Review – Random Hearts

Random nonsense is more like it. I spent almost the entire running time waiting for the other shoe to drop, hoping the plot would turn a corner and become something else. The worst part was that every once in awhile it almost seemed prepared to do so, teasing the audience with hints that it would transform itself into an political-intrigue thriller or at the very least a routine murder mystery. But no, it never did. Instead, the filmmakers appear prepared to wallow in a meandering, bathetic exploration of the relationship that develops between a cop and a congresswoman after their spouses, off to an adulterous rendezvous in Florida, are killed in an airplane crash. I lived in D.C. a few years ago, so seeing some of the old scenery was sort of fun. But otherwise this movie was little more than a sad waste of Harrison Ford and some good supporting talent in a morose romance that played out like an awkward blend of Harlequin paperback and two-hour-long grief counseling session. See if desperate

Review – Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone

Maybe this was better in 3-D. On the other hand, I kinda doubt that much of anything would have made this dreadful space opera any better. Even Michael Ironside and Molly Ringwald should be ashamed of their appearances in such low-budget nonsense, though at least she’s got the excuse that she was still ahead of the crest of her fifteen minutes. Anywhere that shows this dog should be considered the Forbidden Zone, and adventures there will be few and far between. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Leaving Las Vegas

I guess it probably goes without saying that a movie about a guy who’s set on drinking himself to death and the hooker who falls in love with him is going to be a bit of a bummer. The thing that impressed me the most about this picture is that it actually manages not to stoop to the clichés that so often infect sentimental outings with jazz-heavy soundtracks. Nicolas Cage and Elizabeth Shue both turn in solid performances, doing a superior job with a superior script and ably tackling the often frank and brutal aspects of their characters. Sure, it’s a little sappy and sentimental in parts, but when it’s the guy on the skids and the hooker with the heart of gold, anything short of maudlin is a major achievement. Worth seeing

Review – Go

Or here’s an even better idea: don’t. This twenty-something-oriented trio of interwoven vignettes dwells almost endlessly in a morass of petty scandal and tawdry pastimes. Though the script does manage to sport a couple of amusing lines, the brief bouts of witty dialogue do little to make up for the rest of the empty-headed endeavor. Further, the “kids, don’t do drugs” upshot of the whole thing is just a little too much to bear. See if desperate

Review – The Exorcist 3

This one’s as good as the second one was terrible, which is to say that it’s a damn fine movie, one of the best I’ve seen in awhile. If other writers create spooky visuals like original Exorcist author William Peter Blatty does here, then we should let them direct more often. The end falls a little flat, but the rest of it’s a first-rate horror movie. Worthy of special note are the performances turned in by George C. Scott as Lt. Kinderman and Brad Dourif as the Gemini Killer, both roles drastically over-acted but all the more entertaining as a result. The DVD doesn’t add much beyond letterboxing and digital quality. Buy the tape

Review – Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn

Not soon enough. This first sequel to the horror classic Evil Dead plays like a Cliff’s Notes version of the original with a few plot changes. And when I say “changes,” what I mean is that a lot of the fairly linear structure of the first one has been shaved away, replaced by a rambling, episodic collection of gore and effects. Some of it occasionally manages to be amusing, but none of it ever gets much beyond the sight gag level. If this had been the first film in the series, maybe it wouldn’t have been so disappointing. But as a follow-up to a much better production, it just left me cold. See if desperate

Review – Christine

John Carpenter and Stephen King make a surprisingly good combo. I liked Cronenberg’s treatment of King just a little better, but that might be at least in part because I liked the source novel for The Dead Zone better than I liked this effort. However, the major failing of this movie is also the major failing of the novel: at some point, the suspension of disbelief collapses and the notion of a demon-possessed Pontiac just starts to seem silly. Mildly amusing

Review – The Enforcer

Here’s a cake made from the same ingredients and baked in the same pan they used for the first two Dirty Harry movies. Only the vaguely eerie theme music is missing. But somehow it just doesn’t come out right. Perhaps the criminals – a bunch of hippie revolutionaries – are just a little too dated to take seriously. Perhaps the race and gender issues, as vintage 1976 as the hippie revolutionaries, are a little too intrusive. Perhaps the clichés are just, well, a little too cliché. Personally, I blame the script. More specifically, it seems like Dirty Harry just isn’t dirty enough. Sure, he kills a butt-load of criminals. But he’s just not as mean as he was the first time around (nor for that matter is he as mean as he is in the fourth one). Heck, he doesn’t even have a good line like “make my day” or the infamous “44 Magnum” speech. The closest he comes is when he tells the soft-on-crime police chief “You’re mouthwash ain’t makin’ it.” This isn’t a bad example of the action genre. It just doesn’t measure up to the standards of the series. Mildly amusing

Review – The Thing from Another World

I know it’s wrong to hate classics; after all, if so many other people really love it, then I’m probably just not giving it enough of a chance. But I can’t help it. I really do hate this movie. I dislike it at least in part because in my opinion it’s not really a classic of the horror and sci fi genres. Instead, I think it’s a Howard Hawks western relocated to Cold War Alaska. Sure the bad guys are a pack of pinko scientists and a bipedal plant from outer space (played by Gunsmoke’s James Arness). But really, is the space alien’s role any different from the fate suffered by countless Native Americans at the hands of dozens of other Hawks heroes? The upshot is certainly the same: the military knows what’s best for us, so we’d all better just do what they tell us to do. Like NSDAP cinema before it, such McCarthyist hogwash would be relegated to the realm of absurd historical relics if so many people hadn’t suffered so much as a result of the underlying ideology. If you need a film version of John W. Campbell’s story, watch John Carpenter’s. It’s one of the best horror movies ever made rather than one of the worst. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Sneakers

Of the technology-intensive political thrillers, this one’s the best I’ve seen. Perhaps that’s because it goes back to the counter-culture origins of hacker-dom rather than regaling the audience with a collection of obnoxious teenage antics. Both the drama and the comedy work equally well, which makes this a rare film indeed. Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, and Ben Kingsley head up a solid cast, bringing more warmth and depth to their characters than can usually be found in movies in this particular genre. The ensemble, armed with an intelligent, witty script, do a terrific job telling the tale of a group of security professionals that runs afoul of the government, the mob, and a seemingly endless parade of conspiracy-theory standbys. A working knowledge of the clichés of the cult of surveillance helps but is not required. Anyone looking for a little clever comedy-drama should find this a rewarding experience. Worth seeing

Review – Raiders of the Lost Ark

Steven Spielberg serves up one of the all-time classic action adventures. This is the film that started the Indiana Jones series, and it’s still the best of the set. Few other productions have ever so effectively recaptured the look and feel of 30s-era pulp drama. Sadly, a lot of the racism and sexism more acceptable in days gone by also manage to creep into this production. That aside, however, the plot keeps moving, the action sequences are exciting, and the acting none too shabby. Finally, any action movie where the star is an archaeology professor played by Harrison Ford can’t be all bad. Buy the tape

Review – The Quick and the Dead

Ever wonder what it might look like if famed indie horror movie director Sam Raimi decided to switch to westerns? Well, wonder no longer! Raimi brings his usual bag of jump-cuts and other visual tricks to bear against what is otherwise a spaghetti western-style action flick. Most of the characters are western movie clichés: the shootist bent on revenge (Sharon Stone, whose gender makes her character at least somewhat novel), the villainous town boss (Gene Hackman), the ex-gunman-turned-preacher (Russell Crowe), and so on. Anyone who likes violent westerns should thoroughly enjoy this outing, and Raimi fans may get a bit of a bang out of it as well. Otherwise it’s a fairly run-of-the-mill action movie, with the acting and visual effects only rarely offsetting the predictable, cliché-driven script. Mildly amusing

Review – The Ninth Gate

Here’s what I’ve been wanting for awhile now: a nice, over-wrought cinematic exploration of the powers of darkness. It helped a lot that early on the plot centered around a rare books appraiser and his client’s quest to establish the authenticity (or lack of same) of an antique text supposedly co-written by Lucifer himself. I found the script intriguing as long as it stuck to the ancient books. But when the movie started to devolve into a Satan-related caper flick, I started to lose interest. Though I found the ending somewhat weak, overall this effort from banned-in-the-USA director Roman Polanski is better than your average devil picture. Mildly amusing

Review – SLC Punk

Growing up white and male and rebellious in the capital of the Mormon world must be really hard, at least if this indie is any indication. It packs a handful of extremely funny bits (unfortunately mostly toward the beginning), but for the most part it’s the usual whining and moaning about the burden of hating society. Further, the end is either a sop to the need for something heartwarming and profound or an attempt to out-cynical the whole rest of the cynical show (or maybe both at once). The final product is good for a few laughs and some good tunes on the soundtrack, but not much else. Mildly amusing

Review – The 13th Warrior

For all those people out there who ever wondered what it would be like if you let Michael Crichton redo The Seven Samurai as Conan the Barbarian with Antonio Banderas cast in the lead, well, unlikely as it may seem, they actually made the movie you’ve been waiting for. For everyone else, there’s little here besides a tedious mishmash of plot twists and stunted, macho sexuality. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – They Nest

They stink. This made-for-TV horror movie about killer cockroaches was most likely written by the villains themselves (or at the very least by writers with equivalent IQs). It’s not bad enough that they make these stupid bugs into a supposedly menacing threat to humanity. Nobody feels sorry for roaches, so that was a fairly safe call. But there’s a particularly sick sequence toward the beginning in which the bugs brutally butcher a class pet hamster. The scene doesn’t even contribute anything to the plot. Who thought that was a good idea? A filmmaker who was one of those kids who got his jollies pulling the wings off flies, no doubt. My only regret is that I don’t have a rating worse than “wish I’d skipped it” to dish out to this stinker. Maybe I could invent one for this special occasion. Avoid at all costs

Review – The Skulls

“Empty skulls” would have been a more apt title. There’s a distinctly Grisham-esque flavor to this tale of a poor college student borrowing to the hilt so he can go to an ivy league school, hoping to get into a secret society that’s supposed to erase the financial woes of all its members. The society – a group called The Skulls – bears a distinct resemblance to the real-life Skull and Bones society, which claims several prominent men (including at least one former president) as members. Naturally in this case there’s a catch, coming in the form of a less-than-intriguing murder-cover-up plot. By the time all the twists and turns have played themselves out, there’s a whole lot of “does honor not live forever” male bonding and not a lot of anything else. In a way the disappointing script is kind of a shame, because the basic premise could have been made into a much better movie. Mildly amusing

Review – Glen or Glenda?

