Review – Screamtime

Three bad British horror vignettes don't become good just because they're sewn together with an American bracket. The lead-off story – schizophrenic puppeteer takes revenge on street punks – is the best of the three. Given that even this brief description clearly pegs it as a cliché fest, it doesn't bode well for the rest of the movie. See if desperate

Review – The Queen of the Damned

Believe it or not, I think they’re on to something here. The whole rock star / vampire, groupie / victim thing seems to have some natural parallels. The neuroses involved are so similar that drawing them together into a single thread should have worked quite well. However, the execution falls a little short. The script is mediocre, the acting sub-par, and even some of the effects fall flat. The result is a pretty but vacuous movie that may charm the goth crowd but will probably bore anyone outside the circle of Anne Rice devotees. See if desperate

Review – Gahan Wilson's The Kid

Though normally I’m not all that big a fan of the whole bylined-title thing, in this case it’s an important element. I probably would have flipped right past this thing were it not for Wilson’s name on it, and I almost certainly would have abandoned it after a few minutes if not for the respect I have for the author/illustrator. Overall this appears to be an attempt to market a slightly stranger and considerably more vulgar version of The Simpsons. The story is a set of three animated vignettes about the terrors of being a child, including the foul-mouthed ghost of a dissected cat, an awkward sexual awakening and the ever-popular trick-or-treat anxiety. From someone else this might have been merely a tedious bit of drivel punctuated by occasional entertaining moments, but from Wilson I expected much better. See if desperate

Review – The Time Machine (2002)

When I was a kid I had a record of this H.G. Wells classic. I listened to it over and over and over again. So it kinda goes without saying that I was impressed enough with the original tale that any movie version has some measuring up to do. What I’ll never understand is why film-makers insist on introducing all sorts of bizarre twists and other unwelcome extras. Just follow Wells’ story, for cryin’ out loud. But once again we’ve got more filler than substance in store for us. Some of the effects are kinda cool, but otherwise the story is inferior and the performances sub-par. It should tell you something that I went to see this a couple of weeks after it was released, and the only people in the place besides me were a couple of theater-hopping kids. See if desperate

Review – Jumanji

The special effects are the clear star of this odd tale of a board game with the power to spread havoc whenever it’s played. A boy who plays the game in 1969 ends up sucked into its bizarre jungle world, re-emerging 26 years later as Robin Williams when next the game is played. Every time a player rolls the dice, some new kind of animal or other jungle-related peril escapes into the real world. The result is a lot of cute, computer-animated animals, a lot of amusing if implausible situations and not a lot of anything else. Mildly amusing

Review – Crimson Tide

Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman square off in this movie about a bright, young executive officer aboard a missile sub captained by a crabby, old-school skipper (I expect you can figure out who played whom). Unrest in the former Soviet Union takes the world to the brink of nuclear war, and our heroes end up pitted against each other when a garbled message creates confusion about whether or not the sub has been ordered to launch an attack against a Russian base. Though I admit to being a big fan of sub movies, this one pushed the limit of the good will I automatically extend to representatives of the genre. The macho posturing was excessive, even for a war movie. The bickering back and forth between the two leads – which eventually devolves into mutinies, counter-mutinies and the like – simply takes up too much screen time, leaving little room for action sequences or character development that might have helped make this a better movie. Verdict: mildly amusing

Review – Resident Evil

Here’s a movie so bad that the most entertaining part about the entire experience was the person sitting just down the row from me who kept up a running commentary throughout the entire show (except, of course, when she paused to answer her cell phone). “Look behind you!” “Oh, your leg is on fire!” “That zombie’s gonna bite you!” If only the characters on screen could have heard her as clearly as I did. Then maybe she could have given them a warning they could really use: “Look out, you’re in an abysmally dreadful movie!” Having been thoroughly annoyed by a demo version of the video game upon which this movie was based, I came into the experience with relatively low expectations. Even so, the plot-free, episodic floundering of cardboard characters lacked even the quality action and/or gore that might have made it somewhat tolerable. To be completely fair, this painful ordeal did include a handful of scary, entertaining moments. They might have been even better if they hadn’t been stolen lock, stock and barrel from Dawn of the Dead. Speaking of which, I’m willing to bet that Romero produced his entire zombie classic for what they probably had to pay Mila Jovovich to flash some pubes late in the show. Someday someone’s going to explain to me why Hollywood likes making bad, expensive movies more than good, cheap ones. See if desperate

