Hollow Man

I have been unusually lucky with my SyFy-channel movie watching lately. I had no idea what this movie was really but there was nothing else on last night and I also noticed that it was directed by Paul Verhoeven which have directed quite a few movies that I really liked so I decided to give it a try. As it turned out, this is another movie that is somewhat above the usual standard for movies given on SyFy. It has a rating on 27% on Rotten Tomatoes which is just bullshit. But then, the so called “professional critics” used by the Rotten Tomatoes are dimwits who trash every movie that is not…

It's amazing what you can do... when you don't have to look at yourself in the mirror any more. It was the film that convinced director Paul Verhoeven to leave Hollywood and take a break from film making. His reasoning being that any Hollywood director could have made Hollow Man, a big effects led movie that made a lot of cash at the box office. It's this that is the main problem with the picture, it lacks some of the director's bite and satirical savagery, even the souped up sex (natural or deviant) that often comes with his productions. Yet devoid of expectations of a Verhoeven…

Some pretty impressive effects for the era, and a pretty cool (if not original) core concept, but what's most intriguing about _Hollow Man_ is the hero's journey, or more accurately, the absence of it. The inverse of it. I don't feel like it's fair to even say that it's a villain's journey. Assuredly, by the end of the movie, it is very clear who our villain is, but given that he starts out such a dick anyway, the intriguing thing is not so much that he necessarily changes, but the idea that his character is maybe just "revealed". To become the type of prick he always could have been, if…

Great watch, will watch again, and can definitely recommend. This has a fantastic premise of what happens when humans discover a process to "invisible-lize" and "visible-lize" organic life forms. For a 2000 movie, this has a high production value and probably state of the art computer effects in 2000, and for most of the movie they hold up, though they do struggle at points. I honestly do think that it's an "invisibility" effect, is what helps it hold up. This is a rather tricky premise, it's presented as a scientist turning himself invisible, but it's much closer to a "Twilight Zone"…