Customer Reviews:
Eye candy.......2007-12-27
The quality of the CGI animation in the film, particularly in the animals' fur, is wonderful. The film has some great lines in it too. A nice, fun plot and strong characters round out the experience. Worth seeing.
A wholesome, funny family film.......2007-07-11
'The Wild' is basically a father-son story about the relationship between Samson the lion and his son, Ryan, residents of the New York Zoo. Samson is forever regaling his son with stories of his days in the wild, and Ryan feels inadequate growing up in his father's shadow. What he doesn't know is that his father's stories are just that - Samson too was born in captivity and has never been to the wild.
When Ryan decides to go to the wild himself, inside one of the green boxes that the animals have heard take you there, Samson mounts a rescue mission together with his friends Benny the squirrel, Larry the anaconda, Bridget the giraffe and Nigel the koala. On their eventual arrival in Africa, however, they must contend with a deranged herd of wildebeest who are determined to ascend to the top of the food chain by eating a lion, and Samson is forced to admit his stories of his exploits in the wild were fictional.
Father and son are finally reunited, and are able to reconnect and start to build a new and deeper relationship with each other.
Though 'The Wild' has obvious similarities to the Dreamworks film 'Madagascar', in that both feature New York Zoo animals who escape and travel to the wild, there are some important differences. For one thing, the animation of 'The Wild' is vastly superior to that of 'Madagascar' - both the appearance and movement of the characters is excellent. For another, where 'Madagascar' is a non-stop comedy romp with no real substance, 'The Wild' has a much more meaningful plot, with the emphasis on family, honesty and being true to yourself. This is not to say, however, that 'The Wild' is not humorous - it has many hilarious moments, with Nigel the koala (voiced by Eddie Izzard) stealing the show.
In all, a delightful film for children and animal-loving adults alike.
[3.5]--The Wild was giving so little time for an unoriginal premise., .......2007-07-04
I wanted to see this movie since the day it came out but lost the chance like some others. I wanted to see it for Eddie Izzard and for the fact that Madagascar stole their idea and got their film out first. How is this film going to be any different from Madagascar? Disney and Dream Works are in direct competition. The Wild was in production for quite sometime due to the fallout of Pixar and the discovery of a new animation team to finish the film. It just so happens that Madagascar was rushed and released before The Wild, making Disney look like the bad guy. That being said I have to be honest and say the two are similar..... By premise only. Both films obviously contain a group of animals escaping the New York Zoo to go to the wild. That alone leaves plenty of room for creativity and The Wild accomplishes just that. Some feel that this film should have gone straight to DVD because it was aimed at 5 year olds which isn't a bad thing but definitely not for the theater crowd and probably for the kid's parents.
I have to admit that the story was a bit crazy and aloof at times but I got quickly over it. I enjoyed this film from beginning to end with my kids. Its quite good, full of jokes, has an amazing attention to detail and visually stunning. I actually found myself laughing at some parts of this film. Plus the movie includes morals and lessons to be learned for the kiddies. I did however LOVE Eddie's performance as Nigel. That really was one of the only redeeming qualities of this movie.
The Wild didn't FEEL like a typical Disney movie, kind of like 'Home on the Range'. It's like Disney is trying to jump into the Shrek/Ice Age market. The problem is that I don't want that from Disney. They should seriously reconsider on sticking to the Lion King and Little Mermaid animation because that's what they do best. There's is nothing wrong on going back to your own roots and I believe a lot of parents would agree with me when I say that they should head back to "Classic Disney."
Many are probably are reluctant to see this film given the timing. But I urge you to give The Wild a chance and you just might be surprised.
Good Kids film.......2007-04-07
Well I saw this for the first time yesterday and really enjoyed it, i must admit i thought it might be the same old disney tuff but was pleasantly surprised it had good characters in it good story line and made and me and my hubby laugh a lot of the time.