Also known as “I Led 2 Lives,” this is crap cinema genius Ed Wood’s semi-autobiographical defense of transvestites. Wood uses the basic format of old exploitation “documentaries” of the 1930s. But his odd sense of ineptness gives his work an almost surreal feel. Buffaloes run across the screen as an aging, heroin-ravaged Bela Lugosi yells “pull the string!” apropos of nothing. Also included here are such bon mots of science as the theory that male pattern baldness is due to ill-fitting hats. You have to be in the mood for a so-bad-its-good movie before taking this one on, but if such a mood does happen to strike you this is one of the finest examples of the genre. Mildly amusing

Review – Gladiator

Any big-budget epic about gladiators is probably going to invite comparison to Spartacus, but here the contrast provides a little genuine insight. Both films are certainly creatures of their times: Kubrick’s direction of Dalton Trumbo’s screenplay makes for a sermon on the struggle of the downtrodden working class against the heartless aristocracy, whereas Ridley Scott’s MTV-editing-intensive opus focuses more on post-Reagan-era “virtues” such as individual vengeance. Though the latter work doesn’t really come equipped with enough script to sustain its considerable running time, the action sequences are good enough to keep the movie going for the most part. The biggest disappointment of the film was a problem evident in many such outings: by the time the film-makers have spent three hours setting up the motive for bloody revenge (killed his wife, killed his son, kicked his dog, etc.), no bloody revenge is adequate. So come for Russell Crowe kicking much ass, but don’t feel like you have to stick around for much else. Mildly amusing

Review – Girl, Interrupted

A young woman with bad attitude and irregular habits (including a suicide attempt) gets put in a mental institution back in the late 1960s. Once institutionalized, our heroine (Wynona Ryder) encounters a cast of wacky young women with various mental health problems. She finds a friend and ultimately a nemesis in a sociopath (Angelina Jolie) with a gift for anti-authority antics and other behavior of a more sinister nature. Though I’m not exactly the world’s foremost authority on the subject, I thought that overall the picture functioned fairly well as a movie aimed at female audiences. My only major quibble with the production was the conclusion, in which the moral appears to be that cooperating with forced therapy is the only road to true happiness. I also don’t really get the whole baby-boom generation thing, so the plot points that depended on an affection for 1968 fell a little short with me (hey, I was two years old at the time). Otherwise I thought this movie was an inoffensive if somewhat uninspiring bit of entertainment. The DVD also includes some out-takes that, if left in, might have made a few points a little clearer (though in the filmmakers’ defense I should note that the running time on the final cut did seem a little long even without the extra footage). Mildly amusing

Review – The Sixth Sense

This film puts final lie to the notion that the American public will not flock in droves to see a boring movie. Bruce Willis (already well-established as not one of my favorite actors) plays a psychiatrist trying to shrink a kid who can see dead people. The result is a drags-on-forever combination of cheap ghost story and tedious grief-counseling session. Perhaps if the ghosts had been a little more prevalent and the Willis-intensive therapy rot had been played down at least a bit, it might have been a better production. However, the entire thing depended far too heavily on the movie’s now-famous plot twist at the end. What appears on the surface to be an obsession with the disintegration of a relationship turns out to be set-up for the final gag. If the punch-line had been either more amusing or less predictable it might have been worth it. See if desperate

Review – The Purple Rose of Cairo

This is an awfully sentimental picture, particularly for a Woody Allen comedy. Mia Farrow plays a woman who routinely uses the movies to escape her drab life and bad marriage in Depression-era New Jersey. Her life changes drastically when one of the characters in a romance she’s watching emerges from the screen into the real world. The caricature character’s struggles to adapt to the real world (and attempts by the selfish actor who played him to get him back into the movie) provide a few laughs and plenty of what-is-reality pondering. Overall the film works well as a bittersweet ode to the escapist aspect of old Hollywood movies. Worth seeing

Review – The Land that Time Forgot (1975)

It’s bad actors versus bad puppets in this low budget stinker. The plot is a muddled mess about a hodge-podge of macho men (plus the obligatory love interest) who pilot a U-Boat to a hyperborean world full of cheap rubber dinosaurs, cavemen and other typical denizens of prehistoric B-movies. There’s a lot of completely unnecessary dino death to be had, but the stupid things are so terribly fake that it’s hard to get too upset about it. If you’re a connoisseur of the cheap monster movies of the late 70s, this one’s a must-see; it spawned at least two sequels in a similar vein. Otherwise it’s missable. See if desperate

Review – Silver Bullet

With the combination of Stephen King and werewolves, I guess I should have liked this one a lot better than I did. The plot is based on King’s “Cycle of the Werewolf,” though in my opinion the book was better than the movie. For openers, the plot in the book stretched out over a year and just generally flowed a lot better than its big-screen adaptation. Further, King’s text was accompanied by illustrations by Bernie Wrightson, an outstanding illustrator who drew werewolves the way I’d always imagined werewolves should look. The effects in the movie compare unfavorably, making the lycanthropes look more like skinny bears. Still, I don’t imagine King can gripe much about the film adaptation, inasmuch as he wrote the screenplay himself. I’ve seen plenty of werewolf movies that were a lot worse than this one. But I’ve seen a couple of better ones, too. Mildly amusing

Review – Kiss of Evil

Stench of boredom is more like it. Honestly, when are these dashing but dim-witted Hammer heroes ever going to figure it out? When your car breaks down in an isolated part of central Europe and you get invited to be the guest of the local baron, you just know his castle is going to turn out to be chock-full of vampires and he’s going to go straight after your beautiful but ditzy wife. The only interesting wrinkle this time around is that after laughing boy loses his babe to the wily bloodsuckers and flees to the cranky old man in the village for help, the cranky old man enlists the aid of Satan to defeat the forces of darkness. That was a little brain-bending. Otherwise this predictable effort doesn’t even bother to offer the usual Hammer benefit of either Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing in the cast. Released on the other side of the Atlantic as The Kiss of the Vampire. See if desperate

Review – The Cell

Just what we’ve all been waiting for: a remake of Dreamscape for a more violent, art-direction-intensive world. Throw in dashes from a number of popular pictures (Silence of the Lambs, The Matrix, and several others) and you’ve got the makings of a boring Frankenstein’s monster of a movie. The story is about a woman (Jennifer Lopez) who uses a machine to link up to a comatose kid in an attempt to figure out what traumatized him. The FBI horns in on her project, asking her to link up with a catatonic serial killer (Vincent D’Onofrio) so they can locate his latest victim before she dies. Once inside his head, the whole show sort of becomes an extended music video for an annoying, pretentious band. Of course, it’s possible that I just resent the whole thing because it was hyped as being one of the goriest movies ever made, a promise not even vaguely kept in either quantity or quality. See if desperate

Review – They Live

John Carpenter gives us still more paranoid horror, this time in the guise of aliens that run our planet and can only be seen in their true form when one looks through special sunglasses. By the time you’re done throwing in Roddy Piper as the hero in a goes-on-forever fist fight with Keith David (seriously, this thing goes on so long as is ultimately so ancillary to the plot that I’m pretty much forced to conclude that it’s intended to be a parody of overlong fight scenes), it doesn’t sound like it would be all that good. Surprisingly enough, it’s just mean enough to overcome its shortcomings and turn out okay. Even Rowdy Roddy wasn’t too bad. Also for the record, one of the minor plot details supplied the name of the blog you’re currently reading. Buy the tape

Review – The General’s Daughter

Blah. Could there be a little more rape in this movie? Is there any way we could work in another assault or a little more stunted sexuality? Sakes. Buried somewhere in here is a flimsy excuse for a murder mystery, but even that turns out to be one of the stupid kind that keeps throwing in new wrinkles until additional twisting is cut short by the end credits. Just about the only thing that distinguishes this barker from every other suspense flick full of kinky sex and violent death is that this one takes place on an Army base. With a cast this good, a better film could have been made. See if desperate

Review – GalaxyQuest

This one-joke movie starts out as a refreshing change from Hollywood’s stale fare. The joke gets told, complete with punch line, in the first few minutes of the movie: real, honest-to-goodness space aliens mistake broadcasts of a Star-Trek-like TV series for documentaries and enlist the sci-fi-con-dwelling actors to aid them in a battle against evil. What’s unusual here is that even after the gag plays itself out there’s still enough physical comedy and the like to keep the movie moving until the end of the final reel. It even manages to avoid coming down too hard on the Trekkies, cleaning up the language in order to preserve a PG rating and a larger potential audience among the crowd that attends the very conventions lampooned in the film. Some of the jokes require a little genre knowledge to fully appreciate, but even “outsiders” should get a kick out of the effects-intensive slapstick. Mildly amusing

Review – The King and I (1999)

I’m sure I don’t see the point here. Usually when a classic movie (or musical or book or whatever) gets an animated makeover, it’s to make it more palatable for family viewing. But the original, live-action King and I makes wonderful family viewing. The only thing that might make this rework more suitable for children is the happy ending awkwardly grafted on. Sure, a few of the original’s less desirable moments (such as the exasperating “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” sequence) have been cut out. And sure, it’s not fair to expect a cartoon to live up to the likes of Yul Brynner. But even with those credits duly given, this outing has little to recommend it. The animation quality is dreadful. At least one character steps way too far into the realm of offensive, racist stereotype. Assuming (possibly correctly) that children won’t sit still for musical numbers, the animators clog almost all the songs with annoying, distracting antics of one kind or another. So if you want The King and I, rent the real one and skip the animated remake. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Shadow Hours

I don’t think anyone got what they wanted out of this one. The box made it look like an erotic thriller, which it didn’t really turn out to be. So I felt sort of ripped off (despite the fact that I should have known better than to try to rent an erotic thriller from Blockbuster). The folks who made the movie appeared to be shooting for a tale of a mephistophelean, enigmatic antagonist/helper (Peter Weller) who lures a former junkie back into a world of seamy excess. But thanks to a lackluster script and mailed-in performances from the cast, the movie played more like a morality play turned movie of the week with a little extra kinky sex built in just to get the R rating. Kids, just say no to crap. See if desperate

Review – Cat People (1982)

This film and the Val Lewton original make an interesting comparison and contrast showing some of the differences between low-budget, black and white genre movies that rely on plot, script and innuendo to portray sex, violence and horror and big-budget, color productions that make more extensive use of nudity and special effects. Further, fans of the original should enjoy keeping an eye out for allusions to the old version in this go-around. Comparisons aside, however, this is a fairly good shape-shifter movie on its own merits. It’s also a good example of early 80s film-making in general, with Paul Schrader in the director’s chair and Giorgio Moroder and David Bowie working on the soundtrack. It might easily have scored a slightly higher rating if not for all the animal violence, which at least for the most part was actually integral to the plot. Mildly amusing

