Maybe because the convoluted, self-absorbed nonsense that's unfolding on the screen can always be accurately predicted to continue to be convoluted and self-absorbed.

The end result is that this is simply a 2-hour long masturbation session by one-hit-wonder Guy Ritchie, whose "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" was a real treat; but whose subsequent films have been nothing more than self-congratulatory "look what I can do" marathons, with disorienting and needless camera effects that serve no purpose other than to draw attention away from the story and to themselves--away from the characters and to the director.

And, just as an aside, could Jason Statham stop? Please. Just fucking stop. The grumbling, unintelligible dialog thing has gotten old now. Speak the fuck up and enunciate, or shut up.

And could anything more have "gone wrong"!?? The premise is basically this: 1) A mechanic messes up this lady's car by accident, supposedly because he's listening to the radio too loud, and 2) the car's throttle is stuck wide open, AND 3) the car won't shift out of gear, AND 4) the key is stuck in the ignition, AND 5) the freeway is under repair, AND 6) there's an evil government official who wants the car to crash, AND 7) just by chance, the car's owner is giving rides to TWO STRANGERS and a baby that day, AND 8) there's a drawbridge that won't go down due to "technical problems", AND 9) the helicopter pilot "just didn't see the overpass ahead"??? PUHLEEASE!! Can I just bitch-slap the writer(s) of this farce? Please?

This is an embarrassing disgrace. All copies of this turd should be shipped back to Germany to the producers' offices along with warm bags full of dog crap. If you're a writer, and your storyline relies entirely on a hundred different 10,000-to-1 coincidences in order to make any sense, you need to be able to realize that you f**king SUCK as a writer. Rig up the noose, and kick the chair out from beneath you, Special Ed., you'd be doing the world a favor. We hate you.

And if this is the most popular show on German TV, can someone please send Germany a damn satellite feed with some decent programming on it?

Flash forward 10-15 years, and the dorky little kid has grown into a severely dorky guy. Why dad didn't kill him when he had the chance remains a mystery to us, but no one's perfect. Lucky for the guy, he's found a group of friends to hang out with that are so incredibly retarded and unattractive they make him seem like he's only mildly retarded and unattractive. Seriously, this gang is like the alternate Czechoslovakian bobsled team for the Special Olympics. If the lead team slips on a pool of their own drool, these guys are in! Score.

Your first real cue as to how bright this group is is when one of the guy's friends--the light-haired girl with the dark eyebrows--says she's going to "get high score on video game". Thanks for sharing, missy, perhaps you'd like a salt lick or a rubber chew toy with that?

While they're all in a bar, the guy receives a phone call from his dad--does the guy live in this bar or something? How did dad get this number? It seems old dad isn't feeling quite up to "closing up" his beach condo, so he needs the son to come out and finish "closing up" for him. In case you're wondering what "closing up" means, we're a bit in the dark here as well, but it seems to involve locking the front door. The son agrees, and his gang of goons quickly decides to make a vacation out of it. They can ALL go out to the condo and help him "close up". Great thinking, Corky! The big dumb ape friend with red hair and a green sweater gets all excited because he'll get to have beer and sex at the condo. Sickeningly, his girlfriend is also excited. Eeeeew!

You know what, normally this is the part where we'd continue telling you about the story, and making little jabs at the pile of drooling idiots that appear on-screen, but let's just cut things short and cut to the chase...

They get to the condo, and the guy's dad is there hiding and kills them off one by one. The killings are mostly uninteresting, except for one where he takes a huge hook and kind of sticks it up this girl's crotch until it comes out of her stomach, and then she's lying there screaming and holding it. Now, that's just plain disgusting. But, other than that, the film is just a blur of sub-humanoids frolicking on the beach and spazzing around with each other.

Very highly un-recommended, unless you want to feel much better about your own life and friends. This film should serve as a good motivational tool for any aspiring filmmakers out there: no matter what, the worst that can happen has already happened in "The Mutilator". Go out and make your film, there's no longer anything to lose!

1. Every actor is so bad, it's just infuriating to watch them, regardless of whether or not they're speaking their embarassingly stupid lines. This movie plays like a reject Hanna-Barbera cartoon, only it's all the more depressing since you're watching actual people on the screen instead of drawings.

2. The same ignorant anti-Asian racism that plagued the first excuse for a movie plauges this excuse for a sequel. When the white bartender can't understand Jackie Chan (whose Chinese lines are once again not subtitled, and who is supposed to be Japanese for some reason), he asks "Does anyone here speak Oriental?"

3. This probably could have gone under number one, but we wanted it to have its own number to emphasize our point: Dom DeLuise, whether he's still alive or not, should be shot. He is the most disgusting, annoying thing to ever hit the silver screen. Give us Richard Simmons over this guy ANY day! Yuck!

This movie should come with a can of lighter fluid and a book of matches.

Jackie Chan (in a very, very small part) is supposed to be a Japanese racer, even though he's Chinese and speaks (unsubtitled) Cantonese throughout the film...? And every time he appears on screen, a clichéd little "generic Oriental music" cue is played. Why didn't they subtitle his lines? Presumably because they didn't even consider him worth understanding. They obviously didn't care what nationality he was, or what language he was speaking. He's just there as "the zany Oriental guy". Cannonball Run is both a low point in American filmmaking and a fairly disturbing bit of social commentary on mainstream America's views of Asians at the time.