Where watching it is concerned watch it yourself and make your own decisions i think you may be surprised.
i am definately getting for our collection.
worst disney film i have ever seen.......2007-02-20
I watched this film with my four year old son who loves Disney films about animals but this was rubbish both him and me got bored after about 30mins as we did not find anything funny or interesting about the film at all. The whole film seemed to be an attempt by Disney to copy Madagascar which is a good film but they totally failed and should not of tried.I was glad that i had rented it as it was a complete waste of time and money and i did not loose much.
Amazon.co.uk
Well-made for the genre -- the excessive-skin-displayed-before-gruesome-bloody-torture-begins genre -- Hostel follows two randy Americans (Jay Hernandez, Friday Night Lights, and Derek Richardson, Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd) and an even randier Icelander (Eythor Gudjonsson) as they trek to Slovakia, where they're told beautiful girls will have sex with anyone with an American accent. Unfortunately, the girls will also sell young Americans to a company that offers victims to anyone who will pay to torture and murder. To his credit, writer/director Eli Roth (Cabin Fever) takes his time setting things up, laying a realistic foundation that makes the inevitable spilling of much blood all the more gruesome. The sardonic joke, of course, is that Americans are worth the most in this brothel of blood because everyone else in the world wants to take revenge upon them. This dark humor and political subtext help set Hostel above its more brainless sadistic compatriots, like House of Wax or The Devil's Rejects. In general, though, there's something lacking; horror used to suggest some threat to the spirit--today's horror can conceive of nothing more troubling than torturing the flesh. For afficionados, Hostel features a nice cameo by Takashi Miike, director of bloody Japanese flicks like Audition and Ichi the Killer. --Bret Fetzer
Customer Reviews:
Mostly boring........2008-03-03
After all the hype over 'Hostel' beiing the "goriest, sickest movie you will ever see", I was looking forward to seeing this film. How disappointed I was! The first 50 minutes really tried my patience as I found it just a lot of messing about but then after that it picked up a bit, but not much. I recently watched a film that's been slated called 'Live Feed' and it was far more captivating from the outset, despite being a bit cheesy and retro for 2006. I just found 'Hostel' extremely over-hyped and have seen a lot worse. The 'Saw' quadrilogy was a lot better as far as voyeuristic torture films go. 'Hostel 2', funnily, was far more watchable and with more memorable scenes.
Movies like this turn people away from the horror genre.......2008-02-03
I have heard that this movie was bad, but I could not convince myself that this could be true given the fact that the name of Tarantino was associated with it. Well, now I believe it! I have a hard time thinking of a way in which someone could create a worse movie and it is certainly not easy. The plot is...wait, what plot? Not to mention that the acting is decidedly poor. I can almost imagine the conversation among the creators:
Creator #1: Don't you think we should do something about these actors? They are kind of bad.
Creator #2: Don't worry; we can add a lot of bloody scenes.
Creator #1: Are you sure that will be enough?
Creator #2: Yes. Just to be safe we should make it repulsive, we need to compensate for the lack of plot. I know! We should use a chainsaw. I heard that worked before.
Creator #1: Maybe you are right. Don't you think that the lack of plot is a big problem though?
Creator#2: Bah, we have several cute girls that don't mind being nude. People won't even notice if the plot is good or not.
I hope that by this point you get the idea. Stay as far away from this poor excuse of a movie as you can.
So sick we couldn't watch..........2008-02-02
This was so sick that we couldn't watch it. I guess you have to be really 'into' this type of thing - a bit like the torturer who is 'into' his victims.
A Chilling Masterpiece of Horror.......2008-01-31
With all the rubbish horrors as of late Saw,Saw 2,erm saw 3 oh yea and erm Saw 4.Theres been nothing to stand out but however Hostel does its creepingly brilliant lots of gore and bone crunching if you hate Ankle torture then this film is not for you if your fav films are.
Bambi
Barbie and the Nutcracker
The little Mermaid
Oh jesus please keep away from it.
