review movies online

DOWNLOAD MOVIE Birthday Girl Just $2.99 for a complete movie! No additional software or browser plug-ins required! You can play them for unlimited number of times whenever you want. Downloaded movies will work perfectly on any PC, DVD player, PDA etc.
DIVX ($2.99)	DVD($4.99)	IPOD ($1.99)
Video Previews (divx):
File Name	Size:	Video preview
Birthday Girl (Video Preview).avi	8.85 MB	DOWNLOAD

Birthday Girl – *** (out of 5)   (2001)

Cast: Nicole Kidman, Ben Chaplin, Vincent Cassel, Mathieu Kassovitz, Kate Lynn Evans

Directed By Jez Butterworth

Whether you like her or not, Nicole Kidman is an actress making some of the more interesting films in the last few years.  Starting with EYES WIDE SHUT in 1999, she has made Oscar-worthy appearances in MOULIN ROUGE! and THE OTHERS, and now she shows us yet another side to her acting ability with BIRTHDAY GIRL, probably a forgettable film when one looks at her career, yet a worthwhile film nonetheless. 

Ben Chaplin stars as John, a lonely bank teller that decides to give in to his frustrations and seek a mail-order-bride from Russia.  The woman of his dreams arrives in the form of Nadia (Kidman), who isn’t speaking English and John wants her to go back to Russia but one thing is stopping him…she is a sex goddess in the sack.  The marriage gets better every day until it’s finally Nadia’s birthday, and she invites some friends from the motherland over.  Needless to say, they outstay their welcome, and the meek John ends up upsetting them to the oint where they decide to make his life a living hell.

BIRTHDAY GIRL is a quirky yet likeable comedy that entertains despite the fact that it is derivative in theme of much better films like SOMETHING WILD or OUT OF SIGHT.   Kidman has very few lines but still impresses since most of her dialogue is in Russian, and whether or not she does a good job, I am not expert enough to discern.  Chaplin turns in a funny and sympathetic portrayal of the down-and-out loser, and in the end we do care about what happens to him enough to make it exciting. 

BIRTHDAY GIRL is recommended for fans of Kidman, lovers of offbeat comedies, and some of the more liberal of the arthouse crowds.  It’s short but sweet, and while not altogether memorable, you will probably be entertained enough while it’s on.

Back to Qwipster’s Movie Reviews            

window.open=NS_ActualOpen;
watch english Birthday Girl movies online
watch Birthday Girl movie
watch divx movies online
watch Birthday Girl movie
full length movie online
full length Birthday Girl films
watch movies online

DOWNLOAD MOVIE Eragon Just $2.99 for a complete movie! No additional software or browser plug-ins required! You can play them for unlimited number of times whenever you want. Downloaded movies will work perfectly on any PC, DVD player, PDA etc.
DIVX ($2.99)	DVD($4.99)	IPOD ($1.99)
Video Previews (divx):
File Name	Size:	Video preview
Eragon (Video Preview).avi	14.81 MB	DOWNLOAD
The most interesting Screenshots for the “Eragon” movie:

Based on the bestselling first novel in the "Inheritance Trilogy" by Christopher Paolini, the film version of Eragon feels like a production trying to emulate two other famous trilogies, Lord of the Rings and the original Star Wars films. Emulating blockbuster productions is a bit of a double-edged sword, as it will attract a sizable audience which likes those kinds of films, but at the same time, they are also so well-known and oft-watched, if you aren’t going to bring anything new to the story, you are likely to be greeted by scorn and derision, even among fantasy fans.  Paolini wrote "Eragon" at the age of fifteen, which might explain some of the knowing homage to the works of others that must have surely formed his ideas on how to tell a story.

In this film, Luke Skywalker Eragon (Speleers) is a young farmboy who lives with his uncle Owen Garrow (Armstrong, Van Helsing) in the land of Alagaesia, which is currently under the cruel rule of Darth Vader King Galbatorix (Malkovich, Art School Confidential), not long after a bloody war which saw the destruction of an elite, magical army of warriors known as the Jedi Dragon Riders.  While hunting, Eragon stumbles across a blue stone that Galbatorix is desperately seeking, which turns out to be a dragon’s egg that hatches shortly after, who dubs herself "Saphira".  The dragon emerges and immediately bonds with Eragon, forming a union that cannot be broken except by death.  With the help of a former Jedi Dragon Rider known as Obi-Wan Brom (Irons, Casanova), as well as captured Princess Leia Arya (Guillory, The Time Machine), Eragon soon learns how to become a true warrior, learning the ways of the ancients, especially in harnessing the Force magic to become the Rebellion’s the Varden’s "only hope" to put an end to the tyranny of the Empire King Galbatorix.