If you're looking for an incredibly slow-paced film with every single one of America's worst TV and B-movie actors and celebs from the 1980s, then this film is right up your alley. If you think all Asian people look and sound the same and aren't worth understanding anyway, then by all means, check this one out. But if you're expecting a funny film with lots of action and cool cars, the Cannonball Run will bring your evening to a screeching halt far short of the finish line.

THE PLOT:
A small group of college (?) students are staying at some special intensive archaeology summmer program type of thing. The big find they have to work with is an ancient mummy. But soon they start disappearing one by one.

THE PROBLEMS:
A project of this massive scope--listing all the problems of this movie--could only be called a work in progress. Anyone who would care to add to this list, please let us know.

• During the entire film, it's thundering violently and flashing with lightning. However, there's nary a drop of rain to be seen from indoors or out. And towards the end of the film, one of the kids remarks, "looks like a storm's coming". DUH, YOU THINK?!
  
  
• Every action the characters take makes no sense. But this goes far beyond the usual "girl in nightgown goes outside in the dark to investigate noises". In this film, every single step that every character takes makes no sense.
  
  
• One kid steals an amulet from the mummy's corpse and gives it to a girl. That girl gives it to her roommate to put back on the mummy, even though she's going right back to the mummy herself. The roommate eventually takes the amulet back to the mummy, stands around the mummy for awhile, and then gives the amulet to someone else to put back on the mummy. They all stand around the mummy for awhile talking, catching up...no one puts it back.
  
  
• One of the characters spends all his time making fun of the other students for being at the camp. Um, hello, you're at the camp too, dunce.
  
  
• Where are they all going? They decide to have a secret party in "the compound" (except one girl who is sneaking off campus to see a movie with her boyfriend). But first a guy and a girl go on ahead to "have some alone time together". Before the others even get there, they decide to go back to the dorms to "have some alone time together". Eventually, the others show up, and for some reason half of them go in the front and half in the back--along with the girl who supposedly couldn't go because of her date. They mill around for awhile, and then the date girl looks at her watch and says, "oh my god, we missed the late show by HOURS". Do you really have such a severe problem with time!? HOURS late and you didn't even notice?
  
  
• The Date Girl keeps assuring the audience that she's "a practicing virgin" (don't worry, kiddo, we could all guess). After the tenth time, shouldn't someone just rip off her clothes and get it over with? Someone's gotta' shut this chick up about her damn virginity already.
  
  
• The annoying guy says "I'm gonna' slip into something a bit more...naked". No.
  
  
• Everyone's supposedly really pissed off at the annoying guy, because he stole the amulet from the mummy and broke into the compound to have this party. They all keep saying, "next time I see him, I'm gonna' kick his ass!" But then they see him and don't do anything. Also, they're supposedly so afraid of turning on the lights, because then the security guards might notice that they're in "the compound" after hours and they'd get in trouble. But even after they've decided to call the police and explain the whole story, they still can't turn the lights on, because "someone will notice!"
  
  
• There are scenes where they are all looking around "the compound" (which is made of two or three small rooms) with flashlights. But for some reason, they spend about five minutes in one room that's no more than 10 feet square and filled with folding chairs. COME ON, how long does it take to "search" this little closet of a room? You could just peek your head in from the hallway and tell it's empty, but you each have to go in an point the flashlight around for five minutes to determine that it's empty? And we especially liked the part towards the end where, while doing this, one of the characters starts screaming at whomever he thinks is hidden somewhere in the room. "This isn't funny! I'm sick of your shit, man! If you're waiting to jump out and scream 'surprise!', then that's just what you'll get, because I'm gonna' surprise you!" Great dialogue, no doubt, but the whole scene is hilarious because he's just screaming at an obviously empty room for minutes and minutes... Anyone who has heard the Adam Sandler CD where he plays an old math teacher who gets a prank phone call and stays on the phone trying to find out who the caller was long after they've already hung up? "Hello? I said hello?! Who are you? Just tell me your name. I'm gonna' hang up! I'm warning you!" Déjà vu.
  
  
• And, not to give away the ending (not that it matters), but there is a severe wardrobe problem on the part of one of the kids. Traditional Aztec? We think not.
  
  
• "Ancient Evil: Scream Of The Mummy"? The mummy doesn't even make a sound.
  
  
• If you deduct the HORRIBLY SLOW opening credits and the end credits, this movie's probably about 75 minutes long. Given the film's quality, that's not necessarily a "problem", but still, by the time the film hobbles past the finish line it feels like it's been hours. And the ending? OH MAN! How was it so abrupt AND tedious at the same time?

This utterly bland, by-the-numbers cop flick has Wong recruiting a new team of elite operatives for the SDU. Basically, for the purposes of this movie, all that means is that there are a lot of clips of him running on the same street over and over again with a group of trainees jogging behind him; and lots of scenes of trainees swimming laps in some odd outdoor pool while he screams at them (without regard for the fact that they probably can't hear him very well with their heads underwater).

