Review – Almost Famous

Almost good is a little closer to the truth. I suppose if you’re really into the early 70’s music thing then you’ll probably get a big kick out of this fond but false reminiscence of the days. The plot revolves around a child prodigy from an offbeat family who lands a freelance job writing an article for Rolling Stone about an up-and-coming band. When the group’s engaged in wacky offstage antics (like getting stoned with a bunch of teenagers in Topeka) the movie manages an entertaining moment or two. But just when it starts to worm its way into your good graces, it leaps right back out via one of its many soap-opera-esque elements, including the young-man-coming-of-age and the groupie-coming-to-grips-with-the-futility-of-her-lifestyle. This isn’t a bad movie, especially not if viewed in the right company. Maybe I just expected too much from it. Mildly amusing

Review – The Score

The Bore would have been a more apt appellation. Here’s yet another retelling of the same old last-heist-and-I’m-out caper movie, with Robert DeNiro as the crusty old yegg and Ed Norton as the somewhat-too-eager newcomer. Perhaps if they’d saved some of the cash they spent to have Her Royal Highness Marlon Brando traipse around the set and spent it on a script, they might have come up with a better movie. Certainly they might have hired a writer who could have worked in more character motivation for the last-minute double-crosses and maybe devoted less screen time to go-nowhere film stock wasters such as a thoroughly uninteresting romance and long sequences in which DeNiro seems to do little besides walk from place to place. With this cast a better film might easily have been made. See if desperate

Review – Leap of Faith

I’ve wanted to re-watch this movie ever since I first saw it in its original theatrical release. I can remember thinking at the time that it was an entertaining piece of work, but I had such a terrible time later that evening (caught in an ice storm and stranded on the Interstate overnight) that the entire experience ended up tainted. Thus it was with some relief that my original opinion of the movie was confirmed upon second viewing: this really is a charming piece of cinema. Steve Martin stars as a tent preacher running his usual elaborate cons on the people of a small Kansas town. We see Martin’s character struggle (more or less) with the ethics of taking money from people already brought to the brink of poverty by an extended drought. Then matters come to a head when a genuine miracle occurs during one of the preacher’s shows. Debra Winger and Liam Neeson turn in fine supporting performances, and the script gives them more than enough material to work with. Though the temptation must have been powerful to take a cynical approach to the subject at hand, this production manages to avoid bitterness while simultaneously not veering so far from the sarcastic that it steps into the smarmy pit on the other side of the highway. Those who have a little faith in this picture will find their trust more than rewarded. Worth seeing

Review – Day of the Dolphin

This is like Flipper cut with a heavy dose of the peculiar political paranoia endemic to many movies of the mid-70s. The plot here starts out with a scientist (poor, long-suffering George C. Scott) who has managed to train a dolphin to speak English, or at least produce a really annoying semblance of baby talk. Then out comes the heavy hand of the message piece. Is it ethical to keep intelligent animals in captivity and coerce them into adopting unnatural behavior patterns? What if the big corporation that’s footing the bill for the research center starts making noise about seeing some return on its investment? And worse still, what if the return the evil suits have in mind is a little sea mammal complicity in a plot to assassinate the President by sticking mines on the bottom of his yacht? This might actually have been a better movie if director Mike Nichols had just spent a little less time on the extended, pointless, dolphin-swimming-in-a-tank shots at the beginning and left himself a bit more screen time toward the end to flesh out the political intrigue just a bit more. Mildly amusing

Review – Scary Movie

Someone must love the Wayans brothers, because they keep getting budgets to make movies. This time around it’s a slasher movie parody, and I wanted to like it a lot better than I did. The parody was confined almost exclusively to the Wes Craven hits Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, though here and there we get a one-liner based on another horror flick from the late 90s. The jokes are designed to appeal to the usual slasher audience, so for the most part it’s sophomoric sex comedy (including some of the most graphic penis gags I’ve ever seen in a wide-release movie). If you’re a fan of the genre, you may be able to get a chuckle or two here and there. Otherwise steer clear. See if desperate

Review – Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

If you like plenty of chainsaws and screaming women then you’re certainly in the right place. Sadly, this sequel seems to have a copious supply of everything that made the original annoying and very little of what made it worth watching. In other words, there’s more than one endless saw-racing chase scene. And by the time the tale begins to wind down toward its moronic conclusion, the screaming and noise become so constant that they’re darn near intolerable. On the other hand, the budget is clearly bigger (big enough to afford several sets to create an improbable chainsaw slaughterhouse) and the production values at least somewhat better. Unfortunately, this robs the sequel of the odd, almost documentary feel that helped make the original so creepy. With Dennis Hopper acting, Tom Savini handling the makeup effects, and even Tobe Hooper back at the helm, a better movie might have been made. See if desperate

