Reviews by OsamaExKing

To this date, this movie is the only one that Christopher Nolan directed but didn't write, somehow you can understand that watching the movie, because Christopher Nolan always direct movies that he wrote, or at least Co-Wrote like Batman Begins.

Let me explain what i meant by not a movie by Christopher Nolan, it a crime, thriller, and mystery, with AL Pacino and Robin Williams, to me this movie was a standard crime and mystery with nothing special, it doesn't mean that it was bad, but doesn't have that Christopher Nolan effect, the story follows AL Pacino as a detective who get sent to a small town in Alaska to investigate a murder of a teenage girl, along with his partner, so after he finds the identity of the murderer, he follow him into the woods, and then he accidentally shoots his own partner, then refuse to confess about the murder because he thought that people won't believe that it was an accident, Robin Williams sees the shooting and decide to make a deal with AL Pacino, because AL Pacino is the only one who knows that Robin Williams is the one who killed the teenage girl, and if he told the police about it, Robin would tell the police that AL Pacino shot his partner.

The movie was very well executed, and had that dark look but it was shallow, meaning, that it won't keep you guessing, it's not a full mystery, because you can sense things coming from a mile away and that's not very Christopher Nolanly.

If anything, i thought that robin Williams was very miscasted in this movie, the fact that he's a comedian in a serious role didn't bother me because he was masterful in good will hunting but i didn't feel him here, even AL Pacino didn't deliver a good role, he seemed very old and tired and 'let's get away with it' kinda thing.

If you notice my review, you'll see that i haven't mentioned Insomnia, and the reason is that the movie isn't about it at all, in fact, after the movie ended i thought that the title was misleading, i mean don't get me wrong, AL Pacino did have insomnia in this movie, he couldn't sleep the entire time, and he lived in a town that didn't have nights, just days, but the only way you see it effecting him when he goes to sleep in the hotel and try to cover the windows, and that is all, i didn't see how his sleep disorder had any effect on the movie.

So, overall, if you haven't watched it, it's no something special, just another, crime and murder movie but a very well done movie even though it had it flaws.

Matt Farrell: You just killed a helicopter with a car!
John McClane: I was out of bullets.

After 12 years of the release of Die hard with a vengeance, a new movie surfaced, and it was so easy to bash the movie from a far, because you don't expect it to be good after 12 years of action movies, most of them surpassed the die hard trilogy with the amount of action, budget, CGI, so it's really hard for the new die hard movie to make a valuable statement, because we all know that the previous trilogy made it big, because it was the only one at the time, so what the new movie can offer that make's it interesting?

Well, that's were we all wrong, live free or die hard was a blast to watch, it had enormous amount of action scenes, hilarious one liners "That's gonna wake the neighbors", fantastic performances, it even tried to cross the line of being 'just another action flick' with great, deep liners like: "The news is completely manipulated. Everything you hear, every single day is designed by corporate media to do one thing only. To keep you living in fear."
It even took a completely different path from the previous trilogy, focusing on hackers and how can they control things from a far, although 'Fire sale' doesn't really exist, and cyber crimes are limited to the internet, but it can serve as an 'eye-opener' about what the technology age and how changing things overtime and making it connected to the internet can also make it more vulnerable.

To me Matthew Farrell plays a very solid role in this movie, it wouldn't be the same without him, because he's everything that John McClane can't be and vise versa, which makes them really interesting to watch, every scene they were together, i had fun listing to them, and Kevin smith makes a terrific cameo, i had a blast watching him, "Get out of my command center", the villains weren't great but weren't bad either, Timothy Olyphant doesn't have an on screen charm, in fact i thought that he was annoying, but it didn't bother me that much.

Overall, i think that the die hard makers blow us away with this, proving that action movies aren't always about the action, it can be about the story and the characters and that's were they succeeded, although they kinda take it too far with the F-16 under a bridge, but what's an action movie without a little over the top.

I think it's safe to say that the hobbit prequel is a highly entertaining saga, it had everything you could ask for, performances, stunning visuals, music, characters, and overall a fantastic atmosphere.