Also notable is the female meter maid, who seems to have taken acting lessons at the Shu Qi School For Giggling And Pouting.

Wong does a good Bill Clinton impression throughout the entire film, with a sort of smirk on his face 99% of the time, as if to say "I can't believe I talked them into letting me star in another film! Suckers!" When he's not running or screaming, he's trying to impress his female boss, played by Shooky Kwan, with his astondingly bad Cantonese and confused glances. He's not impressing anyone. Please stop.

So the killer keeps killing and taunting and Sly keeps slurring angry remarks and chasing after the killer fruitlessly. In fact, at one point, he advises the officers at one of the crime scenes to not even bother looking for prints or evidence because it's just a waste of time. That's authentic FBI procedure for ya. Eventually, the killer gets around to Malloy's wife, doing away with her in a rather gruesome fashion, and then he "loses it" like so many movie cops before him.

Malloy turns to drink. He practically moves into a bar, where his partner comes to give him a boring pep talk--"you get up and look life right in the eye and you..."--which doesn't seem to work, except that in the next scene the partner is driving Malloy up to some secluded Wyoming facility that specializes in treating emotionally screwed cops.

Once they arrive, it quickly becomes clear that Malloy's nemesis serial killer schmoe is among them, and it's all a matter of finding out who he is before it's "too late"--which means "before he kills all the other clichéd, annoying characters who you want to die anyway".

This facility is in the middle of nowehere in the dead of winter during a snowstorm, so there's no escape. And people are being murdered one by one. To try and identify the killer in the group, the first thing they do is to separate everyone. Yes, seriously. This is where you might find yourself...oh...say, screaming obscenities at the screen or ripping out your own spleen. "You're telling me that they split up in to parties of ONE, isolated from each other, in order to find the killer?" "Yes, that's damn straight what we're telling you." Oh....

We could go on, but that's basically all you need to know. These people are a bunch of morons, there's not a single person you give a crap about, and in fact most of them you'll actively DISlike. This film should just be called "Cliché: The Movie". We're surprised they even bothered giving names to these characters. If you're gonna' half-ass it, why not just ass it completely? "Sylvester Stallone as 'The Main Guy'"; "Robert Patrick as 'The Really Annoying Guy'"; "Charles Dutton as 'The Token Black Guy/Pep-Talk Guy'"; etc.

In conclusion, we'd just like to say that we highly recommend this film.--if you've been living in a cave for the past 75 years, don’t speak English, have poor vision, and are easily amused by colors and/or shiny things. Or if you liked "Hollow Man"...

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's mention the one good thing: Jonathan Ke Quan. You may remember him as "the cute little Asian kid" in "Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom", or as "the cute little Asian kid" in "Goonies", or "the cute little Asian kid" on the TV show "Head Of The Class"--hell, you might even remember him as "the only person who wasn't completely insane" on the "Goonies" DVD audio commentary track. No matter how you remember him, he's the guy who single-handedly raises the bar on this film from "Mystery Science Theater 3000" to "possibly worth watching if you're drunk".

His performance here is impressive--he easily runs the gamut between several intelligent shade of comedy and drama. His performance is understated, which--for a Hong Kong film--paradoxically makes it stand out more. When you watch this guy on screen, you just know you're in good hands--you know he's gonna give you an interesting read of his lines and throw in some character of his own to liven things up. He's on our top ten list of actors to watch right now, hopefully we'll all see more of this talented actor very soon, his last movie was in '92.

Okay, this session of the Jonathan Ke Quan fan club is now closed. We'll meet again here next week for more discussion...

As popular as this film is, we have to be honest about our opinion of it. Although you may not read a single other bad review of "Crying Freeman" anywhere on Earth, you're about to read one right here. In our opinion, this is one of the worst films in our entire catalog, and we cannot in good conscience encourage you to buy this film before any number of thousands of others.

The story is based on an anime, though you would not know it to watch this film. The central character, Yo (played by the effeminate Mark Dacascos), is "the ultimate assassin"--he never misses. He is the sole hitman for a centuries-old Chinese society called Sons Of The Dragons (pretty original, eh?). He always eliminates his target, and afterwards, sheds a single tear for them. As we struggled through this rubbish, we found ourselves shedding tears as well...

One day, during one of his hits, Yo realizes that there was a witness to his crime. The witness, a pretentious two-dimensional dumb-blonde character named Emu (and yes, she has the intelligence of the ridiculous, ostrich-like bird of the same name), is up in the mountains painting when she sees the murder. Yo approaches her with the intent to eliminate her and tie up loose ends, but he--?--instantly falls in love with her instead and wimps out, fleeing the scene. There's 1400 years of training for ya'.

Unlike every other human on Earth, Emu--instead of being terrified and traumatized by witnessing this brutal murder--instantly falls in love with Yo and, after he flees, cannot get him out of her mind. She awaits his inevitable return with bated breath, anxious to see him again even though she knows it will be for the occasion of her own murder. That makes sense...

Well, as luck would have it, Yo does pay her a nighttime visit soon thereafter with the intent to eliminate her. But after he's near her, their pathetic little infatuation flares up again; and the world's most deadly and ruthless assassin instantly degenerates into the world's most chumpy and ruthlessly impotent ass again. Of course, they screw.

