Review – The Rage: Carrie 2

I wonder what the record is for the number of years between an original movie and its sequel. If this one isn’t the champ, it’s definitely a contender (though I guess Psycho would be up there somewhere too). Despite the passage of years, the formula is basically the same: outcast teen with psychic powers runs afoul of cruel peers and makes them pay with fiery doom. Though not quite as good as the original, the film-makers appear to have done more with less to turn this relatively low budget rehash into a watch-worthy movie. Mildly amusing

Review – Motel Hell

I don’t know if being a classic of cannibal cinema is much of a distinction, but if so then this film deserves the prize. For the most part this is just a schlocky little gore-fest about a nutty old meat curer who uses booby traps to capture motorists in order to add that extra special flavor to his jerky. But occasionally in this low-budget horror flick brief glimmers of philosophy manage to creep in. To be sure most of it is of the bumper-sticker variety, including such priceless slogans as “meat’s meat and a man’s gotta eat” and “it takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent’s fritters.” But listen closely and you’ll find some deeper musings, including a speech on the interrelationship between cannibalism and karma that’s more than a little reminiscent of the Marquis de Sade. It’s nice to know that some folks don’t use the need to make a bad movie as a rationalization for using a bad script. Mildly amusing

Review – Buffalo '66

Meaningless, meandering script? Mindless preoccupation with alienated people in dysfunctional relationships? Grainy film stock? Brutal animal violence? Must be another GenX indy director bamboozling the critics into thinking he’s profound. Actor-writer-director Vincent Gallo actually includes a scene in which another character tells him what a large penis he has. You can’t get too much more self-indulgent than that, and most of the rest of the film is just about as bad. Why oh why do mainstream critics who really should know better keep falling for this kind of nonsense? Gallo has a reputation for attacking critics who talk bad about him, so maybe that has something to do with it. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The Money Pit

If you’re in the process of trying to buy a house, avoid this movie at all costs; it’s a seemingly endless situation comedy recounting just about everything that can go wrong when a young couple buys what they think is the home of their dreams. Tom Hanks and Shelly Long star as our hapless protagonists, trying to hold their relationship together as their country mansion collapses around their ears. Despite the one-joke nature of the plot and the predictable, sappy ending, there are a few genuinely amusing parts – usually bits of slapstick humor such as a raccoon jumping on Long’s head – to be found here. Mildly amusing

Review – Frankenstein (1931)

Despite being a little rough around the edges (due for the most part to the beginners’ mistakes endemic to the early talkies), this movie remains one of the classics of the horror genre. Though neither the first nor the last cinematic adaptation of Mary Shelly’s gothic novel, it nonetheless has become the standard against which other versions are judged and usually found wanting. Boris Karloff’s plodding, grunting, cube-headed, bolt-necked portrayal of the mad doctor’s creation has become a pop culture icon. And despite all the clichés, there are some genuine chills to be had here (particularly when the creature is playing with the peasant girl, and we all know what’s going to happen even though production standards cut the scene short). With that kind of reputation, it matters little that the acting suffers from post-silent histrionics and the plot is often as muddled and awkward as its lead character. Worth seeing

Review – Conan the Destroyer

This sequel is just the sort of cheap, low-production-value nonsense that I expected (and was pleasantly surprised not to get) from the first one. It’s as long as the original (or maybe it just seems that long because it drags and drags and drags), and a couple of the actors turn in repeat performances (most notably Schwarzenegger). And they’re both sword and sorcery flicks. But that’s where the similarity ends. Here petty intrigue has replaced philosophical musing. Even the camera work and effects quality leave a lot to be desired, with visuals that seem better suited to made-for-cable productions than to the cinema. It takes a lot to thoroughly sour me on a sequel to a film I really liked, particularly when the second effort features Lovecraftian undertones. But somehow they managed to do it. See if desperate

Review – Conan the Barbarian

For some reason the studio decided to let director John Milius spend a mint on the production, and for the most part he used the money to good advantage (a couple of expensive-looking sets don’t get much screen time, but other than that the production design looks pretty slick). Even James Earl Jones, drastically under-cast as the film’s cartoonish bad guy, manages to play it all with a reasonably straight face. And let’s face it, this was the role Arnold Schwarzenegger was born to play. Nietzsche and all that aside, this is just about the ultimate achievement in the fantasy film, one of the few movies in the genre that doesn’t play like it was written by teenage D&D junkies and filmed on a sound stage in Toronto. The DVD doesn’t offer much in the way of special features (unless you get the special edition, which has deleted scenes and some other cool stuff), but many of the shots really do need a full wide-screen presentation for proper appreciation. Worth seeing

