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| Ultraviolet |
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| Official Review Thread - Post yours here |
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| POSTED Friday , March 03, 2006 03:51:41 PM |
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OK folks. I took the plunge, and paid matinee price to see this movie. I am trying not to give anything away, because there are so few real surprises, you'll want to save them up.
I am not a fan of this kind of video-game film making, so if you like that kind of movie, this is not a knock against you.
I'll start with the film's two positives:
Action
There's plenty of it, and of course the way all the sequences end are very predictable. Still Milla has never looked so good in these kinda ridiculous scenarios. (Why does she keep walking into the same kind of trap?) It's violent, but not uber-gory.
The camera work is average for these kinds of things, and it got a bit dizzying for me, and became very very repetitive. But, if you like video games, you'll like this.
3 stars for action. It stayed in motion.
Milla
She gets to wear tight outfits (and less... wahoo!) So, if you're into chicks with guns in tight outfits, you won't mind this. (She looks way better than her contemporaries Kate Beckinsale and Charlize Theron IMHO)
Four stars for Milla' "Look" (but see acting)
Now, the rest...
Story:
A complete retread of most of the vampire/scifi/oppressive government themes, and not even well done. (At least V for Vendetta will have a real story under it, unlike this film)
There's no reason to root for anybody here, and I felt very 'outside' the action. I was always conscious I was in a movie theater watching a movie. It's not Uwe Bolle bad, but it's pretty dismal. There's also a lot of leaps of logic, weird Star Trekkian language, etc. Weapons of all kinds, etc.
(but you won't care about that considering your eyeballs are coonstantly forced to ogle Milla's body onscreen.)
zero stars on story
Acting:
Awful. Of course, the script is bad, too. Milla tries, but can't win in this category. The villains are so laugable, I kept looking around for the MST3K robots. (A few audience members did sotto voce imitations of them while I was there)
1 star on acting
Effects:
CGI is sub-par. Nobody is trying to make this seamless. The cycle sequences, and some CGI-Milla are very cheaply done.
After a while I just tuned out the dizzying antics, and tried to concentrate on the story, to no avail.
2 stars on effects
Summary:
I enjoyed some sequences, although my basis of enjoyment of a film is on characters and story, not action.
The title sequences are pretty cool, sort of like Sin City-esque. But that's where the similarity ends.
Oh, I lost count on the bodies, sorry.
So, I give it 1 star out of 5 overall. Go see it at matinee price if you love these things, or rent it if you don't.
Cheers,
Rostron
"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us." |
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| REPLIED Friday , March 03, 2006 04:08:49 PM |
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| REPLIED Friday , March 03, 2006 05:43:48 PM |
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| REPLIED Friday , March 03, 2006 09:53:30 PM |
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I have to disagree. I'm the five percent everyone thinks is brainless and tactless because of the action.
I admit, I walked into this movie with a fanboyism that not anyone would be able to reach besides the adoring fans of Milla and this genre in and of itself. The reason I came in to the film with this type of attitude was because I was a bit dissapointed with everything I had seen so far. And I was expecting it to be very bad. However, that shouldn't suggest a bias throughout the film.
What I found this film to be, was nothing short of an experiment it seemed. To see how far a low budget CGI, action film could go. But that was only part of the charm, for every bit of the movie save for a few exceptions, the director, the actors, the crew, and the proucers, seemed to want very badly to please an audience who would appreciate the film, and I think it succeeded with a few people.
The beggining was horrendous, a complete and utter failure to allure the audience with any type of telling of its film at all. The acting was far below subpar, even for experienced Milla Jovovich. Daxus is nothing but an utterly unamusing *****, who couldn't act his way through a porn film. (Daxus is the villain). However, as soon as the story stopped trying to be compelling but shallow at the same time by being as short as it could be, it started to get to the point and win me over.
Milla Jovoviche's character, Violet, risks her life for a charming little weapon made by the humans that may help her "hemophage" race (vampire's without all the crappy effects essentially). When she finds out it is a young boy who may hold the cure to her disease, she opposes her employer who desires to kill it, mistaking it for something that it isn't. We later go through the movie and the brilliant action to find that she's protecting for one reason: he may have the cure to her illness, and then two: She used to have a child before becoming diseased and she lost it...her maternal person comes out during this time. Her acting throughout the film is average, but in some parts, she's just simply amazing, and looks as if she's curving some talent in this film. Her regret and her despair are shown especially, but her, "I'm going to kill everyone" throughtout the entire film, starting off from bad, to awesome to shifty, is in part what ruins her ability.
The cgi is horrendous in parts. The motorcycle scene could have been so much better given more care...and possibly more money. The ending scene when there are explosions, the smoke is so fake it's maddening. And throughout, the CGI just really doesn't impress anyone, instead, hurting the movie a lot more than it helped.
