Review – Dreamscape

For a cheap sci-fi/horror movie, this one’s not too bad. It’s a little on the juvenile side, but the effects are okay and the plot is reasonably clever (loosely revolving around a sinister CIA-style scheme to create assassins who can enter their victims’ dreams). Okay, the scariest thing in the whole film is probably Dennis Quaid’s Super-70s hairdo. But the talent and the script are enough to keep this one interesting. Worth seeing

Review – Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors

This is the ultimate bad British horror anthology. If you see only one of these clinkers from the 60s (and even seeing one of them might be pushing it), this is the one. Of course, by now it’s Dr. Terror’s House of Clichés, presenting us with a parade of the usual suspects: a werewolf, a man-eating plant, an enraged voodoo god (my favorite sequence), a disembodied hand and a vampire. Even the end is an O Henry twist gone dumb. Still, I used to watch this picture and its kin on Friday Fright Night when I was younger (and Friday Fright Night was still on), so I guess I have a bit of a soft spot in my heart for it. Worth seeing

Review – The Big Lebowski

The Cohen brothers’ first post-Fargo effort, this one isn’t quite as tightly plotted but nonetheless contains more than its share of hysterical, offbeat humor. Of course, it’s got more than its share of plain old weirdness, too. But overall the film upholds the fine Cohen tradition. Worth seeing

Review – The Beautician and the Beast

Fran Drescher stars in the Julie Andrews role in this sitcom-style treatment of The Sound of Music plot. Hey, at least she doesn’t sing. Despite a few odd amusing moments, this is for the most part like watching four or five episodes of “The Nanny” back to back. See if desperate

Review – Species

If you liked Lifeforce, you’ll love this one. It’s got more nekkid wimmin from outer space than you can shake a stick at. Actually it’s just one space alien, played by supermodel Natasha Henstridge, but she spends enough time romping around in the nude searching for a human male to mate with that any dateless adolescent boy should get more than his video rental dollar’s worth of cheap thrills. The only other interesting feature (or the only one at all if you’re not male and/or past puberty) of this lackluster sci-fi thriller is the effects work. H.R. Gieger fans will probably enjoy the first solid movie work by the artist since Alien. See if desperate

Review – Deep Rising

The special effects are the highlight of this bad rework of the old Kraken legend. What could have been an interesting concept drowns under the weight of go-nowhere subplots and petty intrigue, leaving little besides yet another cheap Alien knock-off. The characters are so annoying that it’s hard to muster much concern when they’re menaced by each other or the monster. And the show-stopping chase sequence at the end is definitely a Sea-Don’t. On the other hand, thanks to the magic of computers we’re finally moving into the realm of movie monsters whose movements aren’t limited by the slow speeds of mechanical effects. The end result is a much more threatening – and hence much scarier – creature. Mildly amusing

Review – The Specialist

Yet another Stallone action vehicle. Here he plays yet another mercenary killer with a heart of gold, only the twist this time is that he’s a demolition expert (he likes to blow people up rather than shooting them). Beavis-esque pyrotechnics fans will get a bang out of all the explosions, but otherwise this is just another shoot-em-up (make that blow-em-up) bit of violent fluff. See if desperate

Review – Hot Shots Part Deux

Rare indeed is the movie that can be this dated and yet remain this funny. Almost every joke in this production parodies other movies, mostly from the late 80s and early 90s. Indeed, one of my favorite bits simultaneously makes reference to Platoon, Apocalypse Now and Wall Street. And don’t even get me started on the Buckinghams. However, anyone who liked the first one is likely to like this one as well. Mildly amusing

Review – Hot Shots

Even though this is primarily a parody of Top Gun, you don’t have to be a fan of the Cruise movie to get most of the jokes in this one. And sure, most of the humor is pretty low-brow. But it’s still an entertaining way to kill an hour and a half (though I thought the sequel was a little bit funnier). Mildly amusing

Review – Phantoms

One of the rules I try to abide by is that I only review films that I’ve seen uncut, from start to finish, without interruption. So technically I guess this one shouldn’t count, since it put me to sleep somewhere in the middle (I admit it had been a long day, but still ...). But I’m going to count it anyway because I rewound the tape and watched the part I slept through. Not, mind you, that it made much difference; this meandering stinker about the battle between a small cadre of humans and an ancient organism out to dominate the planet wasn’t vastly improved (or really even affected) by the part where I dozed off. Oh, and if the premise sounds a little like a cheap rip-off of The Thing, you ain’t seen nothin’ until you’ve seen the special effects (especially late in the movie). A few bush-league thrills, but otherwise ... See if desperate