Now things REALLY get going downhill. After the act, the two nauseating lovebirds are interrupted by some mean men with machine guns. That's nothing new, but what is new is Yo's little...outfit. You see, after he gets out of bed, it is revealed that he is totally naked except for a--no joke--buttless thong. He then proceeds to scale a wall--in his thong--and attack the would-be killers--in his thong. Now, correct us if we're missing something here, but how is it exactly that we're supposed to take a thong-wearing, teary-eyed, chumpy, effeminate assassin seriously? All this guy needs is a cowboy hat and some chaps, or maybe a bowtie, and he's ready to take the gold at the next Male Stripper Special Olympics. The "buttless cowboy thong" scene, as we've come to call it, definitely sealed this movie's fate for us.

Thongs and effeminate prancing assassins aside, there are plenty of other reasons to dislike this movie. One such reason that springs instantly to mind is Rae Dawn Chong. Some of you may remember her from a huge string of crappy movies during the '80s, and others of you may remember her from a huge string of crappy movies during the 90s; but chances are most of you will remember her from an unprecedented run of crappy acting that started with her first performance in 1974 and is still going strong. This androgynous halfwit bogs down any project she touches, and her Detective Forge character in this film is as painful a display of her distinctive "junior high school talent show" acting style as any she's ever attempted. However, to her credit, she blends in nicely with the god-awful, direct-to-video ensemble cast and their two-dimensional-ignoramus police officer characters.

To be completely honest here, we didn't finish the film. Perhaps it's not fair of us to judge it so harshly based on the first half alone. But then again, it wasn't exactly fair of this film to suck so violently--or to spring its buttless cowboy thong ambush on us--and without warning, either. Let's just put it this way: the only thing that could physically have made this film any worse--aside from possibly Jan Michael Vincent playing the assassin--would have been Jan Michael Vincent playing Rae Dawn Chong.

In the near future, after World War 3, society has apparently decided that, in order to avoid future wars, everyone will inject themselves with this emotion-suppressing drug every day. Not only that, but all artifacts that contain emotional content (all art, music, poetry, etc.) are destroyed by the Tetragramaton, the special police force assembled to keep order in the numb new world. When one of their elite officers misses a dose of his drug, he starts having feelings and sympathizing with the rebels.

There's more to the story, but let's just start picking this thing apart with what we already know.

1. All of society has opted to inject themselves with an emotion-suppressing drug daily in order to perpetuate this new lobotomized utopia. NOT. Even in the film itself, one of the "underground resistance" members explains that if they cut off the supply of the drug for even a day there would be a major revolution. Which begs the question, wouldn't people be missing doses or going off the drug entirely ALL THE TIME? Clearly, if the drug has to be INJECTED DAILY and causes woefully undesirable results, you're going to have a massive domino effect of people going off the drug constantly. However, that issue is ignored entirely.

2. While people are on the drug, they are essentially emotionless. No grief, no anger, no ambition, no love. Clearly this is a hypothetical situation posed by the writers: "we could avoid conflict by lobotomizing ourselves, but then we wouldn't be human", but even so it falls flat. Because no one wants this hypothetical future, and furthermore the effects of this drug on society are so ill-defined that it literally makes no sense. If people were stripped of all emotion somehow, they would not act like the characters in this film. Each character has a certain robot-like quality on the surface, but each character is also clearly experiencing a wide range of emotions and acting on them. Each over-zealous police officer that goes beyond the call of duty, each time Taye Diggs is on screen gloating something or other over his partner with that goofy shit-eating grin, each time ANYONE DOES ANYTHING more than what was exactly asked of them by the government...all of these things are the result of the very emotions of which they are supposedly devoid.

3. Another sore point is the film's definition of illegal material, such as paintings, poetry, music, "old timey" furnishings and knickknacks... Those aren't things you can define and rule illegal, because those things are an inevitable side-effect of a human existence. Even in the drugged "emotionless" world, their culture still contains heavily stylized architecture, clothes, cars, weapons... But wait, these things are supposed to be illegal now, people aren't supposed to be able to have the emotions necessary to create these things. But wait, somehow they did. How is this possible? Shouldn't all of these things have been designed using arbitrary design decisions that result in the most efficient production costs and methods and end uses? Yet they clearly were not, as all the police wear leather dusters and drive Cadillacs.

Aside from all these holes and inconsistencies, aside from the fact that this whole film feels like some kind of simplified morality tale for a third grade special education class (fascism = bad, freedom = good, you = stupid), and even aside from the fact that the basic premise of the film (the hero "waking up") is a complete rip-off of so many other movies (most notably and most recently "The Matrix")...aside from all of that, the film is SO BORING AND SLOW that you'll just be sitting there drooling on yourself waiting for the action scenes. And when they arrive, you'll probably continue waiting for them because you might not even notice that they happened.