Review – The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T

Dr. Seuss serves up an odd bit of kid-oriented surrealism in this classic tale of childhood fears blown up to mammoth proportions. To be more specific, our young hero Bartholomew Collins falls asleep during piano practice and dreams that he has been imprisoned in a nightmare fortress ruled by his evil piano teacher, Dr. Terwilliger. Though the movie is 100% live action, it features the distinctive art direction, absurd situations and quirky humor long familiar to Seuss fans everywhere. Indeed, the whole thing is worth it just for the principal set: a giant piano designed to be played by 500 pupils all at once. Some of the musical numbers are a little too long and a little too silly for my tastes, but otherwise this is a thoroughly entertaining outing. Worth seeing

Review – Star Trek: Generations

This movie’s the transition point between the original series and the Next Generation (though of course the latter had existed as a TV series for some time before the film came out). Sadly, the emphasis is fairly heavily on the new crew, with William Shatner proving to be the only character from the old cast who spends more than a minute or two on screen. Malcolm McDowell puts in a guest appearance as a mad scientist willing to sacrifice an entire solar system (including a planet with millions of inhabitants) in order to propel himself into some kind of nirvana dimension. Fans of the shows (especially the new one) will probably enjoy this outing, inasmuch as it plays like a longer version of your average episode. See if desperate

Review – Hardball

Someday someone is going to make a movie about baseball that doesn’t end up being sticky sweet. However, it should pretty much go without saying that a baseball movie in which a down-on-his-luck white guy has to coach a team of black kids from the projects ain’t going to be the departure from the tried-and-true formula. Indeed, this plays like an inner-city version of The Bad News Bears. Plot twists are predictable, emotional manipulation rampant and tear-jerking overwhelming (especially toward the end). That notwithstanding, if you want to watch a sentimental baseball flick then you’ve come to the right place; this is a fine example of the genre. Mildly amusing

Review – The Glass House

The previews made it seem like this was going to be a little creepier than it turned out to be. Despite the lack of the genuinely outré, this is a solid if somewhat run-of-the-mill thriller about orphaned kids from the ‘burbs whose new guardians aren’t what they initially seem to be. Though the plot occasionally relies on some dubious logic to keep the thrills coming, for the most part the suspense works well enough. In the end my only real gripe was that Leelee Sobieski is getting just a little long in the tooth to convincingly play a sixteen-year-old. Mildly amusing

Review – The Creeping Flesh

For the most part this is pretty much what you’d expect from an old Christopher Lee / Peter Cushing horror flick. Cushing plays a scientist who ends up with a skeleton of some sort of monster. Inconveniently enough for him, the skeleton turns out to be 1. evil incarnate and 2. not completely dead. Apparently a blood mixture restores the title substance to the old bones, turning them into a big, lumbering lump of oatmeal-esque demon. At the very beginning of the movie our hero is painting a picture of the monster that actually seems like it might be scary. Sadly, the promise goes unfulfilled. Mildly amusing

