Welcome to JLB Movies!

[JonathanLB]

I have finally finished my Website in full, as far as being ready to show it to people, and I thought you guys might want to take a look.

I'm still reviewing my DVD of The One, so that is the only thing right now that I have to do before I send my launch e-mail. I was going to send it yesterday but I re-thought how I would write it, so I ended up waiting a day.

Also I wanted to get the search features fully up and running. Everything should work now, but if you come across any errors (factual, typos, broken links, odd font that looks different from the rest), just let me know because it is a new site and although I spent probably 5 hours looking through it and correcting mistakes, there always could be more when you have hundreds and hundreds of pages.

Anyway, welcome to the site:

http://www.jlbmovies.com

If you want an index of all reviews that are currently up (but please look at the front page first, hehe), then go to:
http://www.jlbmovies.com/ReviewArchive.shtml

[Champion of the Force]

Ooooooooo, let's take a look! :)

:: looks around site ::

Well it loads fast on my poor little modem, that's a VERY good start. :)

I'll have a gander, but it's looking pretty sweet Jon. :thumbup

[JonathanLB]

Yeah I hear you man, I have a lousy ISDN connection here. It's really not faster than a 56.6 because it's pretty poor. :(

We were trying to get satellite Internet but it's not looking good. Mounting a satellite on the side of the house is not that easy at this point. Long story short, it's just too much money in general. Once I go back to college though I'll have cable modem access again.

I think having a fast loading site is essential, definitely helps for the site to load fast, be easy to navigate, graphically appealing without eating too much bandwidth and being too slow, and the content is still king.

I only have 119 reviews, but it is a start. That number will grow steadily and I'll be up to 200 before long, then 300, etc. I just can't wait to grow it a bit more.

I want to set up a bunch of link exchanges with other film sites, so that's another big project to do in the next week.

[darth_mcbain]

Unless I'm mistaken and not seeing them, I think there are 4 glaring oversights in the movies you've reviewed... Namely A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and The Phantom Menace... :) just kidding, I'm sure you'll get to them in due time.

I loaded up the site at work where I have a pretty fast connection, so I didn't have any problems loading it - and I have to say I'm really impressed. It has a really nice feel to it and of the few reviews I read, they looked to be well written.

My only complaint is that some of the pop-up ads get annoying, but a guy's gotta have sponsorship, I guess...

This will probably make it into my bookmarks list... Good job.

[JonathanLB]

Thanks for the kind words, the site definitely required a lot of work.

As for the ads, hmm, well there should only be one popUNDER ad that displays once per 12 hours, so once you see it once you should not be getting it again until basically the next time you view the site. Also, if you have seen an ad before in the last one week, it will not display again (for the popunders that is).

FastClick is not supposed to be delivering more than one ad to each user per 12 hours, so I hope that is the case. I definitely do not want to annoy the visitors with those types of ads, so that is why I choose to use FastClick instead of something more aggressive. There was this one site, ExitFuel, that had a high paying program that gave the user multiple popups when they left a page of the site, but it would spawn like 5 ads! I really hated it. It was horrible. So I had to ditch that.

I don't think these popunders are too obtrusive because at least once you close the first one, you shouldn't receive another during your visit and should be able to browse the site uninterrupted.

You are right about the Star Wars reviews, I must get them up fairly soon. I was going to sit down and watch all four films on Sunday hopefully, then review them after. Not that I have to see them again to review them, but it would be nice before AOTC comes out to go ahead and see all of them again in "order" (or as best order as we have right now, hehe).

I definitely want to make sure all of the reviews are well written. I generally write them, then read them over a few times, then edit them. Everything on the site now has been edited several times literally, but I could have missed something. I mean, I have found errors before like "stars" instead of "starts" for instance, and that is an annoying little typo because both are actually words, lol.

I was considering offering a contest later where basically whoever can find the most mistakes on the site gets a free DVD, so maybe the visitors could help me make sure the site is nearly perfect, hehe. But it seems tacky to do that right away because I don't want that to seem lazy, like "I'm too lazy to find them myself, you guys go ahead!" I think I worked out most of the errors before I launched it because it was a pretty intense testing phase.

