House Of The Dead (2004)

This movie must be classed as one of the worst movies ever. What is it that has attracted overwhelmingly scathing reception? Well, it is a B-movie: there are so many unknown "actors", several clips from the video game series, and revolving camera shots of varying speeds. With unknown actors, there is incoherent or inane dialogue, poor excuse for acting, unintentional humor, and a case of shoddy delivery. That is the characteristic of an Uwe Boll movie.

So because of these abundant flaws, there is no point of explaining the plot. With a small budget comes a pathetic script and lazy writing. The only consolation is abundant shots of topless females, which I think was intended to distract the (male) viewers.

Speaking of distractions, when several shots from the video game flash midway in this movie, it is a slap in the face because you are showing that you have butchered a popular source material with your movie, and got away with it. Imagine if Street Fighter (1994) had adopted this foolish approach. The reception would have been much worse than it was because you are just boasting how you the director have deviated from the source and still claim to have been faithful to the source. This is a fatal course of action that has attracted retribution.

There are plentiful shots where somebody feels as though they are on a carousel. I mean it is dizzy enough looking from the seat, but it must have been dangerous for the one harnessing the camera. They make the characters look like an exhibition in a museum.

This piece of excrement is something to uphold as Uwe Boll's crime against the video game industry. There is so much this movie has to offer to critics that just want to thrash this train wreck. If you love to thrash him, watch this crud!

Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance (2011)

 

Well, it is just one of those days where a sequel to a bad movie comes next. However, watching this movie I can understand that a smaller budget was used.

 

Nicolas Cage is the only actor to reprise his role. He has traveled non-stop and resides in Eastern Europe. He seems to show no reason to be a part of the story, but is heckled into it anyway. So his latest mission is to retrieve a young boy, who has been chosen as a reincarnation of a devil named Rourke. He sees that wherever he goes he is not safe because evil must arise from him.

It is not as though I should care about the devil but compared to him in the last movie, he is a downgrade. I was not even aware if Rourke was the devil because he was just more of a mere man. In the first movie he was called Mephistopheles; the name itself so demonic that no man on earth would undermine it as human. In this movie he answers a human name, he resorts to worldly transportation and harnesses a human body. Mephistopheles could appear anywhere in the world with ease but Rourke must resort to cellphone communication and land transport, which are slower. This is what convinced me that Rourke was just a mere mortal instead of a devil.



The first movie demonstrated smooth computer technology, especially with the flames. But this movie was unwatchable because of the unevenly rendered CGI. I have to be frank, the whole computer work looked as though collage paper was attached to the vehicles, or if the flames were cut and pasted on top of the footage. This cheap computer work resembles comic book sketches overlapping the live work. Closely observing every shot I can see some well rendered CGI on one side, and poorly rendered CGI on the other.

 

The story in the first film is memorable; in this movie it is not. I cannot even follow it adequately unless I watch it and retell it to pinpoint its faults. Nothing interesting ever happens, and I as a viewer would lose focus in the sequence of events.

Taking notes of the opening and closing credits of each film, you will notice that the first was picturesque while the second was just bland. In this movie, you will then have to hear Johnny Cage's bland and dull monologue when he explains events that took place in the last movie. These producers were so cheap that instead of reusing footage from the last movie, they make lousy picture work of such events (including one which nobody would want to recall). This is not helped when more monologues come up and inane slide shows are played along the way explaining the deal or something else irrelevant.

 

There is something else that I find so bothersome: there is this guy Carrigan--a Deacon Frost knock-off--with the power of decay, and when he touches his victims the very shot plunges into pitch black for no apparent reason. I guess that means his victims see darkness as they decay and die. But there are other visual distortions in the form of a layer of film as though the images were exposed to the elements after production.
Speaking of decay, Carrigan touches everything but not every material decays.

 

If I opined that Cage's acting was dull last time, then I would have been impulsive because in this movie his acting is hammed up. I was aghast at how money was wasted on giving Cage so many facial distortions on camera rather than the full transformation into the hellspawn as was presented in the last movie. Many critics remarked this as a ploy to convert Cage into a cartoon character.