I highly enjoyed the first hobbit, and i enjoyed this one pretty much the same amount, but there was something missing, at first, i really didn't know what it was, because peter Jackson's movies are about fantasy, so you can't really complain, but maybe that fantasy starts to wore off after a while, i mean i didn't watch the hobbit hoping that it would be the same as the LOTR trilogy, because that was once in a life time opportunity, but at the same time, i hoped that this movie had the same waw factor as the original, i mean the original trilogy had flawless visuals, and this have even better but come to think of it, it might be the only reason this prequel exist is to show off visuals, because there wasn't actually a story, specially this one more than the first hobbit, it was more like a journey to the middle earth, or an adventure through ups and downs but it didn't go any where for me, specially how the movie ended, no one expected to watch a two and a half hour movie and then end like that.

Now, to give credit when credit is due, i really enjoyed this movie, i thought that it was flawless, some scenes where amazing and blew my mind, like the barrels in the water fight scene, or the Spiders scene, there wasn't Yawn moments, although some of the scenes with the elf's talking or the scene with Gandalf and Radagast wasn't really interesting but it wasn't boring either, but the movie never crossed the barrier to be a powerful or even memorable, pretty much the same as the first hobbit, it haven't been a while since i watched it, and i don't remember it at all.

Something i also should mention is the Dragon Smaug, i was really surprised when i found out that the Dragon talks!, to me it lost all the intimidation and the scare factor when the dragon starts talking with Bilbo, although Benedict Cumberbatch does great job with the voice, but was it really necessary to hear a rant between Smaug and Bilbo for 10 or more minutes, it would be a lot better if we can hear Smaug talking only when Bilbo wears the ring.

In all reality, this whole prequel is based on cash grab, we all know that it can be one movie but it became three movies for financial reasons, so put that all in mind, i praise the movies for being highly entertaining even though the whole idea started on the wrong foot.

Let me be honest here, i'm not familiar with the director, but if this is what he usually do? then i will never watch another movie of him.

The story goes like this: two guys enters a family vacations home, kill their dog, kick the father on the leg, so he can't walk and start asking some stupid question just to irritate the viewer, the two guys look very normal and polite, they use proper language and ask nicely which makes it really irritating to watch as you set just angry and annoyed the entire time.

When the kid escape, you start hoping that this is going to end nicely like most movies, but then the director kills your hope when the kid get brought back to the house and killed right in front of his parents, then the two guys leaves, and your hoping that this is over, but then the director kills your hope again, with the two guys coming back to the house after catching the mother, and then they kill her husband, and then they take her with them and drown her in the lake.

So every-time your hoping for a happy ending or at least a revenge or something, it won't happen, the director plays with your emotions as the mom take the gun and kills on of the guys, but then the other guy rewind the movie and take the gun from the mom as that didn't happen and the other guy haven't killed, it's a pure torture to the viewer.

As the movie ended, i wasn't sure what was it, i felt very irritated and angry, but then i realized that that was a 'message' against violence in movies, the director Michael Haneke, want you to see a different type of violence, a violence with no music playing in the background, with no happy endings, with no bad-ass one liners, just pure sick violence as that is going to change the way we look at violence.

NOW, let's talk about the movie and then about the 'message', first the movie is really, really boring and really disturbing and really irritating, there was long scenes of just crying, long scenes of the injured father trying to move, and just overall boring atmosphere, the performances were good, but the movie was unwatchable, i kept saying "why i'm watching this".

And now the 'message', like i said before, the director, wants you to start looking at the violence differently, and he assumes that this movie is going to do so, but in my opinion, the movie failed miserably to deliver any valid message, in fact, i never felt so violated, tortured and used,
at the end of the movie, i literally felt that the director just spat on my face across the screen, i won't watch this movie again, i won't recommended to any one and it is easily one of the worst movies that i have ever seen, it ruined my entire day, and didn't change my mind about violence in movies, it just changed my mind about how sick and stupid directors can be.

One thing i should mention is that i read at least 50 reviews on IMDb, and the majority of people seems to think that this is a great movie, in fact some of them gave it a 10 or 9, i'm pretty sure that those exact people gave movies like Kill bill a 9 or 10, because people nowadays seems to think that it will make them appear, edgy or classy or smart because they liked something different while in fact, they just jump right into the stereotype and they just made a completely contradictory statement to what they believe in, they supported a movie against violence and then continued to watch violent movies, and it's make me so angry to think that the director assumed that people are going to look differently at violence because they watched this movie, while in fact i think that if the director really hates violence then he should have made a a piece of music or a romance movie, any thing other than this pathetic unwatchable irritating movie.