Not a masterpiece by any stretch, but nonetheless, an inventive and original idea........2008-01-30
The central concept of Hostel (2005) is a familiar one, with the stranger in a strange-land motif having been used in a number of great, similarly-minded horror films of the last thirty-years, most notably in John Landis's classic black comedy, An American Werewolf in London (1981), and again, more recently, in films such as Wolf Creek (2005) and Them (2006), The concept is one that lends itself to ideas of paranoia, unease, uncertainty and helplessness, as we realise that there is no one to turn to and no one to trust.
The film isn't entirely successful, with the usual drawbacks of director Eli Roth's particular style resulting in the usual attempts at crude frat-boy type humour, wanton aggression, vicious violence, and knowing nods towards sexism, misogyny and perhaps even xenophobia; all getting in the way of the more important factors like tension, terror and real, believable characters. Like his mentor Quentin Tarantino, you get the sense that Roth has clearly seen a lot of films and can borrow, reference and pastiche with the best of them, but unlike Tarantino, you also get the sense that he doesn't really love films, but rather, is in awe of the violence that they present to him. His first film, Cabin Fever (2003) attempted to revive the splatter film genre with a combination of Romero's zombie horror and Raimi's kids in a cabin theatrics, with knowing references to films such as Sleepaway Camp, Dawn of the Dead, The Crazies, Deliverance, Sothern Comfort, Evil Dead and The Last House on the Left. Sadly, for all the clever references, buckets of gore and sporadic bursts of T&A, the film was completely devoid of all sense of character or empathy; giving us a film that failed to create any kind of emotional resonance with the audience or anything that made an impression after the final credits had rolled.
However, Roth has certainly rectified some of these problems with Hostel; which overcomes the complete lack of anything approaching real character and his shallow attempts to pay lip service to more talented filmmakers, such as Tarantino and Takashi Miike (who's work Roth seems to completely misinterpret on almost every level), by at least having an interesting concept, an air of dramatic mystery and some truly imaginative death sequences. The most successful scenes are obviously those closer to the end of the film, in which we have an attempt to escape; resulting in a pretty fraught chase sequence, and finally we actually start to feel something for the characters. Some would say that it's too little too late, but I feel it ends the film on a high note and proves that Roth just might be able to reign in his more adolescent tendencies to one day produce a truly great film.
Another thing I liked about it was the scenes that hinted at a central mystery or conspiracy, in particular when two of the central characters search the small Eastern European village for their missing friend; which for me, conjured images of Dario Argento's early works such as The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), The Cat O' Nine Tails (1971) and Deep Red (1975), as well as that kind of uncertain, mysterious, slightly menacing atmosphere from Nicholas Roeg's Don't Look Now (1973). It also goes back to the idea presented in the aforementioned An American Werewolf in London, and its less successful Parisian set sequel (1997), with the travelling companions straying off the beaten track and being punished for it; again, bringing to mind films like Deliverance and Sothern Comfort as well.
I suppose you could argue that some of Roth's more immature touches make it impossible to feel anything for these characters, mostly as a result of them being somewhat under-written and underdeveloped. It's never quite as bad as Hostel Part II (2007), which is really about nothing, other than upping the ante on gratuitous gore; with the deaths and the suffering of that particular film used only as a means of titillating the blood lust of teenage boys. Not that I have anything against violence in cinema you understand, but certainly the old adage that a little goes a long way is undoubtedly true. For me, the most memorable scenes of violence are the ones that hold the most dramatic weight; the ones that feel real and very much believable, where we can feel for the characters in that situation and apply our own various psychological fears and anxieties alongside it; something that Hostel manages to pull off with those frantic final moments.
Admittedly, there is plenty here that audiences might find disgusting, or maybe even offensive, but there is also a decent story that manages to pull you in, despite the overall lack of style and the childishness of some of Roth's lurid scenarios. Unlike its shallow, unimaginative sequel, Hostel offers more than mindless entertainment for a post-pub Friday night in, with some genuinely inventive moments of violence and that great 20 minutes towards the end, which points the way forward to the kind of high tension Roth should be going for. Not a masterpiece by any stretch, but regardless, an inventive and original idea that holds our attention for the duration of the film.