Review – Pumpkinhead 2: Blood Wings

It’s just so hard to pick the most attractive feature of this movie. Roger “my brother’s the President” Clinton as a character named “Mayor Bubba”? Nah, too dated. The scene where chickens peck out a yokel’s eyes? Too short. The leftover locations from Motel Hell? The leftover rubber monster from the first Pumpkinhead? Decisions, decisions. This time around our gourd-craniumed baddie’s got a whole lotta vengeance to take on two generations’ worth of rotten teenagers. Sadly, the gore’s neither convincing nor imaginative enough to keep this turkey rolling all the way to its “heartwarming” conclusion. See if desperate

Review – Key Largo

Here’s a rarity: a movie that was actually better at home on video than it was in the theater. Of course, my theater experience with it came many years ago when one of my favorite local revival houses (back when there were such things) screened it. This was right around the time that stupid soft-rock ballad with the Key Largo theme came out, so the theater was lousy with date-yuppies who figured the movie would be as “romantic” as the song. Urp. When I watched it at home, I got to spend a lot more time enjoying the dialogue from the movie and a lot less time enduring the pretentious film chat from the next row over. For the most part, the second experience was worth it. When it comes to Bogart and Bacall, I have a slight preference for To Have and Have Not. But this one will do in a pinch. Edward G. Robinson plays a gangster who walks the fine line between cliché thug and epitome of evil. However, he does make a nice foil for Bogart’s subtly heroic vet trying to keep mobsters from killing a hotel owner and his daughter-in-law while the group is hurricane-bound on the title island. Worth seeing

Review – Bringing Out the Dead

Martin Scorcese returns to the mean streets of New York to follow a Travis Bickle-esque EMT down the road to madness. The plot also borrows heavily from other angry-young-men classics, including Catch 22. Despite the occasionally effortful direction and a chemistry-free, go-nowhere romance between the protagonist (Nicolas Cage) and the love interest (Patricia Arquette), Scorcese manages to recapture enough of the look and feel of Taxi Driver to keep the production rolling. Odd bits of quirky humor, particularly in the scenes Cage shares with Ving Rhames, round out the show nicely. Mildly amusing

Review – The Empty Mirror

Adolph Hitler sits around a gloomy room in Hell. He dictates his memoirs. He watches home movies. He chats with his old buddies and cherubic German tykes. He fantasizes about women. He rambles on and on. And on. Every once in awhile Sigmund Freud drops in for a little psychoanalysis. I don’t know what’s more amazing: that someone got the budget to commit this to celluloid, or that they actually thought it would keep going for nearly two hours. See if desperate

Review – 9 1/2 Weeks

I’ve heard from several different sources that this is one of the sexiest movies ever made. Well, if your idea of a hot time is an extended relationship with a psychotic creep played by Mickey Rourke, then this picture ought to get your motor working. Sure, it’s got some legendary scenes, such as the famous refrigerator sequence. But somewhere around midway through it turns into a polished but crass glorification of abusive relationships. Maybe this stuff was popular back in the 80s (where the Sharper Image-intensive art direction clearly came from), but I’d like to think that as a society we’ve outgrown at least some of this. I’m probably wrong, but I’d still like to think it. See if desperate

Review – Psycho

Here we have one of the great classics of the silver screen, one of the key moments in the genesis of the slasher genre. A lot of this movie has become cliché, particularly the famous, oft-mimicked shower sequence. And of course Anthony Perkins did such a masterful job as the deeply disturbed Norman Bates that he ended up typecast for most of the rest of his career (including recreations of the role in several inept sequels). Overall this film is such a wonderful example of how much can be accomplished without recourse to gore (or color, for that matter) that it’s a wonder the genre ever advanced much beyond this stage. Arguably director Alfred Hitchcock’s finest moment, this one is not to be missed. Buy the tape

Review – Zorro, The Gay Blade

Ah, once upon a time portrayal of stereotypical, effeminate male characters was a much less dicey affair. The interesting thing about this particular parade of “poof” jokes is that it still kinda holds up. To be sure, this isn’t a great masterpiece of intellectual comedy. George Hamilton plays not one but two roles, and that alone should give you some idea of the caliber of humor you can expect. He plays both a traditional Latin Lothario who inherits the mantle of Zorro, defender of the poor, and his twin brother, a character named Bunny Wigglesworth who has apparently spent too many years in the English Navy. The latter must step flamboyantly into the Zorro role when the former injures his ankle. Most – well, okay, all – of the jokes are sophomoric at best, and one might expect that such a broad caricature of a homosexual character would prove uncomfortably offensive by more modern standards. But Bunny isn’t just a fop, he’s also the hero. The message – to the extent that such a piece of brain candy can be said to have one at all – seems to be that it’s possible to be heroic without conforming to the usual social expectations of ultra-masculine heroes. That may seem like kind of a given now, but back then it was at least a small-scale breakthrough. Mildly amusing

Review – Empire of the Ants

“Have you ever taken a good, close look at what the ant is all about?” Joan Collins has, thanks to American International Pictures and director Bert I. Gordon. Of course ants are a lot harder to ignore when they’re the size of Buicks and they’re trying to tear you in half. For the most part this is yet another reheat of the old giant ant story, with an odd bit of Invasion of the Body Snatchers thrown in for good measure. Mildly amusing

Review – Boys Don’t Cry

The forces of the independent film world come together to tell this grim story about a trans man who falls in love in rural Nebraska, not exactly an environment famous for its tolerance of alternative sexuality. The acting is good, the script well-crafted, and the production values high for an indie (managing to avoid most of the arty conceits that frequently dog such productions). If the film suffers from a serious fault (aside from the extremely graphic depiction of rape, which I guess was integral to the plot), it’s the obvious tension that infects the entire story. Will the other characters discover the protagonist’s secret? If and when they do, how will they react? Further, those who know a little about the true story that served as the basis for the film go into it with the knowledge that it isn’t likely to have a happy ending. Tension aside, however, this is a good if more than a little depressing morality tale. Worth seeing

Review – From Russia with Love

Though not necessarily the dullest Bond movie ever made, this outing is definitely in the running for the title. The story involves 007’s attempts to steal a Soviet decoding device and get it out of Turkey and back to England. Compared to subsequent thwarted evils, this one’s banal to the point of seeming downright bureaucratic (which might make this the most realistic espionage story in the entire Bond series). Robert Shaw does a good job as the SPECTRE hit man, though it’s almost hard to believe now that he was ever this young. Other than Shaw, however, the plot drags, barely buoyed up by a seemingly endless parade of cold war clichés and pre-feminist male sexuality. See if desperate

Review – The Keep

Nazis invading Romania unleash an evil even worse than themselves, if such a thing can be imagined. Before all the killing ends, Scott Glenn (in funky blue contact lenses) must battle a big, beefy demon that’s sort of a combination of a golem and the Devil, with the fate of the world naturally hanging in the balance. Jurgen Prochnow, Gabriel Byrne and Ian McKellen round out the ensemble of under-cast, craggy, stone-faced men. What should have been a better film is set back a bit by an unlikely source of trouble: the director. Michael Mann defined a lot of the “Eighties Look,” and he’s up to his usual visual and musical tricks here. But somehow the stuff that worked so well in 1980s Miami seems a little out of place in Eastern Europe in 1941. Mildly amusing

Review – Protocol

Goldie Hawn plays a stereotypical ditzy blonde. What a stretch. This time around she’s a cocktail waitress who saves the life of a visiting dignitary and ends up a national hero. Her newfound fame lands her a job at the State Department as a protocol officer. The resulting situation comedy is more than a little stupid. It also takes advantage of some fairly coarse clichés about people of West Asian origin, and ends up with a big dose of sanctimonious preaching. The genuinely amusing moments are few and far between, scarcely justifying the overall production. See if desperate

Review – Scream 3

In the mandatory “rules of horror trilogies” speech, they left out a few rules. First, faithful audiences generally mercilessly punish second sequels that stray too far from the formula. The film-makers take no such risk here. Sadly, they also adhere to one of the less desirable restrictions: because you can safely assume the viewers already know the dramatis personae, you’re free to avoid any semblance of character development. This frees you up to devote all your time to dumb plot twists (if associating the word “plot” with an episodic mish-mash like this isn’t overstating the case) and random hack-and-slash. Fortunately, they at least managed to ignore the corollary that specifies that the third episode be shot in 3-D if possible. Cameos by Roger Corman, Carrie Fisher and Jay and Silent Bob are just about as amusing as the whole rest of the movie put together. See if desperate

Review – Zeppelin

Michael York stars in this obscure little movie about a double-agent who stumbles upon a German plot to steal the Magna Carta during World War One. Naturally enough, the plot involves the use of the title vehicle to carry commandos to Scotland to abscond with the sacred document. The production features some special effects that must have seemed quite impressive when the movie came out, but they seem a little mediocre by more modern standards. The script is run-of-the-mill, as is the acting. If you’re looking for a no-brainer action movie, I guess you could do worse. But there isn’t much else to recommend this one, unless you happen to be trying to see at least one movie beginning with each letter of the alphabet during the course of a year and you’re looking for a movie that begins with Z. See if desperate

Review – Scream

Wes Craven tries to warm up the old magic that brought him big-time success with the “Elm Street” series, and the amazing thing is that it almost kinda works. The new shtick is an endless parade of genre references, an active mocking of the very clichés that the film-makers so studiously observe. The cast reads like a who’s who of GenX TV stars, and the script is typical of most bigger-budget entries in the slasher genre. The thing that really saves this movie is its sense of humor, its ability to cynically scoff at the conventions of slasher movies while hacking teens left and right the whole time. Mildly amusing

Review – Das Boot

This should be more than enough grim, cynical, German U-Boat movie for anyone, even those of us who are inclined to look favorably on such endeavors. The realism is impeccable, to the point that one can almost smell the pent-up stench of diesel fumes, rotting food and sweat. In fact, the devotion to historical accuracy occasionally overwhelms the film’s dramatic sense, particularly during the de rigeur depth charge sequences, which seem to go on and on and on. That notwithstanding, those with a taste for submarine movies should find this one of the best examples of the genre. Years ago I saw the original U.S. theatrical release, and for this review I watched the “director’s cut.” I also understand there’s an even longer version out there, but I haven’t seen that one. Whichever version you watch, you’re in for an unflinching tour of the lot of the men who sailed the semi-suicidal missions in support of the German battle for control of the Atlantic during World War Two. Worth seeing