Unlike George Lucas’ Star Wars and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, this cinematic version of Mad Libs does so very little but cram as many plotlines, character archetypes, and borderline-plagiaristic effects and cinematography from the mega-blockbusters that came before.  The thinking here must have been that if they closely adhere to proven formulas, the audience for those films will naturally return.  They figured wrong, as first-time director Fangmeier lacks genuine inspiration, proceeding forward in his story without much in terms of natural exposition, with the exception of a short intro which drops us in the middle of the story (also like Star Wars).  From then on, the film is little more than a chase film, boring us with a Lord of the Rings-type series of near-captures in order to get us to our final destination — oops!  The film is actually a set-up for the remainder of the trilogy, so it has no traditional ending. 

Unlike The Fellowship of the Ring, which is also a film that doesn’t have closure at the end of it, Eragon shows a certain hubris in this regard, as it isn’t an established literary masterwork eagerly anticipated by millions.  At best, it rides on the coattails of other works of fantasy that have enjoyed box office success, trying to sneak in to steal a piece of the pie without invitation, and expects us to have the same love for Eragon as we do for Luke Skywalker, Frodo, or Harry Potter.  The problem is that this project never establishes its own style or unique mythos, feeling every bit the commercial venture trying to piggyback itself on the labor of others in re-establishing Fantasy as the predominant genre of choice for major motion picture releases.

With cookie-cutter characters and a formula story, the only aspect of Eragon that merits some praise is the look of it.  The special effects are quite good, if nothing earth-shattering, and the cinematography, sets, and costume designs are competently handled throughout.  With even a halfway compelling story, this could have actually made some modest returns, enough to have those who have seen it yearning for the second chapter to flesh out many of the scantly-developed plot threads.  Sadly, the only thing most viewers will yearn for is a hasty conclusion, which thankfully comes at under two hours (I suspect, based on how "gutted" the film feels, it was intended to be quite a bit longer).   By "conclusion", I mean that the credits roll, of course.

Eragon might have a big budget for effects, but underneath, it’s strictly amateur hour at the movies.  Even famous actors like Jeremy Irons, Rachel Weisz (who provides the "voice" of Saphira), and a heavily-underutilized John Malkovich can’t bring life to their anemic dialogue and poorly-defined characters.  Outside of the technical aspects, this is a failure on every possible level, and a real yawner when it comes to what should have been a fantasy-war film of epic proportions. 

Epic fantasies need to take us away to another time and place, not withdraw into our own thoughts.  In terms of escapist entertainment, but the only escape I yearned for during Eragon is the alluring sight of the "Exit" sign on either side of the movie theater screen
divx full movie download
full movie downloads
Eragon video downloads
full movies
Eragon full movies online
download Eragon videos
full length Eragon video

DOWNLOAD MOVIE Exorcist: The Beginning Just $2.99 for a complete movie! No additional software or browser plug-ins required! You can play them for unlimited number of times whenever you want. Downloaded movies will work perfectly on any PC, DVD player, PDA etc.
DIVX ($2.99)	DVD($4.99)	IPOD ($1.99)
Video Previews (divx):
File Name	Size:	Video preview
Exorcist: The Beginning (Video Preview).avi	11.88 MB	DOWNLOAD
The most interesting Screenshots for the “Exorcist: The Beginning” movie:

The Movie

Every few years, a movie comes along that is a true phenomenon. These movies permeate not only the filmgoing public, but our entire culture as well. Almost by definition, a phenomenon is something that is unique and cannot be duplicated. But, the powers that be in Hollywood don’t like the word “no” and will try to re-capture lightning in a bottle over and over again. When The Exorcist first hit movie screens in 1973, it became one of these phenomenon films and the legend of the film quickly grew. And even after two financially disappointing sequels, Hollywood is still trying to capitalize on the fame of that influential movie some 30 years later with the release of Exorcist: The Beginning, a film whose behind-the-scenes story is much more interesting than the movie itself.

Exorcist: The Beginning is a prequel to The Exorcist and tells the backstory of Father Merrin, the exorcist from the original film, who was played by Max Von Sydow in the 1973 movie. As Exorcist: The Beginning opens in 1949, where we meet Merrin (here played by Stellan Skarsgard) in Cairo. Merrin had been a priest, but due to some violent experiences in his past, he’s since left the church. Merrin is approached Semelier (Ben Cross), a mysterious man who asks Merrin, who has a background in archeology, to venture to Africa to retrieve an artifact from a dig. Once in Africa, Merrin meets Father Francis (James D’Arcy), a representative from The Vatican, and Sarah (Izabella Scorupco). The archeological team has uncovered an ancient church buried underground which dates back to a time before Christianity reached that part of the world.

As Merrin begins to investigate the area, he learns that the locals are afraid of the dig site, and that there have been some mysterious occurrences in the region around the church. The evidence begins to point towards something supernatural happening around the excavation and Merrin realizes that he must recover his lost faith and prepare to battle the ultimate evil.

