Review – The Birds

Though I suppose Psycho is Hitchcock’s most widely appreciated film, I’d like to put in a good word for this one as well. Sure, it’s a little uneven; the first half of the film concentrates on a lot of superfluous character development at the expense of the plot. But once birds everywhere turn on the human race and attack, the action takes off and it’s pretty good from that point forward. The movie features a couple of notable technical points, including the famous jungle gym sequence and the complete absence of added music on the soundtrack. So if you’re in the mood for an odd angle on the whole end-of-the-world thing, you should find this one a rewarding experience. Worth seeing

Review – Pecker

John Waters serves us up a semi-autobiographical account of a young man who photographs his white trash world in Baltimore and ends up becoming the darling of the New York art scene. Now obviously this isn’t exactly the Waters saga; for openers, the protagonist is heterosexual. But longtime fans won’t be disappointed by this most recent parade of oddballs, pure Waters though toned down a bit since the days of Pink Flamingos, Desperate Living and the like. In fact, it’s almost odd to hear Hollywood types like Edward Furlong, Christina Ricci and Mary Kay Place deliver that distinctive Waters dialogue that used to issue forth from the likes of Divine and David Lochary. Of course longtime troupe members Mink Stole and Channing Wilroy play small parts, but otherwise the torch appears to have passed to a new, better-paid generation. Furthermore, Waters seems to be mellowing in his old age; the plot here is a lot more upbeat and sentimental than his earlier work. But he hasn’t lost his affection for offbeat characters and the occasional gross-out. Worth seeing

Review – Good Burger

Bad movie. I suppose it goes without saying that I’m a little outside the demographics for a film produced by Nickelodeon. And I also suppose that if you were about ten years old you might get a real kick out of a lot of the jokes here. Heck, even I found some of it sort of funny. But for the most part this wee tale of competing burger joints and the dimwit who rescues his employer from the maw of a big corporation is the very definition of juvenile humor. And to top it all off, you’re likely to walk away with the oft-repeated phrase “Welcome to Good Burger home of the Good Burger can I take your order” stuck in your head. See if desperate

Review – The Name of the Rose

The opening credits identify this film as a “palimpsest” of the novel by Umberto Eco. Oh, please! Must everything Eco touches turn to pseudo-intellectual pretension? And could he possibly find a way (therapy, perhaps) to get over whatever problem he has with women? All that aside, this is an interesting and entertaining movie, a fairly unique blend of medieval philosophy and murder mystery. It’s a little long, but it’s clever enough to keep moving, bogging down only occasionally (like in the protracted sex scene). Animal violence-wise, it’s a little hard on the pigs. But other than that, it’s an enjoyable experience. Worth seeing

Review – White Christmas

This is one of the all-time champion examples of Christmas schmaltz. In fact, the only real competition in the schmaltzy holiday musical realm is another Irving Berlin masterpiece, Holiday Inn. Of course, the older film is in black and white rather than glorious Technicolor. If it wasn’t such a holiday standby, I suppose I’d regard it as little more than a second-rate musical. But if you’re in the mood for some festive December corn, this is one of Hollywood’s finest examples. Mildly amusing

Review – Scrooged

This film features two things that I normally don’t care for: Bill Murray and Christmas schmaltz. Oddly enough, however, both work in this 80s-ized retelling of Dickens’ holiday classic. Murray does his usual shtick, but here it’s less annoying and more a welcome respite from the traditional crotchety “bah humbug” portrayal of the protagonist. If you must do the whole seasonal movie thing, this one mixes enough sarcasm and physical comedy in with the sappiness to keep it from turning into yet another Christmas cliché. It also features a solid script, good music and a host of late 80s celebrity cameos. Worth seeing

Review – Holiday Inn

One of the classics of Hollywood holiday cinema, this movie is famous for giving us “White Christmas.” Of course, it also gave us the racist spectacle of “Abraham,” the black-face tribute to Lincoln’s Birthday (which I note has “disappeared” from the version of this movie cablecast during the holidays). Highs and lows aside, for the most part this is your standard, run-of-the-mill Bing Crosby / Fred Astaire picture, a lot of Irving Berlin numbers loosely woven together with something that vaguely passes for a plot. In other words, if you like musicals from the 40s you’ll probably like this one. Mildly amusing