Review – Night of the Lepus

From the time of the cave painters of Lascaux until the rise of the modern age, humanity has been plagued by a thorny question: is it possible to make fuzzy bunnies look terrifying? Now, thanks to the valiant efforts of some brave filmmakers, the riddle has been solved. And apparently the answer is a resounding “no.” Not even if they’re supposed to be the size of Winnebagos and have for some unexplained reason developed a taste for meat. Of course, it didn’t help that the rabbit wranglers decided to use an abundance of the fluffiest pet store veterans they could find. I guess the thing I find most astounding about this amazing piece of bad cinema is that MGM actually put up the bucks for it. Usually you need the likes of American International for garbage like this. As a result of the apparent cash surplus, they were able to get some semi-famous talent, including Rory Calhoun, Janet Leigh and DeForest Kelley. There’s even a scene in which Leigh is rescued from a bunny-surrounded RV by a helicopter; all they needed to make this nonsense complete was Elmer Fudd singing “Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit!” Oh, and quotable quote: “It’s okay, Jack. Don’t be afraid. The rabbit’s gone.” And to top it all off, the production also includes some of the most amazingly dreadful matte work in film history. Though the movie features more than its share of camp value and unintentional humor, somehow in the end it fails to justify the seemingly endless parade of rabbit death. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Judge Dredd

I was a big fan of the Judge Dredd comic books back when I was too young to really understand the word “fascism.” So perhaps I got a bigger kick out of this movie than I really should have, because it closely resembles its source in many ways (especially plot and general feel). The producers spent a bundle on the sets, the props, the opticals, and Sylvester Stallone, and for the most part they got their money’s worth. Our hero serves as a Platonic “guardian” in a future society beset by uncontrollable crime and a sinister scheme to introduce a totalitarian regime even more extreme than the one the country already has. The action occasionally drags a bit. Rob Schneider is more than a little annoying as Stallone’s obnoxious sidekick. Otherwise this is an entertaining bit of big budget brain candy. Mildly amusing

Review – Them!

Ah, that exclamation point in the title is always such a sure indication of quality. And what is it about ants? Of all the things that seem to get mutated by radiation and grow to giant proportions over and over again, these critters have got to be the all-time champs (with the possible exception of lizards). Well, at least this relic from the atomic-energy-obsessed 1950s can lay claim to being the first (unless I missed yet another giant ant movie somewhere). Though the script is strictly B-movie, the special effects were if not exactly wonderful then at least expensive, including several full-scale giant ants. James Arness ditches his killer carrot suit from The Thing from Another World and switches sides, playing the FBI agent hot on the trail of the migrating monsters. And unlike the Hawks movie, the military actually listens to scientists this time around. Of course, the scientists are all in favor of killing the bugs, so perhaps listening to them was easier in this case. Mildly amusing

Review – Scarface

Though perhaps not quite the profound commentary on the dark side of the American dream that the film-makers had in mind, this is a darn fine action movie. Al Pacino plays Tony Montana, “political refugee from Cuba,” who comes to the United States in the Marielitos immigration wave to seek his slice of the pie. Through hard work, perseverance and guts he manages to claw his way to the top of his profession, a regular Horatio Alger story except that Tony’s profession happens to be cocaine importing and distribution. Director Brian DePalma and screenwriter Oliver Stone do a masterful job of combining massive amounts of violence, anti-greed moralization and just enough of a sense of humor to keep the whole show from getting tiresome. Though many critics panned it when it first came out, it remains one of my all-time favorite action flicks. Buy the tape (or buy the disc if you prefer; in addition to the usual features, the DVD includes some behind-the-scenes stuff and out-takes)

Review – You Only Live Twice

However, if you’re wise you’ll only see this movie once (if that many times). Though this isn’t the worst James Bond movie ever made (because hey, there’s always Octopussy), it’s a far cry from the best. The plot is typical Bond: SPECTRE conspiracy to set the US and USSR against each other in exchange for cash from China thwarted after much sex and shooting. But something about the timing is just wrong. For openers, a lot of the cold war and space race stuff that was so current back when this movie first came out seem more than a little trite three decades later. More aggravating is the in-your-face sexism, particularly the frequent use of Japanese social custom as a cheap excuse for random misogyny. I suppose this must have been some sort of backlash against the feminist movement that was gaining steam at the time, no doubt turned up a notch for the amusement of the sexually-immature male target audience. The crater battle at the end is kinda cool, but other than that the gimmicks are lame and Sean Connery seems more than a little tired of the role. See if desperate

Review – Scanners

In the big low-brow cinema lexicon, this one’s known as the “head blowed up” movie, so called due to a memorable scene early in the production. The plot posits that a Thalidomide-esque drug somehow transformed a small group of individuals into psychics capable of “scanning,” reading minds, projecting thoughts and making heads blow up. As an early example of horror maestro David Cronenberg’s work, this is an unpolished but nonetheless visually powerful film. If only the script and acting had been just a little less ham-handed. Mildly amusing

Review – Nightmares

As horror anthology movies go, this one’s not half bad. It leads off with an urban legend: the story of the psychopath in the back seat. Then you get Emilio Estevez, before he became famous, as a video game addict who gets way too caught up in his favorite machine. The third tale is an odd little rehash of the evil car plot, with Lance Henriksen as a faithless priest pursued by a demonic 4x4. I find the final vignette hard to watch. It’s the story of the battle between a suburban family and a monster rat, and it involves a little more animal suffering and death than I generally like to have to sit through. That aside, however, this is a fine example of the sub-genre. Mildly amusing

Review – Mystery Men

If you read a lot of comic books you’ll probably catch most of the in-jokes and get a real kick out of this movie. For those not quite so enamored of superheroes, however, this flick offers little beyond a lot of sophomoric humor punctuated by an occasional bit of slightly amusing physical comedy. Perhaps it might have been better if they’d taken some of the money lavished on sets and costumes and blown a buck or two on a screenplay. As much as I hate to pan anything with William H. Macy and Eddie Izzard in it, their talents were wasted in this stinker. See if desperate

Review – Body Snatchers (1993)

This time around they’ve stripped “Invasion of the” off the front of the title. Otherwise the clichés are all here. This time space aliens are taking over an army base, and only the intrepid teenage daughter of an EPA inspector and her chopper pilot boyfriend stand between the invaders and world conquest. Forest Whitaker and Meg Tilly were at one time respected actors, but now they’re just bit players, fodder for the pod people. The script and direction are mediocre at best, stealing (or maybe “borrowing” would be a nicer term) heavily from the previous entries in the body snatching sub-genre, including the point-and-scream shtick that helped make the 70’s version famous. The creepiest things in this whole picture were Gabrielle Anwar's nude scenes, because she looks like she's around 15 years old (thank goodness she was actually in her early 20s). See if desperate

Review – Dracula, Prince of Darkness

This is Hammer’s follow-up to the success the studio found with Christopher Lee’s first portrayal of the vampire world’s biggest celebrity. Apparently being done to sun-fried dust by Dr. Van Helsing in the first one doesn’t take as much out of a guy as one might expect, because here he is again. This time around he’s about the business of luring British tourists to his mountain stronghold and then dispatching them one by one in a variety of uninteresting manners. Lee does his usual journeyman’s job as the title character, but otherwise this isn’t exactly Hammer’s finest moment. See if desperate

Review – X-Men

Ah, the things I’ll do to see at least one movie beginning with each letter of the alphabet. Actually, this one wasn’t as hard to sit through as some of the other unwatchable trash I’ve endured for a Q, X, Y or Z. Perhaps it helped to have been an X-Men fan many years ago (before they became the “new” X-Men and added the majority of the characters featured in this picture). The plot involves the battle long familiar to fans: the three-way struggle between good mutants who want to help mankind (or at the very least to be left alone), evil mutants who want to enslave the world, and ordinary people who treat both camps with more than a little mistrust. The effects were skillfully done (which is a good thing because bad effects probably would have killed the action), and the script and acting were nowhere near as bad as they might have been. Though I think alienated teens looking for characters with whom they can identify will most likely take to the message a bit more than I did, the movie’s still enjoyable on a comic-book entertainment level. Mildly amusing

Review – The Prophecy

Cheap effects and comic book theology battle it out for prominence in this barker. From the outset the production creates such a low level of expectation that the only genuinely disappointing part is that buried under mounds of dreadful dialogue, pseudo-religious mishmash and the small scraps of scenery that manage to escape Christopher Walken’s voracious maw are odd, occasional, interesting details. For example, one of the minor sub-plots involves a Korean War vet who was involved in some sort of atrocity. That idea alone could have developed into a movie far more interesting than the main plot, a sappy tale of warring archangels. The subplots and the sheer spectacle of Walken’s emoting are all that save this production from the dustbin. See if desperate

Review – The World Is Not Enough

Maybe not, but one more Bond movie is plenty. Pierce Brosnan seems to be settling into the role; he’s still no Connery, but he’s passed Lazenby and Dalton and is gaining rapidly on Moore. The plot this time around is a muddled mess about a psycho terrorist who has a bullet in his brain and thus can’t feel pain. In other words, Blofeld he ain’t. The remainder of the story is even less compelling, though I’ll leave the rest of it out for the sake of maintaining what small measure of drama the movie manages to muster. Just about the only novel trick to be found is the actual, active involvement of M in the plot. Funny how much more they can get done with Judy Dench in the role than they could in the days of Bernard Lee. Oh, and speaking of series regulars, this entry marks the final appearance of Desmond “Q” Llewelyn. Mildly amusing

Review – Scandal

Though this movie was plugged as a racy, erotic drama, there’s just something about the combination of sex, the 60s and the British that’s just impossible to take seriously. Here we have the sad, sordid tale of the Profumo scandal, with Ian McKellen as the ill-fated Minister of War and tallest member of the Lollipop Guild. Joanne Whalley-Kilmer, John Hurt and a young Bridget Fonda in her first film role round out the cast of tiresome shagging enthusiasts. Who would ever have guessed that sex, espionage and scandal could ever be so boring? See if desperate

Review – Body Heat

Here we have Double Indemnity remade with a whole lot of steamy sex. John Hurt and Kathleen Turner star back in the days when they were still young enough to walk around onscreen with their clothes off. This is a good movie to watch when your A/C breaks down on a really hot summer night. That way you can really feel the sultry, stultifying atmosphere. Sadly, the whole Florida in the early eighties thing is the only thing that really works. The plot is yet another one of those twisted melanges of plots gone awry and conspirators engaged in an endless game of double-cross. Mildly amusing

