puzzow

The original "Alien" and it's sequel are two of the finest action/sci-fi/thrillers ever made. The original "Predator" is, to a lesser extent, a well-made 80's era action/thriller. The current round of Alien vs. Predator films are nothing but concept- a product derived from video games and comic books churned out to attract a young, male demographic. It is shame that they've bastardized two great film franchises to do it- you can't help but draw comparisons and, in doing so, yearn for the original movies, which were genuine films and not slickly packaged marketing material. On an even sadder note, this sequel suffers in comparison to the first Alien versus Predator, which itself was far from a magnum opus. The current movie takes the most generic "creatures attacking a small town" plot line, touches upon every horror cliché in the book and has absolutely nothing new to offer in the process. The only thing that differentiates it from a Saturday afternoon Sci-Fi channel "creature-feature" are the very expensive-looking special effects. In fact, this movie seems to mainly exist for its special effects. If you check the credits, you will see that two directors of this film primarily have special effects work to their name- which they probably stick to doing because, as this film demonstrates, special effects do not a movie make.

This a delightful film full of humanistic touches-- from young Prince Karl's playful relationship with his good-natured mentor, Dr. Juttner, his carousing and drinking with the students in Old Heidelberg, to his paddling upon lakes and taking mad carriage rides with the beautiful barmaid, Kathy-- it's all at once side-stitchingly funny, bittersweet, romantic and a nostalgic tribute to youth and young love. The film is made with such a deft touch that, to the end where Prince Karl returns to visit Heidelberg, it never becomes schmaltzy. It is consistently charming and ends on a pitch perfect note. A real crowd pleaser. Highly recommended.

Do not be fooled by the fancy looking trailers like I was. This is a B-grade scary movie masquerading as a better movie, due to pretty-looking photography. B grade movie qualities: actors= unknown except for Anna Paquin. Character development= virtually non-existent. You have the little boy in the role of the prototypical clairvoyant child. You have the father who is characterized by weird mood swings and random acts-- like, hanging a photograph of 3 ghoulish looking women on the wall, with no buildup suggesting some odd fixation upon the photo and no characters in the movie confronting him and saying- "Why do you want that freaky looking photo on our wall? Are you crazy?" as if it were a totally natural thing to want to display photographs of ghouls. The mother-- hm? Was there another character in this movie? The plot is essentially scary moments edited together awkwardly. The scary moments aren't that scary and are derived from a thousand other horror movies- toys moving round by themselves, things crawling around on the ceiling (because things crawling around on the ceiling are really freaky), groups of ghostly children appearing and disappearing between flashes of light (because ghostly children are extremely freaky). The editing is really the main culprit. Maybe this would have been a good movie if someone had edited it to make sense. As is, the story meanders, fails to build tension where it should (at one point, a scene flashes by with something crawling around on the ceiling with no buildup, and then moves on as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened. It's really odd), fails to maintain lucidity from scene to scene. Some people think the ending is difficult to understand because it's ambiguous. But- no- the problem is that it's muddled because it's badly edited. What just happened? How'd they get out of the house? The 'dark' 'got' them? Huh???? Some make comparisons to 'The Others.' Personally, this reminded me more of "Poltergeist II." or maybe "Poltergeist III."