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Ebert Reviews 'Silent Hill'
Last week, along with attending an 'epic' debate, Ebert had the time to take in Silent Hill. Did he enjoy it? Not so much. From the article: "Now here's a funny thing. Although I did not understand the story, I would have appreciated a great deal less explanation. All through the movie, characters are pausing in order to offer arcane back-stories and historical perspectives and metaphysical insights and occult orientations. They talk and talk and somehow their words do not light up any synapses in my brain, if my brain has synapses and they're supposed to light up, and if it doesn't and they're not, then they still don't make any sense. Perhaps those who have played the game will understand the movie, and enjoy it. "
Weird.
I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
A friend of mine got some screener passes so I went and saw this last night. I only have one word for the movie: AWFUL!
Let me say first of all that I was never a big fan of the game series. A number of the people I was with were, though, and they were just as dismayed as I was. There were little bits from the game stuck in there, but even those who caught them said they felt like scraps from the dinner table. The storyline vaguely follows the game, but I totally agree with Ebert for once. I even said to my friends afterwards that I felt dumber after having seen that movie.
I guess they must have realized their movie was terrible, because they threw in massive amounts of wanton violence and excessive gore in to try and cover it up. I had to actually turn my face away, something I've never had to do before, to avoid wathing a closeup of someone's face melting over a pyre. After that, it only got worse, and some of the disturbing stuff is definitely not from the game.
-Yoweigh
yeah anyone who uses the word "devalued" in the context of watching a movie, is almost certainly a buffoon.
Jesus said to his disciples: "If you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one" - Luke 22:36
At first I thought Ebert was branching out into video game reviews since /. listed this under "Games". However, the reviewer I rarely agree with anyway doesn't seem to like the movie Silent Hill. Surprise surprise. He's older than my dad. Then again I wouldn't want some G4TV like kiddies reviewing movies for me either (because their game reviews are pitiful and the powers that be think the tv people all have to look so... well you know if you ever watch that channel).
Does God treat us as servants or friends? Check my homepage.
The game plays like a movie, so it should be difficult to screw up. Just as long as they don't overdo it on the dialoge. Just keep my mind on the movie and keep it a phycological thriller like the games, and I'll be happy.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
Heard nothing good about this movie, and now I read bad things about it on /.
Everyone knows Slashdot is never wrong!
Shiny. Let's be bad guys.
I don't hate on the guy for having a different opinion than I'm likely to, but do find it annoying that he judges movies by criteria that the people who will actually want to see them won't have.
On the other hand, he has something of a point. For example, we didn't need to know that midichlorians are responsible for The Force. Sometimes it's easy to cross the line between backstory and stupidity.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Normal people are the ones who say "A walk to remember is SO GOOD!!! Mandy moore is like OMG SO AWESOME i no critix say that the movie sux but its good! turn ur brain off and have fun @ it!"
I'd rather hear movies evaluated by someone who's seen enough of them to judge them well.
A story that makes no sense... The movie represented the game perfectly! Love the series. However, the first game had so many cuts, it was impossible to understand the story until the third game came out.
While there are plenty of critics out there who are a waste of print, Roger Ebert isn't one of them.
He is a serious student of film, he has seen almost everything ever made, and his opinions are well informed with details to back them up.
And yet, he's no stuffy academic either - he can enjoy a guilty pleasure as much as anybody.
Very, very rarely do I wind up disagreeing with him, and even when I do, I can usually see his point.
The man is a rarity: a great critic.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Surprise, surprise... A man who gets most of his reality spoonfed to him through movies lacks the context with which to understand a movie that offers back-stories, historical perspectives, metaphysical insights, and occult orientations.
It's creepy and has 98% less pretentious bullpoo
I watch Ebert pretty much every week because he is intelligent and an insightful reviewer. Yes, his opinions differ from mine quite often, but he does a very good job of explaining why he doesn't like something, and sometimes suggests what type of audience would enjoy the film. He sees so many movies that I appreciate his point of view, even if I don't agree with him.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
I'm surprised. Ebert usually does better than this. Nowhere does he mention the avg fps or hardware configuration of the theater.
I think that most critics are self-important bastards.
I believe you just criticized critics, thereby making yourself a self-important bastard as well.
Ack! Now I'm one too!
But I don't plan on watching Silent Hill to see any subtle nuances of the zombies or whatever and their motivation for kidnapping and eating people. I would watch it if I wanted to watch a cheesy horror movie. Reviewers tend to over-review a movie while ignoring its genre. They review most comedies as if they weren't lowbrow affairs. They want everything to be elegant and well-written with every plot hole covered, when most people just want a laugh/scare.
