Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

Tobias Burrows It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

AlienatorX I don't think we as an audience appreciate just how disastrously wrong The Crow could have gone. The Crow is one of those stories with such dark subject matter and such brooding visuals that in the hands of lesser filmmakers it could have gone horribly wrong and ended up as some dark bitter mess like Batman Returns. Thankfully the right people were involved and we got the movie we did. And then they made a sequel. Now I'm not one of those people who thinks that 'The Crow' shouldn't have a sequel. The idea that there are other lost souls who must return to earth to right some wrong is not a bad one. But not like this. This movie fails across the board, the story goes on way too long and is hopelessly convoluted despite a pretty simple set up, the music is almost none stop grunge punk rock that adds nothing to the scenes. But the biggest problem with this movie is the way it looks. The director is a man named Tim Pope. Never heard of him? Well before this movie he directed music videos and do you know what he made after this movie? More music videos! This movie is shot like a music video, the camera is too close, the shots are all framed wrong, the angles are weird and the editing is nauseating. Of course this style could be forgiven if it wasn't for the fact this is the ugliest movie I have ever seen in my life. Gone is the smooth neo-Gothic look of the first movie. In its place is hideously ugly punk grunge look with bright colours and nauseating shades that are actually difficult to look at half the time. The music video style directing and editing only makes it worse and I'm sure those with weaker stomachs might actually throw up watching this film. To make all this even worse the story goes out of its way to be dark and gritty adding even more nauseating imagery to this already stomach turning movie. But even the worst movie can be saved by the performances, sadly the performances in this movie only serve as the icing on the garbage cake. The script is ridiculously cheesy and grimy and the actors they picked to say it are dreadful; Vincent Perez doesn't have the aura of menace Brandon Lee had and so he just comes off as sulky half the time and the other half he spends pretending to be intimidating, Richard Brooks's performance as the villain Judas Earl is terrible as none of his lines are delivered properly, they all come off as either bored or forced. This is one of the absolute worst movie I've ever seen. This is a joyless grungy mess that no on should ever have to watch even for the sake of curiosity. I would tell you to destroy it but that would involve buying it and I don't want that. Instead I want no one to buy it. I want all the copies to sit on stores shelves for years and years and years until the company has no choice but to take them all out in the middle of nowhere and bury them in big pit so they can slowly biodegrade until there is nothing left but a grungy patch of earth where nothing can grow. I hate this movie.

Chas Mitchell (ChasM95) I really enjoyed the first one. It was an exceptional movie with a unique plot and great action sequences. This one however is just a big mess compared to the first. It's not the change in characters that bothered me at all, or how different it was from the first, it was just a messy film with mediocre action sequences and flat, boring dialogue.I was really hoping that this movie would be just as good as the first one, but the second one was a huge disappointment on my part and is a lot worse than the original. If the action sequences would be more refined, and the dialogue would not suck so bad, this movie would have hopefully been great. But it's not.If you like the film, that's totally okay, I respect your opinions. I just didn't really like this.

