My Fandango

Sasha Baron Cohen returns to the purely scripted format of his Ali G movie (which went straight to video in the USA) with this silly hit or miss comedy about a dictator adrift in New York after a scheming aid betrays him and his trademark beard is cut off, making him unrecognizable. There are a handful of gags that are but-gusting, tears in your eyes funny, but unfortunately most of the movie is more silly than amusing. This is probably worth sitting through once (if you pay a matinee price) for the handful of inspired moments. Honestly the only people in the theater who seemed to really be enjoying the movie were some 14 year old boys who were laughing themselves silly--they are the perfect audience fir this crude, dumb movie in spite of it's R rating. If I were a 14 year old boy I probably would have found a lot more of this amusing as well. ...(read more)

• 7 out of 11 found this review helpful
  

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Maybe they should get Joss Whedon to do all the Marvel movies--the first Iron Man and Captain America were fun but the rest were varying degrees of not very good. The Avengers actually lives up to the hype--how often does that happen with Hollywood films? ...(read more)

• 7 out of 9 found this review helpful
  

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The Raven is attractively filmed, has good acting and a clever premise--unfortunately it never generates much suspense or tension. There is also at least one giant hole in the plot that is never addressed--the engagement between Poe and his rich girlfriend is so secret nobody including her father knows about it, yet the killer kidnaps her because he knows about their relationship. That would suggest that the killer is someone who knows one of them pretty well, but that never occurs to anybody in the movie for some reason. This starts off very promisingly but loses steam quickly once you find out what the killer wants because it simply isn't exciting to watch someone writing. This could have been a lot better. It may be worth watching once if you only pay a matinee price. Otherwise wait for Redbox. ...(read more)

• 7 out of 10 found this review helpful
  

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As far as Jason Statham movies go I would say Safe was better than The Mechanic or War but not as good as the Transporter films or the Crank flicks. It has a pretty clever set-up and lots of action. Definitely worth seeing if you like this type of film. ...(read more)

• 9 out of 14 found this review helpful
  

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This is an amusing time waster from the writer/producer of Taken and the Transporter series, as well as the pretty terrible From Paris With Love.. The story rips off both Escape From New York and Die Hard in generally entertaining ways. I was hoping this would be better but it's a fun way to waste 90 minutes, if little more. ...(read more)

• 23 out of 41 found this review helpful
  

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Gone is an entertaining if not altogether believable thriller that moves quickly enough for you to ignore the occasional plot holes. Amanda Seyfried is fun to watch as she tries to figure out where a killer that nobody believe exists but her has taken her sister while dodging police who are only interested in finding her since they think she's crazy and dangerous. The movie that this reminded me of most was probably 88 Minutes, which similarly had it's star running around through the course of the entire movie trying to solve a crime within a time deadline. Both movies could have used a better script. In addition to the occasional plot hole Gone also suffers from its need to deliver a PG-13 movie, so everything feels a little tame and sanitized for a movie involving a rapist serial killer. But on the whole I found Gone enjoyable enough. It's not a classic but it's a pretty good time waster. ...(read more)

• 20 out of 37 found this review helpful
  

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