Review – Wolfen

This isn’t your average werewolf movie. For openers, despite the amount of time devoted to the red-herring shapeshifting subplot, the monsters turn out not to be werewolves at all. For most of the film they’re shadowy creatures that we never get a good look at. Indeed, the shock shots are almost downright subtle, and they’re all the creepier for their lack of explicit special effects. Sadly, toward the end the production becomes a heavy-handed bit of environmentalist propaganda, and the beasts become cute, fluffy dogs who’s wire-induced snarling would be a lot more menacing if they didn’t wag their tails. Gregory Hines and Tom Noonan in supporting roles outshine Albert Finney in the lead. However, even the corpulent Finney gets points for having the guts to do a scene that by all appearances was actually shot at the very top of one of New York’s bridges. As a matter of passing, I also note that this is one of the few films Hollywood ever made that features more male than female nudity. Believe it or not, Edward James Olmos was once actually buff enough to pull off full frontal. Mildly amusing

Review – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Immortal classic of the horror genre or nearly unwatchable piece of indie garbage? Well, probably both. When this movie is gets going, it’s one of the best (and most genuinely scary) horror movies I’ve ever seen. Supposedly based at least in part on the crimes of Wisconsin cannibal El Gein, unfortunately ait gets bogged down all too frequently by then-novice director Tobe Hooper’s absolutely abysmal sense of timing. He comes up with good shocks, but then he starts running them over and over and over until they don’t work anymore. In fact, toward the end the film becomes a torment to even try and watch. I think it’s worth a look because of the things it does right, but those brave souls who decide to give it a chance are going to have to sit through a lot of the things it does wrong. Worth seeing

Review – Wizards

Imagine Charles “Peanuts” Schultz dropping acid and reading J.R.R. Tolkein, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s in store for you in this vintage Ralph Bakshi offering. I can remember being impressed by this movie the first time I saw it, but that was many years ago when animation in general wasn’t especially sophisticated, I was a lot younger, and it was a lot easier to win me over with little more than scantily-clad elf women. Viewing it again all these years later, I’m more than a little embarrassed that I used to like this dog. The script is a dreadful, ham-handed hash of anti-war platitudes, and the rotoscoping from Eisenstein (among other sources) that seemed so avant garde once upon a time now just seems as dated as the theme. The nicest word I can think of to describe this picture is “quaint,” and other, less friendly words – such as “preachy,” “ill-conceived,” and “stupid” – also come to mind. See if desperate

Review – The Sands of Iwo Jima

Is that you, John Wayne? Is this me? This has to be the ultimate expression of the United States Marine Corps’ self-image, at least as far as its role in World War Two is concerned. We’ve got all the stock characters and cliché situations: the tough-as-nails sergeant with the heart of gold (played by the Duke himself), the over-educated kid with the chip on his shoulder who nonetheless learns to be a manly man and a team player, the irresponsible guy who learns a hard lesson about the seriousness of war, the Jewish guy (who gets killed), the other ethnic guy (Greek, who also gets killed), and so on. Of course, the movie also features the rampant racism (count the number of times the word “nip” appears) and obnoxious sexism common in pictures of this genre and era. And then of course there’s the ultimate cliché: the raising of the flag at the end of the flick. If you like movies of this general sort, don’t miss this one. Mildly amusing

Review – From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money

If the first From Dusk Till Dawn was boring and stupid, then pejoratives are completely inadequate to describe this sequel. Cracker cops battle vampire bank robbers in a fight that sadly both sides can’t lose. The volume of bat violence in this dog would be unendurable if the fake-looking rubber things didn’t look quite so much like chihuahuas with wings. The result is one of those movies where you just sit there waiting for it to get clever or interesting or entertaining or anything, and instead it just moves from one cheap, dull gore shot to the next. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The Princess Bride

Yeah, I know it’s a juvenile movie. It’s goofy. It’s sentimental. It’s a lot of fantasy silliness. It’s extremely sexist. Parts of it are annoying (I worked with a guy back when this was in theaters who would wander around the office repeating “Hello my name is Inigo Montoya you killed my father prepare to die” over and over again). But despite all that, I really like this film. There’s just something charming and disarming about the simple characters and straightforward plot. I wouldn’t hold it up as a shining example of cinema art, but it’s a good way to spend a couple of pleasant hours on a quiet Saturday afternoon. Worth seeing

Review – From Beyond

Here we have a straight-to-video version of H.P. Lovecraft’s tale of a device that uncovers the World of the Invisible Scary Skeletons that exists all around us. At least I think Lovecraft’s story is in here somewhere. It’s buried under a big pile of bad, latex monsters and adolescent sexuality. Someday someone should make a version of this story without resorting to rape and various other unwelcome additions. But Empire Pictures most likely isn’t going to be the studio that does it. Ken Foree (of Dawn of the Dead fame) does a good job in a supporting role, but otherwise this outing’s mostly missable. See if desperate

Review – I Walked with a Zombie

Fans of the low-budget, black and white, minimalist approach to horror movies that producer Val Lewton made famous should enjoy this one, which some critics consider his best ever. Personally, I’m a little more partial to Cat People, but this is a fine film as well. I was particularly impressed by the treatment of the Black characters. Like just about every other voodoo movie ever made, you couldn’t exactly describe it as racially sensitive. But at least a couple of the non-white characters were portrayed in a sympathetic light. The plot follows the adventures of a nurse who travels to the island of St. Sebastian (presumably somewhere in the Caribbean) to care for the peculiar wife of the local land baron. As it turns out, the wife is peculiar because she’s a walking corpse. As usual with Lewton’s work, some of the movie seems a little awkward and dated now, but there are still a few genuine chills to be found. Worth seeing

Review – Mystery, Alaska

Though on the surface this is a “hockey movie,” you don’t have to really love the sport to get a kick out of it. The cast of quirky, small-town Alaskans (headed by Russell Crowe) occasionally come across as a little contrived, as does the vaguely Local Hero-esque plot revolving around an amateur hockey team taking on the New York Rangers. The script falls victim to its share of sports movie clichés, but it also manages more than its share of clever moments. If heart-warming gives you heartburn, stay clear. But if you can stand the jock flick conventions then this should prove to be a pleasant viewing experience. Mildly amusing

Review – Play It to the Bone

Um, tell it to the hand. This is one of those movies that’s just trying a little too hard to be quirky and clever. Ostensibly it’s about a couple of has-been boxers trying to get back in the game by fighting each other as the first bout on a Tyson card. However, by the time the movie is over there’s a whole lot of road picture and more than just a few gay bonding buddy gags. Once the duo finally makes it to Las Vegas and gets the fight underway, the production’s not too bad (though again a bit overwrought). Unfortunately, the fight itself takes up only a small percentage of the total running time, most of the rest of the picture given over to an endless car ride through the desert colored by uninteresting, empty-headed dialogue and implausible plot twists. The cast (including Woody Harrelson and Antonio Banderas in the leads) gives it a good try, but they just can’t do much with the terrible script. See if desperate

Review – Back to the Beach

I have absolutely no idea if this movie is more entertaining if you’ve actually seen all or at least some of the old beach pictures being satirized. But even if you haven’t, there are still enough moments here to keep the production entertaining in a goofy sort of way. Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello seem to be thoroughly enjoying themselves as they parody the flicks that made them famous back in the 60s. But the high points tend to center around the many cameo roles by TV stars from the 50s and 60s, not to mention Pee-wee Herman and Fishbone. The result is pure saltwater taffy for your grey matter, but if you’re in the mood for some witless cheerfulness you could do a lot worse. Mildly amusing

Review – Friday the 13th Part 9: Jason Goes to Hell, The Final Friday

Ever wonder why the authorities (or anyone else, for that matter) never tumble to the notion of doing away with the likes of Jason Voorhees once and for all by just blowing him up? Well, here’s the answer to that thorny problem. Apparently if you blow Jason into a million bits, it gives him the amazing ability to psychically cause the coroner doing the largely-unnecessary autopsy (cause of death = blown into a million bits = case closed) to eat his diseased heart like a jelly doughnut. From there our ol’ slasher buddy’s spirit hops from body to body, stealing plot devices from other horror movies to keep his reign of terror alive. Honestly, who would have thought that at this late point in the series they’d suddenly feel the need to introduce a plot to justify Jason’s hacking? Of course, we’ve seen the word “final” in a Friday the 13th title before, but at least so far they appear to be serious about leaving him dead this time. Knock on wood. See if desperate [And then along comes #10, crushing the hopes of Jason-intolerant individuals everywhere]

Review – Murder at 1600

The pot boils again on yet another D.C.-intensive action-mystery-thriller. All the staples of the genre are here: the tough, street-wise cop who plays by his own rules (Wesley Snipes), the long-suffering partner who tries to reign him in (Diane Lane), a brutal crime, a bevy of sinister government types, and of course more conspiracies and plot twists than you can shake a stick at. The movie is notable more for its copious use of Washington-area locations than anything it actually contributes to the art of film-making. However, it did leave me wondering: just exactly how much do D.C. street cops and Secret Service agents get paid? Both of the protagonists live in digs that are – especially by Washington standards – palatial, well beyond the salaries I hope even the most gifted rank-and-file civil servants receive. Mildly amusing

Review – In the Woods

I suppose it was inevitable that The Blair Witch Project would end up spawning at least some of this every-moron-with-a-camcorder approach to making horror movies. Of course, this particular brand of amateurish tripe has more in common with early Full Moon (back when it was still Empire) than the pseudo-documentary Blair Witch style. It’s hard to pick the worst element of this dog; the shot-on-video production values, wooden acting and witless script are all solid contenders. But I think the edge goes to the not-very-special effects. Honestly, the monsters on the original Star Trek series weren’t this cheap. The idea of making a movie about a couple of guys pursued by something they unearth out in the woods might have had some potential, but the execution is definitely lacking. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan

This has got to be a joke, right? Sort of like the snide suggestions that the next Friday the 13th movie should be called Jason Surfs Hawaiian or Jason Does Dallas. Well, despite how laughable the whole thing is, the film-makers actually appear to be serious about it. This time Jason hacks his way through a cruise ship (which looks suspiciously like an old freighter) full of – yeah, say it with me now – teenagers. Eventually the remnants of the cast make it to the Big Apple, where they must contend with gang members as well as the tried-and-true reanimated corpse. Eighth verse, same as the first (or at the very least the second). See if desperate

