Revelation

Rating:
Summary: A better than average revelation...
Review: Revelation (2001) is one of those movies that you enjoy as long as you don't think too much about the logic behind it. Almost two hours can be easily spent with this film, although it's not one of those movies you remember much about afterwards.

Revelation is the story of an ancient relic known as Loculus which dates back to the time of Jesus Christ. The good forces has battled the evil through the centuries and the final solution is going to take place in present day. Lord Martel (Terence Stamp, "The Limey") has eventually got a hold of Loculus to unlock the artifact's mystery that no one has managed to solve.

When the Loculus is sent to be hidden for all time, some people want to get hold of it again. James D'Arcy ("Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World") plays Martel's son who has to fulfill his father's last wish. Udo Kier ("Blade") is the leader of an ancient order who has a whole different purpose for the artifact. This leads to a race around Mediterranean in Europe for clues to find Loculus.

Revelation is something of a cross between thrilling adventure and religious mumbo jumbo. Despite parallels to Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" it was earlier released with less artistic and commercial success. The director Stuart Urban has managed to create some stylish visual contribution, but also a lot of unexplained storylines and passable special effects. Udo Kier gives once again a good performance as the leader of the order. One might just wonder how many times has Kier played this kind of a role before...

*** (3 out of 5)



Rating:
Summary: Mind candy.
Review: Revelation (Stuart Urban, 2001)

TV director Stuart Urban comes up with his second feature film. Generally mindless stuff, but topical and easily watchable enough to kill two hours with.

Magnus Martel (Terence Stamp) is a very rich man in possession of a very rare, in fact one of a kind, item; a holy relic called the Loculus. No one knows, exactly, what the Loculus is used for, but in the course of the opening scenes, we find out many people have died for it over this years, and that it came eventually to rest in the hands of the Knights Templar, led by a mysterious grand master played by Udo Kier (Suspiria, Shadow of the Vampire). In order to try and figure out what it's sued for, Martel calls in his estranged son Jake (James D'Arcy, recently seen in Master and Commander), a cryptographer, along with a team of other professionals. Except that somewhere along the way, it seems Magnus crossed the (still-alive after three hundred years) grand master, who's out to reclaim the Loculus.

The bulk of the film details Jake's attempts to find out where Magnus has hidden it, aided by Mira (Natasha Wightman of Gosford Park fame), another member of the team, and his old warrior-turned-priest friend Ray (Liam Cunningham, who showed up in the most recent Prime Suspect). All along the way, they have to dodge invisible Templars, the military, various packs of mad animals, and the like. Typical adventure fare, but with the religious twist recently popularized by books like The DaVinci Code. Will probably be forgotten in a few years, and deservedly; none of the ast here gives an outstanding performance, the writing is middle-of-the-road, etc. But as I said, if you've got a couple of hours to kill, there are worse ways to spend it. ** ½

Rating:
Summary: At last - a cure for insomnia!
Review: Some spoilers, but they'll only save you having to watch this wretchedly bad film.

The film really is beyond a crock: I can understand peddling that Knights Templar/Book of Revelations/alchemy/Blood of Christ/Second Coming malarkey to sell a few books, but the director actually seems to believe it. Unfortunately, he can't make the audience believe it in this cliche-ridden join-the-dots yawner.

Apart from Udo Kier and Ron Moody (as Isaac Newton! "You've got to pick an apple or two, boys!"), the performances stink - not least the two juv leads who, don'tcha know, turn out to be the great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great etc grandson and great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great etc granddaughter of JC and Mary Magdelene. Oh, and the CIA are in a conspiracy with a Masonic order to secure the original JC's DNA, add Udo Kier's and fob the result off on the Vatican as the Messiah: luckily Jake and Mira got it on in a magic circle (complete with cheap cgi effects) before he got buried alive and she's preggers with the real JC...

And such great dialogue: "It is the breath of life in this life and it is the breath of life in the life after this life" pontificates Terence Stamp, who's obviously got the picture sussed from day one and just phones it in. "The age of Aquarius? The age of bollocks," shouts Liam Cunningham's gun-toting Oirish ex-para priest; or how about this exchange with Derek Jacobi - "You two don't look like academics. I expect you're alchemists." "How can an idiot be a librarian?" "How can a gunman be a priest?" Or such deathless expositional gems as "Malta boasts more churches per square mile than anywhere else on earth. That's f***ing marvellous." "Yes, but how many are steeped in the occult?" However, the prize goes to a line referring to Isaac Newton - "Gravity was just a sideline."

Bad, bad, bad. Perhaps the makers of this film will be made to pay in another life, but that's no reason for you to pay to see it in this one.