The action scenes are odd, derivative, short, and uncompelling. The basic idea is that all these police officers have trained in some kind of bizarre method of gun fighting whereby the shooter stands in the middle of a group of enemies and kind of bends and ducks and turns around IN ANTICIPATION OF where the enemies will fire, then shoots them all, and doesn't get hit himself. If you buy this for even a second, you deserve to have to watch it. This is so preposterous and ridiculous to watch that you'll find yourself wondering exactly how stupid the filmmakers thought their audience was. Mix in some "Matrixey" electric-guitar-with-hip-hop-inspired-drums action music and you've got yourself some of the most derivative and boring action sequences of all time.

The most fun part for us was finding ways to make fun of the film. Because sitting in silence watching it is just too depressing. Every time a character says "Tetragramaton", try to find something else to replace that word, like "Chlor-Trimeton" or "Decepticon", or "Super Famicom". Get interactive, scream some smack at the screen. You'll feel better.

But let's not waste any more time on this snoozer. If you're looking for futuristic action or a "the hero wakes up" type of story, just see "The Matrix". If you're looking for a highly intelligent morality tale about a not-so-unbelievable future humanity, see "Gattaca". Do not buy this film, do not rent this film, do not think about this film. If we all just look away and try to clear our minds, maybe we can pretend blissfully that it just never happened.

Oh, we almost forgot, there was also a really long, slow, and boring fan dance number in the middle of the film, which felt like a bad director's desperate attempt to fill up some more time. So, when you combine an otherwise slow and boring film with epically poor martial arts--it seems almost amazing the collection of poor martial artists assembled in this film--you get nothing more than a waste of time. There may be a good fight at the end, but we wouldn't know since we didn't make it past the first sixty minutes... There are so many other movies out there that are better than this one in every way, we simply recommend passing on this yawner.

Perhaps where this film excels is in the "nonsense comedy" department, though the meaning behind many of its colloquialisms are entirely lost in the absurd literal translations (see www.FlubTitles.com for highlights). Our feeling is that the uncomfortable mix of comedy and violence in this film serves to undermine itself in both directions. And, seeing as how neither the comedy nor the action are noteworthy, that's not a good thing.

In the end, though the film has an impressive cast and director, it fails to deliver the goods. We recommend skipping this snoozer and finding yourself either a good comedy or a good action flick rather than this failed attempt at both.

The remainder of her material is basically "republicans are stupid". And not in the brilliant Jon Stewart, Michael Moore way of using actual facts to make an argument--more in the "ha ha, they're just stupid" way. If anything, her opposition to republicans seems to be rooted entirely in their opposition to gay marriage. Okay, you have an opinion, we get it. You like gay everything, and anyone who opposes gay everything is stupid. Fine. Maybe we even agree. But that can't be your ENTIRE SHOW. There's an audience here, not just you.

There's one segment where she proudly explains that she was accidentally booked to play some republican convention and she was so offensive and rude that they turned off her mic and asked her to leave the stage. But she stayed on the stage and continued doing her act even though no one could hear her. Um, that sounds like a total embarrassment FOR HER, doesn't it? "Ha ha, every single person in the room hated my act and I wouldn't leave the stage even after they turned the mic off." No, that's just plain retarded.

There's another segment where she explains how she gets inundated with ignorant hate mail, and how she posted all of those people's contact information on her web site so that her fans could call and write and harass those people. That's funny in concept, but in reality it's just a case of "sinking to their level" that might cut it in third grade but really doesn't cut it for normal adults. The moral of the story? Cho has an army of loyal fans who blindly worship her every word and defend her at all costs. Is it just us, or does that sound a lot like the "stupid, bible-thumping republicans" that she so viciously attacks for "blindly" following their own beliefs? Hmm...

What happened to the old Margaret Cho who was legitimately funny without having to inform her audience specifically of who was good and who was evil in the world? Isn't it more effective to point out observations that allow your audience to find their own opinion? What happened to the Margaret Cho whose jokes weren't 99% predictable--when every punchline didn't end with the words "sucking cock", used simply for shock value? Well, let us be the first to say it: the phrase "sucking cock" is hereby no longer shocking, especially when you use it so often that the real shock is when you DON'T say it. Find a new punchline.

Plus, even if you can overlook the pandering, played-out material, the performance itself feels totally half-assed. Aside from her CONSTANT usage of a "sassy gay male impression", every single sentence she utters is followed by a 10-15 second pause to wait for applause. If you have something to say, just fucking say it will you? Literally half of the 85 minute show is taken up by Cho standing on stage doing NOTHING but waiting for applause. It's like a nightmare real-life sitcom laugh track. But perhaps the capper is the end of the show, where she literally RUNS off stage, out of the back of the theatre, and into a limo and drives away. Was she forced to do this show against her will or something?

One of the bonus features on this DVD is a 40-minute "documentary" which basically consists of everyone shamelessly deifying Cho to the point of complete ridiculousness. It's reminiscent of Will Ferrell's "Inside The Actor's Studio" parodies on "Saturday Night Live": "Listening to Margaret Cho is like looking into the eyes of God and hearing him say 'you are my most wondrous creation!'" It's painfully clear that Margaret Cho and all her handlers and the people who go to her shows think she's a god. Meanwhile, the rest of us are quickly converting.