Review – Platoon

Yet again the hapless nation of Vietnam serves as the backdrop for American men battling with their inner demons. Director Oliver Stone serves up a heavy-handed allegory in which a good sergeant (Willem DaFoe) and an evil sergeant (Tom Berenger) battle for control of an infantry platoon and by proxy for the soul of a young newcomer (Charlie Sheen). Though a solid example of the war film genre and probably the most watchable of Stone’s Vietnam-themed movies, the preachiness and ultra-macho “I wuz there” attitude copped by the production makes it more than a little tedious in parts. Mildly amusing

Review – Dogma

Some people want to amend the Constitution to make it illegal to burn the flag. Some want to amend it to ban pornography or hate speech. The amendment I’m praying for is a total ban on members of Generation X creating anything – song, movie or whatever – about religion. I mean, I’m a big fan of free speech and all, but enough is enough. This specimen in particular is an especially annoying mishmash of comic-book theology and slapstick violence from the guys who brought us Clerks. Judging by the stellar cast, someone must have thought this was going to turn into one of those critically-acclaimed vanity projects. Unfortunately, the script is so terrible and so full of endless speechifying and moronic plot twists that the rest of the production, however well put together, never really has a chance. Too bad, really. I loved Clerks. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The Witches of Eastwick

Now here’s a combo you don’t see every day: a big-budget, star vehicle horror movie with a feminist slant. Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer and Cher star as three single women dissatisfied with the small-town New England hand life has dealt them. Enter Jack Nicholson as a devilish figure who delights in helping the women get out of their ruts. The trio abandon their demon lover when he starts to play a little too rough, and from there things escalate into an effects-intensive denouement. While it’s nice to see Hollywood pony up for a cast and some production values in a horror flick every once in awhile, this particular sample seems to have been so dummied down that “drama” or “comedy” might be better words for it. In the final cut (especially after preview audiences nixed a lot of the gore), the most horrible thing in the whole movie is Nicholson’s shameless scenery-chewing, excessive even by his usual standards. Mildly amusing

Review – Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood

Well, blood anyway. The only new thing about this chapter is that this time around everyone’s favorite hockey-mask-bedecked corpse does battle with a troubled, psychic teenager. So the whole thing turns into a Jason versus Carrie sort of a deal. Other than this subplot, this is just another round of the horny-teen-hating, garden-tool-wielding, supernatural psycho hacking his way though another gaggle of his favorite prey. See if desperate

Review – Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

Here’s another one of my childhood favorites, due mostly to Gene Wilder’s superb performance as a grown-up who delights in tormenting bad little kids. I’m not all that crazy about the musical numbers (with the possible exception of Veruca Salt’s legendary “I Want It Now” song, and of course the little ditty the Oompa Loompas sing as they attend to the remains of the four kids who don’t make it to the end of the picture), and our protagonist, Charlie the poverty-stricken moppet, is a little too goody-goody for words. But kids everywhere who think their parents are tough should get a real kick out of watching over-indulged brats get their come-uppance in a big way. Further, I note that as an adult re-watching the movie I get an extra kick out of the idiosyncratic, almost absurdist wit of Wilder’s Wonka. Even if this movie didn’t have anything else going for it (and it has plenty), it’s worth it to me just for the riverboat sequence, which I believe was one of my first encounters with horror elements in cinema. Worth seeing

Review – Atomic Dog

If you’ve seen Devil Dog: The Hound from Hell, then you can safely ignore this one. Truth be told, you can probably safely ignore them both. This time around the canine villain is a creature of evil thanks to nuclear radiation rather than the forces of darkness, but otherwise the plot (supernaturally vicious dog bedevils suburban family) is pretty much the same. And of course any time dogs play the bad guys, you know you’re in for a big dose of animal suffering. The old Parliament Funkadelic song was better, not to mention shorter. See if desperate

Review – Pitch Black

Once again Alien gets dragged out, dusted off and hung back up on the screen. This time around the twist is that the bugs can’t stand light – it actually appears to burn them – so the hapless humans marooned on a distant planet will be just fine as long as they can keep a fire going. Naturally this simple task that humans have been performing for thousands of years proves amazingly difficult for a seemingly endless parade of reasons. The only up-side to this feature is a booga-booga shot here and there that actually works. Downsides include annoying lighting and filter effects, an almost complete lack of likable characters, and far too many questions of biology, astronomy and the like that never even come close to getting answered. See if desperate

Review – Salem’s Lot

Tobe Hooper directs this four-hour (including commercials) made-for-TV epic based on the Stephen King novel about a small town in Maine infested by vampires. The result’s not too bad, especially considering vampires aren’t exactly my favorite denizens of the supernatural world. The production suffers from some of the usual Hooper technical difficulties, including a “final  battle” sequence that is occasionally difficult to follow due to poor lighting. On the other hand, the script is pretty good, and even the acting’s not half bad for a made-for-TV movie. And for those who can’t stand the full running time, there’s a shorter version available on video. Mildly amusing

Review – Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives

Too bad the plot doesn’t. This one’s bad even by Friday the 13th standards. Brought back to life by a stupid mishap involving lightning, Jason proceeds to hack his way through an uninteresting cast of talentless walk-ons, pursued by the hero from the last two (played by yet another actor). Forget even the most minimal quality standards for gore. In fact, forget just about anything that might have drawn slasher movie fans (or anyone else, for that matter) into the audience. Final, unpardonable sin: downright boring. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Pet Sematary 2

Here we go again. This one picks up where the last one left off, at least in terms of taste or lack thereof; within the first ten minutes, a boy’s mother and a cute dog are both killed on-screen. Then bullies threaten to kill a kitten. Then the main villain shoots his stepson’s dog, which dies a lingering death in the boy’s arms. Then ... well, you get the point. Honestly, this film was almost enough to make me puke, and it offered little if any redeeming value to justify the endless parade of misery it portrayed and inflicted. Avoid at all costs

Review – Dr. Strangelove

Or how I learned to stop worrying and love this film. The passage of years and death of the Cold War have done little to diminish the chilling comedic power of Stanley Kubrick’s genius. In fact, it’s almost possible to get more out of it now that the whistling-past-the-graveyard aspect of the humor has been replaced by a better understanding of the absurdity of nuclear detente. The humor is broad and often a little juvenile, but it still holds up after too many repeat viewings to count. George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden and Peter Sellers (in three roles) all turn in top-notch performances that, when combined with Kubrick’s masterful (if somewhat continuity-impaired) visual style make for a must-see treat. Buy the tape

Review – The Fourth Man

Before Paul Verhoeven made a tidy living directing bad, big-budget Hollywood epics about how evil women are, he used to direct bad, low-budget Dutch art films about how evil women are. Of particular note in this go-around is the appearance, mercifully brief though it is, of one of the most graphic castration scenes ever stored on film. The story itself is about a gay writer in a bizarre love triangle with a muscle boy and an eerie, masculine woman who seems to be in the habit of marrying and murdering. So it goes without saying that you get a fair amount of spider-related stuff. What you also get is a load of pretentious religious symbolism so thick that the plot just about chokes on it. This isn’t a bad choice if you’re in the mood for a big mess of homoerotic horror. Mildly amusing

Review – Dirty Dancing

Boy, if this is what it was like to be Borsht-belt rich back in the 1960s, I’m glad I’m neither wealthy enough or old enough to have had the experience. Honestly, this movie spawned a couple of chart-climbing tunes and an artificial dance craze, but otherwise it’s little more than an empty-headed teen movie that tries to justify its existence with a trumped-up message. It might actually have worked better if it had been a little less ham-handed about abortion, class differences, and so on. It also might have helped if the screenwriters had found a way to portray a girl’s sexual and social coming of age with a little more emotional depth than the average 30 second ad for feminine hygiene spray. Come for the dancing if that sort of thing floats your boat, but don’t feel like you have to sit through any of the rest of it. See if desperate

Review – The Atomic Cafe

This documentary should be required viewing in film production courses, particularly those classes that emphasize editing techniques. With nothing but old archive footage from the 40s and 50s, the Archive Project manages to create a movie about nuclear madness as chilling as it is funny. By cutting together clips from a variety of different sources, the film-makers paint a brilliant portrait of a nation rolling in post-war prosperity yet obsessed with the destructive power of atomic weapons. If any proof is needed that a wonderful, insightful film can be made without spending millions of dollars on big-name actors and flashy effects, here is all the evidence anyone should ever want. Buy the tape

Review – The Fly (1958)

By now everyone’s familiar with the joke here: a scientist invents a teleportation device, but a mishap during an experiment ends up fusing him with a fly, swapping heads and one arm/leg between man and bug. So if it mashes everything in the teleportation chamber up with everything else, why doesn’t it combine the guy’s clothes in as well? Why doesn’t he end up being Mr. Crazy Fly Loafer Cardigan Guy? Okay, assume he peels off before he goes in. What about the dust mites in his hair? What about the bacteria in his intestinal tract? Shouldn’t he emerge from the chamber as Mr. Crazy Fly Loafer Cardigan Dust Mite E Coli Guy? On the other hand, maybe I’m over-thinking it. Maybe I should just be content to enjoy this sci-fi / horror classic on its own terms. Certainly the famous “help me” sequence at the end does much to justify an otherwise somewhat uneven movie. Mildly amusing

Review – The Wicker Man

If fate is kind, this is the only Druid nudie musical that will ever be preserved on grainy celluloid. I suppose the concept has some potential; a better movie might have been made out of the conflict between a stodgy British constable and the inhabitants of a small Scottish island with strange ways and dark secrets. But here the locals’ pagan faith has apparently turned them into a pack of sex-obsessed, folk-song-singing nutbars. Of course, being led by Christopher Lee, in an uncharacteristically flaky performance as the drag-wearing Lord Summerisle, can’t help matters much. Further, the flick is a little rough on the animals, particularly toward the end. On the other hand, by that point the movie is rough on just about everyone, particularly the audience. See if desperate

Review – Interview with the Vampire

I read somewhere that Anne Rice really hated the choice of Tom Cruise to play her precious Vampire Lestat. Personally, I thought he did a fine job as the sort of sarcastic glamour boy that I remembered from the book. Cruise also gets some fine, intense young actor support from Brad Pitt and Antonio Banderas. Casting aside, however, Rice fans should enjoy the excessive goth trappings and moody vampire goings-on. Personally, all the morose sex and death stuff started to creep me out when the plot added a pre-teen participant, ably played by Kirsten Dunst in her first big screen role. On the other hand, it did have some good camerawork and interesting editing. Mildly amusing

