Reviews

I loved the first two movies. In fact, I liked Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers so much I watched them five times.

Unfortunately, The Return of the King seemed a rather big overkill for me - it seemed too rushed - poorly edited - an overindulgent overkill.

The scenes were all pretty epic in the book - but Jackson juiced it up too much.

I didn't like the charge of the Riders of Rohan - it just looked so... fake for some reason.

The scene when the Eye of Sauron topples over - was so laughable.

I really wanted to like it but I just couldn't. I'm sorry.

And to top it off - we get Annie Lennox singing that song at the end - I like Lennox - but I just found her version of this song lackluster. Goodness knows why ROTK scooped up all the Academy Awards. They should have given it all to FOTR instead.

I liked it! I liked it so much I'm going to buy it on DVD, heck even the extended DVD.

I thought it was really well written.

The pacing was good.

The characters were well drawn out.

And the overall story was pretty amusing - in fact, it was so amusing I hoping it will come out on xbox or a computer game to play with.

The only thing I wished for was perhaps more jokes about retro games that I loved - like Space Invaders, Galaxian etc.. it would have been great if they had made a come back at the finale to help defeat the enemy.

This together with Toy Story 3 - are one of my fav animated movies.

Verges is in love with his own hate. He sees hypocrisy everywhere and like a spoiled brat wants to tear everything done. And so he supports dictators and mass murderers in the the name of justice.

He also asserts that the Cambodian genocide under his friend Pol Pot did not happen and blames the Americans for most of the damage.

The fact that over one quarter of Cambodia's population perished under Pol Pot's rule - the fact that Pol Pot's insane policies drove the population to utter starvation - the fact that Pol Pot's regime actively conducted mass imprisonment, torture and murder of hundreds of thousands of its own people - including children - does not bother Verges who still admires Pol Pot.

This film does not press Verges on such hard questions. Its an utter waste of time and only serves as a limelight for his overwhelming ego.

I'm not too sure why there is so much hate for the Hobbit. Its clearly an adaptation of the book, not the actual book itself. And it also incorporates detail from the other stories written by Tolkien, ie. the growing sense that Saruman was going to be more of a hindrance than a help. Some people see it as a problem but I don't. B I have some problems with the film 1. the initial meeting with Gandalf seemed too weird. There didn't seem to be any reason why Bilbo should go running off with this tall messy looking stranger.

However on the 2nd screening (I watched it a 2nd time) this scene didn't seem so bad and I caught some of the casual explanations given.

2. Galadriel meeting with Gandalf. Was Gandalf so in awe of the Lady in the books? She seems to have taken on a ghostly Mother Mary sort of persona here.

3. Bilbo's capture which resulted in the surrender of the entire group. I don't exactly see why Thorin would lay down his sword and get eaten just to save Bilbo's life temporarily.

4. Some of the decapitation scenes of the goblins did not amuse me.

But overall it was an excellent film. There were some marvelous bits of drama for me.

1. Bilbo's explanation of why he didn't belong to the group, and later why he chose to stay with the group.

2. The appearance of the Eagles. Weta did an amazing work in this. Simply stunning to behold.

Some posters complained about Azog being "resurrected" to be the main antagonist. Gosh if that bothers you I think you are a book-wraith.

I don't get this movie at all. I love spy actions films like the Qantum of Solace, Bourne Supremacy, and of course, Spy kids.

Where are the sex scenes? Where are the car chase sequences?? And OMG where are the epic fight scenes and gun shoot outs???? The hero chews a chewing gum - pulls out a gun and thats it???? I mean there was NOTHING at all in this show.

And worse whats with all the weird accents??? They all talk funny. Why have they outsourced all the acting roles to Russian and Irish actors??? I was really hoping to see the acting class of George Clooney and Kevin Costner. I don't know any of these actors. Well, maybe one of them. I think I saw him in Dark Knight, another fav spy movie of mine.

By this time you should have realized this was written with sarcasm mode on. If you don't like it - find a sniper rifle and shove it where the light don't shine, in this case your brain.

It has been said that George Lucas can't do dialogue or write a logical rational script. This movie proves it.

Appalling dialogue. An illogical absurd plot twist. And Jar Jar Binks. Three reasons to hate this dreadful movie.

I hated the way Lucas contrived to make Anakin turn over to the Dark Side.

It doesn't make sense. He might as well have got mini-Sith Lords crawling out of Anny's behind.

How is it that the best Jedi Knight Anakin who has been fighting tooth and nail against the Separatist led by the Sith Lord suddenly turn against his order and go about killing even little Jedi kids? Did Lucas even bother to think this through? I think even a pre-school kid could have done better.

