——Azumi——

(B+)

This is a samurai assassin story by the director of Versus. The story is pretty par for the course and can be a little slow at times, but the director makes up for it with some beautiful images and a fantastic final fight sequence, where Azumi, a female assassin and the best of the group, takes on a village of bandits and samurais to save her master. There’s lots of great samurai sword action and some of the best blood spurting I’ve seen out there. I really liked this, however, I’d tell people to pick up Versus before they jumped into this.

——Billy Jack——

(C)

At times this movie can be extremely fun to watch, at other times extremely painful. I think it would be hilarious to watch high though. This movie is like a hippie’s wet dream, made in 1971 it features a multi-racial school of sorts where social outcasts just do whatever they feel like as long as it is an art of some sort. They are preaching the turn the other cheek and everybody love everybody nonsense that makes them look like morons, even compared to the local townspeople who have to be the biggest bigots in the world. And then amidst all of this there is Billy Jack, this half-Indian who helps out at the school but likes to solve all of his problems through karate kicks. The movie is just funny and disturbing and fucked up all at the same time. Unless you had some sort of drug close at hand I wouldn’t recommend you watch this unless you want to go into hippie shock.

——The Passion of the Christ——

(B-)

I actually don’t have much to say about this movie. There is a great movie in there somewhere, but Mel decided to cover it up with over excessiveness. Mel is definitely operating under the theory of more is more. He makes a really powerful film, but it loses a little bit of its impact because you can’t see past Mel’s blazing ego trip. He wants to do everything he possibly can to disgust you, so that when the message of love and understanding finally shows up you are too mentally exhausted to really take much notice. All the maggots, all the yelling, all the blood, all the beating, all the BLOOD…it’s too much. I seriously doubt Jesus really took the beating he did in this movie, because it would have had to have killed him right then and there. No way could he have then dragged the Cross all the way up to Golgatha.

The Romans were all over the place in this movie. One minute they didn’t want to hurt Christ. Then they beat the ever living hell out of him. Then for some reason when they see him on the Cross they see something wrong with the whole ordeal. It’s absurd, and one dimensional in two completely opposite directions. I don’t think the movie is anti-Semitic. There is nothing in this movie to support that. A priest at one point even stands up to the group and says that the whole thing is out of control and asks why they haven’t waited for the rest of the council. They then kick that guy out. It is pretty obvious that this is a mob. Jews help Christ out throughout the movie. Do some Jews come off bad in this movie? Of course. But do all the Jews as a people come off bad? Of course not.

My favorite part of the movie was really the Marys, especially Jesus’ mother. Harder than watching Jesus take that beating was watching his mom watch him take the beating. That actress was fantastic, and she really was the only thing keep this movie from becoming the most disturbing movie ever made. Seriously, there is some stuff in this movie that horror movies couldn’t even get away with. What the hell is wrong with Mel Gibson?

——Once Upon a Time in the West——

(A)

I absolutely LOVE the soundtrack to this movie. I don’t really have much new to say about it though.

——Returner——

(D)

Oh God was this movie horrible. It rips off at least twenty other movies (T1 and T2, The Matrix, M:I 2, E.T., ID4, Transformers, and Starship Troopers, just to name a few) and never does it do anything new with the material, or anything exciting. The actors are horrible (especially the bad guy), the dialogue is stupid, and the story never goes beyond anything that’s been done in a time travel movie before with any new or original ideas. The whole thing is just stupid. And then after the climax the movie goes on for like another 15 minutes in the lamest wrap up ever. The only thing good about this movie is that there are a few good bullet time shots, but their impact is totally diminished by scenes like the one in the future where everyone speaks awful cliché English and the acting gets even worse than normal. What a mess this movie is. You are better off just going to the video store and renting the movies I listed above.