Review Packs are a collection of very short reviews, usually two or three at a time. My first Review Pack consists of the
Star Wars/
Lord Of The Rings lovechild
Eragon, Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich's raping of the beloved franchise
Godzilla, and the Sci Fi Channel monster mash
Minotaur, starring Tony Todd (
Candyman)
EragonI've read Christopher Paolini's novel
Eragon, and even though it was basically a poorly written LOTR fan fiction stretched to an outrageous length, I still enjoyed reading it. But of course, some Hollywood execs got their grimy hands on it, and transformed a decent novel into a complete mess of a movie. Basically what we have here is a crappy medieval
Star Wars. Luke Skywalker is Eragon! Darth Vader is Durza the Shade! Obi-Wan Kenobi is Brom! So on and so forth. Pretty much everything here is bad. You'd think at least the effects would be good, but no, those are nothing more than so-so. Mild entertainment is the only real value here.
SCORE:
1/2 out of five
Gdozilla (American Version)
True, this movie is a sick, twisted shadow of the real
Godzilla films. The effects are great, but that's about all. The overgrown iguana here isn't Godzilla: It doesn't shoot nuclear fire from its mouth, it runs from the military, and in the end its killed in a way that would barely faze the real thing. But despite this, I don't have such venomous comments about this flick as many other people do. Sure, it doesn't deserve the title of
Godzilla, but I still found it to be a rather entertaining giant monster movie, even if the monster was something of a wuss.
SCORE:
out of five
MinotaurThis movie, in my opinion, and probably in my opinion only, is one of the Sci Fi Channel's best originals. It has great effects (by Sci Fi standards at least), acting that at least doesn't make you want to beat your own head in with a hammer, an above-average script, and surprisingly competant direction. Best of all, Tony Todd, of the
Candyman series, is in it! Really the only gripe I have about the movie is that its poorly edited. There are two scenes when the wires holding actors up are clearly visible, and those could've easily been edited out. Other than that, I give
Minotaur my full approval.
SCORE:
1/2 out of five