Rating:
Summary: concept gets the stars
Review: The concepts that this movie is based on are intriguing. and some very interesting facts that link paganism and Christianit practice and symbolism come out. Shocking and at the same time thought-provoking. but these, and the presence of Terence Stamp and Derek Jacobi are the only star worthy aspects of the movie.

because storyline and scripting are weak... before you read further, beware of some moviespoilers in this paragraph!!! weakness: storyline lead characters are made out to be reincarnations of Mary Magdalene and Jesus, they look the same way they did from 2 K years before, they will birth the returning Christ... wasn't played out convincingly enough in the script or the acting.

semi-strength: the desire to know what the Loculus, the central item of great interest and conspiracy, is the device of the story that is supposed to keep us hooked into the movie until the end...

weakness: quickie pre-climax story line--- choppy feeling scenes about blood and tissue residue ...cloning... floating baby in a tank... orphan left on steps of Vatican...evil cardinal raises Antichrist... needed more thought and depth on the part of the scriptwriter... too many holes in that treatment.

special effects... although i appreciate the efforts put into the special effects (as evidenced by making-of docu), their overall effect is rather 2nd rate.

again, the presentation of various symbolism, pagan ties of Christianity's beginnings and divisions, planet Venus' path in the sky, feminine and masculine principles of Divine, secret societies, little-heard-of( that is, to us Western Christians in the U.S.) early and medieval Christian sites and traditions in the mediteranean were the star aspects of this movie. for these little-known facts pointed out that there is more to Christianity's history and its development than the mainstream U.S. has since known and accepted so far, far away from the land and time of the Man known to be the Christ.

If you want to discover more facts along these lines, AND if you want a better, more satisfying storyline experience with these same sort of Christian curiosities and facts then try reading the book Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. (curiously enough, these fiction pieces about the secret Christian traditions have both come out at around the same time.)

This movie creates more questions. So be bold and ask them. Be brave enough to seek answers outside of what you already know.

Rating:
Summary: Quite astonishingly bad .
Review: The current favourite -if that is the apposite word- among devotees of stupendously lousy movies seems to be Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space ,although Robot Monster has its champions too.Now ,I regard the cult of "so bad , its good " as beneath contempt .The spectacle of the great Bela Lugosi ,morphine monkey on his back ,stumbling through illiterate twaddle should be buried in a deep vault and not paraded for the self styled intelligensia to laugh at.
Truly bad movies are like Revelation -or the intellectual masturbation of the Manhattan ingrown hair Mr Allen--and they fall into this category because they are pretentious and incompetent .Revelation in particular trivialises an important topic and additionally handles it in a manner that is incoherent ,stumbling and insulting to all faiths.

It focuses on the hunt for a sacred relic -nails from the true cross ,from which it is possible to recreate Christ from his DNA.The movie follows the battle for the relic among competing groups ,including the Knights Templar .
It fails to generate any real tension despite having a fair share of physical action scenes and the acting is woeful ,especially from Terence Stamp who gives the impression he is reading from an autocue and cannot quite believe the stultifying banality of his dialogue .(He is not the only one )

The ending is abrupt and seems to be designed to leave the way open to a sequel .

Meritricious garbage and to be avoided by all people with an ounce of interest in religion or devotion to movies

Rating:
Summary: "Raiders" It Is Not; Stilted and Tedious Occult Thriller
Review: The film's title "Revelation" comes from the Bible, and this occult thriller film, it seems, tells us that there still remains a box named The Locutus somewhere in Europe, and the two religious sects are seeking for it desperately for the reason you stop caring in the last minutes of the story.

Jake Martel (James D'Arcy) is a disgraced computer expert who had been in jail. Now released, he is invited to join in the searching team led by Magnus Martel (Terence Stamp), his very rich father, who wants to get the secret of a box the Locutus hidden for years. But soon they come to realize that they have to handle dangerous cult group, of which leader The Grand Master (Udo Kier) has no hesitation to do whatever he has to do in order to secure the box for his own cause.

To be fair, the film's concept has some potential. For example, we have seen it done gracefully in Harrison Ford's "Raiders," but the film chose to be more intelligent and philosophical ... so to speak. There is no action or car chase; instead, you get several gory scenes and tortures, none of which are particularly impressive. It is quite strange, however, that though the Grand Master's army can attack the security-tight office/lab of the Martels with ease, they are always one step behind the two leading hero/heroine.

The role of Terence Stamp is little more than a cameo, so the film is virtually young James D'Arcy's. That's a problem for he is not ready for the job, and co-starring Natasha Wightman, though better than him, is just so-so. Inexplicably, we have another cameo from Derek Jacobi as the librarian, whose intended comic relief is not comic relief at all.