Before we get into this, let me give you an overall of the Trilogy, Ocean's Eleven was good, it was entertaining, you can't deny it, Ocean's Twelve had a very stupid premise but a good, sometimes average or below average execution, but it was entertaining, Ocean's Thirteen on the other hand was pure stupidity.

Let's start with the premise because in order for another sequel to exist, they're have to be a reason, so the premise is that Reuben Tishkoff (played by Elliott Gould) loses most of his money he invested in a Casino, so he experience a heart attack, and the doctor tell the Ocean team, that he may recover, if he felt like he had a family, so the Ocean team decide to rob a Casino to recover his money and make him feel better, so how is that for a premise?, i'll tell you, it was insultingly stupid, pretty much like Ocean's Twelve, when they had to rob a Casino to return the money they stole in the Ocean's Eleven to Terry Benedict.

The main problem with this movie is that it was too lazy, it was a sequel to cash in, not much else, everything about this movie from the writing to the screenplay to the directing was awful, Al Pacino plays a casino owner that the Ocean team trying to rob, and you know how in the Ocean Eleven, Andy Garcia was the Casino owner, he was in full control, knew everything about his Casino and he played a solid, very well written character, here on the other hand, it's the exact opposite, AL Pacino is fully incompetent, he plays a character that is so badly written, i felt like i was losing brain cells just by watching him, for example, he had no valid assistants, he had no idea about his Casino security, and he was there to fill the spot of the Casino owner and do nothing all the time, this is why this movie was lazy, they turned off this character because they were too lazy to work around it, i mean how do you think Al Pacino tried to stop the robbery? he ran on in the Casino to the security personal and told them that no one should leave the Casino after the robbery happened, HE RAN ON HIS FOOT TO INFORM SECURITY, as if there wasn't phones or walky talky or anything.

Let me spoil some scenes in the following paragraphs to show you how stupid this movie was:

Scene 1: they buy a big mechanical machine to dig through Las Vegas until reaching the Casino, in order to cause an earthquake in the Casino, can you even fathom that? they buy a big machine and start digging under a city and no one knows about them as it were a city for blind, mute people.
Scene 2: in order for them to monitor the Casino owner, they sent Brad pitt as a scientist to warn AL Pacino about incoming earthquake, off course, AL Pacino don't believe him so Brad pitt gave him a device for "measuring earthquake" while in fact it's a camera, and AL Pacino so blindly put it in the main room and if that wasn't insulting enough, they sent him a phone that interrupt the Casino security system, and AL Pacino walking around with the phone in his pocket not knowing what's going on.
Scene 3: the machine breaks, so they decide to buy another one from France but they don't have any money, so guess who they ask? Terry Benedict, the guy who they robbed in the first movie and return his money in the second movie.
Scene 4: the only assistant that AL Pacino have, they turn her on by a perfume, and they make her drunk so that she can take them to the diamonds room?
Scene 5: in order for them to pass a security guard, they call him and say that his kid made a problem in the school, so he leave his post to go the school, can you believe that?

Most of the scenes in this movie was made to 'entertain' at face value but i failed to laugh at any of that given the fact that it was so stupid, because sometimes the joke have to be clever for you to laugh at, to me stupid jokes aren't funny, that's why i wasn't able to enjoy this.

Back to the movie, you know how everything was planned in the Ocean Eleven, how they steal access cards, block a camera, here Casey Affleck and Scott Caan can walk around in the Casino dressed as security guards to kick someone out of a room, go to some place and hack something, everything was so easy for them, better yet, everything was so lazy, also an unknown FBI agent can enter the Casino and pretend to arrest someone and no one even ask him for an ID or anything, and remember Vincent Cassel who played a badass guy in the 2nd movie and planed to avenge them? he did absolutely nothing here, he was in-frame for 6 or 7 times and he had no screen play at all, i believe his lines were 'OK', 'give me the diamonds' and 'damn', that was the entire character.

One thing i also never noticed in the first two movies, is that the characters aren't memorable at all, because there are so many of them, there weren't enough screen play for them, if you actually counts how many lines they delivered each, it would be less than 25, it's like they were shiny plates to make the movie looks good, when in reality they weren't there, and off course, it isn't a movie by Steven Soderbergh if it had no 'twist' at the end, but it was dull and brought the movie to a new level of stupidity.