Review – Pet Sematary

Okay, I have to admit that I read King’s novel before I saw the movie, so I really can’t claim I didn’t know what I was getting into (not, mind you, that the title by itself isn’t a dead giveaway). Still, a lot of the action in this picture strikes me as exploitative in the worst way, if not in genuinely bad taste. I’m already solidly on the record as disliking movies that dwell on violence committed against children or animals, and this production supplies both aplenty. The premise is that dead animals and people buried in a certain evil spot in the woods can come back to life, though not exactly as their former selves. Though the basic idea has some potential, by the time the movie kills a girl’s pet cat not once but twice and then devolves into a battle between bereaved parents and a demonic, zombie toddler, it’s just too stupid and tasteless to hope for redemption. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Flawless

Is there such a thing as a “situation drama”? If so, this is a flawless example of the genre. The main plot is an opposites-attract buddy relationship between a macho man ex-cop (Robert DeNiro) who suffers a disabling stroke and his drag queen neighbor (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who gives the gritty old guy singing lessons to help him recover the ability to speak. So it goes without saying that the bulk of the movie is devoted to the cop overcoming his prejudices and bonding with his flamboyant tutor. And because all that’s not quite enough to carry a movie for the full running time, there’s a stupid subplot about a dope dealer looking for some stolen money, and several other half-baked mini-dramas thrown in for good measure. Though most of the gay jokes fall flat, every once in awhile one of the drag queen crowd will come up with a good line; my personal favorite was one of the supporting actors referring to the DeNiro character as “Mr. My Left Foot.” But I guess it goes without saying that if the highlight of the movie is a drag queen making disability jokes, the rest of the production is mostly missable. See if desperate

Review – The Terminal Man

The Terminal Bore is more like it. Though it’s been many years since I read the book, I remember it as being a lot more interesting than this odd, sixties-vision-of-the-future flick about the evils of mind control. George Seagal plays a man suffering from a form of epilepsy that makes him wig out and try to kill people every time he suffers a seizure. Well-meaning doctors implant electrodes into his brain with the intent of staving off his attacks with pleasant stimulation. But as such things often do, the scheme goes awry; our anti-hero’s brain becomes addicted to the shocks, triggering the device so frequently that the over-stimulation begins to cause the very problem it was supposed to prevent. The premise isn’t bad, but once it’s established the movie just doesn’t seem to go much of anywhere else. Mildly amusing

Review – In Dreams

Take the fashion photography out of The Eyes of Laura Mars, add a hearty dose of child murder in its place, and this is what you get: a woman (Annette Benning) can see inside the mind of the psychopath (Robert Downy Jr.) who kills her daughter. Aside from a few visually interesting sequences, this movie offers little that hasn’t been done better elsewhere. See if desperate

Review – The Mummy (1959)

The old guy walks yet again, this time courtesy of the magic of Hammer Films. Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee once again square off in a rehash of monster movie territory first explored by Universal decades earlier. Along for the ride come bad elements like racism and sexism as well as stuff like the archaeological themes that make good mummy movies so much fun. Despite the heavy makeup and the lack of dialogue (except for the obligatory origin-of-the-mummy sequence), Lee actually manages to wring a fair amount of emotion from his slow-moving role. So if you have a taste for British horror movies from this particular era, you should find this example thoroughly enjoyable. Mildly amusing

Review – Detroit Rock City

When KISS bass player Gene Simmons makes a movie about fans of the group trying to get to a concert back in the band’s heyday, this is the predictable result. If you’ve got a little 70s-era lower class white guy in your past, some of the antics here may bring back a memory or two. Otherwise the audience likely to enjoy this movie is likely to be limited to teenage slackers doing the empty-headed rebellion thing. KISS fans, in other words. Mildly amusing

Review – The First Power

The first time I saw this movie was many years ago when it was originally released in theaters. The theater my friends and I chose for this magical experience was one of those spots where the audience members felt free to add commentary if and when appropriate. I have an especially vivid memory of the umpteenth time protagonist Lou Diamond Phillips takes a shot to the crotch, because the guy sitting right behind us loudly opined, “His shit ain’t gonna work tomorrow!” Honestly, it was the high point of the show. Audience participation aside, this is yet another tiresome tale of a psycho-killer who resurrects himself post-execution and continues his killing spree by hopping from body to body. See if desperate (or at least in the right company)

Review – Mr. Death

Continuing his habit of making documentaries about some of the lesser-known corners of our society, Errol Morris turns his camera’s lens on Fred Leuchter, designer of execution paraphernalia and Holocaust denier. Fred’s an odd little man who claims he drinks 40 cups of coffee a day and smokes six packs of cigarettes. No doubt all the caffeine and nicotine help keep him going while he’s working on the electric chairs, lethal injection machines, and gallows used by several states. Unfortunately for Fred, business bottomed out when he got caught up with the movement of people who insist the Nazis never gassed any Jewish people. He even traveled all the way to Poland to chip concrete from the gas chamber walls in  order to prove his point, engaging in such bad forensic science that the results of his crime were completely inconclusive. As usual, Morris paints a fascinating picture, though I kinda wish he hadn’t decided to include some old Edison footage of an elephant being electrocuted. Mildly amusing

Review – Firestarter

If Carrie made a good movie, maybe we can get another one out of an early Stephen King novel about a girl with destructive, psychic powers. Or maybe not. The plot follows King’s story of a pre-teen who can set fires with her mind. Naturally the sinister government agency known as The Shop takes an interest in her, but when they try to separate her from her father all hell breaks loose. The film is notable primarily for the starring role played by a very young Drew Barrymore. George C. Scott also does a solid job as an icky hit man. Other than that, however, it offers little beyond some elaborate pyrotechnics. Mildly amusing

Review – Mission to Mars

Close Encounters was a good movie. 2001 was a good movie. So if we mash them together, that should make a really great movie, right? Wrong. Of course the stupid, new-agey plot didn’t help matters at all. The so-called Face on Mars is real? It was put there by aliens that were also responsible for starting life on Earth? That’s dumb even by Disney standards. As if all that plus a hearty dose of spouse death wasn’t bad enough, the final icing on the cake is an excessive reliance on the battle of the endless string of mishaps versus the techno-babbling macho men. Touchstone must have spent a fortune on this clinker, because the cast list at the end dragged on so long that I actually started looking for my own name in it (hey, everyone else in the United States was in there, so why not me?). See if desperate

Review – Mission: Impossible 2

Just about the only serious fun I’ve been able to derive from either of the MI movies has been seeing how they’ve re-worked the theme music from the old TV show. In the first one, Art of Noise did a techno-reheat. This time around it gets a guitar-intensive workout. Though that aspect of the production was fun, there isn’t much more to put this outing on a to-see list. John Woo is in the director’s chair, so you can bet that there’s going to be a lot of top-dollar, tightly-edited action sequences. And in that respect the movie does not disappoint. But much of the celluloid that passes through the projector between the explosions and the shootings has been exposed to a parade of dull, predictable plot twists, situations oddly familiar from the first time around, and some of the worst dialogue ever written by anyone this side of Ed Wood. Furthermore, as good as Woo is at action, he should probably be physically prevented from ever attempting to handle romance. But hey, that’s what the fast forward button on the remote is for. See if desperate

Review – At First Sight

Sadly, Val Kilmer appears to have reached and exceeded the limits of his acting ability. He’s supposed to be playing a blind man who regains his sight thanks to the miracles of modern medicine. But he plays the character as if he was not only visually impaired but also mentally differently abled. Once he regains his sight and begins to struggle with his newfound sense, his IQ also seems to jump by at least 50 points. Mira Sorvino, as Kilmer’s girlfriend, does her best to keep up. But ultimately this movie never rises above the level of run-of-the-mill disability drama. Mildly amusing

Review – Patton

I loved this film when I was a kid, and I still love it now, though for different reasons. When I was a kid, I mostly just loved all the World War Two action stuff (I was quite a war buff in my younger years). Now I enjoy marveling at George C. Scott’s masterful portrayal of the duality of Patton: military genius and psychotic prima donna. They actually manage to turn the bastard into a tragic hero in the loftiest Greco-Shakespearian tradition. And then there’s the story about how Scott turned down the Oscar for the role, proving just what an amazing acting job he really did. For anyone who thinks he or she might even vaguely be able to sit through a multi-hour war movie, this one’s a must-see. Worth seeing

Review – War of the Worlds (1953)

Return with us now to the days of yesteryear, when scientists were all rugged, good-looking men who worked for the military and even women with master’s degrees existed only to fetch coffee and whip up some fried eggs as needed. This George Pal version of H.G. Wells’ science fiction classic features special effects that were ahead of their time and still hold up fairly well all these years later. I wish I could say the same for the dialogue, much of which would probably be right at home in an Ed Wood movie. Further, I don’t know that Wells would have thought much of the ultra-Christian preachiness, especially at the end. Otherwise, this is a good example of Pal’s unique contributions to the history of sci fi cinema. Mildly amusing

Review – Destroy All Monsters

Well, if we have to destroy all of them at least we’ve got the whole crowd in the same place. Our story begins with Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra and a peck of other rubber suits only die-hard fans of Japanese city-smashers have ever heard of all walled up together on an island somewhere. Enter the evil women from an asteroid who stick transmitters in the monsters’ heads and mind-control them into attacking the world’s major cities. I guess you can kinda tell the caliber of the city based on the monster that smashes it: New York gets Godzilla himself, Moscow rates Rodan, but Paris just gets a big, warty thing. Eventually our intrepid, macho astronaut defenders figure out a way to beat the transmitters, and the monsters turn on their brain-washers. Enter Ghidara to take them all on in the final Texas Death Cage tag-team free-for-all. As Godzilla movies from the 70s go, this is actually one of the better ones. Mildly amusing

Review – Midnight Express

Here’s the grim and brutal story of an American youth who got caught trying to smuggle hash out of Turkey in the early 70s. So come prepared for a couple of hours’ worth of sheer brutality as our protagonist is tortured to the brink of madness by cruel guards, evil inmates, increased sentences, and other miscellaneous trappings of the third world prison experience. Needless to say, this film didn’t exactly do wonders for Turkey’s tourism industry. Mildly amusing

Review – Armageddon

Here we have a Sun-Classic-esque treatment of that most serious of subjects: the end of the world. This documentary (for want of a better term) features a lengthy parade of prophets (including de rigeur considerations of Nostradamus and Edgar Cayce), hysterical Iberian children, “pyramidologists,” survivalists and religious fanatics. I’ve watched this film a couple of times, once when it came out many years ago and then again recently (in the year 2000) after much of the apocalyptic gloom and doom has been conclusively refuted (at least in terms of most of the time frames proposed). Amazingly enough, a lot of the ridiculous ranting loses most if not all of its amusement value after its been conclusively proven wrong. What was once entertaining in a bad-ghost-story sort of way is now just annoying in a making-fun-of-the-mentally-ill sort of way. Or maybe I was just in a bad mood when I re-watched it. At least it wasn’t as bad as the Bruce Willis mega-movie with the same name. Mildly amusing