carmelahayslett I'm a long-time fan of this film but I won't go off and say that I don't understand why people trash it. Like any film, The Crow: City of Angels isn't for everyone. Believe it or not, the first Crow film wasn't for everyone either. I will say that I did not like this film the first time I saw it. I am a major fan of the first and it's hard to enter the sequel with an open mind and clear perception. The second time I saw this film is when I fell in love with it and was able to by viewing it as it's own film. If you're going to sit there and compare it to the original, chances are you will never be happy with it. If you compared many movies to the first crow film you would never be happy with them either. I love this film completely separate from it's original counterpart. Though Miramax tried to make this a mirror image of the first film do not expect to see what you saw in the first film. This is a different place, a different man, and a different story. In my opinion it is the best of the sequels. Now, the third and forth crow films... whether I compare them to the first or not I just don't like them. They did not interest me in the slightest and I'm sorry I ever watched them.First off, there are throwbacks to the original film. Sarah is grown up and living as a goth tattoo artist in a grungy, post-apocalyptic Los Angeles. Sarah still wears Shelly's ring and has taken care of their cat Gabriel. She is also a painter. She's working on a painting of Eric and Shelly in which it's imagery comes full circle at the end of the movie. However, unlike the original crow film and its other sequels we're not watching the same story. This is what pisses me off about Salvation and Wicked Prayer: They recycle the man and his girlfriend gets killed scenario. Eric Draven already did that. There's no need for multiple, watered down versions of this story. In The Crow: City of Angels, Ashe Corven (Vincent Perez) and his young son Danny are killed by a drug cartel when they witness something they shouldn't have. Killing anyone is crossing the line but killing a child crosses multiple. For anyone who has been a parent this story will evoke your fear of losing a child. That story in it's own right is very terrifying.The bad guys are an interesting bunch. We have a Pre-punisher Thomas Jane as the perverted Nemo, the energetic and comical bad guy, Spider-monkey, Iggy Pop as Curve, along with Thuy Trang who was the original Yellow Ranger in the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. We also have Richard Brooks as the guy in charge, Judah. He's no Top Dollar but let me tell you, Brooks prevails in making you hate him throughout this film. This band of criminals aren't quite as interesting as T-bird's gang was in the original movie. That's okay. I don't want them to be because they're the bad guys and I'm supposed to hate them. In this film, you don't explore their personalities until they are about to die but we do spend a significant amount of time with Curve (Iggy Pop). Iggy brought just the right amount of energy into the film because the rest of the villains are overly calm and collected.I understand Vincent Perez's performance throws some people off. I happen to love and admire Vincent Perez as an actor mainly because of this film and his role in Queen of the Damned. I even admire the fact that he used subtle crow-like movements throughout the film. My perception is that we're supposed to believe the crow and the man are one entity divided. I truly felt that in Perez's performance. There's even a scene in the original cut of the film where the crow morphs into Ashe viewed from a shadow on the wall. You can actually still find it in the original trailer. That along with other things was left to die on the editing room floor, I guess. Perez did a great job in securing all the different emotions of the character. He's killing his killers but even when he does he's not becoming them.What I love most about this film is that on the technical end it was executed almost flawlessly from cinematography, lighting, coloration, production design and wardrobe. This film had everything I wanted to see in a movie. It had all the elements that Hollywood blockbusters are supposed to have. Highly stylized, strikingly visual, and mesmerizing.My last statement is that it bothers me that some people act like Brandon Lee is going to put a curse on them if they show any interest in the sequel. It is not disrespectful to Brandon Lee that this film was made. Them trying to remake the original? I find that much more disrespectful than anything. It's like they are trying to erase the original and Brandon Lee's performance in it whereas the sequels were more about trying to capitalize on it. This entire review is my personal opinion. Like I said, The Crow City of Angels wasn't for everyone. Take it or leave it as you please but I'm not afraid to say this has always been one of my favorite films.