Review – Batman and Robin

Ever since the grim Tim Burton picture that started this most recent series of Batman movies, the films have been going steadily downhill. This, the fourth film in the series, has degenerated into the goofy, cartoon violence that was part and parcel for the Adam West / Burt Ward TV series. Also, see my review of The Peacemaker for my opinion of George Clooney (who plays Batman here). What’s next, Bat-Pfink a Boo Boo? See if desperate

Review – Batman Forever

Somehow Val Kilmer just isn’t quite right for the role, though I don’t think it’s really his fault. He’s got the act down, but somehow his boyish good looks just make him an improbable candidate for faithful ward Dick Grayson’s mentor. Maybe if Kilmer had been in one of the earlier films when he wouldn’t have had to play a father figure, he could have outdone his predecessor Michael Keaton (who was also a bit off the Bat-mark, though for different reasons). The highlight of this third Bat-sequel is probably the villains, with Tommy Lee Jones as my personal favorite Bat-nemesis, Two-Face (there’s just something about a psychotic former lawyer) and Jim Carrey perfectly typecast as the manic Riddler. Not as dark and brooding as the first two, so it keeps moving a little bit better. Mildly amusing

Review – Batman Returns

This first Batman sequel still has a lot of the Tim Burton touches (and what is it with Burton and Christmas?), but it’s just not quite up to the original. The fault doesn’t lie with Danny DeVito (the Penguin) and Michelle Pfeiffer (Catwoman); they’re both good examples of the excellent villain casting throughout the Batman movies. But there are just a lot of other things that don’t work as well. For example, the Penguin’s avian sidekicks are just too cute and harmless-looking to be really menacing. The sexual tension between Pfeiffer and Michael Keaton’s Batman somehow doesn’t quite work either. Not a bad movie, just not as radical as the first one. Mildly amusing

Review – The Arrival

This is either a mildly amusing romp in the realm of Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style paranoia (except this time the invaders are trying to snatch the entire planet rather than just our bodies) or an extremely offensive allegory on race relations in Southern California. It doesn’t appear to be taking itself all that seriously, but one can’t help but notice that the good guys are all white and almost all the bad guys are Black or Hispanic. Guess it just depends on how political you think it’s trying to be. Because I’m not sure exactly what was going on in the producers’ minds, I’ll compromise and say See if desperate

Review – Dead Ringers

Contemporary with this film’s original theatrical release, one critic commented that it would do for trips to the gynecologist what Psycho did for showers. That may be apt. Director David Cronenberg gives full vent to his misogynist streak in this tale of twin gynecologist brothers torn apart (in one scene literally) by an actress. It’s a shame that as a rule horror movies don’t draw much critical acclaim, because Jeremy Irons deserved recognition for his portrayal of both the evil twin and the even more evil twin, frequently via traveling mats in which he actually carries on a conversation with himself. The eerie part is that you can almost always tell which of the two he’s playing, even in the absence of other clues, merely by subtle changes in his mannerisms. Worth seeing

Movie Reviews – The Genres

Back when my movie reviews were published on the 8sails web site, each page had a spot for a genre and a sub-genre. Movies began with one of five genre designations:

• Action
  
• Comedy
• Drama
• Documentary
• Horror

Sub-genres were more extensive. Comedies tended to go without a sub-genre, while horror movies (which I know a bit more about) had several standard sub-categories. And the sub-genres were also a little fluid. For example, most ghost movies (such as Poltergeist) were part of the horror genre, but a movie such as Ghostbusters would be designated a ghost comedy.

The designations were mostly for record-keeping purposes, so I could keep track of how many movies I watched in the various categories. And because of the way the web pages were structured, each movie got only one genre and only one sub-genre.

I’ve continued this practice for the blog entries here, at least in part because the set includes more than a few movies that I don’t remember well enough to try to re-classify in any way. And I don’t want to assign tons of extra tags. For example, every movie in the Disney princess pantheon could accurately be tagged as a comedy, a drama, an animation, a fantasy movie and a musical.