 

And let me talk more about the Ghost Rider: I do not like his image one bit. He looks burnt up like a charred match head; his jacket is burned out; he bellows too much smoke, and his speech is just a whisper made so incoherent; and his chain is charred. Thanks to a lower budget, we do not see him use his all-powerful pennant stare. Perhaps this is why we see more of Johnny Blaze for the rest of the film and less of the Rider himself.

 

 
This movie suffers from a budget too insufficient to live up to the expectations of its predecessor. It is one of those cases of 'one sequel too many.' If there is a reason to lessen the budget, then it is better to abandon plans for a sequel rather than press ahead with it.

 

The Matrix: Reloaded (2003)

So where are we now? Neo is Superman in the Matrix. He can see the Matrix as a cluster of codes rather than as the reality to an enslaved human. He is above the laws of a computer program and is above any agent in the system.

The Wachowski brothers continue the story of the fight for the human race against a horde of machines. This time instead of a few sentinels, we see a warring horde of them as they have progressively tunneled their way to Zion, the last human race to take shelter from these monsters.
In this flick, there are new supporting  characters, a majority of them in the defense council. There is Commander Lock, Captain Niobe and several elders. They are determined to see this through to the end even if their approaches conflict with one another.

 The thing that would normally bore an audience is exposition. There is plenty of that going on in this movie, some being duller and more long-winded than others. In fact, the most tedious expositions come from the Merovingian and the Architect. These two drill the fun out of this movie with their convoluted and verbose dialogue, most of which makes no sense and is superfluous. Even a university professor would ask what the hell they are harping on about.

The plot seems hard to follow: as I have mentioned, the machines are drilling deeper into the earth. The fighting faction have to take them out in the Matrix itself since machines run on programs, but would need to enlist an exiled program called the Key Maker. It is he who gives them instructions that they must follow to succeed, all within a time window. Well, the plot is only hard to follow with sequence of events cutting in and taking time to sum up.

 

So this movie is more expensive than its predecessor, notably for the highway pursuit. This is where scores of vehicles--cars and lorries--are involved in real crashes and collisions of incredible magnitudes. Only one sub-scene remains digitally enhanced: the fight between Morpheus and an agent sent to 'delete' the Key Maker. This entire chapter was made to captivate viewers, accompanied by Trinity's motorcycle maneuvers and real evasions from the ghostly twins and agents alike.

Undoubtedly the most triumphant ending to this chapter is where Neo flies in and rescues Morpheus and the Key Maker in split seconds while two lorries collide and explode in comparably 'slow' motion.

Another scene that contributed to a large budget is the fight between Neo and the Smith clones. Before discussing the fight itself, I will recall that Smith has been reborn as a virus rather than an agent, so that he can copy himself onto other subjects. So this means that he can spread like a wildfire and raise the odds of overwhelming Neo. Now to accomplish this scene must have taken a great deal of computer programming and digital alterations; so much that both Neo and his adversaries all resemble video game avatars. To make this fight more interesting and engaging, a special camera was designed to make this scene look as though it was done with one take. Undoubtedly it was capable of following every motion of Neo fighting, and a clone flying at any angle.

I should remark on the ability of Neo to fly faster than the speed of sound, and drag several objects behind him. It is as if the Wachowski brothers were so much hooked on Superman that they were to demonstrate his ability with advanced computer technology. The ripples created by his supersonic flight were something to gaze at in wonder! There is no better way of demonstrating this than with Neo in black.

The Wachowski brothers widen their story and invite more characters in a fight for survival. Morpheus latches on to a prophecy and wants to see it fulfilled. Some things in this movie would keep you from wallowing in boredom due to exposition. So if you like to watch a movie that delivers solid performance, cutting-edge C.G.I., highway chases and a seductive French woman, come and take a look at this.But do take note of several occurrences that are extremely impossible but unexplained for the audience.