That said, Ebert does seem to be one of the better reviewers. When the Rundown came out, he said that it was a bad movie, but he also said he enjoyed watching it, despite the fact that the plot made no sense or something along those lines.
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
And his time spent doing that doesn't leave him much time for doing anything else to put in in any sort of context.
OK, lemme get this straight... we have a videogame based movie and anyone expects otherwise?!? Now that is the real story here.
Doom was without a doubt one of the worst videogame movies next to Alone in the Dark... next to well I could go on and on.
Slashdot should be a fairly intelligent bunch, yet most of the 20 comments so far read: "I know it will suck, but I'll be there opening night..." What is wrong with you people? Are your lives that devoid of quality that you actually anticipate going to see garbage and wasting your money?
How's bout this, send the $10-20.00 to me and then sit and think about getting a hobby or interest besides computers/videogames/movies/porn.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
Insert fanboi outrage that a fright-flick with piss-poor acting and character / plot development got a poor review here.
Ebert is great at reviewing from an artistic perspective (although slightly narrow-minded and elitist), but I truly dislike his complete lack of commentary on emotion. Silent hill is intended to be a horror movie. Yes, it was horrible (his opinion... I haven't seen it), but did it scare you? Was it a true horror flick, or as the trend has become in recent years, just a bloody mess, filled with gore, more gore and naked women. I understand that it was a confused mess of plot, filler and characterization, but could you suspend your disbelief?
The corner of a round room
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/silent_hill/review s_users.php
Pretty much if you are a fan of the series you'll enjoy the movie. Anyone totally fresh to the Silent Hill series will be somewhat lost..... so in a way this is a success for game movies in general, and a failure in the same way.
Hands down the best game movie ever made.
I've seen Ebert give reviews that boiled down to, "I went to this movie expecting to see things blow up, and that was exactly what I got. If you're looking for great dialog, don't go, but it delivered what it promised, and I like it."
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
1.5 stars generally counts as "dislike." ;-)
People seem to miss the one of the main advantages of a professional reviewer. To me the real value of a good professional reviewer is they have a consistent measure, the ability to see many more movies than I do, and practice at disseminating their opinions. By following the same reviewers I am able to learn their style, their likes and dislikes, and their ability to provide a synopsis of the film. I never see a movie because it is a critics pick, I frequently see a movie because of a critics description which I then can use in my gauge of whether or not I would like that movie.
Actually, you're a meta-meta-critic! :D
I dunno man, you seem kind of angry. Is everything ok at home?
I take movie reviews as restaraunt reviews. A greasy spoon will never break 2 stars, but you can still get a decent meal and a real cup of coffee there.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
Screw the movie and get the second game in the series. Play it. Trust me, you will be impressed. Silent Hill 2 has the single greatest moment in the history of gaming ever. It happens in the apartment where you pick up the flashlight and no movie could ever replicate it. I won't spoil it for you, but if you understand its meaning it will send cold shivers down your spine. Brilliant.
Hack your mind out of its sandbox.
Ebert's review was glowing compared to what I'd say. The movie really really sucked. The audience I saw it with consistently laughed at the film's ineptitude. Overdramatic acting, broken dialogue, and even camera direction managed to get unintended chuckles. CGI sets were abundant and generally obvious. The special effects CGI was decent, though it wasn't well integrated into the action - any time there was a big CGI scene it was like a cutscene in a game where the action stopped and we waited for the pretty effects to finish. The attempts to integrate gameplay elements were phenomenally bad - there was literally a jumping puzzle and a rope swinging puzzle, neither of which added to suspense or plot (and which also evoked laughter from the audience).
And continuity: Why is there an offramp to a highway that ends at a big gate? Why does the father character's accent change from British to midwestern every few minutes? Why does the cop pull over the mother? Why does the mother accelerate away from the cop who just pulled her over? Why do cell phones sort-of work as a communications medium between reality and the land of the undead? Why didn't the falling elevator cause serious injury to its occupant when it landed? What motivated any of the characters to do any of the stupid things they did?
Really, Ebert was nice. The movie is really bad.
- Normal People
If the article summary suggests that the film is bad, chances are the film doesn't even exist. So when you see something like that, you know that you have to read the article, just to find out what the /. editor is trying to say. If a headline reads, "OMG STAR WARS VIII SUXS LOL" you know for sure that article is probably about a new brand of laundry detergent.
In this case, of course, there is such a film as Silent Hill. My first reaction on reading Ebert's review was something like, "What? A video game movie that sucks? Say it ain't so!" Ebert's got a pretty good head on his shoulders, and has been known to give good reviews to films that other critics have panned for being too genre-specific, too predictable, or whatever. So given the industry's record with video game movies in the past and Ebert's sound criticism, I think it's fair to say that the movie Silent Hill probably will suck. Though it will probably look pretty.