Though I understand it’s better SEO to pile tons of tags on everything, I prefer the simpler legacy of the old site’s two-tag system.

As with my opening remarks about ratings, these thoughts weren’t originally written in 1998. I put them here at the beginning of the blog because that makes them easier to find. And anyone reading the blog from start to finish may appreciate beginning with a few general notes to explain why things are set up as they are.

Movie Reviews – The Ratings

These are all personal opinions rather than any serious attempt at film criticism. As opinions, they’re colored by my tastes and moods. For example, I like horror movies, so they’re generally going to get a better ranking from me than they might deserve from a critic trying to help a general audience pick a film to see (or harsher, considering that my tolerance for dull horror movies is much lower than my tolerance for bad examples of other genres). 

Also, if I happened to be in an especially good mood (or the opposite) when I saw a particular film, that might have made a difference, particularly for movies that were on the border between two ratings. In general I start every movie in the middle (“mildly amusing”) and give it a chance to work its way up the scale, sink down the scale, or just stay where it started.

So it takes a combination of an especially bad movie and an especially bad mood to earn a “wish I’d skipped it”). A lot of films are on the borderlines, particularly between “mildly amusing” and “see if desperate.”

My rating system:

• buy it = four stars
• worth seeing = three stars
• mildly amusing = two stars
• see if desperate = one star
• wish I’d skipped it = no stars

And just a quick note on my treatment of violence: in general, movie violence is okay with me; I’m not a person with a weak stomach, so my reviews don’t reflect much sensitivity to excess carnage. With one big exception: I don’t like watching a lot of graphic violence inflicted on helpless people and animals for the sheer psychotic pleasure of depicting such acts. I’m particularly dedicated to noting excessive incidents of violence against children or animals, especially when I’m not convinced that a particular instance was really integral to the plot.

Further, I should mention that I didn’t start writing capsule reviews until 1998. Obviously in the first 31 unrecorded years of my movie-going life, I saw a lot of stuff. Unless I’ve seen something recently (i.e. within a day or so of writing the review), I don’t review it. As a result, I sometimes make mention of some films that I’ve seen but haven’t reviewed. One of my long-term goals is to remedy this problem by getting around to re-watching all the films that are referenced herein. Indeed, some of them are high on my list. Others are in a more I’ll-get-to-it-when-I-get-to-it category. And I must admit that by the time I get around to re-watching a couple of the films I mention (such as The Toxic Avenger), it will be awfully cold to be watching movies because Hell will have frozen over.

In 1999 I ran up against a snag in my ratings system for the first time. As noted above, my four-star rating is “buy the disc” (of course at that point it was “buy the tape,” but more on that in a minute). I figured out early on that this would be an odd bit of advice in a review of a film that had just been released in theaters and wouldn’t hit video for months. However, I was able to ignore this incongruity until early July, when I saw Summer of Sam in a movie theater. I decided to go ahead and stick with the “buy the disc” rating, because I think it’s still a solid indication of how good I thought the film was (even though those who read the review right after I wrote it weren’t immediately able to do as suggested).

The following year, the ratings system became even more complex. After watching They Nest, I added a new rating to the bottom of the scale: “avoid at all costs.” The new slam has the same numerical value as “wish I’d skipped it” (i.e. zero), but it helps me express a certain added measure of disgust to films that go out of their way to earn it. An “avoid at all costs” movie must meet the usual cellar-dweller standards: it must have little or no redeeming value (usually not even earning points for technical merit), and I typically have to see it when I’m in a bad mood. However, these worst-of-the-worst pictures earn that additional spoonful of vitriol from me by not only sucking but also throwing in some especially distasteful element, such as truly excessive violence against animals or children.

The year 2000 also saw DVDs enter my life. Thus I had to ponder whether or not to change my highest rating to “buy the disc.” Initially I elected to create a distinction between “buy the tape” and “buy the disc,” with either descriptor equivalent to a 4-star rating. But the latter indicated in addition that 1. I actually saw the film on DVD, and 2. the disc actually included some feature that made it better than the plain old vanilla VHS releases. Usually that required a movie that really needs to be seen in wide screen format with the added picture quality you get with a disc, or perhaps a disc with special bonus features that make it worthwhile.

