Review – Above the Law

Stephen Seagal’s first film pretty much sets the tone for most of the rest of his career. It’s the violent tale of a man of action who takes matters into his own hands when his friends and loved ones are directly threatened by the powers of darkness. Here he’s an ex-special forces operative turned cop who takes on some of his old co-workers who are plotting to preserve their drug-running empire by assassinating a senator. In other words, come for the fast-paced gunfights and fist-fights, but don’t feel like you have to stay for the plot. Mildly amusing

Review – Cleopatra

Before Michael Cimino came along, this was the cinematic benchmark for colossal wastes of money. Other than the grandiose sets, flamboyant costumes and endless parades of extras, this outing is primarily notable as the great romantic pairing of Elizabeth Taylor (in the title role) and Richard Burton (as Mark Antony). Maybe I’m just too jaded for such things, but for some reason the famous couple’s off-screen romance just didn’t seem to translate into on-screen chemistry. The Roman spectacle thing works well, but otherwise this tends to be just another extremely long and not extremely interesting movie, an uninspired retelling of an all-too-familiar tale. Mildly amusing

Review – Ravenous

Imagine those down-home, salt-of-the-earth, extremely boring westerns that were popular in the 70s combined with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The amazing thing is that it kinda works. The laconic pacing offsets the gore just enough to keep it interesting. The plot focuses on a skeleton crew of soldiers in pre-Civil-War California who maintain a way station during manifest destiny’s off-season. One night a stranger stumbles into camp with a story roughly resembling the saga of the notorious Donner party. Then all hell breaks loose, because it turns out that the Algonquian legends of the Wendigo (herein interpreted as people who become superhuman monsters after eating human flesh) are actually true. The script is good, and the production manages to do a lot with what must have been a relatively small budget. If only more horror movies explored new territory like this, maybe the genre as a whole wouldn’t be so dull. Worth seeing

Review – Rated X

The Sheen-Estevez brothers strike again, with Emilio in the director’s chair. This time around they’re playing the Mitchell brothers, the guys who sort of introduced the concept of plot to the porn movie industry. By the time this true-story reheat of Boogie Nights runs its course, the characters have made their way through a ton of cocaine, a bushel of cigarettes and more scenery than I care to think about. The whole decadence thing gets really tired really fast, particularly because the movie suffers from the restrictions of toned-down, made-for-Showtime production standards. The story itself is interesting enough, though the whole good brother vs. bad brother thing wears a little thin after awhile. Other than that, my only real objection to the production is my usual gripe about soft-spoken dialogue and speaker-busting rock-out sequences. Mildly amusing

Review – Spirits

Ready for another heapin’ helpin’ of horror movie gumbo? The base here is The Legend of Hell House, with hearty chunks of The Amityville Horror and Evil Dead stirred in for good measure. Otherwise it’s just a bargain-basement, amateurish romp through a haunted mansion that looks suspiciously as if it might be a house belonging to a low-rent movie producer. If your idea of a good time is watching Erik Estrada play a priest trying to resist the temptations of a satanic nudie nun, then boy are you in the right place. Otherwise just put this one back on the shelf and keep on walking. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Gone in 60 Seconds

Out like a light after 60 minutes is more like it. Wow, is this ever a boring effort, especially for an action movie. The plot is a run-of-the-mill routine about a retired car thief (the best who ever was, naturally) who has to return to a life of crime in order to save his kid brother from car hoods. The script seems like it must have been cut and pasted from other movies, inasmuch as it’s an uninspiring parade of macho posturing and implausible plot twists. However, I admit that I was pretty much guaranteed to hate this movie. Why somebody who dislikes long, loud car chase sequences as much as I do would ever go see a car theft movie is, I admit in retrospect, beyond me. Wish I’d skipped it

[In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that this film allegedly inspired a small wave of copycat crimes among the dimmer members of the audience, and my wife and I suffered more than $1000 worth of damage to our cars as a result of a badly-bungled theft attempt shortly after the film’s release. However, I seriously question the causal link between the movie and the crimes, and in any event I tend to blame the would-be thief rather than the film (though I recognize that I’m bucking a trend by insisting on personal responsibility). So I gave the picture the bad review I thought it earned on its own merits – or lack of same – rather than as the result of a grudge.]

Review – Citizen Ruth

This is one of those movies that features a ensemble cast of fairly big-name celebrities that had to have been doing it out of love for the project. How else could you ever make a low budget, black comedy about abortion? Though I suppose it’s a little harder on the anti-abortion crowd, it’s none too respectful of the pro-choice folks, either. Ruth, the hapless, knocked-up, paint-huffing ingenue comes off as the least unsympathetic character, sort of a heroine by default. But there’s just something about this film; it’s just so mean that you’ve got to love it. Oh, and funny too. Worth seeing

Review – Godzilla vs. Destroyer

Decades after Toho released the original Godzilla movie, he’s still mashing bad models and trashing bad guys. In fact, if anything the 1990s appear to have decreased the quality of the series. The characters and effects remain more or less the same, but the plot this time around borders on unfathomable. Our hero appears to be doing battle with Aliens-esque monsters that grow to mammoth size – or don’t; it’s sort of hard to tell what they’re doing. However many there are and whatever form they take, they either do or do not manage to kill Godzilla and/or his son (which, unlike the roly-poly offspring from the 1970s, looks a little more like a mini-version of his progenitor). In the end, Godzilla either does or does not experience an atomic meltdown, followed by some brief footage from the original, black and white version. There’s such a fine line between deliberate surrealism and plain, old-fashioned bad filmmaking. See if desperate

Review – Titan A.E.