As it stands, this garbage of a film only makes Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back shine even brighter.

I can only hope that one day after George Lucas has disappeared up in his behind - that Marcia Lucas - the real crafts person behind Star Wars will get back in his chair and redo the whole first 3 episodes.

I fell asleep in the first 10 minutes of this film. It was so boring that I stopped watching it after the next 15minutes.

Its basically an Anti-war "I hate war" "war is meaningless" sort of film written apparently by Sean Penn.

This sort of theme may perhaps be used for other conflicts - insert your "I hate Bush" diatribe here. Or lets see, WW1 trench warfare.

But the Pacific War was quite different. The Japanese military really were horrible. They slaughtered millions of innocent civilians. The Battle for Guadalcanal was vitally important as it served as a staging post for Japanese bombers to sink Allied ships heading to Australia etc..

There were numerous historical inaccuracies in this movie. The battle scenes were not factually correct.

In short, this film and the story of WW2 only serves to act as a canvas for an anti-war message, and for the director to insert platitudes about the "horrors of war" and about how the Japanese soldiers - the same people who raped an entire city population at Nanking before killing them - were really really nice people.

In short, its a boring, preachy film filled with hippie 3am free form poetry. Watch this if you want to watch an anti-war film. The director might as well have substituted the Japanese soldiers for smurfs.

A poor effort by the directors and script writers.

This film wallows like an elephant in quicksand, slow moving ponderous. There is a very pathetic attempt at the start to give some depth to the characters - it fails. It tells the background of the men in a series of cliché "faux-Norman Rockwell" vignettes.

Feel good, 2 dimensional - the sort of boring and forgettable ads you see at bus stations.

Then the war starts, and the next second are giving hell to the "Japs" and it plays out like a video game. They shoot and all the enemy fall over like pins whilst the Yanks are behaving like supermen. I think there was more drama in a Rambo film.

And for crying out loud - they are fighting in the jungle. I spent 10 weeks doing military training in Thailand, Borneo etc.. and we were all drenched in sweat every single darn minute and pretty fracking tired - all this and no one was shooting at us. In this film - it all looks so clean, like one big stage production... did I mention the bad acting?

This was just poor directing. I read the history of Guadalcanal - it was intense, brutal, and a close run thing. You don't get that feeling here.

Its also too melodramatic -every emotion is invested with great significance with an accompanying doom-doom-doom "omg so serious" soundtrack. After awhile, it gets wearing.

And then we are saddled with a main character whose whiny world weary cynicism render the 1st part of the series into a massive constipation - that the actor has red curly hair, freckles and bad acting makes this series stink. Check out his successful bozo drunken chat up of the Aussie girl - its so damn awful that it put the "C" into cringe.

Is this far real? If this was actually based on a real life memoir - you gotta really wonder whether the author made it all up instead of writing the awful truth, ie. "After the Battle of Guadalcanal, we got RR in Melbourne where I got blind drunk - I made a pass at a girl. She slapped me in the face then said "F.O. Dick head". I wanted to tell her my name wasn't Dick but was too busy vomiting. A couple of kids laughed at me as I lay in the gutter covered in my own vomit and urine, and stole my wallet. But I'm going to write in my memoirs that I got invited to her home and banged her silly while her parents slept peacefully in the other room. Yeah everyone's gonna believe that."

In no way am I disparaging the efforts of the Pacific WW2 veterans. They fought hard and terrible battles - against a foe which put the "B" into barbarity. The Japanese were the sort of monsters who regularly raped and slaughtered the populations of cities AFTER its citizens had surrendered.

Off tangent but whenever some stupid Peace protesters cries out "Remember Hiroshima!" I feel like yelling back - "Yeah bomb the stupid 4kers and for their mosaic films!" Japanese women are hawt but their film production are stupid, anyhow I digress.

This sort of monstrous behavior went on in varying degrees in all the campaigns the Japanese conducted - from China, Philippines, Burma, Malaya, Singapore - where they rounded up 100,000 citizens - men, women, children and even babies and slaughtered them before dumping their bodies into the sea to get rid of the evidence (and that was just a small part of their horrible reign).

The Japanese also used millions of Asian civilians as slave labor, and even as sex slaves brutally treating them worse than animals. They died in the thousands on a daily basis. And well, God help you if you became a Japanese Prisoner of War or a so-called "comfort women" which were women routinely gang raped to death by ordinary Japanese soldiers.

In this film, you get the feeling that it was the Americans who were the barbarians - and not the Japanese.

