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LOST SOULS is beaten up...
SPOILER ALERT !!
Hey folks, Harry here with a fairly angry, pissed off review about having to endure LOST SOULS... Now this film has had a problematic release history... originally it was supposed to come out a few weeks after THE SIXTH SENSE, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and STIR OF ECHOES... however this doesn't necessarily mean the film is bad... just that New Line didn't feel like sacrificing the film on the stone like what happened to STIR OF ECHOES, and so they pulled it and have been waiting for the right place and time to release it. The trailers have been interesting... maybe it can be fun. This reviewer didn't care for it, but... ya know... I know people that didn't like the above 3 films... We'll just have to wait and see...
Harry,
I just got back from a screening of the Winona Ryder film, Lost Souls. Some
of the soundtrack sounded temporary and a few scenes may have been rough
cuts, but it seemed like a finished product. I didn't know too much about it
before I saw the film except for the fact that the studio has been holding it
for about a year. Therefore, it is stupefying that the movie can still be
this bad.
It starts out with Ryder and some of her cohorts, including Elias Koteas and
John Hurt, going to a hospital to exorcise a mental patient. We get a brief
flashback of Winona undergoing her own painful exorcism. This brief clip is
about the only character development for Ryder. The exorcism turns sour and
somehow Hurt, playing the priest doing the exorcism, is injured.
Ryder, however, manages to decode the messages that the patient had been
writing. The name of Ben Chaplin's character, which I can't seem to
remember, pops up. (Side note: the best acting in the movie may have been
Ben Chaplin's perfect American accent. How come all the English actors can
mimic an American accent and Kevin Costner can't finish Robin Hood without
sounding like he grew up in Michigan?) Chaplin is a writer who specializes
in books about the criminally insane. Ryder finds him and tries to convince
him that he is going to become the devil. And guess what? He doesn't
believe her! Gasp!
I would write more plot, but it doesn't seem worth it. The movie is supposed
to be a thriller/horror flick and can not pull it off. The peaks and valleys
of a great suspense movie aren't there at all. The movie is bad. The ending
is worse.
HERE COMES THE SPOILER...
Of course there isn't much to spoil. I honestly believe the ending to be one
of the worst I have ever seen. Forget that the too much of the movie was
derivative of other Satan flicks (see: End of Days, Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby
and The Devil's Advocate) but the end was simply horrible. Naturally, it
becomes a race for Ryder and Chaplin to find a way to reverse his
transformation into the Dark Prince. And as the clock strikes to signal the
transformation, he becomes Satan. Or maybe not. We don't know. We think he
might be Satan. And Winona shoots him. And he dies. Satan dies. Satan
dies?! What ever happened to the days when you didn't mess with
Mephistopholes? The last scene is Winona in jail. Some guy comes in and
asks why she shot Chaplin and she says "I meant to kill him." Fade to black.
That's it! BAD! Horrible. Lame. No suspense. Nothing. It is like they
got to a point in the movie and got bored. "Why don't we just stop it here?"
someone said.
Obviously this movie has had problems. I would be very surprised to see this
film released in the near future. Of course, if they couldn't fix it in a
year, chances of them ever fixing it are pretty slim. Did I mention that the
ending sucked?
Word Savage
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+ Expand All
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Does Winona show breast? If so thats all the marketing I need:) I apologise in advance for the previous sexist remark.
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Got to say that I know next to nothing about this film and after the above review, I'm really not that bothered. All I wanted to say is that Ben Chaplin is a great actor, who deserves more recognition than he gets.
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So its not only Arnie who can solve theological crisis with an UZI NOINE MILLIMETAH, yeah shoot the devil, Satan returns but i'm gonna pop a cap in his ass. Jesus is back and this time he's pissed off and packing heat. You there, you wearing a cross, you taking the piss, BLAM, hey Satan, eat lead bitch. what a bunch of crap.
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There are many people who labor under the illusion that character development and the action of the story must be distinct and separate. I've seen many films where the action reveals as much about the characters as any dialogue driven scene does, or any clunky exposition.
Perhaps there was a certain style he wanted, but just didn't get. -
Casey Jones, dude, Casey Jones. If he's in it, then I'm there. Lost Soul, with Casey Jones, is gonna rock. Gurantee : )
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These two actors were two reasons why The Thin Red Line is one of my favorite movies of all time. Koteas should have recevied an nomination for best supporting actor for his briliant performance. However this movie looks like shit.