"A statesman is a dead politician. Lord knows we need more statesmen." Opus
...why video games have never made great movies. I think a big problem is that most game movies require that you've played the game to understand the movie. This doesn't make any sense, since the game stood on its own and didn't require any back story. Even sequals to video games are meant to stand on their own. I'm playing Metal Gear Solid 3 right now, never having played an MGS title in my life, and I'm loving it. But even the most obvious choices of games for the big screen fail in their ability to be self-contained.
The bottom line is that these are all cash cow titles. Noone makes a video game movie because they want to make great cinema or great art, they think that having an established fanbase will make the movie a sure success. Strangely, they're usually wrong, because catering to a small fanbase almost always means alienating everyone else, and that "everyone else" is most movie goers. The budgets for these films are too big to rely soully on small, pre-established fanbases. Serenity demonstrated that quite well, for the most part fans enjoyed it (I was a bit lukewarm to it, myself, however), but it didn't stand on its own, and was a total boxoffice flop.
I'm not convinced that movies made from video games can't be good, it's really no different from making a movie from a comicbook series, and that has become surprisingly refined as of late: two great Batman movies, two wonderful X-Men films, arguably a good Spiderman movie, and everyone seems to be raiving about V... it seems that comic book movies are on the rise and becoming more and more sophisticated, in their own rite. But when I saw Batman Begins, I didn't have to know anything about the history of the Batman franchise, and I didn't. I came out feeling like I'd just seen a great action movie, one of the best... and the fact that it was from a comic book was fairly irrelivant, and even pretty moot.
Maybe the percieved proximity of cinema to games tends to cause some laziness on the part of the writers and directors. Since modern video games are so cinematic in nature, directors make the mistake of simply directing the movie like the game was directed, which is a big mistake, since when it comes to pacing and lack of interactivity, the differences between even the most cinematic games and films are still quite different. Novels and graphic novels, on the other hand, are far enough removed that the flow of the narrative has to be completely recreated. And, as we've seen time and time again, a good adeptation is possible: anything from Brokeback Mountain to Sin City (though I, personally, was repulsed by the latter, I can't deny it's success for accomplishing what it set out to do). A good adeptation of a video game is possible, but it hasn't been demonstrated yet. And it has nothing to do with the cinematic nature of the original game. Silent Hill is one of the most "cinematic" games out there, and it seems that the movie has not lived up to expectation. The Metal Gear Solid series could be said to make a great movie... hell it's basically done by a film crew already, but I have no doubt that it could be ruined if not done in the right hands. The bottom line is, MGS has no better chance of making a great movie than Tetris; under the right guidence, practically any idea can be done thoughtfully.
I just hope to god John Woo doesn't follow through with doing a Metroid movie... he hasn't made a good film in years (if ever). The lack of dialog in the series would make it VERY hard to make a good movie, but if done right, with a really unique sense of artistic vision, could be amazing... and John Woo hasn't really proven himself to be much of a visionary.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
I bet if you made anything that sold 50,000 copies, or had 50,000 attendees, you'd be very proud of yourself. Maybe that can be considered a failure as a mass-market movie, but I think a lot of independent film-makers would be happy to get that kind of audience.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Actually, Ebert himself has said he dislikes his own stars system. When reviewing Basic Instinct 2, he gave it only one and a half stars, but said he still enjoyed the movie.
Here are the rotten tomatoes user reviews.
w s_users.php
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/silent_hill/revie
Just wait until the server goes back up, apparently it's been heavily accessed.
OK I read some of the critics reviews, And it seems to be safe. The movie DOESN'T SUCK (at least not so bad), some of the critics actually liked it
by Jeff Otto. 2.5 / 5
by Kit Bowen. 0 / 4
by Edward Douglas. 7 / 10.
by Moriarty. Doesn't give a rating, but he loved it.
by Mike Sage, Peterborough This Week. 4.5 / 5.
by Kevin Carr (2.5/5)
by Sean Means, Salt Lake Tribune (1.5/5)
by Brian Orndorf, EFILMCRITIC.COM (rotten, D)
by Peter Hartlaub, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE. (Didn't like it at all)
by Peter Howell, TORONTO STAR ("The dumbest")
After reading the various reviews (I didn't watch it - yet), It seems Silent Hill has some flaws:
a) The action part is slow and repetitive (Well, that's what you get in the game, duh). Perhaps having shorter and less running away sequences would have worked.
b) Some of the acting and dialogue is bad (altho not always, the critics who gave it a positive review forgive this point)
c) The plot is too confusing, and these parts are VERY LONG. Most of the critics would have enjoyed having less confusing plot parts. It seems Gans tried to explain the whole concept of Silent Hill, and ended up spoiling it.