Overall, the movie was dull, lazy on every level, insultingly stupid, not memorable and in most cases unwatchable.

I love Al Pacino, he's a great actor and he filmed this movie right after the Godfather, and it was critically acclaimed at the time, and had a big impact overall, because it was the first movie of it's kind to target police corruptions, and it's based on a true story of Frank Serpico, a good cop trying to do his job in a world full of corruptions and bribes, trying his hardest to stay away from corruption but he starts finding that his friends don't trust him because he don't take bribes, he tries to go to big government officials to blow the whistle on his police department, but then find out that those people are corrupted too and have no intentions of making things better, so Serpico starts to get threats from other cops and starts to feel endangered, so he decide to go the New York times and blow the situation.

As you may notice, the story is really interesting, as it's guide you through 10 years of Al Pacino as a cop, transferring from a street cop to narcotics to BCI (Bureau of Criminal Identification), and while all this sounds really good, it actually wasn't, the movie had a very cheap production, the scenes looks awful, no lighting control, the sounds wasn't filtered, no camera angles, the car chases was bad, and most importantly, the movie had a terrible editing, i actually don't remember watching a movie where the editing annoyed me, the editor used so many jump-cuts, it was awkward, it felt like the scenes weren't complete, and someone have interrupted that scene to bring you another one, i mean seriously, even independent movies have better editing than this, also, there wasn't any sound mixing, they play a track at some scene and when it finished, they play another one, NOW, all this details above is just me being picky (as i always do) but here's the major downer with this movie, the performances were absolutely terrible, as i said before, i love Al Pacino, but the character he played here was really dull and emotionless, even if he was nominated for an academy award, even if he played that character exactly like the real frank Serpico, i feel like they should have made it more interesting, meaning, that if the real Frank Serpico was really dull, then they should make him interesting, this how motion pictures work, they take the life of an average Joe and make it appealing, and it wasn't just about the costumes and the beard and the dog and the rat that Frank had all the time, it should be more about the character, Al Pacino was calm the entire movie, making it very hard to understand his emotions and character development, and when he snapped, there wasn't a good performance form the other actor to make it a scene, Al Pacino was acting and then reacting to himself, and it wasn't really good.

Believe it or not, i was actually thinking about turning off the movie the entire time, because i had such a bad time, and the movie is really really long, and had so many short scenes that had absolutely nothing to do with the overall story, it was a good story done bad, and that's really sad because it had potential but potential by itself is nothing if it followed by a terrible execution.

First let me address the elephant in the room:
You and Me know about this movie because A.Sharon Stone & Michael Douglas having sex.
B.It's a Hollywood Porn.
C.Sharon Stone Semi-Full Frontal
And now let's talk about the movie.

I knew that this movie was borderline porn before watching it, so i thought, cheesy dialog, horrible acting and many sex scenes, instead, it was clever dialog, fantastic acting and many sex scenes, it was really unexpected, for the first 30 minutes i was thrilled to the max, not believing how great this movie is, mainly because it relied on clever writing and really good performances, and the most impressive thing is the mind-games, the movie was written in a way that make you think about sex in every line, which makes it very erotic, and the sex scenes were beautifully done, although a bit too much but you can't say no to these things.

The story was really interesting and kept me guessing the entire time, and the movie was really thrilling, there wasn't a scene out of place, even the car chases was really good, the score, the overall production was beautiful.

Almost five minutes before the end and you still have no idea who the killer is, but the movie have a way in manipulating the audience, meaning that if you pay attention, you'll have an idea in mind about the killer, but you're not quite sure, so the movie drags along with this thought in your head about the killer identity and ends this way, but before the ending, the movie gives you a little hint about it, and then it gives you another hint about whether or not Michael Douglas knew the killer, that's why it's really thrilling.

