Yiannos
Cinema Addict - 2003 Film Ratings
Member Since: Jul 7, 2014
Bio: I love film and rate according to genre and/or a director's body of work.
Recent Ratings
Check out Yiannos's...
| 43 10% | Lurking Fear (1994) - Aug 19, 2019 |
| 50 25% | The Hot Spot (1990) - Aug 18, 2019
"Noir throwbacks were pretty popular after Body Heat, and this isn't one of the better examples from the period, despite the solid cast and appropriately sleepy town setting, which Hopper never takes full advantage of. The visual style helps convey the feeling of heat, but the film doesn't generate much tension, and while the female leads are sexy, the scenes of nudity and sex aren't particularly steamy. Hopper's problems with pacing are also especially noticeable in this languid context."
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| 53 30% | King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen (2017) - Aug 15, 2019
"A generous rating, but Cohen really does come across as likeable, and his passion for his craft is obvious, regardless of the fact that his output was terribly uneven. He was one of the last of the old renegade American directors who didn't really fit anywhere, and it's unfortunate that gonzo auteurs like him are becoming increasingly scarce in today's homogeneous market. Mitchell's conventional treatment hardly does the man justice though with its lockstep chronology and lack of analysis."
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| 73 73% | Night on Earth (1991) - Aug 11, 2019 |
| 58 38% | Waterworld (1995) - Aug 11, 2019
"Promising idea that regrettably settles for stupidity, Waterworld is nowhere near as bad as its detractors claim, but considering the money and talent involved, it's still a letdown, even 24 years later. It's often referred to as Mad Max on water, but it feels more deliberately old fashioned in its sensibility. The end result is an odd mix of gritty yet glossy action and 80's style heroics, and while many of the action scenes are good, the script is poor and plays like a spec job."
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| 38 4% | Salt and Fire (2016) - Aug 10, 2019
"Herzog continues his narrative losing streak with this silly environmentally themed bore. The expository dialogue reeks of stale cheese, and it's delivered in a wooden manner by the cast, especially by Ferris who is really bad in the lead role. The tone is wobbly, and even Shannon turns in a crap performance. The footage of the Bolivian salt flats is, at times, visually interesting, but it's in service of an unengaging, poorly written story filmed liked a collection of first takes."
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| 70 66% | Into the Inferno (2016) - Aug 09, 2019
"Familiar Herzog territory, focusing on people with dangerous jobs/interests and tribes/communities who are impacted by natural phenomena. The volcano footage is spectacular, and Herzog touches upon the numerous symbolic meanings of volcanoes from multiple perspectives and some of the tangents are interesting, especially the segment in North Korea. Like most recent Herzog documentaries, the narration is a bit too self consciously 'Herzogian', but we shouldn't take his singularity for granted."
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| 58 38% | Life Itself (2014) - Aug 08, 2019
"Regardless of what you think of Ebert, James does a decent job of portraying him in a positive and sympathetic light without shying away from his obvious personality flaws. It's hard not to admire his zest for life despite being grossly disfigured and cancer ridden in his later years. His prickly relationship with Siskel, the superior critic, is the most interesting part of this documentary and probably should have been the focus, but it gives you a sense of the man, for better or worse."
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| 65 55% | Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (2016) - Aug 06, 2019
"Towards the end, one speaker claims that the internet is destroying critical thinking, especially in young people. This is an idea worthy of a series of documentaries and hints at the problem with Lo and Behold: Herzog simply covers too much ground in such a brief running time that the end result resembles a shaggy intellectual scrapbook. But this is often his M.O, and Herzog asks a few interesting questions regarding the internet's capacity to dream and the future of human companionship. "
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| 75 81% | Red River (1948) - Aug 04, 2019
"Old school craftsmanship. Somewhat overrated, but Hawks tells a simple story fluidly that allows for real smoothness to be achieved in narrative terms. Wayne gives an arguably career best performance as a hard nosed cattle driver, and Cliff is better than usual as his young 'rival'. The romance is clunky, and the Hawksian women mostly grate, but the film strikes a satisfying balance between big and small moments, and the cattle stampede is thrillingly captured."
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