Sorum is the story of a young man, around 30, who moves into a disheveled apartment building that is about to be torn down. Presumably, he has gotten an extremely good deal on rent, because this place is the pits. Of his few neighbors, one is an author writing a ghost story, one is a woman his age who is beaten daily by her husband, and the rest of the tenants are never further examined. Soon after moving in, the man develops a relationship with his abused-wife neighbor, and from there, things get funky. She is a chain-smoking, ultra-depressed, confusing woman, who seems to have sporadic temper tantrums and generally keeps you off balance. Whether or not this was intentional on the part of the filmmakers is beyond us, but the end result is that we have no way to connect to her character and spend most of the film just wishing she weren't there. The man is mopey and confusing as well, but his little Bruce Lee impressions (which he does only a few times throughout the film) were really hilarious--truly the high point of the film for us.

The thing about this movie is, the filmmakers seem to have relied on a formula whereby they spend the first 99% of the movie establishing atmosphere and hinting at some incidents that happened in the past in the building, and then they leave the last 1% for the super-shocking-extravaganza-ending, which isn't super, shocking, or extravagant. The end result is a feeling that you spent 90 minutes reluctantly giving this film the benefit of the doubt, hoping it would reward your patience at the end, but it just gives you the finger. Well, it doesn't give you the finger, but the ending is just too predictable and poorly done to be satisfying.

In our opinion, this film was beautifully shot, and if you're willing to go into the experience ready to settle for just 90 minutes of cool-looking stuff and some amusing little bits here and there, you could very well be happy with this film. Or, if you're someone who isn't too quick and is easily shocked or impressed by a complete lack of extravaganzas, then maybe it won't feel like a letdown to you. Obviously, this film was very very popular, so we are likely in the minority with our opinions; but as it stands, this film did not feel like much more than a series of beautiful photographs for us.

The story is a little funky and hard to follow at times, but as far as we can tell, it's basically about a kid who transfers to a school where the students and teachers use fancy-ass Matrix-esque martial arts constantly. He seems to be holding back some type of super powers, and allows himself and his friends to be bullied because he's afraid to use his powers. By the end--we know, big surprise--he finally learns how to use his powers and there's a big light show and a bunch of cheezeball CGI effects to prove to the audience just how powerful he really is.

The story, such that it is, is really too boring to hold up an entire movie. The cast is mostly appealing, and there are definitely some good performances here--in particular, some surprisingly good physical comedy--but it's painfully obvious that the director was just phoning it in, letting the CGI guys run the show. Almost every shot of a human actor looks like they're in front of a green screen, they don't interact naturally with each other or their surroundings. This leaves the entire movie with a detached, soulless feeling. The big effects aren't impressive, they're just the typical "guy throws huge ball of 'energy' at opponent, and opponent flies a few hundred feet back only to get up, wipe some blood from his mouth, and look up with vengeful determination at the camera" variety. You'll often see us praising Centro for their subtle digital effects in films like Bangkok Dangerous or The Eye; Volcano High has gone the opposite route, with bigger, tackier, flashier effects that have no style or class. Check out the final fight sequence: it's raining heavily, but if you look at our hero's head, it's clear that the rain is not interacting with him at all, it really just looks like crap. The physical effects are also marginal, mostly explosions of water that seem out of place, or people flying across a room clearly on some type of clunky wire rig.

What else is there to say? The fate of the entire film was clearly set upon the shoulders of a few guys with some kick-ass computers, and unfortunately, those guys or their computers weren't up to the task. Effects like these aren't enough to carry an entire movie; and when you strip your actors of so many opportunities to interact with other actors and real physical locations by filming them on an empty sound stage in front of a green screen, you're going to seriously hamper their ability to make a connection with the audience. And when the effects you get by doing so are so run-of-the-mill, the trade-off of organic quality for digital flair is clearly a losing proposition.

Another problem with the directing is that the last 30 minutes or so, the director goes on a split-screen frenzy, and it creates a really tacky, annoying look that serves no purpose and looks dated and awkward here. It's also annoying that we keep seeing the same exact shots over and over throughout the movie: a guy falls to his knees and then falls on his face into the camera; a guy gets knocked down and then gets back up and looks up into the camera; the camera swirls around someone for no particular reason; bla ba bla. This movie is trying to emulate so many other movies it forgot to be a movie itself.

So, in conclusion, just re-watch The Matrix instead.

The basic premise is that a down-on-his-luck, suicidal man named Andre is visited by an earth-bound angel (named Angela--get it, GET IT?), who proceeds to turn his life around in dramatic fashion--all in the course of a day or so. In the process, the two fall in love, despite the fact that she's not really human.

The characters are really not too appealing overall. Andre is a small-time weasel whose business has something to do with olive oil--we are never really told why he needed to borrow so much money, what he did with it, or why we're supposed to give a crap. Angela has intentionally come to Earth in the form of a "slut", for reasons unknown, and basically proceeds to solve Andre's problems by giving him endless pep talks about how wonderful he is, and sleeping with most of Paris at $500 a pop to earn the money he needs to pay off his creditors. Soon thereafter Andre begins to fall for her. Now, is it just me, or does the relationship seem more than a bit one-sided?