And then later discs fell by the wayside in favor of streaming. In order to avoid further modifications to the rating, I switched to the generic “buy it” as a general indication that the movie was worth adding to a permanent collection, no matter what form that collection took.

The only new element introduced by 2001 was the inevitable surrender to the forces battling against my attempts to see at least one movie starting with each letter of the alphabet every year. I felt confident early on when Quills netted me an elusive Q, but X turned out to be beyond me. I almost stooped low enough to re-watch Xanadu just to keep the streak alive, but in the end I decided it just wasn’t worth it. And yeah, I ended up watching and reviewing Xanadu later anyway.

At one point I had a fairly strict policy against reviewing edited-for-content versions of movies. Back in the day when movies came out in theaters and then got cut up for broadcast television, passing judgment on censored work would more often than not be unfair to the filmmakers (especially when it comes to horror movies, which make up a sizable percentage of my intake). Thus the only exception I used to allow was if I’d seen a movie uncut at some point in my life then I’d permit myself to review it based on a recent viewing of an edited version (at least if I recalled the unedited version well enough to be fair to the film).

However, a couple of things changed over the years. The first variable factor was the movie industry itself. We now live in a multiple-market environment. Arguably it isn’t fair to review a movie after seeing it in a movie theater because a few months later it will come out on disc in a “director’s cut” or “unrated” version that sometimes – not often, but sometimes – differs significantly from the theatrical release. Further, a lot of movies first see the light of day on television, particularly my beloved horror genre flicks (a specialty of the Sci Fi Channel). Sometimes these movies are also available on disc with the sex, violence and language left in. Sometimes they’re produced for television to begin with and what you see is what you get.

Thus in the 21st century marketplace the film school “pure art” approach is hard to apply as a practical standard. And that brings the second change into play. As I’ve gotten more experienced watching movies in the various different delivery media, I’ve gotten better at telling what’s been cut out for the home audience (even in movies I’ve never seen before). Also, as I’ve gotten older I’ve become less impressed with some of the stuff that typically gets cut to meet S&P dictates, particularly gratuitous nudity. Because the absence of a boob shot or two or an instant of silence while a character mouths the F-word isn’t likely to make a difference in my overall impression one way or another, under some circumstances I think it’s fair to review a movie even though it’s been cut and I’ve never seen it otherwise.

That, then, is the standard I live by now. Sticking to the uncut stuff is still my goal, but I’m willing to allow myself some leeway if I don’t think extra cussing, cheap sex or anything else likely to end up on the cutting room floor would have been likely to have changed my opinion much one way or another.

Also, once upon a time all ratings had “Verdict:” in front of them. It seemed natural back in 1998 when I was still a practicing attorney, but later it struck me as somewhat, well, judgmental. 

And as a quick final note, obviously none of this was written on January 2, 1998. But I thought I ought to put this information at the very beginning of the blog so it would be easy to find.

The Hoffman Lens

Greetings, and welcome to The Hoffman Lens.

This blog is a collection of materials related to mass media, especially movies. Starting at some point in 2015, entries were first published here. Older entries are mostly material from 8sails.com, the media criticism web site I ran until it became too much of a pain in the butt to maintain it. So that explains why the blog dates back to before Blogger even existed.

I should further add that all the dates for the first four years are fake. I didn’t start including specific dates until 2002, so I used a random date generator to get specific enough for blog entries. The years are accurate, but the rest is made up.

Questions and comments are welcome at any time from anyone who isn’t a misogynist or white supremacist. If you’re an incel or a bigot, you are cordially invited to keep your opinions to yourself.

Before we get started, what exactly is a Hoffman Lens?

In They Live, a movie by famed horror-meister John Carpenter, evil space aliens have taken over the planet and are systematically using the Earth as a giant third-world economy. Trouble is, nobody knows what’s going on. The dastardly villains have managed to disguise themselves, hide their presence and keep earthlings in line via an elaborate barrage of brain-numbing broadcasts and subliminal print messages. The only way to see the bad guys in their true, less-than-attractive shape is by wearing sunglasses that have been treated with some kind of special, hypno-filtering chemical. In one scene these glasses are identified as Hoffman lenses. Hence the name of this column.