In this film - it seems it is the Americans who are the cruel aggressors. The people in charge of this film, however, did a big disservice to their story; Spielberg needs sit down and think this though. I think they just got lost in the detail.

The story telling was just so monotonous. Some of the action sequences were OK - but the initials battles lacked tension and felt very much like a video game. Having said that, historically the Japanese soldiers died in their thousands using stupid tactics.

I don't blame the history though - I blame the film's story tellers, the script writers and directors.

On one hand, you have film directors like Christopher Nolan who can make the audience hold their breath over a spinning top. And on the other - you have the amateurs who did the Pacific - who managed to make the epic battles of the Pacific into really boring yawns.

One other note: the soldiers all look so clean, don't they sweat for crying out loud? - Its the tropics, 30C+ degrees, they're wearing full combat gear but they seem like they've run around a few blocks of the movie set.

Poor acting, poor directing, poor script writing, but the props were excellent.

I give it a C minus. I expected better from Hanks and Spielberg.

It just didn't gel. A lot of the scenes feel extremely clumsy like a monstrous giant trying to do origami.

The plot is incoherent. One moment the girl is trying to kill "Tony" - the next she is seducing him. Finally, it made no sense that the devil after outwitting "the Doctor" chooses to release his daughter by getting him to help kill Tony.

Its a stupid and shallow Deux Ex Machima idea - and makes no sense, as the daughter was the one who helped saved Tony at the start.

Some good points. I liked the idea generally speaking. I thought the characters were marvelous drawn up. The costume, set design was fantastic. I thought Jude Law gave a great performance. And Plummer did a good job as "The Doctor".

But Heath Ledger's performance was not so great. The character of Anton was irritating and his eventually fate so clichéd.

Some people will say this movie is very clever or try and gild it with existentialism or some other mumbo jumbo clap trap philosophy.

I'm going to call it for what it is - "The Emperor has no clothes." Now that's a laugh.

Imagine a bizarre world where the school's top students sing and dance for their favorite teacher in their underwear and allow themselves to get molested by him on a regular basis. That's History Boys in a nutshell.

I am still stunned at how so many IMDb reviewers regard this sort of behavior as normal and seem to believe that it was also a part of English school life. Now, which school was that? Penisular Glamor? Buttwarts High?

First off - this is not a criticism of homosexuality - this reviewer is horrified by the glorification of the abuse of the high student/teacher relationship as portrayed in this film. Its like propaganda of pedophilia.

If this film was about an elderly male teacher rubbing the genitals of his protesting but yet compliant young female students the whole media establishment would express outrage and crucify the entire cast - even the best boy ; although perhaps the media elite might find it acceptable if it was directed by Roman Polanski.

This film was touted as another Dead Poet's Society, a story about working/middle class boys making good.

What utter rubbish. Its not.

Its a film whose main aim is to glorify a fat old teacher who enjoys regularly molesting his students who worship him. The same students also randomly break out into a Vaudeville song and dance routine and quote poetic passages from Auden and apparently enjoy prancing around in their underwear in front of the same teacher. Wow, what kind of pervert dreamed up this fantasy?

Predictably, the new history teacher is also of a similar sexual orientation. And the only teacher who finds the fat teacher's behavior objectionable is portrayed as a vile creep who is instantly vilified when he touches a female staff member.

The climax of the movie is when one of the students offers the new teacher a sexual service and when he hesitates - the boy criticizes the man for his timidity. Carpe Dickus! This is nothing other than a pedophile's fantasy - to have high school boys offer blow jobs to reluctant teachers.

Wow! What kind of sick old pervert dreamed this sick fantasy up?

I've read this sort of story before - but it involved female porn actresses and a male star. They didn't win any awards but it was certainly a lot more honest than this piece of pedophilia propaganda.

What I found really shocking was the advertising and reviews for this film which were just as disingenuous as the blurb of this film. Few mentioned the homosexual pedophile aspect of this film.

This is like advertising Jurassic Park as a pleasant family adventure in a nature reserve and totally ignore the man eating dinosaurs or reviewing the Jaws as a fishing trip involving three happy men in a boat with no mention of the man eating shark.

That History Boys received so much acclaim and awards from prestigious groups seems a sad indictment on the film industry: virtually no reviewer dares to reveal the honest truth about this film - that its a pedophiles fantasy. I wonder why?

If the story had been about a fat teacher who was feeling up his female students' genitalia, the outrage from the movie industry and other lobby groups would have destroyed the film, film's directors, actors, producers and even the best boy. But instead - because its written by Bennett rather curiously, the reviewers and movie industry praise it sky high and call the student molesting teacher "a flawed hero". What utter hypocrisy.

