cherub96

This movie is a cautionary tale against taking IMDb scores at face value. At 6.2, I thought this movie couldn't be bad, now could it? Only later did I discover that rating came from 13 votes, which would probably be the actors in the movie, mostly. So what's there to say about the movie? Really bad acting, cheesy movie, crappy camera work, stupid story.... Need I go on? Frankly, this movie does not have any redeeming features. It is something I would expect from a dyslexic with a camcorder.

Bottomline: This movie is really, really bad, and should be avoided at all cost.

After watching the first Anaconda movie - which was horrible in pretty much every way except one - I watched this one with pretty low expectations. The original movie has an abysmal plot full of holes, extremely unrealistic characters, horribly bad acting and not that good special effects. The one redeeming quality were the death scenes. It is really, really cruel and awful to behold when the Anaconda crushes the life out of its victims and you hear their bones break. Curiously, the movie was better in most ways, the plot was more coherent, the characters and their actions more plausible (in the context of a movie of this type), and the acting was way better(which wasn't hard to accomplish). However, the death scenes and the snake attacks lack any creativity and the horror they inspired in the first movie just isn't there. I don't know why this is - maybe they had to cut stuff to get their PG-13? Whatever the reason, it pulls down a horror movie that could have been good to below-average mediocrity. My appeal to filmmakers is to be unapologetic - make a good movie, and if it's a horror movie you probably won't be able to make it at PG-13. Go for R.

I was quite surprised by the quality of this remake. I was especially impressed with the space battles. Though quite a few movies featured battles that were much larger in scope and length, the camera movement, the realistic physical behavior of the fighters, the dark and lumbering presence of the Galactica and the soundtrack gave it a very gritty, very real feeling that I somehow missed in other movies, or, god forbid, Star Trek. The acting for the most part is good enough, sometimes very good, as in the case of Adama, and sometimes not so good, as is the case with Starbuck. Or maybe it's the character that's completely implausible, I am not really sure why I dislike the performance of her so much. I don't know why some movies think they have to absurdly portray military as tolerating insubordination. Punching a senior officer would get you way more than a few days in the brig. It would more likely than not get you demoted, certainly banned from flying forever. Noone could make it as far as Starbuck supposedly has with her apparent behavioral disorder. Nevertheless, the elite maverick with a severe social dysfunction and an inability to follow orders is a staple of Hollywood and usually a symptom of a bad movie and otherwise complete ignorance of the military. However, the rest of the military operations is reasonable, and I am especially gripped by the tense and realistic atmosphere on the bridge and by Adama's demeanor. And so my gripe remains as only one not-so-minor point of critique of what is otherwise a very impressive piece of work.

Considering that this is a TV miniseries and not a movie for the big screen I give it 8/10.