Movie reviews the way movie reviews are supposed to be written: brief.
HOUSE OF WAX
Director: Jaume Serra
Starring: Chad Michael Murray, Paris Hilton, Elisha Cuthbert
Nothing original here friends, just a lot of regurgitation from horror films past such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre, House of a Thousand Corpses and Psycho. The main problem? Director Jaume Serra takes himself and the film way too fucking seriously. How, in 2005, can you cast Paris Hilton - world's most heinous cum dumpster - and think anyone's going to take your film seriously. If someone would have just admitted that this was just another shitty teen slasher movie with blatant sex and violence then it would have been a lot better. I'd give it an F, but it gets a D because Elisha Cuthbert gives torqued-up guys like me something to look at.
Grade: D
KINGDOM OF HEAVEN
Director: Ridley Scott
Starring: Orlando Bloom, Eva Green, Liam Neeson
This film had the potential to be better than Gladiator—for starters, it's a great deal more accurate and it also boasts a smarter script full of contemporary analogies that link it to present-day Middle East conflict. Secondly, the special effects better than Gladiator, and other recent battle epics like King Arthur. Finally, casting is splendid which includes Jeremy Irons, David Thewlis, Liam Neeson and the unbelievably hot (in a plain way) Eva Green. Unfortunately - and there's always an "unfortunately" when I'm around—Orlando Bloom is the star of this show and he just can't carry shit like this. He blows the film's big lines during epic moments and reduces this movie to Gladiator-Lite.
Grade: C
CRASH
Director: Paul Haggis
Starring: Matt Dillon, Don Cheadle, Sandra Bullock, Thandie Newton
Finally, a movie being released this week that's actually worthy of me. I can't remember the last time I've felt so galvanized, disturbed, and moved by full sentences, unadorned by gratuitous profanity, flying out of the mouths of screen characters as ordinary as you or me or the guy idling at the next traffic light. Crash is about the collision of cars, the machinery on which L.A. is built. But it's also about the collision of races, cultures, and classes—another kind of L.A. experience. White, black, Hispanics, and Asians - everyone's fair game in the stereotype department in this, at times unexpectedly funny, and always humane movie with just enough care as to not get the race groups all flustered.
Grade: A
