Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) Review

Time: 109 Minutes
Age Rating: contains violence & offensive language
Cast:
Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator
Nick Stahl as John Connor
Kristanna Loken as the T-X
Claire Danes as Katherine “Kate” Brewster
Director: Jonathan Mostow

A powerful cyborg from a post-apocalyptic future appears in search of a drifter. Soon, he must protect himself and his companion from a deadly robotic threat.

The first two Terminator movies are widely regarded as action sci-fi classics. However, the following movies in the series has been receiving a rather mixed reception. That being said, I like them all, and that extends to Terminator 3. Made and released over a decade after the excellent Terminator 2, Rise of the Machines is enjoyable despite its many issues.

The biggest problem of Terminator 3 is how similar it is to Terminator 2, to the point where it almost feels like a copy. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator goes back in time to protect John Connor from a more advanced Terminator, and there are plenty of one liners and action scenes. It doesn’t help that much of it feels like it is on autopilot. The plot is less interesting, the characters aren’t as strong, and there’s not nearly as much emotion or depth to it, despite some of the opportunities presented here. The attempts at comedy are increased, but come across as being more forced, and I think its goofier than it was intending to be; the scene in which the Terminator gets his clothes here is an example of this. While some one liners are memorable, they were more misses than hits. That being said, I was fairly entertained with the movie, helped by a tight pace. It is also elevated by a surprising third act, with the bleak ending being a standout. While I can see why people wouldn’t like it, it is at least admirable. It is a bold move for a franchise movie to end on such a nihilistic note. At the same time, you get the feeling that it could’ve been more impactful had it been handled better.

Arnold Schwarzenegger returns as another Terminator sent back in time, and is solid as usual even if he’s feeling a bit tired here. One thing working against him is that he just feels like a copy of his Terminator from Terminator 2, only he’s not as good, almost like an empty shell. His characterisation isn’t as strong and doesn’t feel as human. At the same time, there are plenty of human moments where he acts like his Terminator 2 counterpart, despite not having humanising moments like he did with young John Connor. The rest of the cast aren’t as good. Nick Stahl and Claire Danes are fine as John Connor and his future wife Kate, but are forgettable. Terminator 3 is a logical and accurate continuation of where John Connor would go after stopping Judgment Day, but they don’t do much beyond the first act. Danes is also fine with what she is given but is underdeveloped despite playing a major role in the movie. Then there’s the new villain Terminator, this time it’s the T-X as played by Kristanna Loken. While the idea had potential, the execution has much to be desired. It’s a female Terminator and that’s all that’s going for her. She wasn’t menacing, she was hard to take seriously and was a step back after the Terminator villains.

Jonathan Mostow directs this, overall his work is just okay but unsurprisingly pales in comparison to James Cameron’s work on the previous movies. Much like the writing, a big part of the problem is that it just feels like a copy of Terminator 2, except not as good. It doesn’t have much of a style of its own. Its also feels on autopilot, not helped by the generic score from Marco Beltrami. That being said, the action scenes are quite entertaining. It can be a bit messy and sloppy at times, but at the very least goes all in with the bonkers action. An early chase scene involving a truck in the first act particularly shines. While there is clearly an overreliance on CGI and the effects haven’t aged well, there are still some good practical stunts.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is a decent enough sequel, Arnold Schwarzenegger is entertaining as usual, the action is fun, and there’s some aspects that are well done. The problem is that its just pretty much just a copy of Terminator 3, only not done as well. The only purpose of the movie seems to be the direction of its ending, and even that could’ve been handled better. Still, it’s okay if you manage expectations going into it.

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In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Tale (2007) Review

Time: 127 Minutes
Age Rating:
Cast:
Jason Statham as Farmer
Leelee Sobieski as Muriella
John Rhys-Davies as Merick
Ron Perlman as Norick
Claire Forlani as Solana
Kristanna Loken as Elora
Matthew Lillard as Duke Fallow
Ray Liotta as Gallian
Burt Reynolds as King Konreid
Brian White as Commander Tarish
Mike Dopud as General Backler
Will Sanderson as Basstian
Tania Saulnier as Talwyn
Gabrielle Rose as Delinda
Terence Kelly as Trumaine
Colin Ford as Zeph
Director: Uwe Boll

A farmer (Jason Statham) sets out to rescue his kidnapped wife (Claire Forlani) and avenge the death of his son — two acts committed by the Krugs, a race of animal-warriors who are controlled by the evil Gallian (Ray Liotta).

I wasn’t expecting anything when I was going into this movie, Uwe Boll’s first two Bloodrayne movies caused me to have this feeling. For an Uwe Boll movie though, it isn’t as bad as Bloodrayne 2; the movie does have at times decent action scenes. However this movie still wasn’t good on its own, it still has a bad story, average to terrible acting along with having a lot of things from Lord of the Rings which did bother me from time to time.