While perusing the chat forums on this very website, I often see posters debating about “bad” movies. For me, there are two kinds of “bad” movies. First, there are low-budget movies that never really stand a chance because of bad acting, bad story, bad lighting, etc. Then, there are those big-budget Hollywood films which have the luxury of offering name actors, nice sets, lush cinematographer, but still fail to be entertaining or satisfying. Exorcist: The Beginning falls into this second category, as this movie, with its rumored budget of $50 million is a true stinker.

It’s truly appropriate that a movie concerning the ultimate evil would commit what I consider to be the ultimate cinematic sin; Exorcist: The Beginning is boring. For the bulk of the film, nothing happens, save for Stellan Skarsgard wandering around African sets looking both concerned and confused. The story fro Exorcist: The Beginning was written by popular novelist Caleb Carr and James Cameron collaborator William Wisher, but the final screenplay was penned by Alexi Hawley, who has cobbled together a jumbled series of scenes in which little happens. When something does take place, the audience is typically in the dark as to what it has to do with the overriding story. During the final act, just before all hell breaks loose (literally), the film becomes a sort of whodunit?, as we (the viewers) are supposed to wonder which character is possessed by the evil. To be honest, up until that point, I hadn’t realized that the question was going to come up. One of the oddest things about Exorcist: The Beginning is that it really makes no connection to The Exorcist. If the viewer didn’t realize that Merrin is the character from The Exorcist, and let’s face it, most filmgoers don’t memorize character’s names, then they wouldn’t have a clue as to how this pitiful film relates to the horror classic.

While Exorcist: The Beginning purports to tell the origin of Father Merrin, the origin of the film itself is much more interesting. When the project was first announced, legendary director John Frankenheimer was attached to direct, but stepped down due to health issues. Then, Paul Schrader took the reins and shot the film. However, studio executives reportedly didn’t like his version and fired him, hiring Renny Harlin to re-shoot much of the film. As is his reputation, Harlin gives the movie a nice look and the finale is well-done, but he can’t overcome the ludicrously dull script and gives the movie no sense of suspense at all. Rumors abound on the internet that we will one day see Schrader’s version so what we may compare the two movies. I truly hope that this is the case, as I can’t imagine Schrader’s film being any worse.

Video

Exorcist: The Beginning possesses DVD courtesy of Warner Home Video. The film is coming to DVD in two separate releases, one full-frame and the other widescreen. For the purposes of this review, only the widescreen version was viewed. The film has been letterboxed at 2.35:1 and the transfer is enhanced for 16 x 9 TVs. The image is quite sharp and clear, and looks very good, as there is only a slight amount of grain visible on the picture. The colors are all very natural-looking and the daytime scenes are never overly bright and the nighttime scenes are never too dark. There are some trace haloes around the characters when they move, but they aren’t distracting, and there is no overt artifacting on the image. Overall, a nice video transfer.

Audio

If you think that the movie Exorcist: The Beginning is a let-down, wait until you hear the great audio which accompanies this bad movie. The DVD contains both a Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track and a DTS 5.1 track. Both of these tracks sound great, as they provide clear and audible dialogue with no audible hiss. The movie has a very nice sound design and these tracks make great use of the surround channels and subwoofer. During the few action scenes, the sound surrounds the viewer and does add a little something to the movie. The edge here goes to the DTS track, as it is crisper and provides a deeper bass sound, but both are very good.

Extras

The Exorcist: The Beginning DVD contains only a handful of extras. We start with an audio commentary from director Renny Harlin. This is an odd track, as Harlin is very open about the short amount of time that he had to complete the film (10 months) and points out flaws such as the crappy CGI in the movie. Yet, he never mentions the fact that he was brought in to fix Schrader’s film. I can only assume that he was told not to. Harlin also turns up in “Behind the Scenes”, an 8-minute featurette which contains on-the-set footage and comments from the film’s actors. The extras are rounded out by “Cast & Crew” bios and the “Theatrical Trailer” for Exorcist: The Beginning, which has been letterboxed at 1.85:1.

