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The Effigy takes a look at Anthony Hopkins' latest... INSTINCT!
Well... This seems to be (for me at least) a cross between AWAKENINGS and THE MAN IN THE WILDERNESS, but that's just a judgement based on the trailer. I liked both of those films, so... I'm looking forward to seeing this flick, but for now, The Effigy is taking over...
i saw _instinct_ last night, the cuba gooding jr/anthony hopkins
psychothriller (ha!). it was neither psycho nor thrilling. it was boring.
thank god this isn't hopkins' last film (_titus andronicus_ is the last, i
believe - that is, if he doesn't come out of 'retirement'), because it
would be an abomination for somebody to go out on a note like this. while
neither of the two title guys give bad performances, they're nothing
spectacular. instead, they're precisely what you'd expect: good work from
good actors trying to make the best of a mediocre script and a pisspoor
idea. there isn't an original bone in _instinct_'s body - but why should
there be, with a guy like jon turteltaub at the helm? you should know that
_phenomenon_ is on my worst movies of all time list. it offends me that it
exists. now, don't get me wrong - i wanted to like _instinct_. i gave it
a chance. but there were points where i just couldn't contain my laughter
and, apparently, neither could the rest of the audience, who all seemed to
hate it when we were walking out of the theatre. of course, i couldn't
help thinking "amy! mighty joe!" during the opening credit sequence. lots
of stan winston gorillas.
plot - hopkins plays ethan powell, a brilliant (but aren't they all in the
movies?) primatologist who lived with a bunch of gorillas for a couple of
years until he killed a bunch of forest rangers and got thrown in rwandan
prison. now he's been shipped back to the united states where he can enjoy
the amenities of the federal penitentiary psycho ward. gooding plays theo
caulder, a brilliant (but aren't they all in the movies?), ambitious
psychologist who makes it his mission to help heal powell. what follows is
a run-of-the-mill give-and-take relationship in which powell becomes
semi-normal and caulder learns a bunch of life lessons. snooze.
acting - as i said above, nothing groundbreaking. it's all well and good
to see a couple of excellent actors go head-to-head, but there needs to be
something to back it up. and here, there's nothing. maura tierney,
playing the daughter powell, is woefully underused to the point of being
wasted. donald sutherland phones in yet another performance as gooding's
supervising faculty member at miami u or wherever it is they work. john
ashton (you know, the penny-pinching dad from _some kind of wonderful_ and
sergeant taggert from _beverly hills cop_) does nice work as a prison
guard, and the psychos in the pen were suitably, uh, psycho.
everything else - this script is boring, the dialogue is often canned to
the point where you can literally talk right along with it because you know
what they're going to say. turteltaub's direction is rotten. chalk this
up as yet another film that steals "the shot" (you know, the one of tim
robbins, arms outstretched as the rain pours down and the camera cranes up
and over to peer down at him) from _the shawshank redemption_. the film
never really goes anywhere except the interviews between calder and powell,
although some of the african scenes are decent.
this was, as far as i know, a finished print. on the plus side, the
_summer of sam_ trailer was attached. now *that* looks awesome.
just call me the effigy.
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No, this "Anthony Hopkins is out" business is real? No! No! Dammit, it's the fault of all those jackasses that said Meet Joe Black was bad. Is your hatred of Brad Pitt worth insulting Sir Anthony Hopkins?! Damn it all to Hell!
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Listening to this reviewers angered talk about the director of this movie I worry he may be a tad bit biased against this movie. But who knows he may be right Im seeing it sunday so Ill post it here if i agree with him.
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I to have loved the work of Anthony Perkins, since I saw "the Lion in Winter" when I was 11. Having said this, I must also say that if he can't find better movies than "Meet Joe Black", "Freejack", and that one with Alec Baldwin, and the bear, then maybe it is time to hang it up. God knows he's not broke(7-8 Million for five min. onscreen in Mission Impossible 2). If he does quit I will look back fondly on his many wonderful performances, and look forward to no more "big-money" studio stinkers.
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I agree. But we can't stop him leaving can we? But I feel he should have one final blow-out. The "Big One", a swan song to shout about. Not long ago, Hopkins said he would cut loose and only do action movies from now on. OK, how about teaming him up with, I don't know, Robert Carlyle, and pitting them against the "Alien(s)" in 19th century Britain. (Sci-Fi meets Period). A huge epic to bow-out on. It would probably fair better than the sack-o-shite I just read about.
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If this reviewer is right,and I think he probably is, then this film is a major disappointment. Am I the only one who heard that the original plot of this movie was Anthony Hopkins studying gorillas and then a bunch of poachers killed the gorillas so he went out and began poaching them? Now there is a kickass idea. And if they aren't going to use it, can I? I think it would be a great plot for a great actor, which is why I was excited about this movie until I heard it was just another rehash of Silence of the Lambs with monkeys. Phenomenon did suck. It was only moderately bad until the point where John Travolta took an hour to die and learned absolutely nothing new. All he did was sit under a tree. Boooooring! Sounds like another good idea and good actors pissed away. I'll see Wild Wild West instead. Sure, it may turn out to be bad, but at least it promises to be bad in a cinematic train wreck, Howard The Duck sort of way, which is always fun to watch.