Review – Opportunity Knocks

Remember back when Dana Carvey used to be funny? Well, those days were long gone by the time he got around to making this stinker. Carvey is hopelessly miscast as the earnest con man who ends up falling for the daughter of the wealthy family he’s trying to scam. I guess they must have thought that the actor’s charisma and talent for slapstick would somehow carry the day for the mediocre script. Um, nope. See if desperate

Review – Election

Anyone regularly engaged in the sometimes thankless task of educating teenagers ought to get a real kick out of this film. It’s one of the rare occasions in which Hollywood features adolescents as adolescents rather than miniaturized 30 year olds (played by actual 30 year olds). The main plot centers around a student presidential election and the attempts of a civics teacher (Matthew Broderick) to keep an annoying popular girl (Reese Witherspoon) from carrying the day. Though the action is too often interrupted by an annoying subplot involving the protagonist’s marital infidelity, for the most part the film stays amusing and relatively faithful to the way high school really was. If anyone is to be congratulated here, it’s the casting director; everyone from the leads right down to the principal and the janitor are played by actors who have their roles down pat. Worth seeing

Review – The Warriors

Ancient Greek epic action gets a 70s-era street gang makeover. End result: an action movie with a left-wing social conscience. There’s some funky old period tunes on the soundtrack, and some oddly innovative costuming and art direction. Other than that it’s an okay script in a fairly run-of-the-mill Walter Hill violence fest. Mildly amusing

Review – Batman

This first installment in the most recent series of Batman movies is, oddly enough, the least cartoonish of the lot. Indeed, everyone involved seems to be taking the whole thing way too seriously. Jack Nicholson does a good job as the Joker, perhaps a little too good; his character is a chilling psychopath rather than the somewhat buffoonish clown those of us who grew up with the Cesar Romero Joker were used to. On the other hand, Michael Keaton falls a little short of the usual legendary proportions of Bruce Wayne and/or Batman, seeming both too young and too short for the role (even with all the Bat-suit rubber bulges, which thankfully aren’t quite as anatomically explicit as later Bat-outfits). But for the most part he drops his usual manic approach to acting and plays his character pretty straight. Change is good, I guess, and overall the film holds its own, though probably not the ideal choice for family night viewing. Mildly amusing

Review – Videodrome

This film treads the fine lines between kinky sex and abusive violence, reality and television, entertainment and annoyance. The premise – a sinister conspiracy has developed a permutation of the television signal that causes hallucinations, brain tumors and other undesirable effects – is sort of intriguing. And the effects, though very latex-intensive, are worthy of director David Cronenberg’s sense of the perverse. But somehow the various elements just never quite seem to come together (though not for want of trying; I’ve seen at least two different versions of this movie, and they’re both about equally nonsensical, though in different ways). Mildly amusing

Review – Mission: Impossible

This film is a lot easier to enjoy if you give up on the incomprehensible plot early on and just sit back and enjoy the action sequences. They spent so much on the actors (especially Tom Cruise) and the effects that I guess they just ran flat out of money for a script. Suggestion: keep your finger on the fast forward button, and every time someone starts talking, buzz it forward until he or she shuts up and the action re-commences. That way you can derive the same amount of entertainment in less time. Mildly amusing

Review – 2010

What an unworthy sequel to a masterpiece of a movie. Sure, director Peter Hyams is no Stanley Kubrick, but he’s not solely responsible for the problems here. Instead, much of the blame falls on the dreadful script. I’m not sure how much of the problems started with the Arthur C. Clarke source novel, since I haven’t read it. But regardless of source of the problems, they’re bad. The HAL-loving computer geek character (well played by Bob Balaban) is so hateful I wanted to punch him, but I honestly got the feeling that he was supposed to be sympathetic. Maybe to the vast hordes of nerdy losers who frequent sci-fi conventions, but not to me. And HAL as a hero? Please. Oh please. It doesn’t help matters any that a fair amount of the drama depends on cold war tensions between the United States and the now-defunct Soviet Union, proving once again that mis-guessing the future is one sure way to help your sci fi movie look silly. Worst of all is that the mystery and awe of things cosmic and evolutionary in nature in the first one have somehow been transformed into a lot of borderline new age nonsense in the sequel. See if desperate