It could be argued that Exorcist: The Beginning isn’t necessarily a “bad” film, but a disappointing one. But, that would be splitting hairs, as the film is simply boring and not entertaining. Stellan Skarsgard does an admirable job in the film and director Renny Harlin certainly knows where to point the camera, but they can’t save a film which was damned from the beginning.
watch english movies
download new release Exorcist: The Beginning movies
download movies full length
Exorcist: The Beginning legal movie downloads
divx movies
watch Exorcist: The Beginning movies online
watch Exorcist: The Beginning full movies online

DOWNLOAD MOVIE Patriot Games Just $2.99 for a complete movie! No additional software or browser plug-ins required! You can play them for unlimited number of times whenever you want. Downloaded movies will work perfectly on any PC, DVD player, PDA etc.
DIVX ($2.99)	DVD($4.99)	IPOD ($1.99)
Video Previews (divx):
File Name	Size:	Video preview
Patriot Games (Video Preview).avi	15.89 MB	DOWNLOAD
The most interesting Screenshots for the “Patriot Games” movie:

Patriot Games Reviewed By Ryan Arthur Posted 09/03/98 00:05:49

"Inferior to its predacessor." (Pretty Bad)

Harrison Ford in action mode.The good thing about films based on Tom Clancy’s books as that they’re not nearly as dense. Clancy’s novels are 75% technobabble, and the characters take a backseat to the new technology that no reader in their right mind would understand. But in movies, the technology is reduced to being the latest special effect, while the characters move to the forefront.But the plot of Patriot Games fails us. CIA guy Jack Ryan returns, this time played by Harrison Ford rather than Alec Baldwin (I like Baldwin better). He singlehandedly stops an IRA terrorist attack in England and then becomes the target of a splinter group of the IRA. It’s a revenge movie. Ryan spends the rest of the film on the run and in hiding from these terrorists, who eventually make it out to his home for one big showdown.The technology scenes aren’t handled all that well. We see hi-rez cameras showing a raid on a terrorist camp and a satellite photo revealing what appear to be breasts(!), but really it’s not all that exciting. In the film’s final reel, when terrorist invade Ryan’s home, there’s an extended sequence of the terrorist hunting the family with night vision goggles. The sequence is dark and muddy, completely devoid of action.Among the actors, Ford’s boring. He lacks the intensity that Alec Baldwin originated with the role, and he lacks the compassion that we need to see in order to believe him as a family man to his wife (Anne Archer) and child (Thora Birch). As the head terrorist, Sean Bean and Patrick Bergin aren’t the least bit menacing. Just kinda dirty.There’s a reason Clancy had his name removed from the film before it opened, you know.
download full dvd
divx Patriot Games movie downloads
online movie
full movie download
Patriot Games movie to watch
full movies online
download a movie

DOWNLOAD MOVIE Crocodile Dundee Just $2.99 for a complete movie! No additional software or browser plug-ins required! You can play them for unlimited number of times whenever you want. Downloaded movies will work perfectly on any PC, DVD player, PDA etc.
DIVX ($2.99)	DVD($4.99)	IPOD ($1.99)
Video Previews (divx):
File Name	Size:	Video preview
Crocodile Dundee (Video Preview).avi	21.66 MB	DOWNLOAD
The most interesting Screenshots for the “Crocodile Dundee” movie:

Crocodile Dundee (1986) / Comedy-Adventure

MPAA Rated: PG-13 for language, sexual humor, and some violence Running Time: 115 min. Cast: Paul Hogan, Linda Kozlowski, John Meillon, David Gulpilil, Mark Blum, Michael Lombard, Reginald VelJohnson, Irving Metzman Director: Peter Faiman Screenplay: John Cornell, Paul Hogan, Ken Shadie

 

Australian comedian and actor Paul Hogan (Almost an Angel, Lightning Jack) stars as Mick "Crocodile" Dundee, the famed adventurer of Australia’s rugged outback.  Hearing the seemingly tall tales about his survival of croc attacks and the like, a New York newspaper sends a reporter, Sue Charlton (Kozlowski, Village of the Damned), out to do an expose of the man that sounds more like a myth.  Once there, she realizes that the stories are quite fanciful, and many have become more so with repeated telling, as when she finally meets Crocodile Dundee himself, he seems very uncouth and womanizing, with a thirst for alcohol.  However, once they head out into the dangerous unpopulated terrain outside, she finds that Dundee is fully in his element, saving her life on a number of occasions.  Seizing on an interesting new idea, as Dundee has never traveled outside of his home area, Sue invites him to New York City, hoping that the exposure to one of the world’s largest, most densely populated, and technologically advanced metropolises will shed new and interesting dimensions in making him as much a fish out of water as she was in the outback. 

Breaking box office records for an Australian film, Crocodile Dundee proved to be an international sensation.  Paul Hogan has crafted an eccentric, but fully realized character in Dundee that is both interesting and likeable, without being too cartoonish to take seriously.  You can’t say good chemistry doesn’t exist between Hogan and his co-star Kozlowski, as they would have a rumored fling on the set, and marry soon after.  They are still together at the time of this writing.

Peter Faiman (Dutch), the director for Hogan’s long-running television show, "The Paul Hogan Show". knows his actor through and through, as he keeps the comic timing fresh, only indulging in a few contrived moments that are played strictly for a big laugh.  It’s often a bit cliché, in its own quaint way, but we come to like Dundee’s character, and the romance does eventually work, especially in a memorable crowd-pleasing finale. 

