Review – Cats and Dogs

The concept here is clever enough: cats are plotting to take over the world, and the only things that stands between the human race and feline domination are our faithful friends the dogs. Sadly, the movie itself turns up to be far more windup than pitch. It’s a reasonably clever spoof of spy movies and features some amusing moments and standard-issue celebrity voices striving to breathe life into cartoon animal relationships. Beyond that, however, the gag wears off fairly quickly, leaving some mid-quality computer animation and really bad cat and dog puppets to carry the load. Mildly amusing

Review – Ginger Snaps

Not since Suzy McKee Charnas’s short story “Boobs” have the connections between female pubescence and lycanthropy been so cleverly explored. The plot of this odd little Canadian production is simple enough: a moody goth girl is bitten by a werewolf shortly after her first period starts, and throughout the rest of the movie she and her sister struggle with all the changes poor Ginger undergoes. Especially for a teen-intensive rubber monster movie, this one’s not half bad. If not for the genuinely excessive pet death (especially the slaughtered dog that leads the show), this outing would have gotten a slightly higher rating. Mildly amusing

Review – Best in Show

Christopher Guest and associates are back in a slightly-too-self-conscious attempt to recreate the success of Waiting for Guffman. This time around rather than a small town’s civic pageant it’s a big-time dog show, but otherwise it’s the same “we’re not laughing at you we’re laughing near you” pseudo-documentary approach to the world of obsessive losers. Despite the somewhat labored nature of the production as a whole, most of the jokes are amusing and the acting is solid. Fred Willard does an especially good job as the former pro athlete turned inept commentator. Even the dogs are cute. If you’re trying to choose between this one and its predecessor, definitely go for Guffman. But if you liked the original you should get a kick out of this one as well. Worth seeing

Review – Ben-Hur

If someone went through and cut out all the closeted gay stuff and all the Jesus wheezing, this would be a much shorter movie. Of course, that shorter product would also be a much more action-packed movie. When the film focuses on spectacular galleon battles or the famous chariot race scene, it’s a pretty good production. Even the parts of the drama that set up the big scenes are worth watching. But then (especially after the race) the plot devolves into a lot of preachiness about how our angry protagonist (played with usual scenery-chewing aplomb by Charlton Heston) finds peace in his heart through a personal relationship with Our Lord and Savior. Fans of the movie will probably respond that the Jesus stuff is the real point of the movie and I just don’t get it. No, I get it. I just don’t want it. When I’m in need of spirituality, Hollywood and Heston aren’t my sources of choice. I’d rather they focused on what they do best: simple entertainment. Mildly amusing

Review – Valentine

The budget is just about all that saves this from being yet another low budget slasher movie. The production’s slick, and the cast is probably priced somewhere in the middle of the star salary range (Denise Richards is the biggest name in the credits). Otherwise, however, it’s the same ol’ same ol’ guy with a mask (a goofy-looking cupid mask in keeping with the Valentine theme) and a big carving knife. This time around the deranged nut seeks revenge on the junior high crushes who spurned his affection. And as per the well-established formula, the cast of unsympathetic characters gets gradually whittled down until the list of suspects grows so short that they have to do something obvious or something ridiculous (for the sake of what little surprise you might get from the end, I won’t say which). I guess I’ve seen worse slasher movies, but that’s not much of an endorsement; I’ve seen a lot of bad slasher movies. See if desperate

Review – Jurassic Park 3

At this point in the series, the plot has been condensed down to its most basic element: DINOSAURS! RUN AWAY! The Sam Neill character from the first one gets lured into accompanying a sight-seeing trip to the island from the second one, and as soon as they land their plane it’s DINOSAURS! RUN AWAY! It turns out Sam’s been duped. His employers are really there looking for their lost kid, and then DINOSAURS! RUN AWAY! After much ado with the usual cast of reptilian characters – not to mention a couple of new additions – the kid is located and DINOSAURS! RUN AWAY! The effects are solid, production values good (especially for a #3 movie), and the acting’s not too terrible. Otherwise it’s just a lot of DINOSAURS! RUN AWAY! Mildly amusing

Review – Poor White Trash

Here’s a suggestion for a way to have fun with this piece of crap: make a “scavenger hunt” list of theme-appropriate clichés to look for. Think of as many as you possibly can. Then tick them off as you watch. For those of you with only limited exposure to the title sub-strata, let me give you a start: “Confederate flag,” “bowling,” and “T-shirt that reads ‘My face leaves in an hour, be on it.’” I guess maybe if you find such things inherently amusing, then you’ll certainly find plenty of them here. Otherwise this is just another low-budget comedy that lacks the script, acting and production values that might have made it a more worthwhile experience. I got at least a tiny kick out of the references to Southern Illinois University and Carbondale, but that was strictly personal for me. Otherwise the whole thing was silly without being funny and over-wrought without being clever. See if desperate

