This movie was just too good to say only a few words. I'll write a review soon.

DITTO

Didn't you already write one, Lecter? The one from BOM. It's really good.

You should start submiting more reviews for KJ. :wink:

True that. I need to re-work my BOM review of SAW, that wasn't all too professional, hehe.

Once I get into the mood, I'll have a full review. For now, this was AWESOME! AMAZING! SUPERB! SCARY! Yes, it's a horror movie that is ACTUALLY scary! It had be scared, I swear to God. Not many movies have done that.

Grade: A (possibly A+, a grade achieved by few).

A


A brilliant thriller with a great ending. The performances were decent too.

It's funny, I sat down late last night, ready to write this review. But you know what? I had no idea how to put it in words.

I'll write it next weekend when I go see it on the big screen.

By the way, after giving it some thought, it's definently my #1 movie this year.

You saw it the same way I did. :wink:

If your saying that I watched it ILLEGALLY... your absolutly right. :wink:

My friend got a pirated copy of it from good ol' NY.

Of course! It's always "a friend". Good enough, I'm seeing it on the big screen anyway, maybe a few times. It'll get more than enough of my money.

You caught me X. I bought it. Better yet, I DOWNLOADED IT! WHAT NOW! :wink:

Relax, Zing. I live in Nova Scotia, Canada. I couldn't even buy an illegal copy of it. I can barely buy movies that are SUPPOSED to be on DVD. But, let's not mention this again, because I don't want Jigsaw on my ass. :wink:

hey guys...when you write a review,. will you be sure and put "spoliers" if your review is going to give something away??

I don't think there's anything "spoiled" in what we said.

I know, Im just sayinf for future reference

Aye aye, mon capitaine! I'm very anxious to see what others think of Saw.

I wasn't really able to understand the ridiculous amount of love being handed out to this shoddy, shitty, crappy, cheesy penis-flavoured lollipop of a film. But today, I read a review that echoed my thoughts almost exactly. It restored my faith in mankind! I thought I was going mad! Mad! :x

Here's the review.The reviewer pretty much encapsulates everything I found wrong with the film, and hates it almost as much as I!

Here are some choice quotes from his review:

"One of the two men is played by screenwriter Leigh Wannell and it's a performance so poor that I actually thought that he was acting badly on purpose. I couldn't believe that a movie that could afford reasonable names like Carey Elwes and Danny Glover (both giving possible career low point performances) couldn't get someone who could actually ACT to play one of the main characters. I've seen better emoting on Degrassi Junior High: The Next Generation."

"OK, I don't know for sure that an MTV intern worked on this movie in an editing capacity, but there seems to be no other explanation for why it suddenly and spastically veers into Marilyn Manson video territory time and again. Industrial guitars blare, the camera gets overcranked and starts spinning, people thrash around like they're on the Jacob's Ladder Aerobic program, and you just start laughing. There's no better way to defuse the tension of a scene than by TRLing it to death."

"The script itself is poorly written and creates such an ambiguous villain with the Jigsaw Killer, who cuts jigsaw pieces out of his victims for reasons that are never explained, that while you imagine the writers wanted to open up a franchise, you can't picture being intrigued enough by this guy to want to see a Saw 2."

"The movie just drags through the second act, and is cut with scenes of Danny Glover as A Cop Pushed Over The Edge by the Jigsaw Killer. He thinks that Elwes is the killer, and he has been staking the guy's apartment out since his partner was killed while chasing the fiend (who, by the way, dresses like an evil druid from a Renn Faire ALL THE TIME, it seems. He walks into his secret hideout dressed in a black cape and hood. Danny Glover should have just rounded up the local LARPers for questioning)."

"Saw is one of the worst movies I have had the misfortune to sit through this year."

For the record, here's my brief yet terribly sexy review from long ago, reprinted here for prosperity. And cos I liked it:

SAW - A NOT-SO-BRIEF-OR-SEXY REVIEW!

Prior to seeing Saw, I'd been quite erect over most of the promotional material I'd seen on the web. It looked like it might turn out to be a somewhat solid horror flick. Also, I'd been built up for it even more by my sister who saw it last weekend and loved it. In hindsight, that probably should've been the first red flag. After all, the girl lists K-9, K-911, and Weekend At Bernies among her favourite films... But I still wasn't quite prepared for the disappointing cinematic burp that is Saw.

It's about two blokes in an old, dirty bathroom who quickly discover they're part of a deadly game cooked up by someone called the Jigsaw killer (so called because he takes chunks of skin out of his victims shaped like jigsaw pieces... for some odd reason. Why he does it is never explained - I guess the filmmakers thought it was cool, and, hey, every movie serial killer needs a hook!). They have to play the game, or Cary Elwes' wife and daughter will be killed. While they're in there, Danny Glover potters about in the real world trying to solve the mystery of who the killer is as ineptly as possible.

From the beginning, the film's intentions are clear - it wants to be Seven. Simple as that. There are gritty and gruesome murder scenes lit by focus-beam torch light. The killer's a clever so-and-so and all of his murders seem to have some sort of laboured "point". Moreover, there's a lot of pooh on all the walls, and every location looks very much like a David Fincher wet-dream.

