NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Mehdi Hoffman There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

denieuwehoorspelers Every so often i have the opportunity to see a movie which isn't highly rated. Monolith (1993) was rated 4.3 at IMDb. This score is a lot higher than it really deserves. As a sci-fi fan, i don't care to much if a plot or props and such are unconvincing. Even the acting isn't a real issue for me. This film had a good plot (even if it is a bit stale) and the acting wasn't bad. So why the low score? Well, there are several things in this movie which destroy the immersion i'd like to get from a sci-fi movie. I'll give three examples. In the beginning of the movie, a 'deranged' woman tries to kill a young boy. She chases the boy in a car while the boy is running away. According to the sounds of the engine of the car, she's driving high speed and the car is moving really fast. Yet the boy, on foot, not really very fast, manages to keep ahead of the chasing car, nonetheless (1). He ducks into an alley and the car chases behind him. You can see the boy running in the ally with the car in the background. (The car isn't moving at all). The camera switches into the car and it's moving very fast (2). At the end of the movie the main characters jump from the departing flying saucer which flies at the top of the skyscrapers. Their drop only lasts about a second (3). The movie has lots of things like the three examples i've mentioned which made the movie an utter disappointment to me. Perhaps i've been spoiled during the years but if your wise, skip this movie and save yourself time for more pleasurable things to watch.

MasterFantastic I have a confession to make: I like 'B' movies. Some can be very inventive while others are downright terrible. This movie falls somewhere in between the two poles. The plot of Monolith concerns a formless, shapeless alien presence which can transfer between bodies and gives its human hosts the ability of pyrokinesis. It also kills them after a fairly short time, but then again, it's an alien, it's been here before time began, so it really doesn't care much. And it's held by John Hurt who heads up the Department of Historical Research, which is a fancy name for a government black ops organization that tracks aliens.Enter two cops, played by Bill Paxton and Lindsay Frost. They're at odds with each other from day one, yet form a grudging respect and affection for one another by the end of the flick. They stumble onto the government's plan and after chases, watching their commander (played well by Louis Gossett, Jr.) get killed, and poorly staged fights, they manage to thwart John Hurts' plans and all is well...sort of.The good thing is director John Eyres manages to build some suspense with this flick in spite of working with a low budget. Paxton and Frost work well together even though the dialog between them--otherwise known as playful banter--is often stultifyingly bad. John Hurt overacts marvelously. His speech at the end ("I've earned this moment, I deserve this moment") should win an Oscar...or a Razzie. There's an amusing scene with a guard at the Department of Historical Research, an excellent good-cop/bad cop scene (very well edited, IMHO), and the music is surprisingly effective.The downsides to this film begin with the title. With a name like 'Monolith' I was expecting some kind of immense stone structure. We get a spaceship instead. (It's pretty cool, but still...) The dialog also could have been a lot better. A lot. Really, I'm surprised that the leads managed to work up any sympathy for themselves with some of the lines they had to spout and that's due to good acting more than anything else. The explanation for Paxton's wife's death is never fully explored although it can be guessed from the flashbacks, but is underdeveloped. I really think if Eyres had been given a decent budget and the script had been worked on more, it could have been elevated into 'A' status. Sadly, it wasn't, but it's still a very likable film in spite of its deficiencies.

udar55 Detectives Tucker (Bill Paxton) and Flynn (Lindsay Frost) individually stumble upon an out-of-this-world case when they both spot a deranged woman chasing down a young boy with her car and then shooting him dead. Things get messy when the Department of Historical Research boss Villano (John Hurt) shows up and takes the woman away (according to the screenplay, he has a higher security rating than the President) from police chief Mac (Lou Gossett, Jr.). Naturally, two curious and rule breaking detectives won't be having any of this and begin to investigate. But the bigger question is will these two cantankerous cops get along? Folks seem to peg this as an X-FILES ripoff, but that is hard to swallow because it was filming before that show debuted. It is more LETHAL WEAPON with aliens. Director John Eyres and screenwriter Stephen Lister had some marginal direct-to-video success with PROJECT: SHADOWCHASER so Shapiro-Glickenhaus maybe wanted a piece of that. It is nice seeing Paxton getting a film to carry on his own at this time (he previous did with THE VAGRANT), but the budget just isn't there for this one. Introvision handled the FX and some of them are really rough. It is a shame because I could totally get behind a "LETHAL WEAPON with aliens" film (well, I guess I have THE HIDDEN, which this closely resembles). John Hurt appears to have only done a day or two on this as his scenes in the last half have him isolated in shots (even including his major role in the finale).

jaded_viewer I tend to cut SF more slack than other genres, simply because there is so much more setup work to be done in establishing a believable reality in which the story takes place. It is also my favorite genre. That said, this movie was one of the worst I've seen (I've seen a lot and own over 1000), which was very surprising considering the star power among the cast. Every, and I mean every, scene was stereotypical of some previous movie (cop buddy, action, etc.) done countless times before. And these worn out scenes strung together do not a plot make.I kept dully pawing the remote in a futile search for some way to lower the frickin movie music volume somehow. It was just relentless! The "smoky sax", the "distorted guitar", the "ominous strings", etc. Someone got their hands on the latest 1993 synth and was wearing it out - and me too. It was often louder than the dialog, telegraphing the "mood" of every boring scene, removing even the possibility of anything unexpected happening in this dog.An what's up with the name of the movie "Monolith"? I was expecting some large structure ala 2001 to appear at some point. No one even mentioned the word. I don't get it.I'd rather watch the space saga Albert Brooks was editing in "Modern Romance".