The film is shot in black and white, and has been hailed as some type of loving cinematic portrait of Paris. But we found the film's locations to be touristy and unoriginal to a ridiculous extent. The film's two characters literally stand in front of or outside of every major tourist attraction in the entire city: Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, The Eiffel Tower, etc. It was as if the director bought a cheapo pack of postcards from a souvenir shop at the Paris airport and decided to use them in place of storyboards. Nearly everything about this film is just too obvious, as if we need to be beaten over the head to get it. "DUH, the Eiffel Tower, they must be in Paris!" Even the film's title, "Angel-A", is too obvious. Wouldn't "Angela" have sufficed? Even that would have been too obvious, but they had to add that hyphen in there just in case anyone in the audience was mentally retarded and needed that extra clue.

And the ending is no exception. I don't want to spoil it for you--if that's possible--but it's pretty much as syrupy as it gets--the final simplistic cliché to tie up the whole package. My advice? If you want to see a fun, funny, and yes, syrupy love story between a mortal man and a woman from another dimension of sorts, go re-watch "Splash". Want a cute story about an angel who comes back to Earth to help someone to turn his life around? Try "The Heavenly Kid"--it's syrupville for sure, but a fun 80s romp nonetheless. "Angel-A", however, has nothing new to offer--other than perhaps the world's first non-violent martial artist prostitute angel slut? Why?

PROBLEM #1 - THE ROMANTIC SUB-PLOTS:
So there's this kid, Bond, and he falls in love with his teacher, Kim, and vice versa... And it's supposedly this big scandal because, "Ooh, a teacher seeing a student, ooh!" Only, the teacher is probably even younger than the student, so who cares? Plus, the student is never in class; and when he is, he's asleep; and why is he even going to school (college?) anyway? He wants to be a professional fighter. So anyway, he's in love with his teacher, and also the teacher's male friend/roommate is in love with her, and also her cheating ex-husband claims to be in love with her...but who cares? All we want to see is Bond training and getting better and kicking ass in the fighting ring. Yet we're forced to sit through the most tedious and tiresome courtship of all time instead. If the filmmakers had completely ditched the entire romantic sub-plot, the film would have been much, much stronger.

PROBLEM #2 - THE ACTION DIRECTION:
For a film that's half action and half romance, if the romantic half sucks, the action half better be damn good. Unfortunately, that's not really the case here. All the fighting centers around the "Star Runner" tournament, which is a free-style fighting competition. Fighters are allowed to use any styles they want--even including dry humping on the floor like the real-life, pay-per-view free-style fights we've all seen on TV. (Thankfully, there's no dry humping in this film, but they get close a couple times.) So the fight scenes aren't your typical variety where there's a lot of room to move around, stuff to climb on and jump off of, props to hurl, etc. It's just two guys in a ring just beating the crap out of each other back and forth--sweat flying, faces puffing, eyes sealing, etc. So while it's dramatic, in the way that a boxing movie would be, it's not very exciting or creative. And the direction really hurts the film here, because it cuts every few frames, and it's mostly close-ups so you can't see exactly what's happening or in what sequence. If we wanted to see an American action film, we would have; but you're in Hong Kong, guys, we hold you to a higher standard in the fight direction department.

NON-PROBLEM #1 - OLD SCHOOL ASS-KICKERS:
Here's where the movie redeems itself, or at least approaches doing so. Gordon Liu plays a coach at Bond's training gym, which is a treat. He doesn't do any fighting, but it sure is nice to see him back up on the screen, even in a limited capacity. Then we have David Chiang, another Shaw Bros. master, in another very small but cool role. And finally, we have Ti Lung, as a wing chun master that teaches Bond a kung fu trick or two. Love it. How cool is it to see these guys in a modern movie? Hopefully this is a trend that will continue. Rounding out the ass-kicking portion of the cast are Chin Kar Lok and Max Mok, neither of whom would be considered "old school", but both of whom kick ass and don't seem to get enough play in films these days. Hong Kong filmmakers, if you're listening out there, set these guys free with a camera and a stunt crew some day without entangling them in lame comedy and romance sub-plots and you'll have a real winner on your hands.

So, in conclusion, this film was basically all about the cameos for us. The fight scenes didn't really do much for us, and the romantic story was indescribably irritating. If you're a fan of boxing films, Hong Kong romances, or just badly want to see some of your old school faves, give "Star Runner" a look. But if you hated "The Karate Kid" or can't stomach more than your yearly recommended dosage of sap in one sitting, you should probably just skip it.

Tide's parents died when he was young, and all his partners have died in the line of duty, so he assumes--based in part on advice from his mentor--that everyone he cares for will meet with an untimely demise. Consequently, he leads a solitary life, actively avoiding friendships, dating, and meaningful interaction. As you can imagine, his fear of connecting with anyone gets difficult to handle at times--like when he falls in love with a girl, and does not dare pursue her for fear that she may die as a result. He's got troubles.

His only confidant is a shopkeeper named Paper Chan--so named because he sells the paper trinkets that people burn for the dead. His shop carries an excellent selection: everything from paper guns to paper scooters to paper cell phones to paper mansions--when a living person burns such an item for a departed loved one, the loved one receives the "real" thing in the afterlife. This idea--based on ancient customs still widely practiced--has a lot of possibilities in a film where the main characters are both ghost and human. In addition to running his paper goods shop, Paper Chan serves as Tide's mentor and pseudo-father-figure.

