Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

Wordiezett So much average

Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

Micransix Crappy film

Phil Hubbs Now this was a blast from the past, my teenage years (I was 17 at the time). It might seem crazy these days but I distinctly remember watching this in the cinema with a friend, and both of us scoffing at how ridiculous the movies premise was. The whole idea of the internet (something that was more of a joke back then) being able to bring down someone's entire life. The idea of people actually having portable computers and being able to use them, online! everywhere! The idea of someone's life revolving around a computer...or more specifically the net, was at the time almost inconceivable (unless you were rich). Yes these were simpler times my friends, back before the internet was an integral part of people's lives, or before the internet was even taken seriously. Hell back then movies like this were the only introduction some people had to the, so called, information highway. This and movies like 'The Lawnmower Man' were pretty much the only things most common people saw of the internet, hence why we all thought it was a gimmicky flash in the pan. Even British videogames TV show 'GamesMaster' would mock the internet with its limited abilities at the time. We were told one day we'd all be surfing the net, we all ridiculed the notion, how wrong we were.Anyway the movie. Systems analyst Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock) is accidentally drawn into the dark world of cyber terrorism when her work college sends her sensitive information on a floppy disk (remember those?!). The information revolves around the death of the US Secretary of Defense and a large software company CEO, Jeff Gregg. Whilst on holiday Bennett gets wined and dined by mysterious British gent Jack Devlin whom she starts to have feelings for. But before she knows it this British gent is trying to kill her so he can get his hands on this disk. Following a nasty accident where Bennett tries to escape Devlin, she awakes in hospital to discover her life has been deleted. Bennett must now try and find help to recover her life, evade Devlin, and uncover the truth on the disk.Yeah so the plot is your typical computer hacking/expert, on the run type affair which is now a dated concept. This idea was quite new at the time but director Irwin Winkler really tapped into the public's interest by utilising the newfangled internet contraption. The internet wasn't unheard of at the time of course, but it was intriguing to the masses and was used a lot to present an exciting new angle to movies. It was almost like an unexplored universe and Hollywood wasn't gonna let it slip by without milking its every potential.The other main draw for this movie was actress Sandra Bullock who was literally the biggest thing in Hollywood between 1993 - 1995. Hot off a trilogy of blockbusting hits that were 'Demolition Man', 'Speed' and 'While You Were Sleeping', Bullock could do no wrong. She was America's sweetheart with her adorable, girl next door looks and squeaky clean image. People just went to movies starring Bullock, no questions asked, she was huge.This movie also used the highly unpopular nerd image which was still something to mock at the time. Nowadays nerds are all the rage but back in the day oh no, being a nerd was not cool. But what baffled people even more was the introduction to a sexy female nerd, this was virtually unheard of at the time. This did present a problem for the movie simply because no one believed a sexy female could be a whizz- kid on computers or a nerd. Especially Bullock who was Hollywood's new darling leading lady. And admittedly it is hard to believe Bullock in this role because she simply doesn't look like she understands what shes talking about half the time. She also looks surprisingly unathletic considering her previous action movies, she kinda sleepwalks through this looking bored.Looking back now this movie is fun simply to see all the retro hardware and early programs in action. All these chunky laptops, very basic net page layouts, disk swapping and loading etc...it does bring back many memories. The action is kinda sparse but reasonably thrilling I suppose, it was never gonna be a violent movie with Bullock in the lead. Bullock was the queen of PG-13/12 rated movies. So the movie cuts away for any violence and there is little profanity, if any. Jeremy Northam is easily the best thing about the film with his devilishly charming contract killer, probably why his character is called Devlin.In the end this is a very safe and harmless action thriller that didn't want to rock the boat for its leading lady. Bullock is still cute and cuddly while under the stress of being hunted down by a hit-man. Being a movie about computers director Winkler obviously couldn't pass up a chance to film at the Macworld/iWorld trade show in San Francisco. So naturally the tense unrealistic finale is shot there. It is hilarious to watch Bennett downloading/uploading such large chunks of data onto floppy disks just in the nick of time. I'm just gonna assume that the trade show would have had the best of the best computers on show so that made it possible. Its all very silly, cutesy and charming these days, so amusing to think this was a big serious release back in the day.5.5/10

