Review – The Body

What if a body turned up in a tomb in Jerusalem, and what if all the evidence strongly suggested that it was the distinctly un-resurrected corpse of Jesus Christ? The concept alone is worth the rental price. To get much beyond the premise, however, you have to be willing to buy Antonio Banderas as a priest. Yeah, no kidding. I enjoyed the archaeology-driven parts of the plot, but I felt the filmmakers’ attempt to keep things going with a lot of West Asian intrigue fell more than a little flat. The end also left me cold, but perhaps that was just because I was in an especially cynical mood when I saw it and thus was almost completely unreceptive to the movie’s touchy-feely conclusion. Mildly amusing

Review – Soulkeeper

I’ve gotta stop watching movies with the word “keeper” in the title. First there was Demon Keeper. Now this. Heck, even The Keep wasn’t all that good. Here we have just what the world’s been waiting for: another stupid, low-budget horror comedy jam-packed with rubber monsters, lingerie-clad models and B-list walk-ons. I expect pubescent fans of bare boobs will derive their usual thrill from the offering here, but nobody aside from boys under the age of 14 or so is likely to get much from this production. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Stray Dog

This early team-up of famed director Akira Kurosawa and a youthful Toshiro Mifune will be something of a surprise to fans of the duo’s samurai classics. For openers, this is a contemporary drama about a cop who loses his gun on a bus and must spend the next couple of days pursuing the criminal who is using it to rob and kill people. The real star of the show isn’t the actors or the script; rather, Kurosawa’s skill at establishing atmosphere provides the best reason to rent and watch. He takes the audience on a sweaty tour of summertime Tokyo, particularly the places where the ragged people go. The final product has a distinctly European flavor (I don’t want to come right out and say “Fellini,” but the feeling is there). My only gripe about the whole thing was a problem with the DVD: the English subtitles were often more than a little odd. Otherwise this was a thoroughly entertaining couple of hours. Worth seeing

Review – Spy Game

Maybe I’m angrier at this movie than I should be because I thought it was going to be something a little different than what it was. I watched it at the end of a long day, and at by that point in the evening I was looking for a fast-paced action movie that wouldn’t be too demanding and would keep me entertained or at the very least awake. Instead I got a long, slow tale of the CIA’s recruiting and retention efforts. Sure, the production features a couple of vaguely amusing fight sequences. But for the most part the story consists of a retiring agent (Robert Redford) shuffling papers and attending meetings while his protégé (Brad Pitt) languishes in a Chinese prison. For actual motion the plot depends heavily on flashbacks, and the flashbacks in turn depend heavily on the queer-in-an-icky-still-in-denial-way relationship between the protagonists. Rare indeed is the espionage movie that can make covert operations and international intrigue seem even more boring than my day job. But this stinker pulls it off. See if desperate

Review – Spider-Man

Sam Raimi’s style as cinema auteur is as well-suited to this super hero as Tim Burton’s was to Batman. Thus the product here is somewhat predictable: a wise-cracking nerd-turned-hero fighting crime and looking for love. In other words, if you like the comic book then like as not you’ll like the movie too. The cast is solid, with Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and Willem Dafoe playing their stereotypical roles to a tee. The effects fall a teeny bit flat every once in awhile, but for the most part the action sequences keep the plot moving. Though this isn’t likely to make it to anyone’s Top 100 of All Time list (or at the very least it isn’t making mine), it’s an entertaining piece of brain candy. Mildly amusing