Dundee has become a tad dated over the years, and two lackluster sequels certainly haven’t helped its reputation.  As a piece of pure entertainment in the 1980s, it is charming enough with some classic funny bits that have been reused many times afterward in other films.  Definitely worthwhile viewing for those looking for a little lighthearted adventure, comedy and romance.

– Followed by two sequels, Crocodile Dundee II and Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles.
watch movies com
Crocodile Dundee movie to watch
download Crocodile Dundee movies
full length vids
divx full Crocodile Dundee movie download
watch Crocodile Dundee divx movies online
full length Crocodile Dundee video

DOWNLOAD MOVIE Proof Just $2.99 for a complete movie! No additional software or browser plug-ins required! You can play them for unlimited number of times whenever you want. Downloaded movies will work perfectly on any PC, DVD player, PDA etc.
DIVX ($2.99)	DVD($4.99)	IPOD ($1.99)
Video Previews (divx):
File Name	Size:	Video preview
Proof (Video Preview).avi	8.83 MB	DOWNLOAD

In another case of a Miramax movie made in 2003 that is just getting released, Proof marks the second pairing of John Madden and Gwyneth Paltrow after the Academy Award winner Shakespeare in Love, and once again the result is wonderful. While not as good as A Beautiful Mind or Good Will Hunting, the only other movies about a similar subject, math, that come to mind right now, the movie has excellent performances from all its four main characters and at just 1 hour and 40 minutes, it never bores us, keeping the story flowing perfectly.

Gwyneth plays Catherine, the daughter of Anthony Hopkins’ Robert, a brilliant mathematician, the best of his generation, who’s been declared crazy and so Catherine as been taking care of him for the past 5 years, leaving school and having no social life at all in the process.

Catherine is also a great mathematician, so when his father dies, her sister Claire (Hope Davis) comes back home for his funeral and also to try and take care of her, as she thinks she’s going crazy just like their father. And she kind of is.Also in the picture is Hal (Jake Gyllenhaal), one of Robert’s students, who falls in love with Catherine, and at the same times wants to research Robert’s more than a hundred notebooks hoping to find whatever it is the beautiful mind has supposedly been working on when he was out of his mind.

This is Gwyneth’s best performance to date, and have in mind she won an Oscar already. She is so believable in the role, helped by David Auburn and Rebecca Miller’s smart screenplay that gives her and all the characters great dialogue, specially when it comes to math.

Catherine never goes crazy, but she does show some signs, and while Gwyneth does not show it like Russell Crowe (who got robbed at those Oscars) did, her more quite performance is equally magnificent.

The one showing more Crowe-like signs is Hopkins, who is crazy and fatherly and sweet all at the same time. Davis and Gyllenhaal also give very good supporting performances with some great dialogue from both of them, specially whenever Hal talks about his fellow geeks.

Because of my love for math I knew I was going to like this movie, but the amazing performances and smart dialogue made me love it. Proof is intelligent but not confusing, funny when needed and then perfectly realistic in its drama, an overall excellent movie, with Gwyneth Paltrow giving a performance that puts her at the lead of the Oscar race.

watch full movies
Proof full movie downloads
download divx movies
download Proof movies
watch new Proof movies
full length Proof movie online
download dvd online

DOWNLOAD MOVIE Rookie, The Just $2.99 for a complete movie! No additional software or browser plug-ins required! You can play them for unlimited number of times whenever you want. Downloaded movies will work perfectly on any PC, DVD player, PDA etc.
DIVX ($2.99)	DVD($4.99)	IPOD ($1.99)
Video Previews (divx):
File Name	Size:	Video preview
Rookie (Video Preview).avi	14.39 MB	DOWNLOAD
The most interesting Screenshots for the “Rookie, The” movie:

Rookie, The

Eastwood may be a well respected director these days, crafting such Academy Award winners as Unforgiven, Mystic River, and Million Dollar Baby, but he has made a few duds in his time as well.  Anyone remember Firefox?  True Crime?  Absolute Power?  Blood Work?  If you do, don’t you kinda wish you didn’t?

The Rookie was Eastwood’s attempt to direct a buddy cop flick, very much in the vein of 48 Hrs. and Lethal Weapon.  He didn’t succeed.  The primary reason stems from the fact that those movies had good chemistry, clever dialogue, and a real sense of irreverence that made the banter between the characters infectious.  The Rookie simulates the feel of banter without actually having the depth of characterizations to make us feel we truly know these guys as anything but one-dimensional archetypes.  It also doesn’t help that the script by Boaz Yakin (The Punisher) and Scott Spiegel (Evil Dead II)  is mounted on an insipid plot. 