The story doesn’t have anything interesting to offer, made worse with the movie being 2 hours long, it should’ve been shorter. The first act was set up poorly with characters that I didn’t feel attached to, not helping this is the dialogue which is poorly written, uninteresting and doesn’t further develop the characters. This may be an aside but Statham’s character is literally called Farmer. The most boring part of the movie was the second act, there wasn’t much going on. The third act was the most entertaining and had a whole lot of action scenes which were done okay but they didn’t have much story to link them together to make them interesting. The film has many plot holes, like in one of the final fights with Jason Statham and Ray Liotta, Liotta doesn’t use his magic at the beginning, despite being able to get rid of him in an instant. This movie also took a lot of things from Lord of the Rings, for example the last big battle scene was very similar to the Helms Deep scene from The Two Towers. Even the Krugs seemed very much like the Orcs. The writer of this movie actually rewrote 80% of the script because it felt too much like Lord of the Rings, it’s not just me finding it familiar.

This film has a good cast, none of whom brings much to the movie. Jason Statham doesn’t make much of an impression here, he’s much better in other movies but I will say that he does well in the action scenes, as he usually does. Ron Perlman gives the best performance in the movie, he’s one of those actors who can bring anything to a movie but unfortunately his character still wasn’t given any depth or attention. Burt Reynolds is for some reason in this movie but he just didn’t bring anything to the movie; he looks like he doesn’t want to be there and is quite underwhelming and boring. On the complete other end from acting bored is Ray Liotta who plays the villain and is completely over the top. If you’ve seen the two Bloodrayne movies, you know that Uwe Boll doesn’t know how to direct actors in playing villains. A prime example is when Liotta shares a scene with Matthew Lillard, it’s like they are competing in a ‘worst performance’ competition.

The action scenes in the first act of the movie are done poorly, the camera shook and cut often and they aren’t filmed well. Later on the action scenes improved, the camera didn’t cut and it was steady, however they weren’t very interesting or entertaining, they were just okay.

I will say that this movie is better than some of Uwe Boll’s other movies but this is still a bad movie. It has the many things that Uwe Boll movies have, bad acting, poor writing, average cinematography and has many plot holes, on top of feeling too much like Lord of the Rings. In short, the movie is a poor man’s Lord of the Rings, it’s the best way to describe it. I heard that Uwe Boll made a good movie, Rampage, I would really like to see it sometime; I need to take a break from his movies.

BloodRayne (2005)

Time: 95 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence and sex scenes
Cast:
Kristanna Loken as Rayne
Michael Madsen as Vladimir
Matthew Davis as Sebastian
Michelle Rodriguez as Katarin
Ben Kingsley as Kagan
Director: Uwe Boll

Rayne (Kristanna Loken) is a half-human half-vampire Dhampir out for revenge for the king of the vampires Kagan (Ben Kingsley) who killed her mother. In her journey she meets Vladimir (Michael Madsen) and Sebastian (Matthew Davis), the leaders of the fortress of vampire hunters Brimstone, and joins their society to face the forces of Kagan.

Uwe Boll has been called one of the worst filmmakers of all time; because Bloodrayne was on TV I decided to check it out, and I’m now paying the consequences. It has wooden acting, a shallow, uninteresting plot, and poorly done action scenes. I haven’t played the video game it’s based on but I feel sorry for the fans who were subjected to this abysmal adaptation.

The plot goes so fast it’s hard to understand what’s going on. We also don’t know anything about these characters so we can’t really care for them; they make the characters from The Happening look like the Guardians of the Galaxy. The dialogue is not used well; it is either used for backstories, moving the plot, or exposition. The movie doesn’t even say what time period it’s in or where it is set. The film also has some odd ideas such as having normal water hurt vampires; here they are like the aliens from Signs. The last scene is a montage of whenever blood has been spilt and is nearly 4 minutes long; it comes out of nowhere and doesn’t make any sense in any form of context. Surprisingly, the screenplay was written by Guinevere Turner, who previously wrote the screenplay to American Psycho. It turns out that Uwe Boll demanded that she handed in a rough copy of the script and that he went with that version, so that explains a lot of the problems.

Kristanna Loken was quite wooden here and barely showed more emotion than the T-X in Terminator 3. Michelle Rodriguez doesn’t give that good of a performance either, however she does seem like she’s trying to give a good performance. A stand out bad performance is from Michael Madsen, who doesn’t show any emotion throughout the movie and looks drunk (which he was) and bored; even when he’s fighting people, he doesn’t change his expression. There is a major thing that happens to him near the end which I won’t spoil (in case some of you actually want to see this movie) but he doesn’t even change his expression for that. He really looks like he doesn’t care, just look at this image down below, he’s not even holding his sword right.

Billy Zane is only in a few scenes in this movie and doesn’t make any impact on the plot. Ben Kingsley plays the villain and most of his scenes are very short, barely lasting for 30 seconds; his performance is unfortunately phoned in, which is a shame. I won’t even go into the hammy performance from Meat Loaf as he was only in one scene.

The action scenes are not done that well; there is a fight between Rayne and a big monster; there were so many cuts in that scene that I wonder how much of the footage was cut at just the right moment. The blood in this movie is so exaggerated that Quentin Tarantino would probably roll his eyes at it. There is one moment where a guy is cut in half at the waist but if you slow it down, you can clearly see his real legs behind some fake legs. The costumes are also questionable, particularly Rayne’s, one has to ask what type of person would wear that in any time period.

Bloodrayne is a terrible movie; it’s not a so-bad-it’s-good sort of bad movie, it’s just boring. I wouldn’t recommend anyone to watch this movie (then again if you already know about Uwe Boll you probably weren’t even thinking about doing that) as there’s nothing enjoyable about it unless you are someone like me who wanted to make fun of it.