I'm just getting that DVD review of The One up now. I'm also reviewing The Matrix out of necessity.

Basically, the e-mail I am sending to 70,000 subscribers is going to be very simple and I'm going for the "curiosity factor" here. Instead of using the introduction I was going to, which I don't think will get as many people to the site, I want to force them to click out of interest and if they like what they see, which I really hope/think they will, then they'll keep coming back, otherwise, oh well.

So the title of my e-mail will be: "What is The Matrix?"

The body: "Want to know how deep the rabbit hole goes? Visit http://www.jlbmovies.com to find out!"

Talk about a short e-mail! BUT, I think people will click because it doesn't try to sell them on anything, it's a marketing ploy basically and I think that's what I need to get traffic into the site. Future newsletters will be packed with content, though, so this is just the intro e-mail.

[Champion of the Force]

Talk about a short e-mail! BUT, I think people will click because it doesn't try to sell them on anything, it's a marketing ploy basically and I think that's what I need to get traffic into the site. Future newsletters will be packed with content, though, so this is just the intro e-mail.
That sounds like a good plan. I honestly get bored by overlong e-mails that don't need to be. If you just say hi and give a link then it should work well. :)

[JonathanLB]

I agree with that. I was going to have this rather long e-mail saying hello, telling them what the site was, everything it did, lol, and basically it was about 3 long paragraphs before I gave the link. Then I looked at it and thought, "And who is going to read that far for some e-mail they didn't even expect to get? Hmm..."

So I scrapped that idea. I'd rather get them to the site and they can decide if it is something they'd like to visit again regularly or if they want to unsubscribe or whatever.

I got my review of The One's DVD up now. That was one dang long review! I never write that much for a DVD, except with A.I. I guess, but there was sort of a lot to say even though the DVD was not that great.

http://www.jlbmovies.com/TheOne.shtml if you want to see it, hehe. They did put a few hidden features on that DVD that I found. I am sure I missed a few more maybe.

[Admiral Lebron]

I linked your Site to my profile, which gets 4-5 views a day from different people. Really neat site, I like the graphics.

[Jedi Master Carr]

So far I really like the site, but there is one thing I would like to see is an add to here:D I think that would be cool for you to link here and we can maybe link your site. As far as the site go I must say you do have cool graphics, haven't read the reviews too much yet but I will go through some of them and see what you think, especially of upcoming movies.

[Shawn]

Hey I got a Q for you, Jon: What did you think of Hannibal? Good or Bad?

(Yes, this has a point. :p It seems that this was one of those "Love it or Hate it" type of films.)

[JonathanLB]

I am not passionate about that film in terms of defending it, I mean I have heard people who hate it and I can definitely see where they are coming from, so I'm like, "Yeah, that's cool. I understand."

I actually loved it, so you are right, seems to be love or hate. I gave it four stars even though it was one really screwed up movie, but I guess I just really liked Hopkings. His character is totally messed up but the feel of the sets, the film, and the directing Ridley Scott did was quite good I thought. It'd be at the lower end of my four star scale, A-, but I actually loved it.

I can understand someone hating it, though, it's kind of disgusting and messed up. I've still only seen it once, but I got the DVD used for like $9 at Hollywood Video a while ago.

Carr, I can definitely link to this forum, I'll put it in my links section as the top link, which should be nice publicity I think at the very top there.

Perhaps there could be a link somewhere here to the site maybe, I am not sure where such space exists exactly but... we'll think of something.

Lebron, thanks a lot. :)

I really am glad you guys like it, I am adding to it frequently, should do another update yet tonight (already did two today, but it's going to be like that for a long while, hehe, in terms of very frequent updates).

Shawn: thanks for the PM earlier, good call. You saved me, hehe, I hadn't yet sent out my newsletter otherwise I guarantee I'd have received about 50 pieces of mail on that.

I bought Clerks and Chasing Amy on DVD today but I need Mallrats still...

[darth_mcbain]

Ahh... Mallrats... One of my personal favorites - I don't care how bad it did in the theaters or that it was panned by critics, every time I pop that one in I laugh my @ss off.

