Review – The Omega Man

Here’s one of the more expensive entries in the what-if-the-world-ended-and-you-were-the-only-one-left genre. Charlton Heston stars as the ultra-square survivor of a plague that turns the rest of humanity into corpses or albino counter-culture vampires in Black Sabbath robes. The establishment-versus-monster-hippies theme is as dated as most of the hairdos sported by the African-American characters, and the plot is full of gaps big enough to drive a semi through (such as the nagging question about our hero’s motive for living in an urban town-home when he’s being besieged on a nightly basis by Manson-family-esque children of the night who seem like they’d probably be less trouble to a country estate with a nice, wide kill zone and a good perimeter fence). All that notwithstanding, this remains a decent piece of post-apocalyptic fantasy. Mildly amusing

Review – The Lost Boys

Wow, teenagers and vampires all in the same movie? Where do I sign? Oddly enough, this does turn out to be a slightly better picture than it sounds like it would be. The plot is an odd rework of J.M. Barrie’s famous children’s tale, with Peter Pan replaced by vampires who offer the gift of eternal youth to a disaffected teen. Sadly, it falls into one of the classic vampire movie traps: centering way too much of the action on the Vampire Rules, or what will and won’t kill or at least reveal the presence of a member of the undead. That aside, goth teens ought to get a real kick out of this movie, and even those who aren’t quite so devoted to the whole vampire thing may get at least a small bit of fun from this outing. Mildly amusing

Review – Stigmata

The Catholic Church hasn’t taken it this hard from a horror movie since The Exorcist. Actually, this one may be even worse, inasmuch as the plot revolves around a Vatican conspiracy to suppress the secret writings of Jesus. Caught up in the drama is a woman (Patricia Arquette, in her first horror movie in awhile) who has ecstatic visions and suffers from the title phenomena. In the end this film’s a little hard to pigeon-hole, falling somewhere between conspiracy thriller and theology-intensive horror flick. Whatever it is, it offers up a few interesting visuals (including some minor-league gore) and just enough plot to keep it moving until the end. Mildly amusing

Review – Eye of the Beholder

One thing you can say for most thrillers is that they’re a fairly straightforward lot. Sure, they’ll include all kinds of nonsensical plot twists and obscure character motivations in a usually lame attempt to keep the audience guessing. But at least they decide where they’re going and almost always get there eventually. This thriller, on the other hand, never quite seems to make up its mind. Is it an erotic murder mystery? Is it a stalker movie? Heck, by the end it almost seems to be turning into a relationship picture with a hearty dose of caper thrown in for good measure. Even the motives of the monomaniacal-man-obsessed-with-beautiful-woman are at best a little hazy and at worst downright obscure. Maybe it could have passed itself off as a dark comedy if it had contained even the slightest hint of a sense of humor. As it was, the characters were too ill-defined and the plot not sufficiently interesting to keep the movie moving. See if desperate

Review – Total Recall

“I want to be somebody. I want to go to Mars.” Who would ever have thought that an old Phillip K. Dick story could be turned into a goofy action flick starring Arnold Schwarzenegger? Well, here it is. Some of the effects are sort of interesting (though a lot of it is pretty cheap stuff), but otherwise this is strictly a matter of get-what-you-pay-for: bewildering multiple realities courtesy of the late Mr. Dick, and wooden one-liners and massive slaughter courtesy of Arnold. Mildly amusing

Review – American Psycho

Stay away from me. Here’s a faithfully empty-headed cinematic retelling of Bret Easton Ellis’ tale of a yuppie driven to ultra-violence by 80s excess and ennui. Snore. I guess this is supposed to be Rand-ism taken to its unseemly nth degree. But if most irony falls flat because it requires viewers to be able to hold two ideas in their heads at once, then this feeble offering flops because it requires the audience to hold no ideas in their heads for the 90-some-minute running time. References to cultural background material ranging from Dostoevsky to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre likewise fail to impress. The production is slick, but the acting is wooden (though I concede this approach is at least appropriate to the plot). And though I think women should get more jobs directing mainstream Hollywood movies, this time around it just reeked of see-it-isn’t-anti-feminist-backlash-because-a-woman-directed-it, or at the very least couldn’t-get-anyone-else-to-touch-this-leper-of-a-movie-with-a-ten-foot-pole. See if desperate

Review – Dark Carnival

Dork Carnival is more like it. I hope this was somebody’s film school project, and furthermore I hope they flunked. Everything about this production is stupid. The haunted-house-that’s-really-haunted plot is as trite as it is uninteresting, the script is wretched, the acting is amateurish at best, but the terrible production values really take the cake. It’s like the filmmakers deliberately sought the most awkward cuts and uninspiring camera angles. My favorite actor was the kid who plays a haunted house character who sacrifices a victim to “mighty Isis,” only she has such a thick accent that she chants “mawty awsis.” Sometimes movies this bad make it all the way to the so-bad-they’re-good category, but this flop can’t even pull off that dubious distinction. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – American Movie

Few films manage to successfully pull off genuinely, profoundly funny or sad, and fewer still do both at once. Thus this low budget documentary about the making of a low budget movie is a rare bit of cinema art. The film follows the exploits of auteur-wannabe Mark Borchardt and his group of lower class Wisconsin accomplices as they try to make a short horror flick called “Coven” (pronounced with a long O, because apparently pronouncing it correctly would have made it sound too much like “oven”). The absurdity of their inept, inherently doomed efforts are plenty amusing, but at the same time the pathetic hopelessness of their aspirations is also more than a little depressing. In the end this outing does for independent filmmaking what Decline of Western Civilization Part Two did for heavy metal music. Worth seeing