Customer Reviews:
A "must buy" film.......2007-07-01
Flicka is a great family film. It's about wild mustangs and a girl who tries to tame one. It really is a must buy film, I got alot of pleasure out of watching it.
Best Horse Film Yet ******.......2007-02-10
Hi,
I have followed Flicka from when it was bring film. I was soo excited to read that it was being made - finally a new horse film!.
So when the release date came in sept i was over the moon - no more watching Tim McGraw music video! but sadly it never reached Cinema's near me so here i have been, waiting the DVD release until today!!!!!
I don't think I have ever been so excited to get a DVD and sat down and watch the entire thing!.
After watching I have to say I was really disappointed , why - mostly because I work with horses everyday and just kept thing " why is she doing that , why doesn't she do this.." etc but second time viewing I LOVE THIS FILM!!!.
I guess I had such high expectations it just seemed abit childish the 1st time around ( like all horse movies) but after re-watching I think its really good , some really good scenes . It really is a tear jerker and the cast are really good.
I think 3 amazing scenes are them *SPOILERS** capuring Flicka , Selling Flicka and The lion scene - that broke my heart!.
I don't get why this film has been so slamed , every film has its downsides sure but overall i think this film is amazing!!!
Two days later after seeing the film am still thinking about it ... and longing to live on a Ranch , ahh if only i was an american!
Do watch this film , you won't regret it! x
Just shoot me.......2007-01-06
The fact that two horses reportedly died during the making of FLICKA is an irrelevance. This film is otherwise so juvenle that only an adolescent female and her horse could love it - i.e., 5 star "family entertainment". For the adult world, which I like to think includes myself, it may be one of the more forgettable films of 2006 - 2 stars.
Katy McLaughlin (Alison Lohman) attends a pricey, boarding prep school in Wyoming. Returning home at the scholastic term's end, she must figure out how to tell her parents, horse ranchers in deep hock because of the tuition and hard business times, that her performance on a final essay was so dismal that she's being academically held back a year. Her Mom and older brother, Nell (Maria Bello) and Howard (Ryan Kwanten) respectively, are sympathetic. Her Dad, Rob (Tim McGraw), is angry and disgusted.
Her first morning back on the spread, Katy goes horseback riding and is thrown from her mount by a cougar, which is subsequently scared off by a lone mustang. Being rescued by the animal ensures Katy's love for it, and she gallops forth again the next day to rope the horse and make it her own. She only succeeds in driving the mustang into one of her father's domestic herds, stampeding the latter. After the dust dies down, the mustang is captured and brought back to a prison corral up by the Big House. Rob wants to sell the beast to a rodeo; Katy names her Flicka and wants to keep and train it. Considering Katy's low standing with Ol' Dad at the moment, the subsequent conflict between father and daughter is, well, as strident as you can imagine.
The best part of FLICKA is the gorgeous Wyoming scenery, though, with the tell-tale oak trees, the set looks suspiciously at times like coastal California. Indeed the big time rodeo ostensibly set at the Wyoming State Fair more resembles an event staged for the camera in Simi Valley just north of Los Angeles. The storyline was otherwise oh so predictable: the mortal perils encountered by Katy and her hoss, Katy's "I'll show you" rebellion against Rob's hard-headedness, Nell's "good-guy" approach to parenting contrasting Rob's "bad-guy" routine, and the caught-in-the-middle positions forced upon Howard and the two ranch hands. At one point, when Katy is sick and Flicka grievously injured, the former gives Rob permission to shoot them both. My thought was, "Oh, please, pull the trigger and put me out of my misery."
20th Century Fox was excoriated by animal lovers for the deaths of the two horses during production, and the resultant bad press undoubtedly had its PR department spinning into overtime. The ironic thing is, if the studio vows to never again to do another schmaltzy pony epic, it'll be because of the bad PR experience, not because the script was too silly to begin with and shouldn't even have escaped from whatever production meeting approves such things.