As for the History teaching aspect - a perverse twist has been added. The new teacher advices his pupils to say positive things about two of the most evil men in history, Hitler and Stalin, to get admission to a prestigious British university. Those two were directly responsible for the deaths, rapes, tortures, and enslavement of uncountable number of men, women and children.

Just great, perversity in logic too.

Bennett and the whole cast of the show, including its producers and actors ought to read out the names and details of all the people Hitler and Stalin killed, and for good measure Mao, Castro, and Pol Pot too.

If I could give this film a -1000 I would.

In summary, History Boys is a film which glorifies the sexual abuse of high school students. Its a male pedophiles' fantasy.

It also demonstrates the utter hypocrisy and perversity in the media industry who choose to downplay this central theme of the film. Their sense of moral judgment is so far off its not even on the same planet, possibly on Uranus.

The Battle of Midway was a crucial battle of WW2. However, this movie does it injustice.

I personally thought that the producers of this film were lazy. They crammed in any old stock footage from WW2 - including film from Battle of Britain - Now there's nothing wrong with using stock footage but when its used incorrectly, ie. when a US plane is attacked - they incorrectly show footage showing a Japanese plane crashing.

In fact, virtually all their entire combat footage is stuff taken from other War movies or common stock footage.

Example they borrow heavily from the movie, Tora Tora Tora. So you have scenes of airplanes fighting in Pearl harbor (for goodness sake you can see the ships are in harbor!!!) substituting for Midway Battle scenes fought in the open seas. Some people will say - yeah, so what big deal.

But hey, what if you went to see ... say, the latest action "blockbuster" movie and found that they had recycled footage from a dozen of other films for ALL their action sequences - what would you call that??? Ridiculous.

Its cheap, its lazy, its a quick way to make a quick buck. If this was for a TV show, I'd understand. But this is for the big screen and for an important battle in the Pacific war!

Sarcastic mode on: Hey, but its a feel good sort of movie ain't it? The good guys win - the bad guys lose. That's the most important thing for most cinema goers. They should have ended with Heston kissing a nurse for good measure in the end scene. Then jumping on a Mitchell bomber flying off the deck of the Hornet, turning into a B-17 to fight off a swarm of enemy fighter planes and Tie-fighters, before transforming into a B-29 and dropping the A bomb on Hiroshima, "Take that you b@stards!!!" Sarcastic mode off.

It looks like the producers of this film blew their entire budget on hiring a few major actors and cutting the best bits from previous movies. Porn films do that and make mega profits too. But I don't call them great films.

I watched this movie in 2004 expecting it to be another Royal Tenenbaums type of film - which I enjoyed, very much. I was disappointed. It seemed a bit too contrived. I put it on the shelf- or should I say my sister borrowed it for 5 years, had a baby, and afterwards I took it back. The DVD I mean, not the baby.

I had gone scuba diving since 2007 - and had been watching hours of scuba diving, undersea films and documentaries - like Diving with the Great White Shark.

Then I rewatched this The Life Aquatic again - and I found understood its genius for the first time. And I also appreciated its dead pan humor even more so.

Its also a very philosophical film like the other Wes Anderson's films - its a film about heroes getting old and frail, its about children finding that their parents can be very human and flawed and accepting that.

For those who hated the film. Its OK. Never mind. Go scuba diving. Then go watch all those shark, nat geo, discovery, documentaries - the ones where the camera focuses on the shark hunters in pensive moods or striding purposefully onto the board, or finding things in the water FOR THE FIRST TIME (with the camera men already on location filming the jokers).

Then watch this. You'll get it.

But having said that - this film could have done with some editing. There were several unnecessary bits that could have been removed to improve the pacing of the film such as:

1. The scene where Ned is on the telephone to his airline boss telling them that he's going on a voyage with Steve and won't be coming back soon and that someone else is covering for him. Did we really have to hear all that? Couldn't we have overheard it in an overlapping background?

2. The little boy Verner. He's cute but he couldn't act.

3. Swamp leeches. WTF?

Lol. This film is so bad - its funny.

Tedious. Predictable. Bad writing. Clichéd crap.

The sharks form swarms to attack humans like piranhas. The funny thing is that no one seems to notice the people getting killed. No MIA reports. No washed up body parts.

When they finally realize the sharks have gone insane. No one bothers to get the police or coast guard to warn the beachcombers.

Just watch this on fast forward. Watch the funny parts. Watch this esp. if you are going for your Open Water Padi dive - its hilarious. In the Gallow humor way.