Review – The Patriot

I guess maybe it’s comforting to know that Americans still have a war we feel we can be proud of. Revisionist history has done in the nobility of just about every armed conflict in our history except World War Two (which has taken some lumps but remains more or less on its feet) and the Revolution. This, of course, is a Mel Gibson epic about the older of the two “popular” wars. If you go in expecting Braveheart relocated to the Colonies, then you’re going to get just about exactly what you pay for. Some of the battle effects are kinda graphic (especially the scene in which a cannon ball takes off a guy’s head). But other than that, this is mostly just a whole bunch of “Hello my name is Inigo Montoya you killed my entire family prepare to die.” If the outlaw Josey Wales had a funny accent and fought for the good guys, this movie would already have been made around 30 years ago. Mildly amusing

Review – Pass the Ammo

Though this movie was a great deal more timely when it first came out (right around the time of the infamous Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart scandals), it still endures as a comedy masterpiece. Aside from Tim Curry’s flamboyant performance as Rev. Ray the crooked televangelist, the cast is good without being great. The production values could only charitably be described as cheap. But the script is an amazing piece of work, as clever as it is sarcastic and irreverent. Though it probably isn’t one of the greatest films ever made, it is an excellent choice for anyone in search of a silly, cynical bit of brain candy. If nothing else, it’s worth seeing just for one of the most memorable lines in movie history (though decency forbids me to say more than that). Buy the tape

Review – The Ten Commandments

Among my guilty pleasures, this is one of the guiltiest. Cecil B. DeMille takes so long to tell the story of Moses, the exodus from Egypt and the title subject that it’s almost faster just to read the Bible. Further, the casting is a big mistake. Though I concede I’m not much of a judge of men, I just can’t imagine many Egyptian princesses actually preferring rock-headed Charlton Heston to smooth, stylish Yul Brynner. And the script? Don’t even get me started on the dialogue! And yet I’ve seen this so many times I know much of it by heart. Perhaps it’s a childhood comfort association, because this used to show a lot around Christmas and Easter. Maybe it’s an appreciation of the finest in sanctimonious camp and spectacle. Or maybe it’s just that when I’m using the TV as background noise it’s nice to have something on that’s familiar enough for me to ignore most of it. Whatever the case, I can’t go all the way to “buy the tape” here, but I do confess that it’s part of my personal collection. Worth seeing

Review – Mercy

What an odd title for a film that apparently has none. The bad acting, ludicrous script and ham-handed exploitation of unsavory sexual themes are as relentless as they are tedious. Yet again Hollywood (or at least the low-rent, straight-to-cable corner of Tinseltown) trots out the tired old male fantasies about what women do with each other “while the guys are at work.” Adding S&M wrinkles and a basic murder-thriller plot structure does little to warm up these cold leftovers. And Julian Sands in a dress? Please. See if desperate

Review – Tarzan

Yet another familiar tale Disney-fied. It’s got all the classic studio stock elements: dead parents, lots of law-of-the-jungle violence, cheesy romance, plenty of musical numbers, expensive animation, the works. And though it features all the usual dysfunctional relationships Disney has become famous for, it nonetheless turns out to be a fun movie to watch. Or maybe I was just in a good mood when I saw it. Mildly amusing

Review – Tarantula

Here’s the beast that put Leo G. Carroll over a barrel. Honestly, aside from the mention in “Science Fiction Double Feature” there’s little here to distinguish this giant bug from all the other radioactively-enhanced critters that menaced the desert southwest back in the 1950s (though I guess technically this one’s a chemically-treated arachnid rather than an irradiated insect). There’s still animal violence and bad blue screens aplenty. If you’re into this sort of thing you should get a kick out of it. Mildly amusing

Review – Tanya’s Island

This soft-core study of sexual themes first explored in movies such as King Kong might have been a better picture with a bigger budget, a better script or at least some moderately-talented actors. Sadly, this effort lacks all the elements that might have saved it. The acting is probably the weakest of the three, particularly the talent-free performance mailed in by the female lead, D.D. Winters (a.k.a. Prince protégée Vanity). Setting the inscrutable bracket aside, the central plot is the tale of a woman frolicking on a deserted island with her painter boyfriend, a neurotic loser by the name of Lobo. The pair discovers that they’re sharing their Eden with a burly primate of some sort (created by gorilla-master Rick Baker’s former student, Rob Bottin). As our heroine’s affection strays from Lobo to ape, the former gets more and more savage as the rival for his girlfriend becomes progressively tame. The final result is a parade of rape and savagery as boring as it is offensive. On a good day this might be just bad enough to be sorta funny, but it would have to be a pretty good day. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The Astronaut’s Wife

I’ll bet Rod Serling could have told this same story (a sci-fi reheat of Rosemary’s Baby with aliens stepping in for Satan) in his usual 22 minutes. The film-makers here fill the additional 80-ish with a whole lot of meandering and useless art direction. The cast does what they can with it, but there just isn’t enough script to work with. See if desperate

Review – The Mean Season

Kurt Russell and Mariel Hemingway star in this run-of-the-mill thriller about a newspaper reporter who receives calls from a serial killer. Though David Berkowitz’s notes to Jimmy Breslin clearly provided at least some inspiration for the drama, this movie goes in entirely different directions from the Son of Sam killings. For openers, it’s set in Miami rather than New York. And the killer and journalist end up a lot more closely involved. Overall this isn’t terrible, particularly as psycho thrillers go, but it does rely heavily on the less desirable facets of the genre (particularly the repeated, graphic victimization of women) without providing a lot of compensating rewards for enduring the experience. Mildly amusing

Review – Virtuosity

Russell Crowe appears to be having way too much fun hamming it up as the virtual villain of this otherwise lackluster visit to cyberspace. Denzel Washington plays a cop-imprisoned-for-homicide who is freed so he can hunt down a virtual serial killer who has somehow escaped into the real world via some expensive computer effects. Why do we need Washington? Because the psychological profile of the terrorist who killed his family is part of the inner workings of the new psycho’s programming. In other words, don’t ask. Crowe’s playfully insane performance is worth a look, but otherwise this effects vehicle is missable. Mildly amusing

Review – Final Destination

Gee, as if teenagers weren’t already sufficiently obsessed with death. The premise here is an odd mish-mash of recycled horror plots, including guy-who-can-foresee-disasters and teens-stalked-by-a-supernatural-force-with-a-grudge. The plot launches with a small group of kids saved from a doomed Flight-800-esque experience by a psychic premonition. But after that it devolves into the usual stalker plot (though at least this time the antagonist is an amorphous “death” rather than a personified evil like Freddie or Jason). Some of the editing is clever, but a lot of it ends up wasted on elaborate deaths that frequently seem more contrived than a Rube Goldberg device. Further, the deleted scenes available as extras on the DVD make it fairly apparent that the filmmakers originally had a much different ending in mind and that something a bit more cheerful had to be cooked up after audience testing. Mildly amusing

Review – Run Silent Run Deep

As I’ve admitted elsewhere, I’m a sucker for submarine movies. Even so, this is one of the finest examples of the genre and just generally a good war movie. Clark Gable plays an Ahab-esque Navy captain given command of a submarine that by rights should have gone to his executive officer (Burt Lancaster). The captain uses unorthodox tactics to pursue a Japanese destroyer responsible for sinking his previous sub. The script is good, and the acting equal to the task. Those with no affection for the submarine sub-genre of the war movie may not get much out of this production, but if you can even vaguely tolerate such movies then you should find this one rewarding. Worth seeing

Review – I Married a Strange Person

Animator Bill Plympton’s wife must say this on a daily basis. Here Plympton isn’t even constrained by the normal restraints of working for clients such as MTV or an insurance company. So he lets his imagination run wild, with the result being, well, wild. If nothing else, this feature-length animation includes a lot more graphic sex and violence than the artist’s more famous, shorter work. The plot, to the extent that there is one, loosely follows the exploits of a man who ends up with psychic powers that he uses in the pursuit of strangeness. But if you’re in the mood for a little absurdist comedy, this will more than scratch your itch. Mildly amusing

Review – Demon Knight

“Tales from the Crypt” presents Attack of the Men in Rubber Suits. Despite the addition of a chunk of fakey theology and a bunch of filler, this movie seldom if ever succeeds at any level higher than an extra-long episode of the HBO series based (more or less) on the legendary EC horror comics. You’ve got to figure that any film where Billy Zane is the high point, as the villain no less, that the rest of the picture is one long low point. See if desperate

Review – Demon Keeper

Is a demon keeper like a bee keeper, only with a hive full of demons rather than bees? And if bees make honey, do we really want to know what demons make? Actually, for all I know they might have made a better movie. Instead we get an unimaginative bit of nonsense about a group of losers who accidentally summon Asmodeus (Latin for “guy in a cheap rubber devil suit”), who proceeds to do them in. Added bonuses: the world’s cheapest rabid dog puppet, a lesbian demon mud-rasslin’ rape scene, and Dirk “Starbuck” Benedict chewing as much scenery as he can cram into his hammy maw. See if desperate

Review – U-571

As two-fisted tales of men and the sea go, I’ve seen a lot worse. As the title suggests, the plot revolves around a German U-boat. A cast headed by Matthew McConaughey capture the sub in question and attempt to get it (or at the very least its valuable Enigma encryption device) back to friendly waters. Occasionally the plot skips over holes or leaves motives unexplained in order to keep the action going. But that’s probably for the best, considering that the action and effects are the real stars of the show. Some of the depth-charge-damage sequences run a little too long, but other than that this is a fine piece of mindless violence. And hey, I’m a sucker for sub movies. Mildly amusing

Review – Fatherland

The basic concept for this drama is somewhat intriguing: what if D-Day had failed, the United States had made peace with Germany, and the Holocaust had never come to light? A German cop and an American reporter end up on the trail of a mid-60s plot to kill high-ranking officials who know too much about the Final Solution. Our heroes end up in a race against time to uncover the awful truth before President Joseph Kennedy Sr. concludes a treaty with 75-year-old Adolph Hitler. Despite workmanlike performances by the cast, particularly grand Teuton Rutger Hauer, the high point of the movie turns out to be the art direction. The what-if creation of a 60’s era Nazi Germany ends up being more interesting than the twisting, turning plot it’s supposed to support. Mildly amusing