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Codex Atanicus
Codex Atanicus is a three story anthology by Spanish director Carlos Atanes. Before watching the movie I never heard of the guy, but the introduction video on the DVD by one of his regular actresses Arantxa Peņa made me realize that I'm in for a hell of a ride. Experimental, bizarre, sick, strange - these are some of the words that describe the stories contained in Codex Atanicus. The anthology is opened by a 20 minute short from 1995 called Metaminds & Metabodies. I am really not into this kind of experimental videos, but I will try to summarize. It opens with a girl singing in the club. Everything looks ultra underground and the girl is connected with some wires to the walls. Strange people are watching her...
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Movie Review: Butterfly Effect 2, The

Story
When driving home from Julie's birthday celebration, Nick, Julie and their two friends are hit by a big truck. Later on Nick wakes up in the hospital and finds out that his girlfriend did not make it, and neither did his two friends. But by looking at old photographs, Nick can travel back in time and so he does in order to save Julie.

Comments
I'm a big fan of The Butterfly Effect which I thought was a great movie that was original and had some real suspense to offer. This sequel is basically just a clone of the first flick, only that it had no suspense to offer at all and just felt like a very tired sequel. Even though it wasn't a complete mess, it tries to do what the first movie did but basically just fails at every try and delivered a story that pretty much had snooze written all over it. Obviously I had no expectations to begin with and it just looked like one of those boring sequels, but it was worse than I first had thought it would be and it was very difficult staying interested the whole film throughout.

The Butterfly Effect 2 started out in such a cute and cuddly kinda way that I almost got sick. Luckily it took a different turn shortly after which made me wake up for a brief moment, but unfortunately it didn't stay that way and it was a hard task not snoozing off once in a while. All the characters in this movie are new, and while I liked Ashton Kutcher's character in the original, I can't really say that I liked Eric Lively's character Nick a whole lot. I didn't have any expectations when I watched the first movie, but afterwards I was truly impressed with Kutcher's performance, I didn't expect him to pull it off in a suspenseful flick like that. But while that movie felt new and fresh, this one basically borrows and uses the exact same kind of ideas, only problem was just that it didn't feel new any more, and was more of a lame clone to a terrific film.

The Butterfly Effect 2 The Butterfly Effect 2

Instead of reading his old journal (like Kutcher did), Nick can travel back in time by looking at old photographs. So Nick's girlfriend dies in a car accident and leaves Nick totally devastated for one year. He has headaches every now and then and doesn't seem to do as well at his job as he did before the accident. Eventually he discovers that he can go back and alter the past by looking at old photographs, and so he does but altering the past of course will have unexpected consequences in present time. If you've seen the first flick, you obviously know exactly how things goes, it's just that while nothing is really new here, it's also quite boring and a helluva lot more lame than the original movie was.

So he goes back and forth in time, changes things that changes other things and it never seems to be exactly the way Nick wants things to be. The acting was all right for what it was, but I can't say that I cared the least bit for any of the boring characters. The were also some sex scenes that were used as fillers and so boring it almost made me throw stuff at the tv. The CG looked good and was used a lot, but since I hate CG, it was not a good thing. The 92 minutes felt like 192 minutes and during the whole film, I just wanted it to end. I guess it would work somewhat ok if you're really hung-over and have absolutely nothing else to do, but other than that, it's not something I would recommend.

Final Comments
The Butterfly Effect 2 felt like a bad rip-off and I was just as annoyed during the movie as I was afterwards. The original flick was really good, but this tired sequel didn't even come close to any of what the first movie had. You should most definitely not bother with this one.

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Butterfly Effect 2, The

ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 2006
DIRECTOR: John R. Leonetti
WRITING CREDITS: Michael D. Weiss
GENRE: Thriller, Sci-Fi
CAST: Eric Lively, Erica Durance, JR Bourne
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 92 min

RATING: 3/10

Butterfly Effect 2, The Website/IMDB Click here
Butterfly Effect 2, The Trailer Click here

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