Review – Rawhead Rex

Rare indeed is the movie that is this completely defeated by its own technical defects. The script is vintage Clive Barker from back in the days before he started to suck. The concept – an ancient monster released when an artifact is moved – is trite but reliable. Barker stirs in some male versus female sexuality that adds a little flavor to the mix. But then they turned the cameras on, and the whole thing went downhill from there. To begin with, any film that’s going to rely this heavily on daylight scenes of a monster must be very careful not to employ a special effect that would barely pass muster for brief, dimly-lit shots. The acting’s not the end of the world, but stronger casting might have helped. The directing is inept at best, and frequently what little suspense the flick manages to muster is swiftly undone by the inappropriately cheerful soundtrack music. I doubt that this will ever be remade, but if it was the second time around would be hard pressed to be worse than the first. See if desperate

Review - The Family Man

I love watching actors who make seven digits per picture pretend that people who have to work for a living are actually much happier than their wealthy counterparts. Nicolas Cage stars as a successful Wall Street deal-maker who has no idea how unhappy he really is until Clarence-the-Angel-redone-as-a-homeless-black-guy magically transforms him into a tire salesman with a wife – his old college girlfriend – and two kids. Though things are naturally awkward at first, our hero eventually comes to understand the merits of simple domesticity over high finance. I’m not quite cynical enough to disbelieve the basic thesis, and I concede that the story features a few amusing scenes and even a touching moment or two. It’s just a little hard to swallow a multi-million dollar product about how the best things in life are free. Mildly amusing

Review – Dungeons and Dragons

Here’s today’s zen koan: does computer-generated scenery have a flavor? If so, journeyman ham Jeremy Irons should be able to fill us in on the taste sensation. Honestly, what does this guy do? Does he call his agent and demand progressively more and more humiliating roles? If so, his poor rep must really have been beating the bushes after booking Irons into Adrian Slime’s version of Lolita. But this one might actually do the trick. D&D players should feel right at home with the characters, situations and story. Thus I guess they’ve done a solid job appealing to the most obvious target audience. Beyond that, however, this production offers little to the non-fan beyond some entertaining effects work and some so-inept-it’s-entertaining film-making. See if desperate

Review – Seven Days in May

Turn director John Frankenheimer and screenwriter Rod Serling loose in the conspiracy-happy months following the Kennedy assassination, and this is pretty much what you’re bound to come up with. Burt Lancaster stars as the power-mad head of the Joint Chiefs, out to depose an unpopular president and place the country under martial law. Only an aide with the usual admirable sense of right and wrong (Kirk Douglas) stands between this madman and his evil victory. Despite Serling’s talents the script comes up weak in parts, especially at the beginning where our hero sniffs out the plot based on some pretty flimsy evidence and at the end where the drama devolves into pedantic speechifying about the virtues of democracy and the evils of its opposite. On Frankenheimer’s part, this comes across as an attempt to re-create his previous, considerable success with The Manchurian Candidate. Minor defects aside, however, this is a fine piece of paranoia-driven cinema. Worth seeing

Review – Rock Star

The story had potential. Indeed, the tale of a heavy metal fan suddenly tagged to replace the lead singer of his favorite band – a plot loosely based on part of the real-life history of Judas Priest – seemed almost tailor-made for a Hollywood adaptation. Sadly, the script fails its own story. All the classic elements are there: the wide-eyed hero, the adoring girlfriend, the corruption of the music industry, and so on. But the characters are so badly written that they just don’t work. For example, the relationship between protagonist and love interest is so poorly established early on that it turns out to be somewhat less than poignant when the boy-loses-girl moment hits in act two. Perhaps if they’d played it for laughs a bit more they might have gotten away with it. As it was, however, in the end it came close but didn’t quite pull it off. See if desperate

Review – Jeepers Creepers

This is one of those annoying movies that seems to have a fair amount going for it but just never seems to pull it all together. Though it starts out as one of those boogeyman/urban legend deals, it features enough interesting visuals and amusing twists to keep it going for a little while. Around midway through, however, it just sort of peters out, becoming overly episodic and never really regaining momentum. Though the film-makers are to be applauded for at least including an old-fashioned monster rather than just another cheap psycho, in the end the movie’s one joke doesn’t provide enough of a punch-line to make it worthwhile. Mildly amusing