going to take ten minutes to do a task, you will be shown it, usually with no dialogue and occasionally with a soundtrack that wants to make you reach for the volume control to turn it down. The fast forward button also came into use for the first and last half hours of the film.

Odyssey (as defined by the Cambridge English Dictionary): a long, exciting journey. Long? yes. Exiting? no. One of the greatest films ever made? that's purely down to personal preference. I prefer THX1138 as my cinematic science fiction art piece.

Loved the first one. Absolutely hated this one from the opening taxi fight scene (I did not like the camera zooming-around effect at all). The next half hour gave me nothing compelling to continue watching.

I'm obviously one of these people who enjoy bad films. Given the abysmal rating on Rotten Tomatoes and it's low rating here, I can give this a whole-hearted five stars for giving me an hour and a half of laughs. Thoroughly enjoyed it. The Cinema Paradiso critic review reads like somebody who needs to loosen up a little, describing the movie as "an unpleasant and bitter experience." Or maybe he just hates women in comedy. I'm glad I gave it a chance.

While the visuals don't stand the test of time, the story becomes ever more plausible as we delve into the future. As the title of this brief barely-a-review indicates, this is virtually the same story as 2005 movie The Island, without all the ridiculous, over-the-top, action sequences. Clonus is not without its own explosive scene though!

If you can tolerate the poor quality (compared to today's HD standards) audiovisuals, then I recommend giving this cult classic a view. Not being a fan of Scarlett Johansson, I'll prefer to watch this, over 'The Island' any time.

Because the tone is set as a drama, the ensuing unfortunate events just caused me to laugh hysterically.

I'm assuming that the reviews that give this movie low scores because 'it would have been good if it were a comedy' have no sense of humour or are intrinsically incapable of enjoying a film because it is classed as something other than what it is.

Bored of teen slashers and mediocre monsters? Give this film a try.

So utterly tedious that even when suddenly confronted with either scenes of graphic sexual depravity, or the scenes featuring some of the gorier sides of nature, I felt no emotional response.

Atrocious, awful, bad, cheap, cruddy, crummy, defective, deficient, dissatisfactory, dreadful, faulty, garbage, godawful, imperfect, inferior, junky, lousy, poor, rough, slipshod, stinking, substandard, unacceptable, unsatisfactory.

There is nothing competent about this movie. Just avoid unless you are curious as to how bad something can be, like I was. I can confirm that this is not one of those movies that a niche audience love, unless you like genuinely terrible movies.