JLB, about those ads, they kept popping up for me every few seconds, even when I was just scrolling down the screen and not clicking or mouse-overing on anything... But, my IE was kind of freaking out on me at the time and ultimately I had to reboot, so it might have been something flaky in there...

And I second Carr's suggestion. In fact I had thought about that but forgot to put it in my post - you should definitely put a link to here in your site...

:)

[Jedi Master Carr]

I will ask David and the others to see what we can do about it Jon, also we probably could give you a small add o this site to put in your links, like we were doing for CC.net.

[BUFFJEDI]

Well I took a look around and I really liked what I saw.BUT how could Godzilla 2000 be the worst film,no stars and Charlies angels get like 4 half???(had to vote same as most critics there buddy) Glad to see you really didn't care for BW2.All and all Really cool looking place :) keep up the good work:thumbup

[JonathanLB]

McBain, it definitely should not be doing that! I am sorry about that. Is anyone else having problems like that? I haven't noticed anyone else mentioning it among the other friends who have looked it over, but it definitely should not do that.

Hopefully it was a one time thing, because it is supposed to be very very conservative with popunders. I hate having any on the site really but it's impossible to make money without them pretty much. I have no idea how well I will do with the site, but it costs about $100 per month to run, plus my expenses on movies and that is really high. At the rate I will be going, 3 movies per day on rental except for Friday (new releases), then from rental stores alone it is going to be perhaps $150 per month I would imagine. Then in theaters it costs me about $100.

I spent $2,200 on the site itself. So... I do not expect to make my money back anytime soon, I'm really doing this because I think it'll be fun and in *time* it will pay off, but that's a long time from now and I'm ok with that. Mainly, I figure I have time to do this, I really want to do this, so I may as well. I consider this part of my studying for film, hehe. I was thinking now that I am going to college for the next 4 years or so, maybe 3 years and 6 months if I am lucky, but then I want to go to AFI's 13-month intensive study program.

One thing that is really lacking among film students is their knowledge of film. The same could be said of me entering college in that I've not seen enough movies, plain and simple. I still haven't. I need to see about 500 specific movies before I will feel more like I am educated about film, hehe. The AFI top 100, all of Hitchcock's work, Woody Allen's work, Kubrick, the rest of the Spielberg films, other famous directors and lesser known critically acclaimed directors, etc. I want to go through and rent every movie that was ever nominated for best picture, then for best director, then for best screenplay, etc.

So I figure in four years, I'll have done more than that even :)

I just rented 6 movies tonight, 5 due back Friday. So I have to get cracking so I can get this stuff up, but Carr, yeah I can put a small graphic on that link page too even. It couldn't be a full banner because I don't think there is space there for a 480 wide banner, but a smaller graphic for sure.

I hear Mallrats rocks, did critics hate it? I don't know anyone who doesn't like that movie so far. I know the guys I have talked to say that Chasing Amy is amusing/entertaining, but one of Smith's weaker films, but I've never heard anything bad about Mallrats.

I need to see it for myself, though, so far I really like Kevin Smith but I've only seen two of his movies I guess. I thought both were solid 3.5 star films.

Ok back to work, hehe. I'll be adding a few reviews yet tonight.

[JonathanLB]

Godzilla 2000 is definitely one of the worst movies I have ever seen.

However, I did enjoy seeing it because it was so bad it was actually almost good again. But unlike some critics, I don't rate like that. A film that is totally horrid and campy gets no stars, it doesn't magically get 3 stars again because it sucked because that's unfair to the movies that actually attempted to be good and only got 2.5 stars or whatever.

But I must admit I had a pretty fun time watching Godzilla 2000 because that movie was so incredibly hilarious with its corniness. I love my review of that film, probably my favorite review on the entire site. Not the highest quality in terms of length or time spent on it, but the funniest. :)

My A.I. review is probably the longest/best.

Just wait until the Star Wars reviews are up ;)

I really liked Charlie's Angels, but everyone has their own opinions so whatever. But you got a few hot chicks at least (I'm not a Lucy Liu fan at all), then you got some pretty tight action, definitely a fun movie. I loved Tomb Raider too, though, hehe. Those are popular movies, but it's always popular to diss them too.