Review – Miracle on 34th Street

Unless I missed something somewhere, this famous holiday tale enjoys the distinction of being the only Christmas film with a lawyer for a hero. That implausibility aside, this is a charming story about a Macy’s department store Santa turns out to be the real thing. Naturally the powers that be seek to have him locked up in an asylum, hence the lawyer crusading valiantly to prove that he actually is Santa Claus. The mix of cynical politics and hokey sentiment in the court scenes is an amazing bit of counterpoint from Hollywood in general and Christmas movies in particular. Not to mention cute little Natalie Wood as the cynical tyke who learns to have faith in the holiday spirit. Worth seeing

Review – Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss

I rented this movie sort of by accident, because somebody put the cassette behind one of the boxes for Burn Hollywood Burn at the video store. I usually take such events as viewing tips from the Fates, so I sat through it anyway. The Fates must have been in a cranky mood that night. This is an extremely self-indulgent film about the ins and outs of gay romance in Los Angeles. I’m sure the world needed this film for some reason, but that reason isn’t immediately apparent to me. On the other hand, it was better than Burn Hollywood Burn turned out to be. See if desperate

Review – Jingle All the Way

What appears to be a kid-oriented Christmas movie concept turns out to be a screwball comedy aimed more at dads with a lot of pent-up insecurity about their abilities as husbands, fathers, providers and so on. I’d be a little surprised to learn that Arnold Schwarzenegger was the first guy they had in mind for the lead, but he plays the part with his usual aplomb for slapstick. About the best thing I can say for this is that it isn’t quite as sappy as the usual holiday fare, but even that gets blown in the end when the film turns into a message piece about the value of family bonds over commercialism. See if desperate

Review – Carrie

This one’s famous for several reasons, including an early appearance by Sissy Spacek in the title role, a bit part played by John Travolta, the source novel (Stephen King’s first), and a rare bit of sympathy for female characters, especially by horror movie standards. The scene in which mousy Carrie White takes her telekinetic revenge on her cruel classmates at the prom is a legendary moment in genre history. Though teenage outcasts will probably derive the most pleasure from this outing, anyone who remembers just how bad high school could be and just how nice it would have been to have psychic powers when the going got rough should be able to enjoy this movie at least a little. Worth seeing

Review – War of the Gargantuas

Few movies cited in the Medved brothers’ Golden Turkey books so richly deserved multiple mentions in the chronicles of the truly dreadful. Imagine a Godzilla movie with no Godzilla in it, and you’ve got the general idea here. Apparently Gargantuas are men in moss-strewn wet suits who enjoy stomping on miniatures. This outing is missable except as a historical curiosity, offering up one of the worst lounge singer numbers ever preserved on celluloid and providing evidence of just how rapidly Russ Tamblyn’s career went downhill after West Side Story. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear

Priscilla Presley and Robert Goulet romantically paired (however briefly)? Somewhere in the Hereafter, Elvis must have gone through an awful lot of TV sets over this one. Actually, maybe they could have filmed the King blasting his big screens rather than wasting celluloid on this poor attempt to revive the bygone glory of the Airplane! days. Aside from the rare occasions where the jokes do work (and even then to a very limited extent), the high points of this historical relic are the long strings of physical comedy that are made funny only by the fact that O.J. Simpson (pre-homicidal-rampage) happens to be the victim. See if desperate

Review – King Kong (1976)

“When the big monkey die, everybody cry.” Thanks, Dino. This film is terrible on so many different levels, from a multitude of continuity slips right on up to the dreadful script, dreadful acting and dreadful direction. And if you could write a book about the sexual themes in Lady and the Tramp, you could write a whole encyclopedia about the sick sexual overtones here. If this movie is worth seeing at all, it’s merely as a historical artifact, or perhaps an integral part of any Jessica Lange film festival (hey, it keeps her humble). Wish I’d skipped it

Review – King Kong

Though rife with racism and sexism and more than a little rough around the edges, this film remains one of the all-time classic monster movies and a seminal piece of special effects pioneering. I was a wee tyke the first time I saw this, still young enough to be taken in by the effects (not to mention unable to read “Eighth Wonder of the World” for myself and thinking that it was “Ape Wonder”). Even though Willis O’Brien’s animation work is jerky, almost amateurish, by today’s standards, he still manages to get more drama and feeling out of his miniatures than de Laurentiis got from the millions he spent on his remake. Worth seeing

Review – Carnival of Souls (1998)

I’m not sure what it was about the original cult favorite that required or even invited a remake. And to the extent that a remake was needed at all, I’m not at all convinced that this particular film was what anyone should have had in mind. It seems to capture all the disjointed weirdness of the first one without any of the eerie sense of foreboding. Ultimately all we get is an hour and a half of constant snapping in and out of dream/hallucination sequences, each more pointless than the last. Except where it busies itself stealing shock effects (not to mention a little plot) from Jacob’s Ladder, this movie has little to offer. See if desperate