You can see and hear many, many historical and religious items, such as alchemist, Knight Templars, and so on, but they add up to nothing, all assembled in a messy way. And the conclusion of the film is a surprise, indeed, but may look offensive to some (or many) Christians. But it is also so incredible that it is hardly possible for any of us to take it seriously.

The film's globe-trotting story gives a good chance to see many places in Europe, all of which are shot beautifully, but that doesn't mean that we are interested in the mystery which the film is trying to show in a clithed and far-fetched way (like dots on the map). And I hear that they released it theatrically in UK, which makes a greater mystery than this film's.

Rating:
Summary: interesting, but forgettable
Review: This movie is about an ancient relic, which Terence Stamp (The Limey, Bliss) wants to destroy but a secret soceity that is secret wants it for there own purposes. Stamp gets killed passing the info onto his son. His son accompanyed by a woman go on the run in search for it, but meanwhile tracking behind are the society lead by a nicely looking Udo Kier (Blade, End Of Days). It is a little bit hard to follow at times and I didnt know what was going on but it was a pretty interesting, but not the greatest. It seems Kier has a knack for playing badguys because he's so darn good at it and Stamp is just totally wasnt. James D'arcy also stars. "you breathe in and I breathe out" hmm pretty fascinating scene that was.

Rating:
Summary: The Apocalypse and the Birth of Anti-Christ.
Review: This movie provided me with much food for thought and meditation on the Apocalypse and the coming birth of Antichrist. The idea behind the movie is that Christ's blood traces which are left on the nails used to crucify him have been hidden in a secret box. By unlatching the nails from the box, a secret society hopes to clone Christ to create the devil's child, the Antichrist. Unfortunately, the movie proliferates the feminist myth which arose as a heresy in the Middle Ages and is expounded in the book _Holy Blood, Holy Grail_ that Jesus Christ had a child by Mary Magdalene. Such counter-church myths are really largely responsible for the breakup of Christendom and the decline of traditional Christianity. The Apocalypse is being heralded in by the Priory of Sion, not by the Catholic Church - Christ's true Church - which has stood fast in its resolute opposition to the growing force of secret societies.

Rating:
Summary: Gnostic nonsense, but fun...
Review: Udo Kier...False Prophet to Michael York's menacingly charismatic Anti-Christ in OMEGA CODE II...is back in action as reincarnated Black Adept leading his Masonic cult of very bad, bad guys on a Merry-Magdalene chase around the world after The Holy Grail. In this outing, the Grail is "Raiders of the Lost Ark"-like box,LOCULUS, constructed with spikes used to crucify Jesus. The good, bad and ulgy initiates believe these spikes are spiked with the Lord's DNA, and the sacred gene pool can be used to engineer an UBERMENSCH CLONE. The movie features Terence Stamp as (sort of)"Terry Mason" attempting to thwart unilluminated brothers from ushering in the Black Millenium superintented by Grand Master Kier and his custom-made Anti-Christ. James Darcy and Natasha Wightman...New Age witch whom we are led to believe, belives herself reincarnation of Mary Magdalene...are foot soldiers and tourist-guides unlocking ancient codes and astological/occult mysteries.Battle for Biblical End Times Truth ends on Patmos, the island where St.John(Jesus'youngest Apostle, one of three who stood vigil at the Crucifixion)mystically entranced, composed The Book of Revelation.

Viewers familiar with "The Da Vinci Code", DNA(er)Dan Brown's best-selling rehash of Magdalene Myth-as(incarnated & impregnated)Holy Grail will find end of this chase between forces of Black and White Magic(there's no Christianity here, folks)bogus.Director Stuart Urban has mounted a handsome-looking film with good FX; accessible plot pacing;and occasionally terrifying "grimness"(there are persecution/torture scenes DEMONstrating Udonic Mason's do mean business). But pay-off REVELATION is more ridiculous than Loculus thing-a-ma-jig they're hunting. If you're into the real stuff, Nikos Kazantzakis,THE LAST TEMPTATION at least plays by gnostic(heretical)rules. If you're not familiar with this kind of mythology, the movie's "hip" references to CIA; P-2; Michele Sidona and Vatican Bank scandal conspiracies, is confusion for sake of confusion. The movie...it has an hour of Extra DVD Features dealing with Knights Templar schemes for World Domination; Alchemy; and "sacred" geometry...takes itself very seriously. Don't you. Watch it unseriously (like an OMEGA CODE III).Then, this gnostic nonsense is PM monster-mash fun.

Rating:
Summary: Sad movie Sad story
Review: Well yet again the politically correct has tried to bring forth occult movies that dislodge and deforms the truth that is in Christianity and in the Scriptures. The movie shows that there are evil Christian (so they say they are) groups out to get the world. That only through tolerance and witchcraft can there be harmony for one and all. A sad movie, sad lies, but not overly surprising for me.