Review – 2001: A Space Odyssey

As noted in other reviews, I’m not exactly an expert on science fiction films. But my sense is that this particular example is a watershed moment in the history of the genre. The pacing is extremely slow compared with what Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott would be doing with alien contact themes just a few years later, and the big, black slab lacks the inherent drama of great big bendy-toys emerging from gigantic flying saucers or things popping out of eggs, bursting out of chests and the like. But the quiet (and I do mean quiet; except for some occasional Strauss, there’s no music) dignity of director Stanley Kubrick’s somewhat abstract consideration of human contact with ancient alien artifacts somehow lends a believability and a sense of wonder that even Close Encounters never truly achieves. And then of course there’s the legendary end sequence; though I can’t tell you from personal experience, I understand that it’s quite an experience when viewed while on psychoactive drugs. Worth seeing

Review – The Haunting (1963)

Once upon a time there were horror movies that didn’t have the luxury of relying on a lot of expensive effects work to carry them. In fact, some didn’t even use color. Instead, they relied on script, character, shot composition, lighting, editing and other basic tools of the trade to inspire that creepy feeling in the audience. This is one of those films. To be sure, it has its drawbacks. The plot tends to wander, and the filmmakers often resort to mawkish devices like voice-overs. But overall, armed only with dutch tilt, rapid zoom and some other cheap tricks, director Robert Wise takes Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and runs with it, turning it into a first class ghost story. Worth seeing

Review – A Bright, Shining Lie

Once again Hollywood gives us the Vietnam War as a backdrop for one American man’s personal struggle to make sense of life. If anything this one’s actually worse, because it has the nerve to masquerade as an honest portrait of US involvement in Southeast Asia. Oh, if only we’d been nicer about winning hearts and minds we wouldn’t have needed to burn so many damn huts down. And if only protagonist John Vann's mother hadn’t been a prostitute he could have gone to West Point instead of becoming a washout and a pervert. Whatever. See if desperate

Review – The Haunting (1999)

If this film is any indication, the traditional haunted house story has abandoned plot and character for the sake of expensive effects. I’m not saying the tons of computer graphics that infest this production aren’t top-drawer; quite the contrary. The trouble here is that its hard for all the cool faces in curtains, moving statuary and other gee-gaws to have much of an impact if the audience just can’t be bothered to care if the characters live or die. The sad part is that this is a remake of a film that was made back when script had to substitute for wow ‘em visuals. The 1963 version packed in a lot more with a lot less to work with. So really all the folks who made this barker had to do was stick with the substance of the first movie and supplement the script with modern cinema tech. Goodness knows they had the cast (including Lily Taylor and Liam Neeson) to pull off a less empty-headed production. As released, however, the picture is good for a few thrills but not much more. See if desperate

Review – The Blair Witch Project

I guess if they’d called this “The Lost in the Damn Woods and Got No Smokes Project” they probably wouldn’t have been able to sucker as many people into paying to see it. The first few minutes aren’t too bad, and the very end would probably have been powerful stuff if the preceding hour or so hadn’t completely worn out the film’s welcome. The middle, unfortunately, plays like MTV’s “Real World” doing a version of those dumb ghost stories we all used to tell when we were kids. It’s a seemingly endless onslaught of three film students screaming at each other about how much they hate being lost in the woods and how much they all want cigarettes. Occasionally there’s a little less-is-more horror to be found, and my hat’s off to them for having the guts to keep it simple in an effects-intensive market, regardless of my suspicion that it was a creative decision motivated by finances as much as by aesthetics. But overall this is a tiresome, amateurish effort that in my opinion deserved little of the critical acclaim it received. I suppose that as long as film students have easy access to equipment and exposure to the works of Peter Watkins, this film was bound to get made sooner or later. If only it could have been later. Much later. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Deep Blue Sea

Hollywood takes a serious swim in shark-infested waters for the first time since Jaws (to which there is a brief license-plate homage early in the film). In order to avoid falling into the just-another-rubber-shark movie pit that trapped the Jaws sequels and a handful of other pictures, the filmmakers came up with a couple of gimmicks: the sharks are played by a combination of expensive life-sized models and computer graphics, and the beasts are supposed to have been made super-intelligent by medical research. The result is a film with a great deal of high-quality gore and enough deep bass in the soundtrack that if you see it in a theater with decent speakers it will take your innards back to the halcyon days of Sensurround. However, it goes without saying that there’s a big old bunch of animal suffering and death along the way. Mildly amusing