zardoz-13 Everybody who saw "The Crow" (1994), a grisly but formulaic back-fr0m-the-dead revenge melodrama, knows actor Brandon Lee died from an accidental gunshot wound on the set during filming. Strangely enough, Lee's untimely demise boosted the box office appeal of "The Crow." The success prompted Miramax Pictures to release a sequel of sorts: "The Crow: City of Angels." Not only have the film producers replaced Lee with another actor, but they also have conjured up an entirely new character. Sequels typically fail to live up to the high standards of most original films, but "The Crow: City of Angels" proves the exception to the rule. The message of "The Crow: City of Angels," a nihilistic supernatural sadomasochistic saga, is that love is sometimes stronger than death. Nevertheless, love takes a backseat to violence in this expressionistic follow-up to the ill-fated but financially successful original. Instead, the filmmakers aim their cameras like guns at the more unsavory narrative elements: brutal murders and echoes of deviant sexual practices with an incidental node to the love aspect.The premise of the first "Crow" reechoes throughout the sequel. When somebody dies, a crow carries the soul to the land of the dead. Occasionally, something so horrible occurs that a soul can find no rest. In such a case, the crow leads the soul back to the living so that injustices can be resolved. David Goyer, who penned the original "Crow," tinkers rather than tampers with the surefire formula that yielded a $50 million haul at the box office. A cadaverous hero rises from the grave and destroys a depraved gang of low-life hemorrhoids. In "The Crow: City of Angels," a twenty-something auto mechanic, Ashe Corven (Vincent Perez of "Queen Margot"), and his young son Danny (Eric Acosta of "Cheerleader Massacre 2") witness a gangland execution by a drug kingpin called Judah.The setting has been changed from the Motor City to the City of Angels. Instead of hoodlums celebrating Devil's Night, as in the original, here citizens participate in the Day of the Dead ceremonies designed to discourage departing spirits from lingering with the living. Eight years have elapsed since the first movie, and Sarah (Mia Kirshner of "Not Another Teen Movie") is the only hold-over character from the original. Sarah has grown up, moved to Los Angeles, and now runs a tattoo parlor. Sarah has been having nightmares lately, about a double homicide.A crow flies into her apartment, and she follows it to the harbor where the bodies of Ash and his son were dumped. The crow revives Ashe, and he emerges in a frothy fountain of bubbles before Sarah's eyes. When Ashe embarks on his revenge, Sarah paints his face in the same Harlequin pattern as Eric Draven's from the first film. Only this time, she uses Ashe's dead son's paints, giving it a truly symbolic meaning. Ashe begins knocking off Judah's (Richard Brooks) henchmen, working his way, as he calls it "up the food chain" to Judah himself. The villains comprise an undeniably loathsome bunch. You'd certainly never invite these scumbags home to meet your parents. Curve, (plug-ugly Iggy Pop of "Tank Girl") resembles death warmed over, while a dark smooth-skinned Richard Brooks as Judah presents a commanding presence. The drug dealing merchant of pain here is so repellent that he display little remorse when a poorly mixed batch of his own narcotics kills his customers. Every time one of these reptilian characters dies, the image of a crow appears around him. For example, when Ashe pitches one baddie from a window, the blood from the dead person's head coagulates in a puddle shaped like a crow.Compared with the first film, "City of Angels" isn't as violent. There is nothing here that comes off as violent as the table scene where Brandon Lee's Eric Draven got blasted by a barrage of gunfire. French heartthrob Vincent Perez animates his slain avenger with a Gallic exuberance. Perez's performance also conveys a quality that makes his character vulnerable and at the same time somewhat melancholy because he is deprived of life. Ashe reveals his reluctance to Sarah to blindly adhere to the fix path that fate has paved for him. Audiences learn the bare minimum about him. All we know about his wife is that she abounded him and their son after she became a drug addict. Unlike Eric Draven, Ashe's body doesn't erase the signs of violence. Gunshot wounds don't magically vanish. He spends more time tooling about on his motorcycle in search of felons and he never carries the crow around on his shoulder.Goyer's episodic script resembles a formula Republic serial from the 1940s. A mysterious hero enters a destitute city and topples a tyrant. Compared with the longer original film, "City of Angels" amounts to a severely pared down exercise in minimalism. The filmmakers have sacrificed exposition, which would clarify characters and story, for supercharged, headlong momentum. If you're looking for exposition, try the web site for "The Crow: City of Angels," because only the most essential information for pushing the plot forward remains in the film. Goyer and director Tim Pope keep the narrative simple, the characters shallow, and the story free from complications or digressive sub-plots. Extraneous characters, such as Ernie Hudson's cop from the first "Crow" don't clutter up the storyline. "The Crow: City of Angels" marks the motion picture debut of music-video director Tim Pope. Previously, Pope helmed music videos for Paul McCartney, Iggy Pop, Queen, and David Bowie. Pope clearly draws on his background so that his "Crow" boasts a fast-paced, no-nonsense, imagine intensive appearance. The film possesses a murky, Gothic look. Smoke swirls around the different bombed-out nocturnal settings, and Pope bathes different scenes in harsh, abrasive color schemes. The wide-angled point of view shots from the perspective of the craw have an avant-garde quality. You don't need to have seen "The Crow" to appreciate "The Crow: City of Angeles."