Review – American Gigolo

For something ostensibly about sex and murder, this sure is a boring movie. Richard Gere plays a male sex worker (one who services women, no less) who ends up framed for murder. The plot itself isn’t all that interesting, so the art direction and soundtrack are left to carry the film more or less by themselves. They almost do it. Almost. If you’re interested in  Paul Schrader’s movies, this film is fairly typical of his work. Otherwise it’s missable. See if desperate

Review – Lord of Illusions

Here’s another melange of meandering metaphysics from the mind of Clive Barker. This time around the plot involves Barker’s recurring detective character Harry D’Amour and some blurring-the-line-between-illusion-and-magic nonsense about some folks who survived a supernatural death cult only to end up pursued by the vengeful messianic leader who has returned from beyond the grave. The movie is rife with evil beings with creepy-sounding names and bizarre modi operandi that typically involve a lot of gooey gore and flashy opticals. In other words, for the most part this is your usual, run-of-the-mill Barker outing. As a fan, I enjoyed it less than some of his other work, but it was an acceptable diversion for an hour and a half or so. Plus if you stick around to the end of the credits you get treated to one of the world’s most annoying renditions of “Dancing in the Dark.” Mildly amusing

Review – Cry Baby

If it worked in Hairspray, it’ll work here, right? Guess not. Though director John Waters’ first excursion into big-budget Hollywood film-making was – like this outing – a send-up of America during the baby boom’s teen years, this time around clever humor has been almost completely supplanted by crass, boring satire. Even so, a film-maker of Waters’ skill might have pulled it off if the comedy hadn’t depended so completely on a thorough knowledge of and affection for the “juvenile delinquent” movies of the 1950s. And judging by male lead Johnny Depp’s performance, having a few Elvis movies under one’s belt wouldn’t exactly hurt either. To be sure, there are a few funny moments; my personal favorite is a cameo by Willem DaFoe as a prison guard who makes his young charges mention Roy Cohn and Richard Nixon in their nightly prayers. Such brief moments aside, however, this isn’t exactly anyone’s finest hour. See if desperate

Review – Heavy Metal 2000

Wow. Up until now I would have thought that just about nothing could have made me long for the original Heavy Metal movie. Amazing though it may be, this one does it. Aside from the graphic violence, harsh language and occasional nudity, this thing could run on the Cartoon Network. Indeed, the flow is periodically interrupted by fades to black that strongly suggest the intention to cut it down and run it on commercial television at some point in the future. The story loosely follows a madman’s quest for immortality and the efforts of a buxom babe bent on revenge who’s trying to thwart him. At least with the first one we didn’t get stuck with the same dumb plot the whole way through; breaking it down into vignettes allowed the animators to hedge their bets. The soundtrack is the closest this picture ever comes to the original, and even that aspect falls considerably short. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Torpedo Run

Glen Ford and Ernest Borgnine star in this two-fisted tale of World War Two submarines and the men who sailed in them (does one “sail” in a submarine?). This particular outing has more than its share of macho bravado, sporting a plot that involves a sub commander who semi-accidentally torpedoes a prisoner of war transport, killing his wife and daughter in a failed attempt to sink a Japanese carrier. Naturally the carrier becomes his obsession, in much the same way the Clark Gable character in Run Silent Run Deep became obsessed with sinking a destroyer (or Ahab latched onto his whale nemesis, which is where all of this sort of thing ultimately leads back to). Of the two sub movies, I liked the Gable picture a little better because I thought the characters were a little less one-dimensional. On the other hand, the effects are a little better in this one, and color actually seems to add a bit to the production. I generally prefer script, plot and acting over slick production, but this is nonetheless worth a look if you like sub movies. Mildly amusing

Review – Robocop 3

Two things about this movie sort of caught me by surprise. The first was that Peter Weller proved a lot harder to replace than I would have imagined. At the outset my guess would have been that just about any stooge from central casting could have adopted the stiff movements and wooden acting that Weller used to characterize the protagonist in the first two Robocop movies. But oddly enough, his replacement seems to lack a certain je ne sais quoi. And Weller wasn’t exactly the only no-show in this second sequel. The only other returning characters are the corporate sidekick and Nancy Allen (who manages to get killed fairly early on). The other thing that surprised me was that Frank Miller, one of the people responsible helping comic books become “graphic novels,” works the reverse effect in his screenplay for this movie. The high-quality action of the first two has been replaced by a parade of cheap clichés. In other words, sort of like a trite, boring, pre-Frank-Miller-style comic book. See if desperate

Review – Robocop 2

Though slightly more cartoonish than the original, this sequel to the sci-fi classic offers more of the same action-oriented drama. Peter Weller repeats his role as the cop-turned-cyborg, still crossing picket lines to save Detroit from crime while the rest of the police force goes out on strike against their corrupt corporate overlords. This time around our hero is battling a psychotic drug lord played with usual aplomb by Tom Noonan. Things really get interesting (not to mention effects-intensive) when a mad scientist decides to use drug psycho’s brain in the prototype of the next generation of Robocop technology. I found it interesting that the old, good Robocop appears to operate on a DOS-based system, while the new, evil Robocop uses a Mac-esque interface complete with a little skull where the apple should be on the menu bar. Mildly amusing