Review – The Mission

This relic from David Puttnam’s tenure at Warner is one of my all-time favorite films. Rarely before and rarely since has Hollywood taken a well-crafted script with something worthwhile to say and put enough money and star power behind it to make it turn out just right. Robert DeNiro and Jeremy Irons (backed by a talented supporting cast including a young Liam Neeson) play two Jesuits with disparate backgrounds. The two are united, it spirit if not in tactics, by efforts to keep the Portuguese from destroying Indian missions in South America in the 1750s. The film manages to be touching without being saccharine or syrupy. This film was nominated for seven Oscars, won one (cinematography), and deserved more. Buy the tape

Review – Baseketball

I was completely amazed to actually be enjoying a film this stupid by the guys who created South Park. Sure, the humor’s as juvenile as it is dumb, but when you come home Friday night after a long work week, sometimes you need a movie just like this. And despite the emphasis on all varieties of offensive humor, somewhere under all the bathroom jokes there’s actually at least the bare bones of a parody of sappy, sentimental sports movies. Mildly amusing

Review – Quarantine

Ah, the things I’ll sit through to get the ever-elusive Q to round out my every-letter-of-the-alphabet goal. This is an exceptionally dull and amateurish effort about a future dystopia in which disease victims and political dissidents are put in concentration camps. The plot, to the extent that there is one, focuses on a muddled mess of thuggish police, beautiful resistance operatives, and an ordinary guy in over his head. I guess there’s supposed to be a message in here somewhere, but it doesn’t seem to be anything much more profound than “dictatorships are bad.” In other words, pretty boring stuff. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – EdTV

I’m not sure if this is a rip-off of The Truman Show or vice versa. The simple comparison is that this picture is a lot more realistic and at least a little more amusing than Weir’s production. Here our hapless hero knows that he’s on television all the time. Thus the plot focuses on the human drama of a man, his family and friends coming to grips with the constant invasion of privacy rather than the efforts of the television people to keep him from finding out that his life is a TV show. As with many Ron Howard movies, it tends toward the melodramatic, has more than its share of sappy moments, and features his brother in a supporting role. Despite all that, it’s got a few worthwhile bits. Mildly amusing

Review – Jaws 3

Between Lou Gossett, Dennis Quaid and Lea Thompson, there’s gotta be enough money to buy up all the prints of this barker and make sure nobody ever sees it again. At least Quaid and Thompson can argue that they were relative unknowns at this point; Gossett had been nominated for an Oscar before picking up a thoroughly unconvincing southern accent and employing it herein. If you’re watching this third Jaws movie (connected to the first two by the slenderest of threads) on video, part of the reason that everything looks out of focus is that the original theatrical release was in 3-D. Quick hint for movie people everywhere: 3-D equals stinkaroo. There are exceptions to this rule, but they’re few and far between. And this definitely isn’t one of them. It’s hard to say what’s cheaper, the script or the effects. Decisions, decisions. See if desperate

Review – Jaws 2

I guess after the first big-ass shark movie the studio felt like they needed to get a sequel into theaters as quickly as possible. That would explain why they’d release a film with this many continuity errors and other technical slip-ups. Sure, they got some of the original cast members back (notable absences include Richard Dreyfus and Robert Shaw, though of course Shaw’s twin excuses were that his character died in the original and the actor himself passed on in the interim between movies). Sloppy work and weak script aside, this flick’s most serious failing is the rubber fish, which they set ablaze early on. I suppose the burn scars were supposed to make it look scarier, but ultimately they just make it look even more fakey. Roy Scheider does his best, but in the end even he can’t save this one from the ranks of the mediocre thriller. Mildly amusing

Review – Drop Dead Gorgeous

This movie would have been a lot better if it didn’t fare so badly against the films it appears to be copying. On its own it’s an amusing fakeumentary about a small town beauty pageant in which a contestant and her mother literally kill off the competition. It suffers from mild cases of excess sentiment and silliness, and ultimately it’s not quite as clever as it pretends to be. Other than that, the overall production is well-crafted and features a number of genuinely funny moments. I would have considered it quite good indeed if it didn’t automatically demand comparison with the likes of Waiting for Guffman, a film with which this goofy romp simply does not compete. If you haven’t seen Guest’s movie (or perhaps even if you have), however, you should find this one thoroughly enjoyable. Mildly amusing

Review – Dragonheart

As one might suspect, this is a sword and sorcery flick jam packed with many of the old saws that plague the genre. However, a fresh element or two can also be found among the costume pageantry and histrionic heroics. For example, the tale centers around a dragon and a knight who team up to dupe villagers into paying the latter to rid them of the former. Though the movie is prone to lapse into sappy sentimentality, there’s also some genuine humor here and there. This film is also the first I’ve seen in which a creature created entirely on computers actually has a little personality (aided by Sean Connery’s voice). Mildly amusing