So overall, a really enjoyable movie, extremely erotic, thrilling and i really, really enjoyed it, i'm also gonna go out on a limb here and say, it's underrated, i mean 6.9 on IMDb is pretty low, it's more like a 7.5 for a movie this good.

i watched this movie expecting to be blown away by it, but i wasn't, in fact it was rather disappointing, but i was blown away by Charlize Theron performance, if you actually watch the real Aileen Wuornos (on YouTube) and then watch Charlize performance, the way she moves, talk, walk and the way she looks, you'll be fascinated by that performance, and you will instantly know why this movie is praised.
But let me add a reality check, the movie script was very average, it was cheap production and had a below-average editing, and i know i'm being picky here but it could have been way better.
It's a story about a serial killer, and we don't see serial killers every day so it's a unique opportunity to see through the mind of the serial killer, how they evolve and what do they think and all that, but the movie wasn't deep at all, in fact it was more on the events then on the characters, the movie shows you how the crimes were committed and the circumstances around them, and it give you a very little taste of childhood, which is the most interesting thing and what the movie should be all about.
If you read about Aileen Wuornos, you'll learn that she was sexually abused as a kid by her brother and grandfather, and she was kicked out of the house when she was 13 years old, and lived pretty much in the street, worked as a hooker her entire life, so THAT'S what i want to see in the movie, i want to see how things evolved, how things happened, how she end up being in this state, i wanted to see all that, even a half hour of childhood would be really satisfying for me, but no, the movie shows you how she committed these crimes and that is all.
One thing i should mention is Selby (played by Christina Ricci), that character was horribly written, it's like they tried to strip her out from the character, i mean she wasn't there at all, she did nothing, said nothing, and were nothing all the time.
So overall it's average/not very enjoyable and would have been way better, if it focused more on the characters, and gave us a little bit of childhood.

Take a simple concept, uninteresting story about a law-firm and then deliver the story in an Oscar-Worth-Way, meaning many twists, encrypted script, unconnected scenes, unrelated characters, unrelated events, twisted time-line and overall confusing atmosphere.

This is Michael Clayton, the most confusing, boring and and anti-interesting movie ever, in most cases, these type of movies, tend to have a great story, that will blow up at the end, but here, the story didn't go anywhere, the same confusing atmosphere that the movie begins with, the movie ends with.

I spend the first hour of the movie just confused as what the movie is trying to be, seriously, the script was encrypted and confusing, the events were unrelated and there wasn't an introduction to the characters at all, at least with mystery movies, you can sense a story building up, or at least a character building up over time, but you don't get to see any of that.

This was Tony Gilroy debut as a director, and it looked professional, but for no reason, the story wasn't worth it, most people supporting this liked the movie atmosphere, the score, the cinematography, but i don't like wasting my time in the dark wondering what's the movie about, and then end up confusing about what it was.

I don't know why i watched this, i guess because too many people told me not to, which made me curious about it, so i'm not going to tell you not to watch it, because if you are like me, you will watch it anyway.

The movie is only 1 hour and 28 minutes but that's more than enough to make you feel bad about yourself, it's very disturbing and the reason for this is that there isn't a reason, meaning it's a disturbing just for the sake of being disturbing, there wasn't a story whatsoever, two girls from New York go to a tour through Europe, and while they were in Germany, they meet a guy who invite them to a party out of the city (cliche no.1), and while they were driving, their tire break (cliche no.2) in the middle of a dark road in the woods (cliche no.3) and they can't call the car company because they have no signal on the phone (cliche no.4) so they end up in a dutch doctor house.

The doctor is a famous surgeon who used to separate Siamese twins and now he dreams about make his own human centipede, so he kidnap people from the roads, drug them, and kill them if they don't match his description.

So, when the two girls arrived, he give them rape drug and operate on them, one of them try to escape so when he catch her, as a punishment, he puts her in the middle, because the middle of the centipede is the most painful position.

And that's pretty much it, and during the movie, there's long scenes of the girls just crying and crying and crying, it's like the director was intentionally trying to make you feel disturbed and disgust with yourself.

The worst thing about this movie was the end because when the two cops break-in his house, he kill them both, but get shot before he kill the second cop, the Japanese man in the front of the centipede kill himself, and the 2nd girl at the end of the centipede dies of suffering, so the movie ends with the girl in the middle just hanging there, and you have no idea whether she will get rescued or not, and that's horrible, because what's the point of the movie then? other than make you feel bad about yourself?

One thing i should mention is Dieter Laser (the doctor), he was so good, and delivered such a scary performance, it was like he was born to play this role, i seriously can't see him in any other movie than this, so this saves the movie a little bit from being a complete disaster.