Review – The Minion

Get a crowd of folks together to help you mock this stinker. The opportunities to fling derision at the screen are just too ripe and too plentiful to pass up. However, without an MST3K experience going movies like this just aren’t that much fun. The plot here is the usual nonsense about one of Satan’s servants trying to obtain an object that will allow him/her/it (the thing body-hops) to release the Beast 666 from a basement in Israel and thus ignite the apocalypse. Dolph Lundgren plays a Templar sworn to thwart the creature of darkness (I wonder if he ever regrets not going ahead and pursuing chemical engineering as a career path). I suppose this might have been a better movie if the script hadn’t been so dreadfully mock-worthy. See if desperate

Review – Judgment

Gosh darn that pesky Antichrist and his One World Government. Always picking on those sweet, innocent, long-suffering Christians. For this particular chunk of the End Times, the forces of darkness have placed a Bible-believing woman on trial for the crime of “hatred of the human race.” Crafty defense lawyer Corben Bernsen decides to abandon Lucifer’s script and put God Himself on trial. This is part of the “Left Behind” series, so you can bet that you’re in for a heapin’ helpin’ of empty-headed pseudo-theology and ill-conceived storytelling with all the intellectual and emotional depth of a Chick tract. Fortunately, it packs the same car-wreck-esque entertainment value common in such efforts. Extra added bonus: Mr. T. I pity the fool got the Mark of the Beast! See if desperate

Review – Mimic 2

The bugs are back, apparently not effectively killed in the first one. You spray and spray, and ... well, you know the rest. Their new, improved form apparently includes a desire to mate with a human woman, a schoolteacher entomologist with especially attractive pheromones. Also added to the mix is a sinister government task force – a la Predator 2 – that’s trying to get at the bugs and otherwise prolong the plot. Some of the effects aren’t too bad, and over the course of the story one does actually learn a bit about roach biology. But otherwise this is fairly standard fare. Mildly amusing

Review – Josie and the Pussycats

I didn’t expect much from this outing, so when there actually turned out to be some amusement to be found and a moral that was at least halfway worthwhile, I was very pleasantly surprised. Sure, the humor was sophomoric at best. But a lot of it was just goofy enough to work (assuming you’re in the mood for it). The plot keeps things simple: a mega-corporation rockets a small-town girl band to stardom so their music can serve as a vehicle for delivering subliminal directives aimed at selling products. Yeah, I guess there’s something more than a little cynical about a big Hollywood production decrying how evil corporate merchandising is. Still, it seems like this charming little movie ought to at least get an E for effort. Though I probably wouldn’t screen this picture for a class on film production techniques, it made a fine Friday night diversion at the end of a long week. Mildly amusing

Review – Begotten

Okay, let me see if I can sum this up for you. Some guy sitting in an empty house cuts his own guts out. They dribble all over his feet accompanied by the sound of flatulence. A woman appears from behind his chair. She gives the corpse a hand job and impregnates herself. She gives birth to a skinny, bald adult who seems to really enjoy flopping around in the mud. Black Sabbath (or is it the bad guys from Phantasm?) shows up and starts hitting Flopsy in the crotch with sticks while he honks up buckets of guts. Mom shows up and drags sonny off, but Black Sabbath catches up to them. They kill Mom, pummel her crotch with giant Q-Tips and make her into a stew. Then they come back for Flopsy. Then something else happened, but by that point the movie had already used up more than an hour’s worth of grainy black and white film stock, a healthy dose of nerve-grating ambient noise, and pretty much all my patience. The guy who directed this went on to make Shadow of the Vampire, which should give hope to talentless indie art posers everywhere. For the rest of us this is fertile mockery bait but not much else. Mildly amusing

Review – Microcosmos

This is one of those movies that tends to make you feel like you’re stoned whether or not you actually are. The basic theme here is that there’s a whole world out there that carries on its rich pattern of life beneath our notice. And no, it’s not the world of the invisible scary skeletons. Instead, it’s a somewhat Koyaanisqatsi-esque documentary about insect life in a grassy meadow. The film features some genuinely impressive footage, even if some of it is fairly obviously “manipulated.” If you’re not fond of bugs this movie isn’t for you, but otherwise it’s an entertaining diversion for 75 minutes or so. Mildly amusing