Review – Payback

“Hello, and welcome to the movies. My name is Mel Gibson, and I’ll be your server. What can I get for you folks this evening?” “Well, I think we’d like a hearty helping of violence.” “Very good. And would you like some acting with that?” “No, just violence would be fine.” “Could I tempt you with a little plot on the side?” “We’ll pass. Just bring us the violence, please. Oh, and could you throw in a cute dog? But make sure something violent happens to him.” “We’ll get your order right out.” Mildly amusing

Review – The Golden Child

This is an odd mixture of fantasy film (usually the domain of the very young and the very dorky) and slick, cynical Eddie Murphy vehicle. Odder still is that the combination actually kinda works. Murphy plays a street-wise private detective recruited by Tibetan mystics to snatch a Dalai-Lama-like child back from the gaggle of demons, mutants and criminals who kidnapped him. Some of the effects are a little amateurish, but the comedy works well with the drama and the plot keeps moving fairly well. Mildly amusing

Review – Marathon Man

This film is legendary for the psychotic “Is it safe?” dentistry scenes. Other than the big gross-out, however, this is a not-half-bad political thriller about a hapless grad student involved by his brother in an international conspiracy of Nazi war criminals, shadowy government agencies and diamond smugglers. The impact of the brutal violence tends to outweigh the occasionally thin plot, but overall this isn’t a bad example of the seventies-era thriller. Worth seeing

Review – The Evil Dead

Here we have one of the legendary classics of low-budget horror. The acting is terrible, and the effects not much better. The misogyny gets a little hard to take as well (particularly the scene in which one of the female characters is graphically raped by plants). And to be honest, once the film passes the halfway point the whole mess disintegrates into a brain-dead gore-fest. But even so, the set-up isn’t too bad, almost Lovecraftian at points. And though a lot of the gore is cliché stuff, every once in awhile director Sam Raimi will throw in something just innovative enough to be genuinely creepy, sometimes even downright scary. If nothing else, this picture should be regarded as a memento of a bygone age when independent film-makers were still able to turn out horror movies on par with the big-budget Hollywood stuff. Worth seeing

Review – The King and I

This classic musical features the role that came to be Yul Brynner’s trademark. Sure it’s trite, dated, sexist, and way too sentimental. But if you’re in the mood for something in the heartwarming neighborhood, you could do a lot worse. The “Getting to Know You” sequence may produce unpleasant flashbacks to grade school music classes, but the rest of the big production numbers are fine examples of the Hollywood musical genre in its Technicolor heyday. Worth seeing

Review – Rounders

I must admit at the outset that the allure of movies about poker players eludes me entirely. Thus it should come as no surprise that I found this grim, pseudo-noir tale of a former card shark trying to make good by going to law school but ultimately being drawn back into the game by his ne’er-do-well friend more or less completely charmless. Actually, it should come as at least a small surprise; I have no affection for Matt Damon at all, but I’ve liked John Malkovich and Edward Norton in other films. Not in this one, however. See if desperate

Review – Rosemary’s Baby

This is one of the oddest combinations ever to produce an effective horror movie. Start with Ira Levin’s novel about poor, clueless Rosemary Woodhouse, duped by her simpering husband and the coven of old folks next door into bearing Satan’s baby. Cast Mia Farrow as Rosemary, and add the normally quaint and charming Ruth Gordon as one of the witches. Let outré Eastern European director Roman Polanski apply his own unique visual touches. Then to top it all off, let William Castle – who has a brief cameo outside a phone booth – produce. Maybe Percepto (first introduced by Castle’s The Tingler) would have been the perfect additional touch to the famous Farrow/Devil rape sequence. Seriously though, the film is a little dated, but it nonetheless retains much of its power to chill, particularly if watched in the right conditions (late at night, lights off and all those clichés). Mildly amusing

Review – Tora! Tora! Tora!

