Reviews
Gekijôban Poketto Monsutâ Kesshôtô no Teiô Entei (2000)
Pokemon 3 is a poor, dull effort.
This third Pokemon movie is too abstract for younger kids to follow and too repetitious to entertain older kids. The message of the film-- about dealing with loss-- is subverted by the return of the young girl's father during the film's credits. Team Rocket provide some amusement, but they're not really part of the small plot, so they don't appear very often.
Nosferatu - Phantom der Nacht (1979)
(English version) Painfully slow, little new
Other than the ending, this version of the Dracula tale offers little that is new, and it does so excruciatingly slowly. The characters' speeches evoked the feel of silent movie text and served to remind me that this was another retelling of an often-told story. Dracula is played to evoke sympathy, and his aspect as a horror villain is diminished, particularly as his monstrous appearance is taken as unusual but normal by those who see him. Herzog's Dracula is merely pathetic.
200 Cigarettes (1999)
mildly amusing but not much substance
"200 Cigarettes" was amusing in parts, but I left the cinema feeling as if I hadn't really seen a movie. There was no real story to grab me, only glimpses into the lives of various characters on New Year's Eve 1981. Unfortunately, the script never gives them time to become real people; they remain characters throughout the film and in the end I didn't really care what happened to them. Perhaps it was the creators' intentions merely to create an extended video with 80s music and well-known 90s faces, but that's not the kind of film I want to go see.