Review – The Stand

This former TV mini-series is practically a movie marathon all by itself (four episodes, each of which come close to 90 minutes). Over the hours the story from Stephen King’s famous novel plays out with most of its plot and characters reasonably intact (no big surprise there, considering that King wrote the teleplay). The casting’s good as well, though a bit different from what King once wrote he had in mind. To be sure, slightly tighter plotting could have cut down the running time a bit, and the end was a little weak. But overall this is an entertaining enough version of the end of the world as we know it that the time goes by relatively quickly. This is a must-see for King fans and aficionados of apocalyptic horror, and a good show for just about anyone. Just be sure to check the tapes in the box before you rent them. I had my viewing experience disrupted by the stupidity of the last person who rented the copy, because whoever it was stuck the wrong tapes back in the box (so I ended up with two copies of episode two and no copies of the final chapter). Mildly amusing

Review – Urban Legend 2: Final Cut

I think I’m already on record as generally resenting sequels that don’t have much to do with the previous efforts in the series. Here it’s even more insulting than usual because the film-makers graft a couple of the conventions and characters from the first one onto a script that probably started out as something completely different. For example, the shtick from the first one was that all the killings had something to do with an urban legend. Here only the first slaying is legend-connected, and even then the folklore element seems like an afterthought. Furthermore, any movie about film students starts on my bad side and has to work its way into my good graces. This one just didn’t pull it off. See if desperate

Review – Casino Royale (1967)

The biggest joke in this whole movie is the one played on James Bond creator Ian Fleming; apparently he always wanted David Niven to play his super-spy, and the only time Niven ever actually assumed the role was in this bizarre parody of the Bond series. Most of the humor from this 1967 gem is either dated or stupid or both. Indeed, it plays out like a two-hour-plus Mad Magazine version of the “real” Bond series. So it goes almost without saying that this has little to do with the Fleming novel by the same name. With a cast this good (including Peter Sellers, Orson Welles, Woody Allen and a host of other luminaries) a much better movie might have been made. See if desperate

Review – Ed Gein

Of all the movies based however loosely on the sad, strange story of Ed Gein (a filmography that includes Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs, among others), this is the first serious attempt to accurately portray the man himself. To be sure, much of the drama here has been “enhanced,” with departures from reality ranging from name changes to extensive speculation about the relationship between Ed and his mother. Steve Railsback does a solid – if occasionally somewhat hammy – job as the title character. My only gripe about the final product is that in general it’s just a bit too prosaic. The simple, straightforward approach to writing, shooting and editing (only rarely departed from throughout the movie) makes a great contrast to Gein’s grisly deeds, but more attention to visual detail might have helped the film-makers bring out the essential backdrop of bleakness of small town Wisconsin just a bit better. Oh, and fair warning: I’m at least a casual buff of Geinabilia, and if you don’t share this taste then there’s a good chance you won’t enjoy this production anywhere near as much as I did. Mildly amusing

Review – Poltergeist: The Legacy

Note to movie marketers: I really resent the heck out of so-called sequels that actually have nothing at all to do with the original. Just because I let John Carpenter skate by with Halloween 3 doesn’t mean I’ve become a regular push-over for the stuff. And despite the protestations to the contrary on the video box, this has nothing at all to do with the first three Poltergeist movies. Instead this is tied into one of those stupid hour-long drama series that tends to end up syndicated into the overnight slots on the Sci Fi Channel, with just a dab more violence and nudity than its televised counterpart. There’s some kind of story here about a team of ghost-busters who are trying to capture a chest-o-evil before its demonic contents can be loosed upon the world. Just about the only claim to uniqueness this stinker can make is that it includes one of the most tasteless demon birth sequences I’ve ever seen; think screaming woman dragged around by umbilical cord and you’ve got the general idea. C’mon guys. Call products like this something like “Nothing-to-do-with-Poltergeist: The Boring Crap.” You may not sell as many tapes, but at least you’ll be able to sleep at night. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Bedazzled

Here’s a big budget Hollywood remake of an old Peter Cook and Dudley Moore movie about a guy who sells his soul to Satan, with Brendan Fraser as the hapless, lovelorn nebbish and Elizabeth Hurley as the Beastmaster (or is it Beastmistress?). The plot runs our hero through predictable paces, granting him seven wishes in exchange for his soul. Naturally they all go sour on him, teaching him that true happiness can’t be obtained by ... well, you know the rest. I guess as brain candy goes I’ve seen worse. At least the star power and production values provided a little entertainment value to this otherwise trite, predictable and (especially at the end) preachy bit of nonsense. Mildly amusing