Review – Star Wars Episode Two: Attack of the Clones

Well, at least that talentless tyke who played the hero in the first one is mercifully absent from this episode. Seriously, though, this is a little better than Phantom Menace. The effects get ever more and more elaborate and the stories get longer and longer. Further, this one’s a bit darker than the last effort, suggesting that George Lucas is trying for an Empire Strikes Back feel. It sort of works. It might have worked better if the romance between the young protagonists had been a little less stiff. The computer-animated Yoda was also a little off-putting; I know the Yoda fight scene was supposed to be a real crowd-pleaser, but the whirling Jedi midget sort of struck me as the kind of thing you’d call Orkin about. And what was the deal with C3PO? Did Lucas make him extra annoying so we’d be grateful for Jar Jar Binks? But that’s all minor stuff. The only major gripe I have here is that this is two and a half hours of set-up, starting plots that presumably we’re going to have to wait a couple of years to see concluded. Well, with a little luck all the characters are now onstage and the wheels all set in motion. Stay tuned for the next exciting episode. Mildly amusing

Review – The Order

I don’t know if this has too much plot for a Jean Claude Van Damme movie or too much Jean Claude Van Damme for a plot movie. Either way, it just doesn’t work. Perhaps if they’d started with the story up front (as they’ve done in the past with some of JCVD’s more successful outings) and worked the kickboxing in as they went, things might have flowed a little more smoothly. Instead the movie leads off with stunt-intensive shenanigans and doesn’t try to sprout a story until late in the day (and by that time it’s an unwelcome intrusion). For what it’s worth, the plot fragments might have made a decent movie about a secret, Templar-esque order scheming to blow up the Dome of the Rock and thus jump-start Armageddon. As things worked, though, they didn’t. Mildly amusing

Review – She Creature

Seems Stan Winston is going back and re-making a bunch of schlocky old horror movies from the Arkoff era. If this one is any indication, they’ll probably be chances for Winston to show off his creature effects talents and not much else. There’s a vague plot here someplace, a mish-mash about carnival people who kill a crazy old man and steal his real-life mermaid, a dastardly plot that leads to predictable consequences for the lot of them (especially when the mermaid transforms from supermodel to scaly critter). Further, the “sexuality” mentioned in the ratings box was pretty timid stuff. Otherwise the concept’s not too terrible and the execution not too bad (could have been better, but probably could have been a lot worse). Mildly amusing

Review – Sleepless

Which is what Dario Argento ought to be at this point in his career. Honestly, does this guy just wake up in the morning and think to himself, “Hooray, today I get to make another cheap slasher movie with lots of brutal butchery of vapid supermodels!”? If I was still doing the exact same thing I was doing in 1970, I’d be in preschool drinking out of a Tommy Tippy cup and sleeping on a mat. There’s some kind of excuse for a plot here, the usual trite nonsense about a serial killer copying the M.O. of a murderer who was supposed to be dead. Max von Sydow plays the second most embarrassing role of his career (hey, there’s always Strange Brew) as the crusty old detective who comes out of retirement to battle his former nemesis. But otherwise this is typical Argento, no doubt to the immense pleasure of his fans and the usual indifference from the rest of us. See if desperate

Review – Apocalypse Now

At the outset I have to admit that this is one of my all-time favorite movies, so I can’t really give you an objective, critical analysis of it. It would probably suffice to say that Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and the Vietnam War make an astonishingly good combo. On top of that, Francis Ford Coppola manages to escape his normally-prosaic directing style and create a visually poetic movie. Be forewarned, however, that even for those of us who like it this is a long and somewhat emotionally draining production. Further, I recommend seeking out the “Redux” version. It’s even longer and more emotionally draining than the original theatrical release, but it contains some genuine enhancements (rather than just crap that belonged on the cutting room floor). In particular, the protagonist has a slightly less monomaniacal personality in the re-edited version. The disc doesn’t include much by way of special features (and with a movie this long that’s to be expected), but the picture clarity is worth going ahead and getting the DVD. Buy it

Review – The Omega Code 2: Megiddo

Here’s a trick: if you obliterate Satan in a blinding flash of God’s Righteous Fire in the first movie, what do you do for a sequel? The nemesis dearth is solved via the strategy used in Evil Dead 2: if you can’t come up with a new plot, rework the story from the first one and shoot it again. This time around Michael York repeats his role as the Antichrist, still up to his old One World Government tricks. The only thing standing between him and global conquest are the President of the United States (Michael Biehn) and – for some strange reason – the Chinese. They spent a lot of money on the special effects for the battle of Armageddon at the end (to some small avail). Otherwise this is another pedantic rehash of the virtues of the usual right-wing Christian agenda. See if desperate