juneebuggy I caught this on TV the other night and stuck with it. Its seriously dated now (1995) and laughable in terms of computer technology and giant cell phones but still a good thriller for the most part. Actually all the outdated technology just ended up making this kind of fun and campy.I think its the hook of Sandra's entire identity being erased and replaced with that of a wanted criminal that's so good -scary and intriguing there.The bad guy (Jeremy Northam) becomes very one dimensional after his initial charm wears off but Sandra Bullock does a great job all the way through, with lots of running and evading of the cyber thugs.This opens with Angela Bennett, a reclusive computer programmer who works from home, orders pizza online and only associates with her cyber friends. After she unwittingly comes into possession of software that allows access to secret government information Angela's life is put in danger as the bad guys try to gain access to the floppy disk, culminating with them deleting all evidence of her existence. Dennis Miller plays her sort of boyfriend here and there is a brief cameo from Ron Howard. I always forget how AIDS paranoid we were in the early 90's. 4/11/15

seymourblack-1 The mid-1990's was an exciting time when the use of the Internet grew rapidly and it became obvious to everyone that it would soon affect virtually every area of human activity. Alongside the excitement, however, many anxieties were expressed about the potential dangers involved and many of these feature in this movie which presents the kind of nightmare scenario that many people feared. Identity theft, a breakdown of social interaction and cyber-terrorism were all recognised threats and are used to good effect in "The Net" to create a fast-moving thriller that was very topical at the time of its release but now inevitably looks dated.Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock) is a computer analyst who works at her home in Venice, California where she identifies and eliminates viruses in programs that are sent to her by San Francisco software company, "Cathedral Systems". When one of her colleagues sends her a program that makes it easy to access and modify data held by government departments, airports, hospitals and banks etc, she's told that he'll soon be travelling down to her home to work with her on the program. Shortly after, he's killed in a plane crash and so she continues with her original plan to go on vacation to Mexico and takes her laptop and a disk containing the new program that she'd been asked to work on.In Mexico, she meets a smooth-talking man called Jack Devlin (Jeremy Northam) who seduces her but is really only interested in stealing her disk and killing her. When this becomes obvious, Angela manages to escape but after returning home, discovers that her house has been put up for sale and her identity has been swapped with a woman called Ruth Marks who's apparently a criminal wanted by the police. It swiftly becomes evident that Angela's being pursued by a group of cyber-terrorists called "The Praetorians" and the police and can't prove her real identity because she has, for many years, led a reclusive lifestyle in which her only regular face-to-face contact was with her mother who has Alzheimer's disease.The only person that Angela knows who could confirm her identity is her ex-psychiatrist and ex-lover, Dr Alan Champion (Dennis Miller) and although he provides some help, he's soon prevented from getting Angela out of her nightmare and she remains on the run until she eventually confronts Devlin for the final time.There are plenty of chases and well-executed action sequences in "The Net" and Hitchcockian influences such as , the wrong man (woman) theme, the fairground motif and confused identities as well as a disk that becomes the MacGuffin, add extra interest. The power of the terrorists seems overwhelming and an atmosphere of paranoia prevails when amongst other things, the modification of key computer records result in the deaths of a prominent politician, a hospital patient and a software expert who's piloting a plane.The focus throughout the entire story is on Sandra Bullock's character and her skill in making herself convincingly introverted and work-obsessed plays a huge part in the success of this movie as she outshines everyone else who appears in it.

jessegehrig Unlike a box of cereal, a movie does not have contents, instead a movie has scenes and sequences. When I emptied out the contents of this cereal box of a movie, I looked upon a spread-out mass of meaningless pieces, not worth consuming. They made the movie too soon, like the studio heard back in 95 that the Internet might be a thing in the future, so they cobble together a feeble film under the premise that being first is always best, first internet movie! yeah! Generic thriller ham-fistedly rendered, lacking at all times suspense. Featuring a PG-13 rating so you know for certain nothing awesome will happen, no blood no tittie no cussing no violence. All of our schemes and machinations just to have sex with each other--it's all a big joke.