The action is the seller. That's what Wimmer and his stunt director, and choreographer do the best. There are many scenes where she fights a repetitive battle because you always expect her to win. However, each fight scene has it's own little signature that makes it beautiful. Starting from hand to hand, glass smashing, to a cinematic event never done, to "Gun Kata" a new form of martial arts made by Wimmer himself, a bitch slap that sets it apart from other action movies (A literal bitch slap), and a sword fight with two swords on fire with a killer ending. My favorite however, the cinematic event never done before, which is where we are introduced to her ability to dodge bullets splendidly and gracefully, never has anyone killed so many people using not any weapon at all. I loved the action from top to bottom.
The story is another thing. There are plot holes everywhere, to the overall story, to little things like, "Where the hell did they come from!?" Also, we never are told how Violet became so good. They just really try to hold over the story on you, make it simple with enough questions to keep the movie from being completely unneccessary.
I loved almost everything about the film, it even makes you laugh in unexpected places. The lighting is tremendously beautiful. Especially in the home styled scenes where Milla has her hair down and she's in deep thought, fireworks blasting up, able to be observed from her friends camper in which she stays about twice or three times. Milla's acting is like I said, remarkable at points, but she's still shot in the foot by a script that really is quite bad.
Overall, it's not a perfect movie, but it's got charm in what it is trying to give. |
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| REPLIED Friday , March 03, 2006 10:19:08 PM |
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| REPLIED Saturday, March 04, 2006 10:02:32 AM |
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| REPLIED Saturday, March 04, 2006 10:27:00 PM |
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| REPLIED Sunday , March 05, 2006 03:50:06 PM |
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I'll just agree on most of what Rostron said.
The action was cool, The plot lost me, Milla was way sexy (Good Lord that one scene! ), the story lost me, kind of repetative with getting caught then kicking everyones ass, the dialogue was...not good.
I enjoyed it, but it was quite cheesy at times.
What's up with her kicking everyones butt and never (maybe once) getting hit herself!?? I like to see the hero get beat up a bit then comes back swinging, but going up against an army an dnot getting touched once??? That's why I liek the Rocky movies, he gets beatup but comes back to win.
It's gonna be a close race between this and Dave Chappelles movie, people were going to one or the other when I went to the theater.
True-X: The Brave One!
X-men Bounty Hunter
That Studly X-Stud 
Housemate @ forum 26
The Mansion, CD.coms first "Real World type fanfic thread, located in Forum26
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| REPLIED Sunday , March 05, 2006 06:55:32 PM |
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I got the story with a one time view, but has anyone noticed just how much story was missing. (I still had to put the story together in my head, sans the plotholes, but it's pretty simple once you think about it).
I mean, seriously, there is a, "Young Violet" credited in the movie's sites and a lot of other character's that were left out. Let's not forget out the other 30-45 minutes of footage edited out. I can't believe how much they cut from this movie.
Now, True-X, I have to disagree. It's as if it would be unmentionably broken in our universe to have her get beat up. It was what added to the...well, realism to it all. I believed that she was unstoppable, unbeatable, untouchable, you know almost any other immortal words you can think of.
I still love the fact that she didn't need a weapon to kill everyone in the fight against the asian men on the rooftop. I want to see this movie again. I do, and I can't wait for the DVD release.
And it looks like it beat out Block Party by about two million. I was hoping for something more...but oh well. I still love it. It has more weeks at the box office to find an audience. If people would just look deeper, I think they'd find this movie to have a lot more soul than presumed. |
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| REPLIED Sunday , March 05, 2006 08:38:10 PM |
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| REPLIED Monday , March 27, 2006 08:13:23 PM |
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| Wow, you guys are generous! I finally saw it a couple days ago, and it is easily one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I liked the fight scenes, and the art direction is pretty cool, but omg, that's it. They shouldn't have tried to make any plot. If it was just 100 minutes of fight scene after fight scene it would have been much better. I lost count of plot holes and completely unexplained jumps in time and space (merry-go-round WTF???) I'm seriously wondering if the print at my theater was missing 30 minutes of randomly absent footage. I couldn't stop laughing everytime that kid asked Violet what they were doing or what was going on, because I couldn't put it better myself. More like she was born into a movie we may not understand. But, I did enjoy watching it. I went to see it for the fight scenes, and those looked cool, I just didn't like putting up with the crap inbetween. Oh, and what was with all that soft focus/diffusion filter wackiness???
The Nutty X-Chick
 I like this guy!
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| REPLIED Saturday, February 14, 2009 11:49:34 PM |
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