This plot concerns an underground organization of car thieves, led by a German named Strom (Julia, Presumed Innocent), who steal the best of cars, dismantle them in the local chop shops, and then sell them to the highest bidders.  Eastwood plays Nick Pulovski, a down-and-out cop on the grand theft auto beat, that just lost his partner in a bust of Strom’s latest catch.  Pulovski is pulled off the case now that it belongs to homicide, but he is still hell-bent in his determination to take Strom down.  Nick is assigned a hotshot rookie detective, an impeccably gifted but very green new guy named David Ackerman (Sheen, Major League), who knows his stuff, but has had a lifelong bout of freezing up when situations become tense. 

The Rookie is a truly poor movie, made almost acceptable because of Eastwood’s dry humor and a few memorable scenes.  It is gratuitously violent and highly sensationalized, although perfectly in keeping with the kinds of action movies churned out by Hollywood during these years.  It does feature an interesting array of actors, although some of them are not really cast well.  Most notable in this regard is Raul Julia, who does make for an intelligent and charismatic adversary, but his underwritten role suffers greatly by the fact that his Latino-flavored accent is too strong to buy him as a German, no matter how many "zese", "zose", and "zem"s he utters liberally.  Sonia Braga (Angel Eyes, Empire) doesn’t even bother trying.

Luckily for us in the audience, Eastwood realizes just how ridiculous the premise of the film is, so he decides to have fun with the project, sending it wildly over the top during certain moments for some tongue-in-cheek laughs.  Perhaps he should have just made the entire thing a complete lark and stripped out all pretense of seriousness, and we might be looking at a better film here. 

The one complaint about Eastwood as a director that has managed to stick with him throughout his career is his lack of ability to squeeze out the excess in his films down to a traditional running length, and at over two hours, The Rookie is a good twenty minutes longer than it really needed to be.  Most scenes go on longer than necessary, and some exist for no real reason at all, to the detriment of the overall momentum,

For all of its flaws and excesses, The Rookie might still provide a decent evening’s worth of entertainment for Eastwood’s fans (like myself) and those that love bloody, comical cop action films of any variety.  Some guilty pleasure entertainment may certainly be had, provided you take it about as serious as Eastwood intended, which is to say, not at all.

Qwipster’s rating:
dvd downloads
watch divx movies
video downloads
watch full length movies online
watch full movie
divx Rookie, The movie
videos downloads

DOWNLOAD MOVIE Empire Just $2.99 for a complete movie! No additional software or browser plug-ins required! You can play them for unlimited number of times whenever you want. Downloaded movies will work perfectly on any PC, DVD player, PDA etc.
DIVX ($2.99)	DVD($4.99)	IPOD ($1.99)
Video Previews (divx):
File Name	Size:	Video preview
Empire (Video Preview).avi	15.99 MB	DOWNLOAD

The Series:

President Harry S Truman one said “The only thing new in this world
is the history that you don’t know.”  There’s a lot of truth in that,
and that’s the reason that I enjoy documentaries so much.  There’s
a lot of history that I just never learned, and much of it is fascinating. 
The Eastern Roman Empire is a good case in point.  Did you know that
the Roman Empire grew so large that it was basically split into to parts? 
What’s more amazing is that when we talk about the fall of the Roman Empire,
we’re really only talking about the western empire.  The eastern one
lasted for 1000 years, well past Rome’s glory day.  It’s now known
as the Byzantine Empire, though the citizens at the time continued to call
it the Roman Empire.  It was only when reviewing a DVD on the Crusades
that I found out about this whole in my education.  Luckily another
DVD has come to the rescue and partially filled this gap in my knowledge: 
TLC’s Byzantium:  The Lost Empire.  Written and hosted
by popular TV British personality and archeologist John Romer, the show
has a wealth of information about this forgotten (here in the West at least)
empire.  The only problem is Romer himself.  He’s much to animated
and excited about his subject and often digresses into long and often pointless
stories that don’t really add to a viewer’s understanding of this time
in history.

The
show takes a more or less chronological look at the empire.  It was
founded by the Roman Emperor Constantine in 330 when he moved the imperial
capital from Rome to Byzantium.  That city was renamed as Constantinople
(it is now known as Istanbul) and became one of the most glorious cities
in the world.  When the Western Roman Empire fell in 476 and darkness
spread across Europe, Constantinople was flourishing, a center of learning,
art, and trade all through the Dark and Middle Ages.

In addition to Constantine, a good amount of time is devoted to Emperor
Justinian I and his powerful wife Empress Theodora, who together attempted
in the sixth century to recreate the glory that was once the Roman Empire. 
They also were instrumental in rewriting and revising the Roman Legal Code. 
Other major rulers such as Basil II and John II are discussed too as well
as the impact that Muslims and the Crusades had on this Christian nation. 
The fall of the empire and the events that lead up to it makes for some
interesting viewing too.

