Archive for Release Year: 2002

31 posts from 27 May 2017 to 17 January 2026.

  • Hollywood Ending

    Woody Allen is not perfect, and this is an example of it. Just like Scoop, this still has chucklegoofs, but the drudge you need to wade through before getting to the good jokes is too much.

  • Minority Report

    It seems ironic that Spielberg adapts sci-fi stories, when he flatly doesn’t care about the story. Feels like a bet he won, making a blockbuster about something he couldn’t give a shit about.

  • Abandon

    The Rules of Attraction as a reluctant thriller.

  • Pinocchio

    That’s Pinocchio, all right.

  • Die Another Day

    The one with Halle Berry, Rosamund Pike and Maddona.

  • Analyse That

    Undoing the character development in the last film for fun and profit.

  • The Transporter

    A very good action film with really inventive fight scenes. Has more in common with the old Jackie Chan films than the usual fight-scene driven drivel, but with a better script.

  • Rollerball

    The 2002 remake (original is here). Po-faced ultra-violent silliness. It’s not even a metaphor for NFL, however thinly veiled. The audience uses vuvuzelas, GTFO.

  • Ripley's Game

    Half of Dangerous Liaisons, with a not so tragic ending. Not that it ends happily…

  • The Sum of All Fears

    One of Clancy’s roman à clef.

  • Murder by Numbers

    Wow, Michael Pitt is a psycho killer? Who would have thought? Funny how he plays Games with everyone…

  • The Bourne Identity

    I had never seen the extended cut. They cut so much Wombosi stuff out, and there was apparently plenty of cuts and reshoots too. Still manages to blow most thrillers out of the water.

  • Deathwatch

    Kinda redundant, an horror film set in The Great War’s trenches. Even if it’s a big purgatory metaphor, and the entity testing the souls is a German POW.

  • Men in Black II

    A letdown compared to the first one. Box-ticking exercise, everybody is just going through the motions.

  • Teknolust

    What the, what? Virgin scientist cyborg-clones herself thrice, in the Three Faces of Eve personas, but eventually finds true love herself, amidst a potential pandemic of barcode rashes and male impotence.

  • Blade II

    A higher budget cannot hide the outdated CGI, but is great despite that. The characters are just awesome!

  • Resident Evil

    It’s no Event Horizon, but it’s a competent mainstream horror film. Derivative, but a good effort.

  • Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

    I thought I detected the Soderbergh touch, not only on the very extensive cast, most the cut away gags, the stylish editing-based jokes. The underlying seediness, the depression, the mental instability, that’s something else, something Being John Malkovich-shaped.

  • Star Wars: Attack of the Clones

    It that Rose Byrne? It’s like Harry Potter over here, a massive amount of English people!

  • Panic Room

    A great thriller with so much class subtext, where the focus is all on the technical trickery and old-school CGI. Working Class people are fucked over badly, while aristos can withstand ugly home invasions and come out of it relaxed and looking for more places to gentrify.

  • Ararat

    Why does this have to be so complicated and convoluted? There’s at least three interlocking stories here, stories withing stories.

  • Ali G Indahouse

    As if Seth Rogen, Airplane! and Mr. Bean had a filthy baby. How the fuck did they get Working Title to go for this, is it another Bad Santa? Poor Charles Dance, I guess he had a contract to fulfil.

  • The Scorpion King

    A Rock vehicle, a Conan-lite where he saves the girl and goes from assassin to the King. Not worthy of The Mummy connection.

  • American Psycho II: All American Girl

    What the fuck is this, with Mila Kunis as a baby, and Shatner as a professor fucking a student? But PG-13, and comedy music all over (or nu-metal, equally inappropriate).

  • Bad Company

    This almost works, but Chris Rock doesn’t have enough range to code switch properly. His CIA guy is not different enough to make this truly believable, it’s too movie-like. A good Joel Schumacher idea, but it needed someone else as a lead.

  • Austin Powers in Goldmember

    Starts great, with an action intro that is actually a fake trailer for Austinpussy: Tom Cruise as Austin, Gwyneth Paltrow as Dixie Normous, and Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito as Dr Evil and Mini Me. Directed by Spielberg. John Travolta as the ultimate bad guy in the end. Not Octopussy.

  • Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever

    This Canadian The Matrix ripoff had a good sense of hiring Don Davis for the music, to cover for the most generic plot possible. The leads have about 100 lines between both of them, but Lucy Liu barely speaks. Antonio Banderas just looks like a sexy John Wick for the whole time.

  • Liberty Standing Still

    Phone Booth but political. Yup, Liberty does stand still for almost the whole film.

  • Secretary

    Fifty Shades of Grey, if Anastasia was mentally ill, and there was another inept suitor. The lawyer is called Gray! Absolute insanity, this was allegedly based on a book, must be absolute smut.

  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

    The one with the big snake, big spider, and small pixies. The Lockhart teacher is incredible, once again Dumbledore fumbles the rotating position.

  • The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

    The big one, with the return of the wizard, wargs, a princess flirting with Aragorn while he dismisses her, Wormtongue whispering foul words to the king, and the trees flooding Isengard.