Review – The Filth and the Fury

Here’s a documentary on the archetypal punk band the Sex Pistols that’s well suited to its subject’s anarchic ways. Fans of the band should enjoy this frank, uncut look at the short-lived group from its formation to its break-up and the death of bassist Sid Vicious. Even if you’re not a big Sex Pistols nut, you may still find this tale of decadence, rebellion, feuding and censorship an interesting if somewhat disjointed portrait of an important era in music history. Mildly amusing

Review – The Year of Living Dangerously

I’ve gotta confess that I like this movie way more than I should. That’s due at least in part to the fact that one of the minor regrets of my life is that I was born in the wrong time and place to have been a journalist in Southeast Asia in the 1960s. So I guess I’m stuck living the fantasy vicariously through a young Mel Gibson, who plays a bureau correspondent in Sukarno’s Indonesia. The acting is solid, as is the script and Peter Weir’s direction. Further, the annoying romance with love interest Sigourney Weaver is more than offset by Gibson’s more interesting struggles with his role as a reporter in a hostile country. I even liked the soundtrack, which occasionally included some good stuff by Vangelis. Though I could see audience members with different tastes failing to get as much of a kick out of it as I did, I thought it was an enjoyable diversion. Worth seeing

Review – Telefon

A rogue KGB operative is activating a series of Manchurian candidates and sending them off on missions of mayhem and destruction by calling them up on the phone and reciting a few lines from “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.” And I thought I was the only one who was sent into an uncontrollable, homicidal rage by Robert Frost’s poetry. Charles Bronson plays an assassin sent by the Soviets to kill the rogue (Donald Pleasance) before his campaign torches off World War Three. Despite the fact that this has got to be an all-time low for the number of people Bronson kills per 90 minutes of screen time, this is actually a fairly amusing bit of Cold War drama decreased very little by the death of the Soviet Union (in fact, it might be interesting to see this remade with post-Soviet politics in mind). Mildly amusing

Review – The Wolf Man

Here’s the one that put werewolves on the pop culture map (though there were werewolf movies before this one and more than a couple of better ones that came later). With this picture, Universal Studios added shapeshifting to the Dracula / Frankenstein / Mummy pantheon. To aid the flick in its quest for success, the studio brought in seasoned horror veteran Bela Lugosi for a supporting role and Lon Chaney’s ill-fated son in the lead. By modern standards, this is something of a dud. The effects are cheesy (though state of the art back in 1941), the plot hackneyed and the protagonist nearly completely charmless (though again he probably seemed suave and debonair by the standards of yesteryear). Still, it’s worth a look as either a historical point in the evolution of the horror genre or as an at least somewhat entertaining exploration of the lycanthropy myth. Mildly amusing

Review – The Dark Crystal

If you’re in the mood for some goofy, muppet-intensive fantasy nonsense, well, then you’re in the right place. For the most part the plot here (the usual screed about the forces of good and evil struggling over a crystal that controls the universe) serves as little more than an excuse to string together sets and effects inspired by the artwork of Brian Froud. Downsides include the protagonists (imagine Jon Bon Jovi and Stevie Nicks done up as hobbit puppets and you’ve got the general idea) and Jim Henson Productions’ struggles to distance themselves from Sesame Street by including an inordinate amount of brutal violence. As a result, the production gets wedged into the awkward spot that exists somewhere between “too intense for most pre-teens” and “too muppet-filled for most everyone else.” Mildly amusing

Review – The Curse of the Werewolf

At least a couple of critics have identified this as the greatest werewolf movie ever made, but frankly I just don’t see it. I suppose it’s probably the hands-down winner for most elaborate explanation for why the protagonist is a werewolf: his mother, who was mute, was raped by a lunatic in prison, and then her son was born on Christmas. So every time our hero tastes blood and/or becomes sexually aroused while the moon is full he turns into a wolf, or if not a wolf then at least something that looks vaguely like it might be marching across the floor of Madison Square Garden during the yappy dog division of the Westminster Kennel Club competition. Oliver Reed takes the lead with his usual aplomb, exploring his full range of mugs that make him look as if he’s ready to either transform into a ravening beast or uncork an explosive bowel movement. I guess I’ve seen worse werewolves, but this one still does too much to bring the word “dog” to mind. Mildly amusing

