DVD Talk Forum - DVD Talk review of 'Returner'

I read John Wallis's DVD review of Returner at http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=9357 and...

why do I get the feeling this was written in about 5 minutes? I've never seen so many mistakes in a review before. The first time I read it I spotted more than half a dozen errors, both grammatical and spelling. I made these kinds of mistakes when I was writing high school essays at 3am that were due at 10am.

Missed closing parenthesis, misspellings, improper use of commas and dashes... It's bad enough that I don't really agree with your review, but even if I did, how could I take it seriously? Style is one thing, I understand that, but iffy writing is iffy writing. The ideas are there, I know, but I found myself spotting the mistakes more than anything else.

It's not THAT hard to edit, is it? I mean, 'enteritinag'? Come on...

(Small spoilers peppered through the rest of this ugly rant, so you are now warned.)

By the way, even the story has a mistake in it. Mizoguchi doesn't have the criminal empire, he only works for the Chinese dude that runs everything. When Mizoguchi realizes the power he could have, he decides to take over.

On the disagreements with the ideas in the review: the movie plays it straight but it knows where it comes from. With so many references, you can't believe that they're simply rip-offs. In fact, the director readily points out the 'Poltergeist' reference in the commentary on the Japanese DVD. I'm sure he points out more, but I haven't listened to all of the track yet.

Hollywood's done that also. To me, 'Eight-Legged Freaks' played it straight and I still knew director/writer Ellory Elkayem knew where he was coming from. I knew the movie wasn't just one big rip-off. I really enjoyed that movie, by the way.

As for the character thing at the end, that's just a personal preference so I can't say anything about that. I will say that the ending does have a point. You can at least appreciate that.

I mean, these two stars never kiss (which, by the way, may have been because of the fact that Ann Suzuki was, like, 14 when she made the flick, but even had she been north of 18 I don't think any smooching would have happened). This movie does follow some Hollywood conventions, but one of the reasons I like it is because it actually didn't finish right after the climax and the stars never took themselves too seriously, which happens far too often in Hollywood (Matrix anyone?). In any case, the direction never gets heavy-handed or sappy (which might be debatable, but just take a look at Matrix: Revolutions as a comparison and you'll see my point).

After all that, I know the mark is still 'Recommended'. I just think I should point those things out. For a website as respectable as DVDTalk, I'm surprised something with simple mistakes made it through.