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Jun 30, 2000 11:45:39 AM CDT
The Only Way I Could Tell Lost Souls, Stigmata and End of Days A
by buzz maverik
...was that Ahnuld was in End of Days, which I didn't see either. I mean, let's face it, Bill Z. Bubb is a lousy actor. He wouldn't even be making movies at all if he didn't own the souls of 99.9% of Hollywood. Okay, I made the last part up. We all know they don't have souls. So he keeps getting into movies using the ol' casting couch.
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I was at the screening last night too but I saw a different ending (there was a line for a screenign after us, so New Line must have been testing out different endings) - and I thought the ending was amazing. The version I saw just ended with Winona blowing away Chaplin. And that's it. Totally ballsy. No big END OF DAYS fire and brimstone. No DEVIL'S ADVOCATE stupidity with the Devil singing Frank Sinatra. But an ending closer to a 1970s horror flick like ROSEMARY'S BABY or THE EXORCIST. It seems like there were some people that were really pissed about the ending because big horns didn't come out of Chaplin's head in some kind of special effects ending. But this film (which does have its problems) is a pretty raw story of two people who are thrown together in the middle of a big satanic event. It's cool that the director (cinematographer Janus Kaminski) goes against expectations and underplays everything istead of hitting us over the head. THis is a movie that assumes the audience is kind of smart... maybe that's why your reviewer didn't like it.
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I was at the same screening as Word Savage and I must say, the review was absolutely correct. The movie was lackluster, and even if it had ended for our screening with Wynona Ryder just shooting Ben Chaplin, it still would have been an awful movie. The movie was only an hour and a half long, but it felt like an eternity. Save your money and more importantly, save your time.
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I saw this SO long ago (could have been last April or May or early June), I remember few details, but I definitely can't argue with the negatives here (but I can argue with the post that says 'it assumes intelligence on the part of the audience'... I got just the opposite, that dumb people have a head start in finding this entertaining...). Bias-wise, I like Ryder a lot, love Kaminski's visuals and was looking forward to seeing what he would do as director (and... the visuals are nice), think Ben Chaplin's a good actor... don't/didn't really go for any in this whole slew of supernatural/devil/exorcist new films (saw and hated End of Days on video, skipped Stigmata entirely...), but a large part of that may be because THIS is the one I saw first. The premise is intriguing (She's got to tell this nice guy that he's going to become the antichrist), but it's poorly handled and... nearly NOTHING works in the film dramatically. Just awful. I don't remember how it ended, to join that discussion, but I remember I was very disappointed all around... I didn't really see a way for them to 'fix' anything, either... short of tearing it up and starting over. Haven't been at all surprised to see it bounce further down the calendar... not surprised to see 'it SUCKS!' reviews now.
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Just in case you wanted to know the exact date they test screened Lost Souls, it was May 6th, 1999 ( Although this was not the first test screening they had). I have it on file over at my site http://www.plur.ch/LHS/MOVIE_REVIEWS.html and it appears to be a slightly different version than the test screening that took place yesterday in Hollywood ( I didn't want to see it again as they test screened the Art of War on that same day in Old Town Pasadena). Either way the version I saw appears to be pretty close to one just reviewed except that the film I saw ended with Rider Shooting Chaplin in the head in a car and that was it, the end of the movie! There was not courtroom scene or scene of Rider locked up in jail for his murder. So that was definitely added at the last minute and I do not think it helped improve the film, which I liked for the most part, or at least I wanted to like it more than I actually did. They are still working on this film though as they have test screened it over 6 times in a two year period at least and have added as well as deleted several scenes in the interim. So maybe they will work things out by the time it comes out this Halloween? As I am not sure when this film is coming out anymore. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to email me, take care!
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wow. was looking forward to this film. well, no, not really.
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so, let me get this right: they made another of these stupid end-of-the-world, satan's coming back movies, but this one has Winona in it and ends with her just slamming the whole overdone genre by just shooting the bad guy and going home already? sounds good enough for me. :) thanks, a winona freak
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Mad Dog has a point. Does Wiona show of those huge gorgeous jugs. If so I'm there with some hankies. If not, I don't give a crap about this movie.
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this genre has been done to death, just like boy bands and the colour orange- are we really this suprised that it sucked so hard? theres nothing new to be done with it, even 6th sense i had figured out RIGHT after i saw the trailer, wasnt too hard. nothing scares us anymore, its foolish to even try it seems.
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