Review – The Runestone

Quick hint for low-budget horror directors: when your rubber monster suit is as cheap as the one in this movie, don’t spend anywhere near as much time as this movie does with the monster on screen and well-lit. The latex were-creature in this go-around is some sort of a Norse demon whose re-appearance after an extended dormant period is somehow heralded by the unearthing of a rune-covered rock (hence the title) and facilitated by the owner of the rock, who becomes the monster. Though the creature used to do battle with great Viking warriors, in modern society it appears to be satisfied with dogs, bums and art posers. I suppose I should give the screenwriter at least a little credit for trying to come up with a clever script, but most of the dialogue flops so badly that I can’t extend much more than an E for effort. Acting-wise, I’d expect the likes of Alexander Godunov to show up in crap like this, but poor Peter Riegert (who plays a wise-cracking cop) actually used to be able to get decent roles in real movies. See if desperate

Review – Rules of Engagement

If you liked A Few Good Men, then like as not you’ll also enjoy this macho military mouthpiece movie. This time around a grizzled old Marine Corps lawyer (Tommy Lee Jones) is defending an old buddy (Samuel L. Jackson) against charges that he ordered his troops to open fire on unarmed civilians. I won’t presume to second-guess the morality of the notion that all Yemenis – even children – are secretly agents of an anti-American jihad, nor should I question the wisdom of shooting non-combatants and prisoners of war. However, even if such issues are set aside this picture still comes up wanting. Even if the characters are morally right, they’re still not all that sympathetic. The sinister government conspiracy to frame Jackson’s character is cartoonish at best. And at the conclusion of the drama far too many loose ends are cleared up via recourse to reassuring text overlays. So overall this is a vaguely entertaining but poorly crafted and morally questionable production. Mildly amusing

Review – The Outrage

Well, I wouldn’t go that far. In fact, parts of this movie aren’t too bad. The concept is less than original; though this isn’t a perfect shot-for-shot recreation of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon in an Old West setting, it is pretty darn close. So the production can borrow at least a little of the brilliance of the original. Further, the cast is hard to beat. Paul Newman, Laurence Harvey and Claire Bloom play the ill-fated trio that make up the central cast, and supporting actors include Edward G. Robinson and William Shatner. I derived particular pleasure from watching Newman struggle not only with the challenges of playing a Hispanic character but also trying to imitate Toshiro Mifune at the same time. If you haven’t seen either one, I’d start with the original if I were you. But this makes an entertaining if somewhat cheap follow-up. Mildly amusing

Review – Faust: Love of the Damned

Every once in awhile the power fails in the neighborhood surrounding the Movie Elements Mega Mart. On such occasions, bad movies immediately arrive on the scene, throw a trash can through the plate glass window in front, and go “shopping.” Most of these cheap looters just grab the first couple of things they can get their hands on and then dash off into the night. But every once in awhile we run up against a real pro, the kind of movie that grabs a shopping cart and goes to town. This particular effort grabbed a big box of Spawn and a jumbo-sized bag of The Crow. Then it sped over to the props aisle and tossed in a package of X-Men. On the way out, it snagged a host of minor plot and character elements from the impulse buy rack. And at that point it was content. The most original part of the whole darn thing was Jeffrey Combs getting to play a character that wasn’t a nerdy, creepy loner. There’s a chunk o’ nudity (some of it tied to some really stunted sexuality) and some bush-league gore for the easily amused, but otherwise this outing’s thoroughly missable. See if desperate

Review – Wolf

What a thoroughly modern werewolf we have on our hands here. Jack Nicholson plays a book editor suffering from a serious case of the mid-life-phased-out-at-work-and-cuckolded-at-home blues. Fortunately for him, he gets bit by a werewolf and ends up with a serious case of lycanthropy. In high men’s movement style, the process of getting back in touch with the beast within empowers our aging hero to triumph at work, dump his cheating spouse and go after the enigmatic daughter (Michelle Pfeiffer) of his boss. He’d really have it made if only he hadn’t bit his young rival from the office. As much as I generally like werewolf movies, this one simply had too much mid-life-crisis nonsense in it. If they’d just dropped the pop psychology and let Nicholson transform and chew the scenery at will, this might have been a much better movie. Mildly amusing