But Some of the negative reviewers gave it a 2.5/5 (that means in my lingo: "Not that bad", or "good enough for a fan".
However, there's one point that ALMOST ALL reviewers give to Silent Hill: It's visually astounding. In other words, if you enjoyed Star Wars: Episode 1 despites the horrible story, you'll LOVE Silent Hill.
I particularly liked Moriarty's review, because he's NOT a gamer, and did NOT play the game. However, he might be biased because he's a fan of the horror gender. But hey, maybe that's representative of the intended audience!
I strongly disagree with this. Having followed his writing for a while now, I think he has a real passion for cinema, as well as an impressive store of knowledge about film. If you're looking for some really exciting and challenging moviegoing experiences, flip through his list of Great Movies, available on his website. Of course, his opinion is of no more importance than anyone else's, EXCEPT for the credibility he gains from this vast store of movie knowledge, and his generally entertaining and funny writing style.
I don't know, this movie may be bad, but its apparent that ebert just hates games, and I'm going to take any review by him with a grain of salt.
look at these two blurbs:
"They talk and talk and somehow their words do not light up any synapses in my brain, if my brain has synapses and they're supposed to light up"
"At first, when they were figuring out the games," he said, "the whole brain lit up. But by the time they knew how to play the games, the brain went dark, except for one little point." Walking out after "Silent Hill," I thought of that lonely pilot light, and I understood why I failed to understand the movie. My damn brain lit up too much.
he contradicts himself there. I believe he went into this movie fully expecting it to be awful. he probably made his opinion before he went to see it. I don't trust him.
Or at least not many. I was listening to the radio (that's like television without pictures) today, and they had their weekly talk with a local movie critic. He said they weren't giving screenings to critics, and that was a baaaad sign. Folks, this is going to be a bad movie. Maybe not Highlander II bad, but still bad. Wait for it to come out on DVD, wait for a friend rent it, then ask to borrow it for a night.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Let me say first: If you are not a fan of the game DON'T GO SEE THIS MOVIE, you probably won't enjoy it.
I for one love the original 2 games. (#3 and 4 not as much) I will never forget sitting down to play the first one late and night and being terrified. Never before did a game provide that level of horror and suspense.
The movie is true to the game genre, and for that I loved it. It is loosely centered around ideas and themes from the first game so if that was your favorite (as is mine) you should enjoy it.
1) Dialogue is similar to the games: Not A+, but this was originally a Japanese game and I imagine there is a small amount of "All-your-baseness" that someone ignorant to the games might take as just poorly written character dialogue.
2) There are a lot of pyscological themes in the movie, just as the game. If you look at it more then a slasher film you will walk away with more
3) YES there is violence and a lot of disturbing imagery. What do you expect? Again, did you play any of the games?? The games include murder, blood, violence, rape, strange religous imagery, etc. Expect the same in the film
4) If you walk away confused at the end then good, again the movie succeeds in keeping true to the series. Please, anyone who has played this series before tell me you weren't scratching your end when you completed the game. (It will be amusing to see if the DVD contains alternate endings similar to each game)
Is this movie going to get rave reviews? No, becuase most people out there won't appriciate it for what it is. Is it the best "video game movie" I have seen. By a long shot.
was mario brothers.
seriously.
The movie was pretty damn cool, and, if you aren't a mental invalid atleast, has a pretty good storyline. The ending was pretty bad but it just leaves us waiting for Silent Hill 2.
Went and saw Silent Hill last night. I understand why Ebert couldn't communicate with his brain now. The movie is pretty well done. It's Silent Hills phycho-thriller aura through and through. Pretty true to the game. Not much (but still present) fanboyism. Pyramid head is back from number 2, but the storyline is from the original game. Either way, they did a great job capturing the feel of the game. Combat was avoided for the most part (no superheroes here) except where it makes sense (a cop kicks some ass for about 30 seconds). Your heart is given breaths of life from the main story once in a while by showing clips of Rose's husband looking for her.
The Silent Hill series is steeped in symbolism of the past. Everything in every game is a representation of hate, malice, repression and feeling. Ebert's brain didn't stand a chance.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
If the idea was to scare the holy watoozey out of the audience, it did that and then some. Even after having seen the previews, nothing beats seeing those ash ghosts walking up on the main character from behind for the first time. Where The Ring hinted at stuff, Silent Hill brought it to your face, head-on, and without apology.
Sorry, I gotta post anonymously, because of all the I-hate-game-movies-no-matter-what trolls hanging around with too many mod points to spend and a grudge to guide 'em.
Hey look a double post and a review score that is at least 5 days old! Way to keep up to date Slashdot!!!!