Amazon.co.uk
Well-made for the genre -- the excessive-skin-displayed-before-gruesome-bloody-torture-begins genre -- Hostel follows two randy Americans (Jay Hernandez, Friday Night Lights, and Derek Richardson, Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd) and an even randier Icelander (Eythor Gudjonsson) as they trek to Slovakia, where they're told beautiful girls will have sex with anyone with an American accent. Unfortunately, the girls will also sell young Americans to a company that offers victims to anyone who will pay to torture and murder. To his credit, writer/director Eli Roth (Cabin Fever) takes his time setting things up, laying a realistic foundation that makes the inevitable spilling of much blood all the more gruesome. The sardonic joke, of course, is that Americans are worth the most in this brothel of blood because everyone else in the world wants to take revenge upon them. This dark humor and political subtext help set Hostel above its more brainless sadistic compatriots, like House of Wax or The Devil's Rejects. In general, though, there's something lacking; horror used to suggest some threat to the spirit--today's horror can conceive of nothing more troubling than torturing the flesh. For afficionados, Hostel features a nice cameo by Takashi Miike, director of bloody Japanese flicks like Audition and Ichi the Killer. --Bret Fetzer
Customer Reviews:
Mostly boring........2008-03-03
After all the hype over 'Hostel' beiing the "goriest, sickest movie you will ever see", I was looking forward to seeing this film. How disappointed I was! The first 50 minutes really tried my patience as I found it just a lot of messing about but then after that it picked up a bit, but not much. I recently watched a film that's been slated called 'Live Feed' and it was far more captivating from the outset, despite being a bit cheesy and retro for 2006. I just found 'Hostel' extremely over-hyped and have seen a lot worse. The 'Saw' quadrilogy was a lot better as far as voyeuristic torture films go. 'Hostel 2', funnily, was far more watchable and with more memorable scenes.
Movies like this turn people away from the horror genre.......2008-02-03
I have heard that this movie was bad, but I could not convince myself that this could be true given the fact that the name of Tarantino was associated with it. Well, now I believe it! I have a hard time thinking of a way in which someone could create a worse movie and it is certainly not easy. The plot is...wait, what plot? Not to mention that the acting is decidedly poor. I can almost imagine the conversation among the creators:
Creator #1: Don't you think we should do something about these actors? They are kind of bad.
Creator #2: Don't worry; we can add a lot of bloody scenes.
Creator #1: Are you sure that will be enough?
Creator #2: Yes. Just to be safe we should make it repulsive, we need to compensate for the lack of plot. I know! We should use a chainsaw. I heard that worked before.
Creator #1: Maybe you are right. Don't you think that the lack of plot is a big problem though?
Creator#2: Bah, we have several cute girls that don't mind being nude. People won't even notice if the plot is good or not.
I hope that by this point you get the idea. Stay as far away from this poor excuse of a movie as you can.
So sick we couldn't watch..........2008-02-02
This was so sick that we couldn't watch it. I guess you have to be really 'into' this type of thing - a bit like the torturer who is 'into' his victims.
A Chilling Masterpiece of Horror.......2008-01-31
With all the rubbish horrors as of late Saw,Saw 2,erm saw 3 oh yea and erm Saw 4.Theres been nothing to stand out but however Hostel does its creepingly brilliant lots of gore and bone crunching if you hate Ankle torture then this film is not for you if your fav films are.
Bambi
Barbie and the Nutcracker
The little Mermaid
Oh jesus please keep away from it.
Not a masterpiece by any stretch, but nonetheless, an inventive and original idea........2008-01-30
The central concept of Hostel (2005) is a familiar one, with the stranger in a strange-land motif having been used in a number of great, similarly-minded horror films of the last thirty-years, most notably in John Landis's classic black comedy, An American Werewolf in London (1981), and again, more recently, in films such as Wolf Creek (2005) and Them (2006), The concept is one that lends itself to ideas of paranoia, unease, uncertainty and helplessness, as we realise that there is no one to turn to and no one to trust.