Animator Don Bluth has apparently lost interest in trying to out-Disney Disney, so now he’s done something that’s an odd mixture of his usual tricks along with some stuff poorly-adapted from Ralph Bakshi. The result is sort of a half-baked version of Bakshi with no sex, violence toned way down, and a genuinely wimpy soundtrack. In other words, it’s Heavy Metal with no prurient content. The film’s failure can’t be laid at the doorstep of the cast; Matt Damon and Drew Barrymore head up a collection of seasoned pros who might have been used to create a much better movie. But the stars’ personalities fail to shine through the thick coating of mediocre cel animation and the over-used and under-developed computer effects that make up most of the movie’s visuals. If this is the best he can do, Bluth should stick to the more familiar realm of musical cartoons for kids. See if desperate

Review – Legal Eagles

Robert Redford and Deborah Winger are the big draws in this legal caper flick. They play a slick DA and an earnest defense lawyer, respectively, who get caught up in the unusual case of the daughter of a dead artist suspected of trying to steal one of her late father’s paintings. The plot grows ever more convoluted, eventually drawing arson, insurance fraud and murder into the mix. The romance that develops between the Redford and Winger characters is more than a little on the high school side, but despite that it seems to work. Though this movie is little more than a somewhat clever diversion, it does at least manage to be diverting, especially for a movie full of lawyers. Mildly amusing

Review – The Tingler

I’d argue that this is writer/director William Castle’s magnum opus, not so much for the quality of the movie itself as for the gimmick Castle used to promote it: a joy-buzzer-like machine called Percepto that was installed in selected theater seats and triggered at appropriate moments (you can probably recognize them when you watch the tape). Percepto aside, the general production values are plenty cheesy and campy, but there’s also a nugget of original drama to be found in the tale of a pathologist who discovers a big rubber centipede called “the tingler” that grows in our spines when we’re terrified and can only be subdued by screaming. Vincent Price turns in a vintage performance as the scientist wrestling with the ethics of performing experiments involving human fear. Worth seeing

Review – Octopussy

To date, this is the worst James Bond movie ever made, and in that sub-category of bad cinema it manages to best (or perhaps “worst” is the term) some stiff competition. The 13th entry in the Universal Studios Bond series, this outing combines all of the unpleasant elements of the set with some new nonsense stirred in for bad measure. For openers, it appears in points to actually try to be funny, a serious mistake in the oh-so-deadly-grim (or at the very least religiously tongue-in-cheek) realm of the espionage flick, especially when the jokes don’t work. The effects are cheap. The secret agent gizmos are dumb, and the action depends far too heavily upon them. The acting is bad, which isn’t much of a surprise in a Roger Moore movie. But the script takes the cake for sheer loathsomeness. In one scene our intrepid hero inquires “what’s that?” presumably about a small tattoo of an octopus sported by his latest conquest. “That’s my little octopussy,” the witless vixen replies. Honestly, how desperate does an actress have to be? Later we learn that the main love interest (Maud Adams, making her second appearance as a “Bond girl”) shares the movie’s awkward moniker, apparently bestowed upon her by her polypi-enthusiast father. Barfing becomes Electra. The sole ray of sunshine in this bottomless pit is that the producers decided to forego the tradition of featuring the movie’s title prominently in the theme song. The very thought of Rita Coolidge yodeling “Octopussy!” over and over is actually enough to make one almost grateful for “All Time High.” Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Gods and Monsters

Though the strong homosexual themes probably put off mainstream audiences, this fascinating piece of cinema received a lot of well-deserved critical acclaim. The plot revolves around has-been director James Whale (Ian McKellen) and his relationship with his ever-so-straight gardener (Brendan Fraser). Whale was the real-life director of such horror classics as Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein (a line from the latter lends this movie its title). Conversations between the old guy and his gardener stray around his love affairs, film-making, and various other reminiscences. The script is clever and the characters engaging. I’m not usually a real big fan of the whole Hollywood decadence thing, but this time around the production was good enough to keep me interested. Worth seeing

Review – Citizen Cohn

James Woods does an admirable job playing one of the most hateful people in the history of American politics. The plot posits that, while the monstrous mouthpiece of McCarthyism was in the hospital dying of AIDS, he received hallucinatory visits from old nemeses ranging from Robert Kennedy to Ethel Rosenberg. The bulk of the film is devoted to flashbacks showing various episodes and aspects of Cohn’s life, including his political ambitions, mob ties, personal problems and sexual orientation. As with many good movies about bad people, it’s often aggravating to watch. But the anti-hero’s eventual and total defeat is almost enough to make you feel sorry for him. Almost. Worth seeing

Review – Nuremberg

TNT attempts an epic, four-hour-long (with commercials) retelling of the story of the Nuremberg war crimes trials as seen through the eyes of the American prosecution team. So in general the protagonists’ perspective isn’t all that interesting. Further, the production indulges many of the questionable clichés of the trials (Albert Speer was a hero, the Germans as a race are all predisposed to following orders, and so on). And a small but still too large portion of the total running time is devoted to an inappropriate romance between the chief prosecutor and his Gal Friday. Shortcomings aside, the script is well written, keeping the subject interesting throughout the long running time. Folks familiar with the trials will probably prefer a more in-depth treatment than this movie provides, but for general audiences this is an entertaining re-creation of an important point in world history. Mildly amusing