The
big political events aren’t the only things that this show concentrates
on however.  The art and architecture of the period is also examined,
and the way that people lived and worked.  This makes the show well
rounded and more interesting than just a litany of dry facts.

Even though there is a lot of information to be gleaned from this show,
and the period that it is examining is interesting, there are some flaws
that really make this documentary hard to watch.  The first and most
grievous flaw is having writer John Romer also narrate and present the
show.  His love for the subject is evident, but his grand gestures
and constant hand waving are as distracting as the purple prose that fills
this show.  The narration is so ebullient that it is almost laughable
at times.  Everything is “wonderful”, “amazing”, and “glorious.” 
Apparently nothing was mundane or even average.  The way he describes
things is so over-the-top that it’s hard to take the program seriously
at times.  In an early episode he describes a church in these terms: 
“It’s as perfectly mysterious as the finest natural crystal.  The
walls, the columns seem to be nothing more than an illusion and simply
fade away.”  Later he talks about the dome and connecting entryway: 
“It’s like a vast net of stone and brick slung over this central space…
this strange, mysterious space…”

Another shortcoming is that John Romer is more interested in what things
looked like than what actually happened.  He seems to spend more time
explaining what a building looked like than discussing the events that
took place there.  He also tends to get lost in small details and
that makes it hard to see the big picture.  While explaining how the
ancient Greeks made olive oil and what crops they planted was mildly interesting
there were way too many digressions.  This documentary, while not
bad overall, would have been a lot better if someone had edited it a bit
and made it more focused.

The DVD:

---

The four episodes that make up this series are presented on two DVDs. 
The set comes in a single width keepcase with a second ‘page’ to hold the
other disc.

Audio:

The two channel audio was adequate.  The haunting music which works
so well with the show doesn’t have the dynamic range that it could, the
highs are clipped and the mids are a bit muffled, but sounds okay. 
John Romer’s voice is easy to understand and the few sound effects are
forceful enough.  This disc doesn’t have the last word in audio fidelity,
but it suits the subject matter.

Video:

This
documentary is presented with the rather unusual aspect ratio of 1.56:1,
a ratio that’s usually seen in commercials.  (It’s a compromise between
4:3 and 16:9 so that either display can present the image with minimal
letterboxing or pillarboxing.)  The show is not anamorphically enhanced,
but given the ratio, that wouldn’t really help a lot.

The image itself is only so-so.  The level of detail isn’t what
I was hoping it would be, people and objects that are far away from the
camera are a bit fuzzy, even when they are in focus.  The lines aren’t
as tight as they could be, and finer details tend to be lost.  The
colors are even though a little on the drab side, but the black levels
are fine.  On the digital side, things aren’t very impressive either. 
Aliasing is a big problem with diagonal lines having a stair step effect,
and when the camera pans across an image the fine lines tend to jiggle
as if they had a life of their own.

Extras:

Unfortunately there are no extras.

Final Thoughts:

I didn’t know much about the Byzantine Empire before watching this documentary,
and now I feel that I have at least a passing knowledge about the empire
and its people.  In that respect the documentary series is a great
success.  Unfortunately it succeeds in spite of John Romer rather
than because of him.  His over-the-top delivery style and turgid prose
are hard to take at times, and the too frequent deviations make the show
seem unfocused.  Viewers who want to learn more about this subject
don’t have a lot of alternatives, and you could do worse than this series
but it doesn’t have a lot of replay value.  Make it a rental.

 
Empire video download
movie download
download this video
full lenth movies
download movies
download full length Empire movies
watch divx movies online

DOWNLOAD MOVIE Dorm Daze 2 Just $2.99 for a complete movie! No additional software or browser plug-ins required! You can play them for unlimited number of times whenever you want. Downloaded movies will work perfectly on any PC, DVD player, PDA etc.
DIVX ($2.99)	DVD($4.99)	IPOD ($1.99)
Video Previews (divx):
File Name	Size:	Video preview
Dorm Daze 2 (Video Preview).avi	18.58 MB	DOWNLOAD

In 10 Words or Less
More crap from the (in)famous brand

Reviewer’s Bias*
Loves: Screwball comedy, ’80s sex comedies
Likes: The Marla/Lynne dynamic
Dislikes: Chris Owen
Hates: Most National Lampoon movies

The Story So Far…
National Lampoon cranks out bad movies for the direct-to-video market on a regular basis, with nothing going for them but some stunt casting and nudity. Their college tale Dorm Daze has been reviewed in many outlets as much of the same, but it apparently moved enough copies to necessitate the creation of a follow-up. DVDTalk has reviews of the original film by Aaron Beierle and Adam Tyner.

The Movie
I have to make a confession. This may affect the way you view my reviews, and it may lead to my colleagues here shunning me like a leper. But I have to admit something: I’ve never seen Dorm Daze. There…it’s out there now, and I’ll just have to deal with the consequences.

