A very suprising un marketed movie / Not  a " B " movie
350672
This movie was a perfect blend of eclectic, spastic bad guy and unconventional copper good guy. Great interaction between Cusack and cage, they are both unique actors and made the dreary wintery setting even more gloomy.
3183722
i am not an action movie fanatic, but this movie is really good much to my surprise!
2276201
I thorougly enjoyed this movie and I didn't expect to. I went in knowing nothing... I feel as though everybody else seemed to know it was a vampire vs. warewolf movie beforehand. Anyway, perhaps that's why it was a surprising treat to me. I thought it was well done and far more enjoyable than the trailers or the poster makes one think. The poster reminds me too much of that Purple Rain guy!
4890982
I am different than the other reviewers, because I went to the movie expecting it to be funny and entertaining. I saw Evan Almighty, and Get Smart, and thought this would be along the same line. This is more like "The Office" type humor.  I admit that I didn't see any previews or reviews.
Everyone that told me they liked this movie also told me about Ryan Gossling's bare chest. If you are interested in more than that read on.
I think why so many people like this movie is because of the sincere vulnerability of Steve Carell's character. His wife is the only woman he loved and he is honest about it.
Is this suitable for a 13 year old? A teen age boy jerking off, a teenage girl taking nude pictures of herself, a wife cheating on her husband, a man sleeping with a different woman every night, a boy who thinks his dad is a rival for a teenage girl's affections, a man having sex with his son's teacher? I don't think so. On many levels this is a crude movie.

Is it better than "Hall Pass"?  Yes, definitely. One of the best movies this year? Not in my opinion.
3554393
Good Movie, thought it would be boring but I was surprised.
1349634
Please don't misunderstand. The positive reviews of this movie make it out to be a thrilling, mysterious, symbolic movie with a hidden message that requires an introspective person to understand it. This is not the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald. It's just a very weird movie that tries to trick it's audience into believing its faux self-importance. The only pay-off is looking at Gyllenhaal's dreamy eyes for an hour and thirty minutes. There are millions of thought-provoking movies. This is not one of them. My advice it to pass.
2516351
If your looking for another fake expensive science fiction movie with bad actors and good special effects about a monster/monsters who destroy the city of Philadelphia (like in "Python" & the 1998 version of "Godzilla") then this isn't really your movie.  So don't be fooled by the picture on the front cover of this movie.  I can tell you right now that the only time you see the giant Reticulicated Python (dark snake on cover) & Scarlet Queen Boa (red snake on cover) ever fight is at the very end of the movie.  The rest of the time all the giant snakes ever really do is mostly slither and eat some people.  Also do not be fooled by the helicopter shooting a missal at the snakes.  That never happens in the movie, in fact when I saw the movie no air craft even got close to the snakes and there were no helicopters in the movie.

But all in all I'd honestly say this movie was worth the $6 I payed for it at the Mansfield Covered Bridge festival. And I don't even really know why I'm saying this.  And all in all it wasn't the worst movie about giant snakes I've ever seen (Anacondas was far worst).

So here's how I would grade the movie
-Actors-C
-Monsters-A-
-Plot-B
-Special effects-C-
3163028
I rented this movie based on the 30 mostly positive reviews on Amazon regarding this film and seeing the preview of this film on youtube. What I expected to see was a passionate love story about an unhappy, sexually unfilled middle aged married straight woman who falls in love with a gorgeous call girl (what I imagined to be a lesbian version of Pretty Woman.) What I got instead was seeing a stepdad rape his daughter; not enough character development of the leads (especially Paris the call girl); some red herrings on the what was really going on with 'Rebecca', and a very sad and depressing ending (which is the exact opposite of "A Perfect Ending" imho.)  I wasn't expecting an unhappy ending, which is not 'A Perfect Ending' in my book

While I adored the (1) love scenes; (3) the incredibly gorgeous Jessica Clark who plays Paris the call girl; and (3) the divine Barbara Niven who plays Rebecca, the cliched script, direction, and over-loud soundtrack for this film couldn't overcome its assets.

I am very happy I rented this film so I didn't have to buy a $20 DVD that I never would have watched after the 1st showing.  If you want to see 'a perfect(ly) happy ending' to a lesbian film, watch -- When Night is Falling, Imagine Me and You, Elena Undone, or Kiss Me (a Swedish film).
969693
"The Village" is a good movie, but people keep expecting it to be a really scary movie with some sort of HUGE twist at the end. It isn't a scary movie (as the advertising seems to indicate), but it is suspenseful. There are some rather tense moments, but I would not call them scary or frightening. Neither does this movie have a big, surprising twist like "The Sixth Sense" (actually, that was the only movie of his that had a real big twist, yet people keep expecting it from him).