Review – Natural Born Killers

Unnaturally bored audience. Who would ever have thought an endless parade of jump-cut violence could possibly be this dull? Of course a big part of the problem is that Oliver Stone appears to have set himself about the task of creating a movie that would upset the critics. Sure, he’s trying to pass this off as commentary on the sad state of a nation obsessed with killing, but the message is far too ham-handed and silly to have much of an impact. Some of Stone’s visual techniques are innovative (or at least they were when this first came out), and most of the cast turns in solid performances. Beyond that, however, the whole ugly mess is just too dumb to work on any level above crude comedy. See if desperate

Review – Ali

I admit that before I sat down to watch this movie my assumption was that the low point of the production (with the obvious exception of Mario Van Peebles as Malcolm X) would be Will Smith’s effort to portray the title character. But I have to confess that I was pleasantly surprised by Smith’s performance. Yes folks, the scrawny little Fresh Prince actually does a good job as one of the great legends of sports history. Sadly, his work goes largely to waste. The plot is so jumpy and the script so stiff that more often than not our hero comes across as a spectator in his own life. Once the movie abandons its Spike Lee aspirations and settles down to the task of telling its tale, it’s entertaining enough. I just can’t fight the feeling that with a little more support from the writers and director Smith might have been able to make a better film out of this concept. Mildly amusing

Review – The Zombie Chronicles

Wow. And I thought I was a talentless video producer. Judging by the technical quality of this outing, the folks who made this usually confine the damage they do to iron oxide to the creation of low-budget, shot-on-video pornography. That isn’t to say that there’s much sex in this production, just that it has that same cheap aesthetic without the actual smut. The box boasts three tales of zombie mayhem, though actually – mercifully – it’s only two plus a bracket. The only highlight of any of the stories is that they loosely follow a bargain-basement version of the morality found in EC comics, and the comics’ strong suit was never exactly their moral values. For at least a little while (especially during the brief introduction) the show’s so cheap and terrible that it’s almost funny. But the joke wears out swiftly, leaving little save boredom in its wake. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Red Dawn

Though I remember seeing this movie when it first hit theaters back in the roaring Reagan 80s, I don’t recall whether or not the notion of a full-scale Soviet invasion of the United States seemed more plausible back then than it does now. Somehow I suspect not. Even if the basic premise seemed sounder before the collapse of the USSR, the most paranoid red-baiter would still probably have trouble swallowing the notion that America’s first line of defense would prove to be a high school football team turned freedom fightin’ cadre. The teens (including early performances by budding luminaries such as Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen) organize themselves into a resistance unit that – without directly admitting having done so – closely follows the pattern established by “werwolf” terrorist groups formed by the Nazis at the end of World War Two to combat the Allied occupation. Over-wrought battle scenes are punctuated by long passages of ultra-masculine melodrama. The final product may stir a few survivalist hearts even today, but for the rest of us this is a mediocre historical relic and not much more. See if desperate

Review – Bones

Oddly enough, for a Snoop Dogg movie this actually isn’t too terrible. Sure, it’s a handful of visuals wrapped in a thick blanket of hip hop false consciousness and grossly stereotypical (however sympathetic) portrayals of women and minorities. The story – a tale of a reanimated drug dealer who exacts effects-intensive revenge on his slayers – is nothing short of stupid. The dialogue is laughable. It’s clearly aimed at empty-headed teens. Despite all that, the production values are high enough, the gore clever enough (however fake looking), and the action constant enough to keep things at least somewhat interesting. Though clearly not a Palme d’Or candidate, this flick’s entertaining enough for a Friday night at the end of a long week. Mildly amusing