According to Paper Chan, Tide's current ghost partner, Sam, is just about due for reincarnation. Tide, it seems, will then have to find a new partner very soon. When he finally does find his new partner, Wind (Stephen Fung)--the guy who meets all of Paper Chan's criteria--it turns out that Wind is quite useless in high-stress situations. He becomes paralyzed out of fear and lies prone on the floor during ghost attacks. Quite a partner...

The premise is excellent--the perfect backdrop for action, comedy, or an interesting romance. The real problem with this movie is that it lacks a heart--it lacks a meaningful central story. Perhaps in an attempt to "keep you guessing"--or perhaps as the result of poor editing--the film changes directions regularly, leaving old stories behind and poking around at new ones. The end result is that--yes--we were guessing all along; but we also just didn't care so much when it was over. The film tries to do too many things in too short a time and ends up undermining almost all of them--truly a perfect example of catering to an MTV/short attention span target audience. The characters' motivations and personalities were never clear, and so we never felt like we connected with any of them enough to really care about them. Likewise, the characters' interactions with each other were never meaningful or substantial enough for the audience to become invested in their relationships. For example, all we have to determine that Tide has met the "girl of his dreams" is his word that "she's the girl of my dreams". They don't know each other, they're awkward and say boring things to each other, and they're secretive and dishonest with each other. Sorry, but that relationship doesn't quite cut it in the post-junior-high-school world.

Furthermore, the film--like nearly all Chinese films about the supernatural--fails to properly establish rules and explain the situation before plopping us down into it. Our protagonists are ghost hunters, but their tools and methods are never discussed, and a typical work day for them includes goofing off and lounging around. Every once in awhile they take care of a malicious ghost, but even the ghosts feel arbitrary and two-dimensional--who are they? what makes one more powerful than another? etc. When someone dies, they don't disappear, they become a ghost and can interact with our main characters effortlessly. Consequently, the impact of "death" is entirely eroded, and it honestly wouldn't matter if any of the main characters died or not--they would probably lead very similar lives either way. And so, by the time we get to the big finale--a major brawl with a bad-ass ghost--we really have no investment either way in what happens. The movie gets a lot of mileage out of the concept that being a ghost isn't so bad--in fact it often seems quite fun--but then it expects its audience to forget all that when the protagonists are "in danger". Sorry, no.

The film is packed with cool CGI effects and elaborate CGI-enhanced hyper-supernatural-martial-arts sequences and camera moves galore. The 2002 duo is super-cool with their all-black outfits and black leather trench coats. Nick Tse is indeed like a little Ekin Cheng strutting around with wisps of long hair covering his face, too cool to be taken seriously. While it's all somewhat fun to watch, we can't help but feel a bit let down at its lack of originality. It feels almost like watching a highlight reel of "The Best Of Andrew Lau CGI", only without the character of an Andrew Lau film or Centro's CGI.

Now, to add insult to injury, we must mention one last thing about the soundtrack. Nick Tse should NOT be allowed to sing in public. Ever. His two ballads in the film were flat-out embarrassing, and should absolutely not have made it into the final cut. Ever seen those Levi's commercials with the horrible karaoke singers...?

In the final analysis--though we've bitched and moaned a lot--the film does get under your skin somehow. We wouldn't have bothered to examine the different aspects of the film in such detail if we didn't feel that they all had potential or some style. Perhaps the reason this film left such a strong impression on us was that it was so close to being right that we could almost taste it--but just ended up wrong.

Some advice to director Andrew Lau: All these "semi-sequels" to other films you've made are fun, but don't use the same actors as different characters in the same settings. If you have actors play the same roles they did in related films, treat them with the same care you did before. And when picking songs for your movie's soundtrack, try to find singers who have at least a vague understanding of intonation.

There are lots of little nods to the kung fu flix of old that will likely appeal to genre fans, but I couldn't help wondering while I was watching the film who the intended audience really was. True genre fans would likely find this film to be childish and unengaging on the whole. Casual fans whose primary exposure to the genre has been through crossover films like "Crouching Tiger" would also likely find this film lacking in emotional depth and motivation. And kids--well, kids would probably like most of it, though a lot of the violence did seem a bit harsh for a young'un. I guess the idea was to make something for young teens whose parents might have been Shaw Brothers fans back in the day? I'm just guessing here.

The bottom line is that if you're watching this with your 13-year-old son, you'll probably come away mildly entertained and he'll come away with possibly a new favorite movie. But if there's no 13-year-old boy in your scenario, then you might want to skip this one and seek out something a bit more decisive--a movie that has actually something to say or at least an innovative way of saying it.

The only word that keeps popping into my head when I think about this movie is "cute". If "cute" is enough for you to justify a couple of hours, then more power to you. Otherwise, don't lose any sleep over missing this one.

What this film does well is to provide some historical information on the rise and fall of the Asian leading man, fascinating interviews with several generations of Asian actors, and several very moving personal testaments as to what it's like to be an Asian actor in Hollywood. If you're not looking for "fair and balanced", this documentary is fantastic. I was, and I felt let down by the overall lack of context and counterpoint.