Many of this film's detractors  say "I saw the 'surprise' coming from a mile away" or "the 'twist' was stupid." I think they are missing the point of the movie and are probably the same people who complained about the aliens in "Signs." "Signs" is not a movie about aliens. "Unbreakable" is not a movie about comic books or men with super-powers. "The Sixth Sense" is not just about a little boy who sees dead people. "The Village" is not just a movie about a village in rural Pennsylvania in 1892. There's a deeper meaning here, but it seems that most people don't go to the movies to think or ponder, but merely to be entertained. If you're watching this movie for purely superficial reasons, you're going to be disappointed.
3319708
Very Good Movie Not what I though it was, Way Better, good Story
44454
There are many shocks associated with this movie. The most obvious is that Michael Jackson actually appears in the film, and it is not just a lookalike as in other film parodies. Reading the credits provides a few major shocks: I couldn't believe there was actually a director of photography working on this film (film students deliver more professional looking results) or that there are people credited for the special effects (YOU can do better on your home computer). I'm shocked by how this film is categorized: as a comedy? Really? Just because it mixes together characters and situations from different movies in the guise of a parody doesn't qualify it for being a comedy. In order to fit this qualification, there really is only one requirement: an occasional joke! Unfortunately the director did not hire a writer but insists on writing his own work, providing another shock: how could a person go so long without grasping the concept of humor? Has anyone EVER told him a joke? I'm not exaggerating or being mean; there's not one joke in this film? Writer/director Bryan Michael Stoller (if you're asking Who? there's no shock there) demonstrates what he THINKS is funny early in the film when two characters whose cell phone connection cuts out yell "Can you hear me?" into their phones over and over. Are you rolling on your sides? Stoller expects you to.

If you doubt that Stoller does not understand comedy, consider this shocker: there is actually one person who delivers a good performance in this film (yes, I know, that in itself is a shock) and the director hardly uses him at all. The person I am referring to is the one who delivers a very convincing impersonation of Austin Powers; this person should have been the star of the film. If he was, there might have been some actual humor, even accidentally, injected into this intended-comedy. (Or maybe it wasn't intended to be a comedy and Stoller was trying to do a sci-fi adventure?) The film stars Eric Roberts (I'd be shocked if you're shocked at this) and Charlie Schlatter (who sadly could never again regain the acclaim he achieved for 18 Again!) and a cast of bikini-clad beauties. No, their bikinis never come off, and yes that would have been an obvious way to make this movie infinitely more watchable. I suppose Stoller deserves some credit in the virtue department for not taking that route, but it seriously WOULD have made watching this film less of a painful experience.