It's not like I expect people to agree with all of my reviews. I guarantee any review site you go to you will find things where you literally say out loud, "WHAT?! What an idiot!"

That's part of the fun ;) I do it myself, I can't expect other people not to do the same to me, haha.

Try FilmHead.com. The guy gave 3000 Miles to Graceland 3 stars and that film is unquestionably one of the WORST films ever made regardless of era. It belongs on MST3K, but even THEY have HIGHER STANDARDS! lol. Then he gave Final Destination one star, which is like one of the most popular cult films of the last 5 years or so. It's a great movie, definitely don't see how he figures it's one star, lol.

Plus he gave Gladiator 2 stars. You can always find ratings that make you cringe, like me giving The One 4 stars probably pisses so many people off, haha. I love that movie! It's great, the plot is what I like most about it probably, even though other people complain.

[Marcus Telcontar]

Nice site actually.

One of ther things I would recommend is to have "discussion area", maybe link that to here and use this forum? Give a sense of community so people will want to come back.

[JonathanLB]

Well if you look on the side bar, I do have one of those actually. I have a forum dedicated to the site, it's the final link on the main link section...

I'd like to build my own thriving forum there in time, but it will probably be a great while before that really happens. It's so hard to get a forum going. :(

In time, though, it'll be possible.

[Shawn]

Hey, whaddya know: We agree on something! ;)

I really liked Hannibal. It started off a bit slow with the whole Verger sub-plot, but it really picked up steam after a while. The climax was absolutely intense.

Re: Kevin Smith's films: Discounting the atrocious J&SBSB, Mallrats was my least favorite of his movies. I'm not, by any measure, saying it was *bad*... but if I had to rank them, it would be at the bottom. My list would go something like this: Dogma, Chasing Amy, Clerks, Mallrats. Which is really unfair, because I absolutely love the first three on that list. Chasing Amy was, I felt, a bit more of a mature comedy. Not in the actual subject matter, but in the way it's presented - underneath all the "**** and fart jokes", there is actually a serious love story involved. I really, really liked it.

[Dutchy]

I think those border images (http://www.jlbmovies.com/images/left_vert_bt.gif) together with the horror movie site kinda colors (red on black) don't come of overly inviting. I'd pick a more neutral layout instead.

I like the JLB Movies Philosophy part. It's very important the readers know the author's intent with the reviews or the site in general.

I got some comments on it, though.

It says that your site has a strict no spoiler policy, but I found a huge spoiler in the In the Bedroom review, which, by the way, wasn't predictable at all, IMO. The movie, that is.

Personally I never read reviews before watching a movie. I much rather read them afterwards to see whether they reflect my opinion.

I thought it was funny to read that Bowen believes not in making insulting remarks about people who enjoyed some movie, because that's exactly how I've become to know him, the past years. A little hypocritical, if you ask me.

I've said it before, but your writing style and grammar surely are excellent. Your writings, even though I very often higly disagree with them are always pleasantly to read, style-wise.

[JonathanLB]

I really like Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. I thought it was an awesome movie, but I like Dogma a lot too, yeah...

I have heard from most people that Clerks and Mallrats are the best, but... I will have to see them each for myself.

"which, by the way, wasn't predictable at all, IMO. The movie, that is."

LOL! Umm, you didn't realize that the insane boyfriend was going to kill the son? It was so incredibly predictable. What else was going to happen at the end of the movie after the son has died? What are the parents going to do to the killer? If you can fill in that question without having seen the movie, it's predictable. There was only one real thing they COULD do to keep the movie going and end it sufficiently.

Unfortunately it was the most predictable movie I have probably ever seen. Thir13en Ghosts was predictable, but not that much so because at least enough things happened that you couldn't predict all of them, whereas in In The Bedroom only two things happened in the entire movie, both of which you could see coming from about a mile away.

So Dutchy do you mean that you actually did not know either of those two events would happen? What was your idea of what might happen then? I thought after about 5-10 minutes, seeing how the insane ex-husband/boyfriend was acting, it was pretty obvious what would happen. My mom called it all too, but I don't really talk during movies, she does, so she leaned over and said what she thought was going to happen, lol, which was always correct.