P.S. I heard that retirement thing is over. I read an article where Anthony said that he was just burned out filming Titus and now he was ready to do something else. In fact, I've heard rumors of a Silence of the Lambs 2. Now that would kick some ass! -
If this reviewer is right,and I think he probably is, then this film is a major disappointment. Am I the only one who heard that the original plot of this movie was Anthony Hopkins studying gorillas and then a bunch of poachers killed the gorillas so he went out and began poaching them? Now there is a kickass idea. And if they aren't going to use it, can I? I think it would be a great plot for a great actor, which is why I was excited about this movie until I heard it was just another rehash of Silence of the Lambs with monkeys. Phenomenon did suck. It was only moderately bad until the point where John Travolta took an hour to die and learned absolutely nothing new. All he did was sit under a tree. Boooooring! Sounds like another good idea and good actors pissed away. I'll see Wild Wild West instead. Sure, it may turn out to be bad, but at least it promises to be bad in a cinematic train wreck, Howard The Duck sort of way, which is always fun to watch.
P.S. I heard that retirement thing is over. I read an article where Anthony said that he was just burned out filming Titus and now he was ready to do something else. In fact, I've heard rumors of a Silence of the Lambs 2. Now that would kick some ass! -
It's good to see other people think SILENCE OF THE LAMBS was crap.God knows why it got good reviews.Hopkins was good,but overall the movie wasn't that scary.I Think it's cos JODIE FOSTER was innit the critics were kind.Women always get kind reviews by critics cos they feel sorry for them.Hollywood is dominated by men,so critics like to have a couple of women,who they can say "look she's good".
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I'm glad to hear others thought Silence of the Lambs was bad - if you want to see truly bad, see SOMETHING WILD. You spend about 100 minutes trying to figure out why only the first five minutes of this movie were so good and the rest is soooooooo bad! I mean, this is the movie that brought us the whole Ray Liotta as a psycho genre. Speaking of Psychos, I thought Sir Tony's performance was way over the top, and he was in no way convincing as a diabotical, brilliant, manipulative cannibal psychiatrist.
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A: To get the old scent back.
Any news on Michael Mann and "The
Zen Differential?" An extended version of "HEAT" on DVD? A soundtrack rerelease of Tangerine Dream's score for "The Keep?" A CD pressing for "MANHUNTER?" I guess I'd have to be dreaming. But at least Roger (Pink Floyd) Waters is going on tour for the first time since 1987. I guess anything's possible. -
Am I the only one who read that he wasn't retiring and that the plans were laid for the sequel to Silence? He said something about how he really didn't mean to say that he was retiring just that he needed a rest after Titus. From what I understand doing Shakespeare is maybe as taxing a work as you can get.
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Sorry about the stupid,5th grader subject.Anyway,I haven't seen this movie and probably never will.The trailer is so bad and extremely fucking boring I'd kill myself if I had to sit through the whole movie.
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Even if this film sucks, especially if it sucks, you should all check out the novel Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Instinct was not based on the book but the philisophical aspects of the film were influenced by the novel. It really is an excellent book, but philosophy doesn't always translate well to film, especially when what people really want is action and kick-ass fx. So read the book already. The survival of H. Sapiens may depend on it.
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Ah, yes Anthony Perkins was a good actor wasn't he--but this is Anthony Hopkins. He makes even bad movies good. I'm sorry, but he WAS good as Lector in "Silence of the Lambs." And even in the lesser movies like "The Edge," he made the movie worth seeing. Okay, I'm a nut. But I loved his movies. I sure hope he really was just in a mood when he said he'd retire. He's too great. An idea: A new film version of Cleopatra starring Hopkins as Julius Caesar, Catherine Zeta-Jones as Cleopatra, Brad Pitt--er some dark-haried guy as Marc Antony, and Leonardo Dicaprio with dyed brown hair as Octavius...okay, maybe not the last two, but Hopkins YES! I've gotta stay off that sudafed.
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I saw Instinct last night and agree it's a bad movie. I walked out at 45 minutes; that's how long it took Anthony Hopkins to speak his first words.
The minute I saw Hopkins in a prison, shackled with long flowing white shaggy hair, I said, I've seen this before -- ah hah! Silence of the Lambs & Zorro, where as Don Diego, he was imprisoned damn near his whole life and had the same look.
After he made Instinct, Hopkins proclaimed he was quitting movies, I can see why.
There's no plot, there's no surprise, everybody talks a lotttt.
Cuba Gooding Jr, sorry, like Brad Pitt he's still a supporting actor. In fact he got on my nerves. Skip Instinct. -
Show me the exit! Show me the exit!
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