Being a rip-off of a terrific film doesn't actually make Saw bad. In this case the majority of the blame falls on the crappy cast. None more guilty of overwhelming crappiness than Cary Elwes!

Cary, Cary, Cary... You showed so much promise in The Princess Bride all those years ago. I'd always wondered why you weren't a bigger star afterwards. Now I know why. It's because you're awful. You should be on an Australian soap, man, you're that bad. And even then, you'd probably only fluff up the accent and get fired in a week. The other bloke in the room does a passable job of acting confused, scared and annoying. But everyone else is utter POOH! Danny Glover in particular comes close to Elwes-like stinkiness with his tired, gritty detective schtick.

On top of the performances, the film comes riddled with wooden, expository dialogue and bizarre plot twists! For the majority of the film Cary Elwes and his cell-mate just do a lot of talking about their past (which ties together! Not that that has anything to do with why they're there... just a pointless fact the film urges you to notice) which in turn leads into a lot of flashbacks! After the umpteenth flashback within a flashback, however, you'll be confused as to what time frame Danny Glover and the killer are even in towards the end of the film.

In an odd way, this confusion kinda helps, because as it flits from the present to 6 months ago and everywhere in between, you'll be less able to spot the gaping plot holes left behind by the film's preposterous ending - which, make no mistake, is truly imbecilic. It takes you by surprise, yes. And for a moment, it might even seem clever... But then it all unravels and becomes so ridiculous that the bathroom itself might as well have come to life and turned out to be the killer.

Now I may be going a little overboard with the vitriol here... but damn it, I was looking forward to an original horror movie! Or, at the very least, an entertaining one! Instead, it's one Ashley Judd away from being your average (albeit sub-par) formulaic serial killer flick. Thumbs down I say! Or should I say... SAW! No. Probably not.

So, there was my brief and sexy review. Which, in the end, turned out to be neither brief nor sexy...

Well... Here's a brief, sexy version for all you horny and impatient nitpickers:

Saw: two blokes, dirty bathroom, CLITORIS! Jigsaw (why?) killer, wet dream, Cary Elwes, Australian soap-opera, Danny Glover, tired schtick, VAGINA! Trite confusion, overboard vitriol, stupid twist. GIGANTIC BOOBS

I refuse to sit here and say how the reviews don't really take the film seriously, so I'll be blunt. I think Saw is an amazing ride. Some think it's a terrible waste of time. As fucking usual, the people decide. :? And Snrub, do you mind posting your OWN review? If I want other people's reviews from other sites, I'll find them myself. And, can you make it brief and sexy? :wink:

Movie was bad.

Full review later.

KJ

SPOILERS









I saw Saw yesterday, and I loved it. I admit that most of the acting was horrible (At the time when he was crying about his family, Cary Elwes' voice turned into the noble voice he used in the Princess Bride. I cringed at that part), but the ending more than made up for it. Not since the 6th sense have I been so surprised by a movie's ending. I had it mostly figured out, but Wan and Whanell did a great job of misdirecting me. Right when I saw John lying in the hospital bed, I thought he was Jigsaw. Then 10 seconds later, they showed Zepp, and I was fooled, and I completely forgot about John. By the time Zepp said "It's the rules" and was about to shoot the doc, I knew that Zepp was just another victim, but I never came even close to figuring out that John was the "Dead" guy.
You just assume that a guy with a huge scar on his face lying motionless in a pool of blood is dead, and you also assume that the deep voice on the cassettes is not Jigsaw's real voice. I came into the movie expecting to be surprised by a big twist, and I was, so I walked out happy.

As I sat down to right a full review for Saw, I realized that there was little to no point in doing so. I realized that, after ten minutes or so of typing, it was all just going to degenerate into a mess of hyperbole and adjectives. So, I decided to just make this as simple as possible, and do my very best to cut down on the sheer excitement this movie instilled in me. It is, hands down, the best film of the year. It is also, hands down, one of the best films of any year - period. I've never seen a film that was able to keep me absolutely riveted from the opening frame to the final credits - until Saw. I've never seen a film that was able to pay homage to the great horror films of the past (Argento and Black Christmas were clearly two huge influences) and yet still remain 100% original - until Saw. I've never seen a film with an ending that absolutely left me stunned, that I had no chance of ever guessing, that if I guessed what the ending was 1000 times, I would have never gotten it - until Saw. I've never seen a first time writer and a first time director handle a film like this before and completely knock it out of the park - until Saw. I've never seen a film that's truly scary and disturbing yet still retained an interesting and intelligent plot - until Saw. Pretty much, i've never seen a film like Saw, and I don't think I ever will again. Simply amazing.

This pretty much sums up exactly how I felt.

#1 of 2004!

A-freakin'-men to that, makeshift_wings. Some people just won't enjoy the film, but it just reeled me in for the ride, and man did I love it. I truly thought no film was better than Dawn of the Dead and Shaun of the Dead this year, but Saw proved me wrong. All three films are a few of my all-time favorites now. 2004 produced some BAD movies, but still also made some amazing ones.

Some of the worst acting I have ever seen, Slow throughout, Plot with more holes than swiss cheese, and an ending cornyer than The Village, and a blatent attempt to copy se7en.

Everyone seems to love this and I have to say I don't get why.

KJ