I don't think saying that the ex-boyfriend kills the son is a spoiler because the entire movie revolves around the grief and anger and frustration the parents feel about their son's death. You cannot review the film without mentioning that, plain and simple. It would be like reviewing Gladiator but not wanting to spoil the fact that Commodus turns on his father and Maximus is exiled. If you didn't say that, you couldn't mention how good of a job Crowe did as the guy out for revenge (because you couldn't tell people he was out for revenge). I mean, I just don't spoil the end of a movie. I won't say, "The way that Maximus dies is really great, he should die that way," lol.

In a few of my Hong Kong movies I kind of explain too much of the plot (they were written long ago), but in those cases to be honest it doesn't matter... They are mostly there for the action/Kung Fu, so the plot is just an excuse to have the action. I don't mean always, just in the cases where I did explain too much of the plot.

I try not to read reviews before I see a movie either, Dutchy. Sometimes I do... like I will go to RottenTomatoes.com and just see the general remarks, but not read full reviews.

Dutchy, I don't think it is hypocritical saying that I don't make fun of moviegoers for their tastes or make fun of the actual professionals themselves. If you can find one review on my Website out of those 120 where I say something negative about people who liked the movie, then please show me so that I may fix it. I don't think there are any instances of that. I don't say, for instance, "Anyone who liked Thir13en Ghosts must be a total idiot; it would appeal only to the stupidest people" nor do I say the director is an untalented hack, but I feel his work on that particular film was horrible. Then again, I loved Resident Evil and the director who made that film also made a film I totally hated, which was Event Horizon, so just because someone has one piece of lousy work doesn't doom them forever to me.

I know at times on forums I can be overly defensive of a film I like or overly critical of a film I hate and say, "WHAT?! How could you think (so and so)?" but my philosophy on reviews refers to the manner in which I write the reviews themselves, and in that case I do not believe in insulting the readers by making broad generalizations, like "Everyone who likes such and such is an idiot."

I have probably said something like, "The film seems entirely aimed at kids and does not appeal to older audiences," but that wasn't meant to come across as an insult, just an observation about the aim of the film...

You are right with the design in that I went for a machine-type of feel to the site, kind of action/horror/sci-fi look almost, definitely going for the darker twist, but that's not supposed to mean it is uninviting. I am sorry you got that impression, but hopefully the content is still high quality even if the design is not your cup of tea so to speak, and hopefully even when you disagree (which is often I realize), you at least feel like I have expressed my opinion sufficiently. For instance, I can respect critics/moviegoers who simply feel differently than I do when they explain what they liked and didn't like about a movie, but it's just when they make really inaccurate, silly statements that it bothers me. Like if someone is going to knock The Phantom Menace and say, "It feels too much like an introduction without having a full plot," then I can say, "Ok, fair enough, BUT..." However if they are just going to say, "Well the Jedi show no emotion at all, it's really a poor acting job," then they leave me no other choice but to think they didn't do their homework and have no idea what they're talking about because anyone who knows Star Wars knows Jedi are not supposed to show emotion nor are the actors who portray them. No passion, no love, no fear, etc. So some comments are valid, some are just uninformed pretty much.

Oh well, I mean ultimately you just aren't going to have people agree with you 100% of the time or even 75% of the time probably, so you have to hope people read anyway and just look for the similarities, not the disagreements.

But thanks for your comments on the writing style and quality, that is nice of you to say and I try to put a lot of time into editing myself and writing the reviews, so I hope that is reflected there.

Thank you for your honest commentary on the site. I hope you enjoy it in general.

[Admiral Lebron]

I'm angry! I am infuriated! You do not have a review of the absolute BEST movie of ALL time, How to Make an American Quilt! That was GREAT movie! Not really...kinda sucked...in fact, I think it is like the most boring and worst movie the world. Not good at all. It's a poster child for like Oxygen or Lifetime. Real bad.

[JonathanLB]

Well after seeing Thir13en Ghosts and Original Sin back to back, I'm about to just give up on movies entirely.

Haha, j/k ;)

But seriously, wtf? I knew they would both suck, but dang. Next is probably K-Pax and I expect that to be even worse.

Hopefully this "Sexy Beast" movie is good and Ghost World also looks good, got that too.