This film probably wins the prize for the most realistic war movie Hollywood ever made, if for no other reason than the fact that the Japanese characters actually speak Japanese. Taken as a whole, this appears to be a fairly even-handed portrayal of the events leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor. The cast includes a galaxy of character actors, but the real star of the show has to be the protracted recreation of the attack itself. Though a little light on plot and character development, World War Two buffs should enjoy this one immensely. Mildly amusing

Review – Kindergarten Cop

Arnold does light comedy, with kids no less. Of course there’s plenty of action, too. Unlike the usual rule of thumb with Schwarzenegger movies, however, most of the amusement value in this flick comes in the stretches between gun battles and chase sequences. Despite the obvious contrivance of it all, there really is something endearing about watching Der Ubermann struggle with a pack of six-year-olds. Especially popular among real teachers: the scene where Arnold beats up an abusive father. Mildly amusing

Review – Major League 3: Back to the Minors

Minors, indeed. This third picture in the Major League series is loosely connected to the first two inasmuch as they’re all about baseball. Oh, and a couple of the characters from the original (and one from the first sequel) return for roles that don’t amount to much more than cameos. Otherwise this is a tiresome little piece about a minor league manager (who starts the movie as a pitcher who throws with his foot at least a yard in front of the rubber) in a rivalry with the manager of the Twins over whose team is the least dreadful. With wit and affection for the game replaced by silliness and sappiness, even die-hard baseball fans will have trouble taking this one. See if desperate

Review – Major League

This is a bit of a rarity in the genre of the baseball film: a movie with a sarcastic sense of humor, a flick that doesn’t spend a lot of time wallowing in cheap sentiment. I suppose it might have been improved somewhat if the romance between struggling old-timer Tom Berenger and love interest Rene Russo had been omitted. That aside, however, you get more than enough funny stuff to make this a rewarding experience, especially for baseball fans. Worth seeing

Review – The Day After

Normally I don’t review made-for-TV movies, but I’ll make an exception for anything that shows Kansas City being destroyed by a nuclear attack (furthermore, it was on HBO, so at least there weren’t any commercial interruptions). In our post-détente world, the preachy anti-nuke sentiment we get here seems almost quaint, though it does on occasion get a little too thick for comfort. This remains a somewhat interesting drama about human reaction to the destruction of society, even if the given means of destruction seems less plausible now than it did when this film was first televised back in the mid-80s. Mildly amusing

Review – Magnum Force

Capitalizing on the popularity of the ultra-violent Dirty Harry, this first sequel once again gives us Clint Eastwood as Inspector Harry Calahan, still shooting his way through one problem after another. In many ways this is pure formula, the street-wise cop with his own brand of justice trying to ... well, you get the picture. Here the additional twist is that prominent members of the underworld are being assassinated by rogue members of San Francisco’s finest. The result is a fine tightrope balance between law with a certain lack of respect for due process, a la Eastwood, and outright vigilante justice. Some elements are somewhat dated (particularly costumes and soundtrack), but as a whole the brutal drama holds up pretty well. Mildly amusing

Review – The Thirteenth Floor

The tag line in the ads for this barker was “Question Reality,” so right away we’re off to a bad start. Unfortunately the movie itself lives up to the promo, giving us yet another tedious tour of multiple, elaborate, computer-generated realities. Honestly folks, Phillip K. Dick came through here with this act back in the ’70s (though of course back then the culprits were drugs and plain old fashioned paranoia rather than computers). Terry Gilliam lampooned this nonsense in Brazil back in the ’80s. Aren’t we past the point in film history when Hollywood is willing to green-light anything with the word “cyber” in the treatment? Apparently not. This is also one of those films that relies on its ability to stay one step ahead of the audience to keep from being dull, a task at which it fails miserably. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Southern Comfort

Any film that features a bunch of city boys running afoul of back-woods misfits is inevitably going to invite comparisons to Deliverance. But this one isn’t quite as vicious (or at the very least not quite so sexually graphic), and it’s a little easier to understand that motivations of the Cajun antagonists. After all, the group of Louisiana National Guardsmen (who we’re supposed to be rooting for) stole their boats and then blew up one of their shacks. The disintegration of the unit due to external duress and internal strife is ultimately more macho than clever, and things start to really get convoluted in the end.  See if desperate

Review – The Godfather Part 2

In my opinion, this is the best of the three, slightly edging out the first one. But that’s probably just a personal preference, inasmuch as I like the big-time conspiracy stuff (particularly touches like the subtle allusions to the Kennedy assassination) better than the hoodlum-intensive action of the original. I also like the see-sawing back and forth between the 1950s travails of Michael Corleone with his disintegrating family and the early 20th century stuff showing Vito Corleone struggling up from the streets. This is one of the few films where that kind of flashback nonsense actually seems to work. The subplot with Diane Keaton and the failed marriage doesn’t work as well, mostly because by this point in the overall drama Michael is too deep into it to struggle convincingly with the forces of good and evil at war within him. Other than those relatively brief moments, however, this film is a solid piece of entertainment. Worth seeing