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