The biggest shock of all of course is that this movie was actually produced, and I'd be seriously shocked if Stoller is proud of his completed product. If you can imagine what it would be like to have a  robot with a computer program that tells it HOW to create a parody, but which otherwise has no inherent ability to develop humor on its own, you might have some idea what this film is like. The ingredients are all there, but there is no chef to make anything of them, and so they are all spoiling and waiting to be tossed into the trash (which, by the way, is the perfect place to deposit this film).
2415031
I never felt this film got the commercial exposure at the box office it should have because so many confused it with 'Ghoulies', which had been released the year before.  No Comparison!!.  I've read some of the other reviews and they're all pretty good, so I'll just add some personal trivia.  The house in the movie is in Astoria, Oregon. Thats the same town where they filmed Kindergarden Cops. Some of the scenes on the beach were near Haystack rock in the Cannon Beach, Oregon neighborhood. When Chunk says he saw the Jeep full of bullet holes and calls it an ORV, that was the slang (off road vehicle) before not so off road products were named SUV's.  Reminiscent of The Little Rascals that Spielberg watched when he was in  school, it's an appealing adventure story, a sort of 'Young, Young, Indiana Jones plot". Amazing how Steven Spielberg went from filming a color  silent film of 1965 senior sneak day at Saratoga High School in California to blockbuster mega-mogul film Director, producer et al.  Part of his success was in thinking big.  Although Goonies did not appeal to a broad age group, he didn't cut any corners, spending money on blowing up boats and creating a giant octopus, scenes that hit the cutting room floor.  (but can be viewed on the DVD)  In fact, I think the pirate ship was the largest indoor set ever built>(at that time)  And so Ghoulies faded into history while Goonies speaks to generation after generation, igniting a sense of wonder, speaking to the child in all of us.
4643568
I saw some movies in this categories like <American Crime> and <The girl next door> The former was ok but I didn't felt like classic and the latter one was a movie that only wanted an attention and the director had no heart at all. He made a boxoffice hit with showing brutal horror moster showing all kinds of moments the girl raped by her own cousins.
 Now this movie was really different. It was really carefully approaching the matter.
 The movie is about a girl who was kidnapped to two men and she was suffered to be in child porn and also had to serve a bunch of crap who are seeking for child sexually.
 Luckily she was not all alone and there was a boy- an Afro-American boy who was also kidnapped. They were like brothers.
 When they eventually got out from that place, they two were the only one for each other who take care of each other.
 When she and the boy grow up, all they can do is become a hooker.
 The saddest thing is when she became 18 and finally she meets her parents, they got two kids and when she finally sees them, she felt like they are totally stranger. There's nothing to be attatched.
 They are of course nice and all but there was no chemistry.
 That same night, she goes out from the house. Probably where she grow up.
 She will eventually go back to sell herself.
 The last moment was so sad. The moment she goes silently as if she didn't wanted her parents to wake up.
 The director silently warn for the children and parents to never talk to strangers and espetially not to ride on strangers car even though they seem like they really know the parent really well.
 It is a very delicately made film that everyone have to see.
 It is a good melo drama that not everyone can make.
522763
Highly under-rated and ignored by most in 2002, "John Q" is one of those movies that is sometimes too intelligent for a viewing public unfamiliar with topics never really tho
ught about in common societal circles (health care and insurance policies, rights of blue-collar citizens, media exploitation, law enforcement practices and over-paid medical specialists). Denzel Washington's young son falls out one day at a little league baseball game. The diagnosis is frightening. Without a new heart, the boy will most definitely die. Washington, a normal everyday citizen, lacks substantial resources and benefits from his insurance to even get his son on a donor's list. It is blatantly obvious that Washington and wife Kimberly Elise are being strangled by red tape in a mercilessly heartless (no pun intended) system. Friends Laura Herring and David Thornton (and seemingly countless other ordinary people) do their best to help the couple raise money and soon it seems that most everything they have is on the market to be sold. Work and more hard work does not get the couple much closer to having the money they desperately need. Washington realizes that time is now of the essence. He has been pushed and pushed again and now he takes it upon himself to push back. As a last resort he literally takes the doctor (James Woods) hostage, along with other bystanders who have nothing to do with Washington's war with the hospitals and insurance organizations. Immediately cops led by Robert Duvall and Ray Liotta surround the hospital and the tenseness builds. Hungry media cronies (who would not help Washington when he had asked earlier) also try to benefit from the misery of all those that are involved with their typical exploitation tactics (one thing Jerry Springer got right). Will Washington's son be saved and is Washington actually willing to take his own life in the venture so his boy can live? "John Q" is a very impressive production from director Nick Cassavetes (showing much of the same ability his late father John showed throughout his career). Screenwriter James Kearns gets to the soul of an American society that has been blinded by economics and inefficient big-wigs who have no business possessing the careers they have. Morality has gone out the window and that "hypocritical oath" that is so prevalent in the medical field seems to be little more than a silly afterthought. "John Q" succeeds everywhere just about except in its ending. The ending is a major mistake that took away from some of the good things accomplished before the final ten minutes. Washington, arguably better here than in recent triumphs like "Training Day" (an Oscar-winning role) and "Antwone Fisher", goes to an even higher plateau here. Much like Al Pacino in the equally under-rated "Dog Day Afternoon" (an admittedly better picture), Washington dominates in a role that thrives on a claustrophobic aspect that cannot be escaped or denied within the film's running time. Duvall and Woods are also solid, as always, but Washington is the man here. Strikingly accurate when pointing the finger at things wrong with America these days, "John Q" is a thought-provoking production that will cause its audience to think and learn about sometimes forgotten aspects of human life.
4732748
Wonderful movie and not what I expected but was much better !!
2434993
Let me start by saying that I normally do not care for B-movies or self consciously stylistic films.  In fact, I seldom ever watch one straight through, sometimes quickly going catatonic or usually, hitting the jettison button and looking for another.
The acting, fight scenes, script and camera work were all solid B-movie quality but the plot had some promise with twists and turns I did not expect.  AND, I might come back and watch it again in the future to refresh the image of the over the top creepy degenerate that Carradine plays.  I know he was a somewhat more than passable actor but even he delivered his lines in a halting, unreal manner which leads me to believe it was a device of the director to develop... ?...  atmosphere?  Whatever, I can not define it.
I gave this movie 3 stars based on it holding my interest enough to watch it all and the inexplicable way it held my attention-- some of those involved with this film were doing something right.  Maybe the video comic book works better for me than I thought but it is not Sin City!  Try it out, it is worth your while if you do not terminate it quickly.
1287255
After reading the low reviews on this movie I had low expectations in watching it, but I was quite surprised at how good it actually was, do note that low expectations will help you appreciate this movie a little better. The movie is extremely bizarre and has a gelotinous plot that really takes no shape whatsoever and causes the movie to act out like some sort of strange montage of events (for example, in one scene the main character walks into an empty house, and as he's walking around we see a couple rotweillers presumably running to where he is, but they never get there. The whole film seems to be a satire on pompous big city types and braindead people who contribute nothing and get everything. Really hard to grade this movie cause everybody will experience it in a different way, but if you need sensibility in a film skip this one, if you liked Napoleon Dynamite because it was so different and outrageous then give this one a go, consequently Andy Dick would have been great as Kip. I liked it, but every time I chuckled I shook my head at the same time, it's that kind of funny.