Advantages: Has Ryan Reynolds
Disadvantages: Has Ben Affleck

...I had been waiting for Smokin' Aces for about a month to come out on DVD as i had missed it in the cinema and couldn't wait to see it. I went to my nearest HMV and spent £13.99 which i thought was a pretty good price and then rushed home to insert and play. Personnaly, my pre-watched view on it was that it was going to be one of the best action movies of the year with a great cast. Well i got one thing right, it had a great cast... If it wasn't for Ryan Reynolds (Van WIlder, Blade: Trinity) and Ray Liottas (Goodfellas, Blow) acting i would have given up on it after about 30 minutes. I felt this because it took about an hour to get into the predictable and surprisingly dull story. After a good hour and 20 mintues had slowly passed we, the viewer, were finnaly allowed to see some action. Yay............... And it was good... Read review

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Advantages: Fun, great dialogue, great characters
Disadvantages: Slows down towards the end.

...this and puts a $1 million bounty on ‘Aces’ head, leading to all the major players in the hitman world heading towards Lake Tahoe where ‘Aces’ is supposedly hiding out. Smokin’ Aces owes an awful lot to Pulp Fiction and Killing Zoe (both scripted, in part at least, by Roger Avery) and while it is a lot of fun it comes nowhere close to emulating the films is so obviously admires. That said could anything in this kind of genre really ever match Pulp Fiction? That said it is an enjoyable blast of a film, it moves at 150 miles per hour from start to finish and is chock full of famous faces. In fact most of the main cast will be recognised by viewers. Let’s see we have Ben Affleck as a fast talking bail bonds man (probably his best role for ages), Ray Liotta and Ryan Reynolds as the two FBI agents who are trying to keep Buddy alive, Alicia Keys... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful

Advantages: parallel narratives, actor talent
Disadvantages: sloppy direction, camara techniques

...... Read review

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Advantages: A good cameo from Jason Bateman.
Disadvantages: Pathetic writng, dreadful direction, lame performances and a dearth of originality.

...ambulance chaser. The supposedly original music by Clint Mansell harks back to the funk-laden 70s for its inspiration. It relies heavily on wock-a-chocking electric guitar and flute arrangements to try to bring some sense of uniformity to the film. There's also plenty of jangly Hammond organ and slap bass backed by insistent rhythms. However, it feels like he's aping David Arnold. And then he has the temerity to try to make you feel with low register piano and strings or faux-western humming chorals and guitar motifs. The rest of the soundtrack is somewhat eclectic, using old-fashioned soul for the lady-killers, hardcore techno and metal for the loony Tremors and bland rock for just about everyone else. "Smokin' Aces" is a dreadfully derivative pile of post-Tarantino tosh. I wouldn't have been surprised if it came out ten years ago... Read review

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Advantages: Decent Cast, Good Script, Quality Direction
Disadvantages: A very select audience

...As a fan of both Ben Affleck and Ray Liotta I decided that Smokin’ Aces was a film I had to see at some point. Having missed it at the cinema I finally got a chance to see it earlier today. It seemed to come and go in the cinemas within a few weeks and as I’d not really seen a lot of press about it while it was on I took this to be quite a bad sign. So upon its release on DVD this week I set about acquiring a copy with the express determination of finding out whether it was rightly pulled from the cinema or not. A mob boss takes out a million dollar hit on a Vegas showman turned FBI snitch named Buddy ’Aces’ Israel (Jeremy Piven). The FBI put him into protective custody in the penthouse of a luxury hotel at Lake Tahoe. While Buddy waits for his trial he amuses himself with hookers and drugs but little does he know what’s about... Read review

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Advantages: good action scenes
Disadvantages: ending

...It's been a few weeks since I have had time to watch any films but since it is the Easter holidays for me I have had a bit more time to watch some films. My friends are always giving me DVD's when they are finished with them that they will no longer watch so among this pile was the film 'Smokin' Aces'. I had heard of this being advertised a year ago and I remember hearing that Ben Affleck was in it but at the time I didn't remember it really getting that great reviews which is why I never saw it at the cinema. However, having been given the DVD I decided this was no excuse to not watch it so I took a chance and put it on. The plot is based around a plot to kill Buddy 'Aces' Israel (Jeremy Piven) who is a Las Vegas showman and former gangster member of La Cosa Nostra, a large America criminal organization. In exchange for him getting... Read review

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Advantages: Ace Frehley plays most of the instruments.
Disadvantages: No trains to Planet Jendell

...Having bought all 4 of the Kiss solo albums Ace Frehley's one stood out from the rest. It was produced by Ace & Eddie Krammer in 1978 (Eddie Krammer has worked with the legend Jimi Hendrix!) The first song Rip It Out is brilliant & show's off how good Ace really is,with a cool riff & good solo. Song 2:Speeding back to my baby is a classic rock song (me & my mate used to sing this one all the time with our air guitars)Ace co wrote this song with his wife Jeanette Frehley. In parts of this song you could imagine Suzi Quatro playing along with Ace its got that sort of feel to it. Song 3: Snow Blind is a song where Ace could be talking about his drug problems at the time of his solo project and as the verse of the chorus goes "I think i'm lost out in space". Song 4: Ozone is another good song wheres parts of it almost sound Egyptian... Read review

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Advantages: The two best comedy films around
Disadvantages: Could have more special features than it does

...Ace Ventura Pet Detective, How are we this afternoon, alrigthy then. Ace ventura was one of the funniest comedy movies to be released in the 1990's. Just after the success of Dumb and Dumber, Carrey moved into the remembral role of the pet detective who searches for lost and stolen pets. In both movies however, he is called in to help for the search of two unique animals/mammals. The first film engages in Ace Ventura searching the Miami Dolphin mascot that has been kidnpped, featuring great supporing cast such as Courtney Cox (Friends) and Dan Marino (Miami Dolphins kicker). The film is witty and you will literally laugh out loud at Carreys character, from fighting with the Maimi Dolphins Mascot to being eaten by a shark, you will find everything in the film funny. One of the biggest hits in the younger generation, this DVD... Read review

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Advantages: cheap, good location, friendly staff
Disadvantages: minimal kitchen facilities, no big socialising area

...Upon a recent visit to Prague, seven friends and I stayed in the Ace hostel. I believe we chose this particular establishment based primarily on price and location. I've stayed in several hostels in the last year or so, ranging from inner-city youth hostels to mountain huts, and I must say that Ace hostel is nothing whatsoever like anything I've stayed in before. I am used to hostels operating similar to an actual hotel, with a reception opening right off the main street, and being in quite a big building with lots of rooms, a bar, a left luggage room etc. Ace hostel was different to this. The clue to Ace's location was a sign sticking out of the building, as is usual, but then you had to select 'Ace' from a series of doorbells/buzzers to get the outer gate open. Once through this outer gate, you proceed along a tunnel, and up some... Read review

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Advantages: Smallest compressed files, attractive, generally easy to use GUI
Disadvantages: Displays are sometimes hard to follow

...I have used the main 3 compression programs to find out which one is the best and my conclusion is that WinACE offers the overall best program for compressing and decompressing files. WinACE supports lha, gzip, tar, zip, rar and ace files, to name a few. This means that if you wanted to you could dump your other compression programs and use this one exclusively. The compression achieved using the ACE file format is slightly better than RAR, this doesn't add up to much when you're compressing small files, but if you compress a large file you soon save several megabytes. Unlike WinRAR, WinACE features a nice GUI, which is easy to use. Although its displays can be hard to follow during compression/decompression. Many options can be set to vary the amount of compression and decide exactly how you want your archive to be created... Read review

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