The film isn't entirely successful, with the usual drawbacks of director Eli Roth's particular style resulting in the usual attempts at crude frat-boy type humour, wanton aggression, vicious violence, and knowing nods towards sexism, misogyny and perhaps even xenophobia; all getting in the way of the more important factors like tension, terror and real, believable characters. Like his mentor Quentin Tarantino, you get the sense that Roth has clearly seen a lot of films and can borrow, reference and pastiche with the best of them, but unlike Tarantino, you also get the sense that he doesn't really love films, but rather, is in awe of the violence that they present to him. His first film, Cabin Fever (2003) attempted to revive the splatter film genre with a combination of Romero's zombie horror and Raimi's kids in a cabin theatrics, with knowing references to films such as Sleepaway Camp, Dawn of the Dead, The Crazies, Deliverance, Sothern Comfort, Evil Dead and The Last House on the Left. Sadly, for all the clever references, buckets of gore and sporadic bursts of T&A, the film was completely devoid of all sense of character or empathy; giving us a film that failed to create any kind of emotional resonance with the audience or anything that made an impression after the final credits had rolled.
However, Roth has certainly rectified some of these problems with Hostel; which overcomes the complete lack of anything approaching real character and his shallow attempts to pay lip service to more talented filmmakers, such as Tarantino and Takashi Miike (who's work Roth seems to completely misinterpret on almost every level), by at least having an interesting concept, an air of dramatic mystery and some truly imaginative death sequences. The most successful scenes are obviously those closer to the end of the film, in which we have an attempt to escape; resulting in a pretty fraught chase sequence, and finally we actually start to feel something for the characters. Some would say that it's too little too late, but I feel it ends the film on a high note and proves that Roth just might be able to reign in his more adolescent tendencies to one day produce a truly great film.
Another thing I liked about it was the scenes that hinted at a central mystery or conspiracy, in particular when two of the central characters search the small Eastern European village for their missing friend; which for me, conjured images of Dario Argento's early works such as The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), The Cat O' Nine Tails (1971) and Deep Red (1975), as well as that kind of uncertain, mysterious, slightly menacing atmosphere from Nicholas Roeg's Don't Look Now (1973). It also goes back to the idea presented in the aforementioned An American Werewolf in London, and its less successful Parisian set sequel (1997), with the travelling companions straying off the beaten track and being punished for it; again, bringing to mind films like Deliverance and Sothern Comfort as well.
I suppose you could argue that some of Roth's more immature touches make it impossible to feel anything for these characters, mostly as a result of them being somewhat under-written and underdeveloped. It's never quite as bad as Hostel Part II (2007), which is really about nothing, other than upping the ante on gratuitous gore; with the deaths and the suffering of that particular film used only as a means of titillating the blood lust of teenage boys. Not that I have anything against violence in cinema you understand, but certainly the old adage that a little goes a long way is undoubtedly true. For me, the most memorable scenes of violence are the ones that hold the most dramatic weight; the ones that feel real and very much believable, where we can feel for the characters in that situation and apply our own various psychological fears and anxieties alongside it; something that Hostel manages to pull off with those frantic final moments.
Admittedly, there is plenty here that audiences might find disgusting, or maybe even offensive, but there is also a decent story that manages to pull you in, despite the overall lack of style and the childishness of some of Roth's lurid scenarios. Unlike its shallow, unimaginative sequel, Hostel offers more than mindless entertainment for a post-pub Friday night in, with some genuinely inventive moments of violence and that great 20 minutes towards the end, which points the way forward to the kind of high tension Roth should be going for. Not a masterpiece by any stretch, but regardless, an inventive and original idea that holds our attention for the duration of the film.
DVD:
- The Worst Witch
- Thunderbirds: Volume 1 [1965]
- Thundercats: Series 1 Volume 1 (6 Disc Box Set)
- Tom And Jerry - Classic Collection - Vol. 4
- Tom And Jerry - Classic Collection - Vol. 5
- Tom Thumb [1958] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
- Toy Story 2 [2000]
- Treasure Planet [2003]
- UFO - Volumes 1-4 Collector's Edition [1970]
- UFO - Volumes 5-8 Collector's Edition [1970]
DVD List
DVD