Despite my lack of experience with this franchise, somehow I don’t feel like I’ve missed anything going into National Lampoon presents Dorm Daze 2: College @ Sea - Uncensored & Unanchored (certainly a contender for longest title of the year.) The only thing I seem to bemissing is the reason for the existence of a sequel.

Several characters from the first film, students at Billingsley University, are spending a semester aboard a cruise ship, where they are finalists in a theater competition. That about all the plot you get, though if you poke around, there’s arivalry over an upcoming grant, a professor/student affair, and, as is always the case, a young man dying to lose his virginity.

Things really get rolling when the theater competition (which allows for the requisite gratuitous nudity) ties into the hunt for a stolen diamond and a mischevious monkey trying to avoid being smoked by two stoners. Toss in an over-the-top gay costumer and a horny older woman (played with remarkable ease by porn starlet Jasmine St. Claire), and just about every cliche from a teen movie is represented here, including American Pie alumnus Chris Owen, who has become a teen-movie cliche all by himself.

Once everyone is introduced, the characters are free to do what they want, as long as sex is mentioned or seen every five minutes. Eventually they get back to the central story, and they may even wrap that up in the next sequel, but all I cared about were the characters of Marla and Lynne, played by Danielle Fishel (Boy Meets World’s Topenga) and Jennifer Lewis. Bubbleheads in the mold of Romy and Michelle, they are adorably dopey, and provide a pleasant visual distraction when the movie gets to be too much.

The movie actually approaches something of a manic comic pace at two points, but just can’t overcome its limitations. One scene, in which our virgin hero falls overboard nude, in the middle of a couple’s coupling, drawing everyone into the scene, nearly made me chuckle, but it fell just short.

I can’t explain the problem with this movie, since I love similar films like Hamburger the Motion Picture and Stewardess School. Perhaps it’s the directors’ fault. I’m willing to lay the blame on them, since they were able to somehow make the usually beautiful Vida Guerra into the least attractive girl of the starring cast. Anyone able to spin gold into straw like that, or calls on cameos by Ted Lange and Kato Kaelin for laughs, can easily be considered the problem.

The DVD
The DVD arrives as a one-disc’er, packed in an insert-less standard keepcase. The disc has an animated anamorphic widescreen main menu, with animated transitions, that offers a choice to play the film, select scenes, adjust languages and check out the special features. Audio options include English Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 tracks, while subtitles are available in English and Spanish.

The Quality
There’s nothing obviously bad about the film’s anamorphic widescreen transfer, but there’s nothing all that great about it either. Color is solid, and the level of detail is good, though there’s a bit of softness and grain to the image that keeps it from being an optimal presentation. There no dirt or damage though, so everything remains very clean.

The audio is standard comedy-level quality, focusing mainly on reproducing the dialogue crisply and keeping the music and voices from getting muddy. The ridiculous comedic sound effects peppered thoughout the movie and the music get some play in the surround speakers, but it’s mostly a center-channel affair without much dynamic sound.

The Extras
The extras start with a feature-length audio commentary by directors Dave and Scott Hillenbrand, executive producer and editor. It’s a friendly “remember when” track, with lots of shooting info and a lot of praise for the cast. What’s seemingly missing is a sense of humor about the kind of movie these guys made. Instead, they are very complementary, and talk about things like cast chemistry and telling stories. When you make a movie for a single purpose and will likely get slammed for it, have a bit of humility.

A selection of 19 deleted scenes, with optional commentary, is mainly extensions of scenes in the film (including a ridiculous alternate ending), while the blooper reel is amusing, but nothing great. The disc wraps with a featurette on Guerra that’s just an excuse to show her in revealing outfits (from a promo photo shoot.) Trailers from other Lionsgate projects put a cap on things.

The Bottom Line
I can’t truthfully say I enjoyed this movie, but I didn’t hate it either. It’s just sort of there. Perhaps I’m not the target audience and this went over (or more likely under) my head. Either way, I can’t recommend it, though the extras are decent and the level of quality is good. Use your discretion, and any experience you’ve had with previous National Lampoon films when considering a rental.

---

Francis Rizzo III is a native Long Islander, where he works in Internet Publishing and also teaches journalism. In his spare time, he enjoys watching hockey, writing and spending time with his wife, daughter and Schnoodle.

Visit his MySpace page

---

*The Reviewer’s Bias section is an attempt to help readers use the review to its best effect. By knowing where the reviewer’s biases lie on the film’s subject matter, one can read the review with the right mindset.
divx movi
full length videos
full length downloadable Dorm Daze 2 movies
Dorm Daze 2 full length movie
download full length Dorm Daze 2 movies
watch Dorm Daze 2 videos on line
watch english Dorm Daze 2 movies online