Review – Anima

There are all kinds of different movies about Nazis. The two sub-genres that concern us here are Spooky Nazis and Sentimental Holocaust Nazis. With promises of mummies, evil taxidermy and the like, the box made this one sound like a member of the former group. Instead, it’s even more firmly anchored in the latter than the likes of The Music Box. Our protagonists are a couple of postwar refugees trying to live out their remaining years in quiet, rural seclusion. Unfortunately for their quaint, blissful lives, a video producer discovers that the old man is either a Nazi war criminal, an expert in a lost form of taxidermy, or both. Once I figured out what I was getting, it was easier to meet the film-makers on their own terms and enjoy their efforts as best I could. However, when I watched it I really wasn’t in the mood for an extended parade of artifice, go-nowhere subplots, bathos, bathos and more bathos. Maybe on another night I’d have formed a higher opinion of it. Mildly amusing

Review – Death to Smoochy

Though this Danny DeVito production isn’t quite as clever as it wants to be, it’s still an entertaining way to spend a couple of hours. Edward Norton plays a do-gooding, guitar-strumming crusader in a pink rhino suit who gets hired by a kid-oriented TV network to host a Barney-ish variety show (wow, is that enough hyphens in one sentence?). Though the execs hire him specifically because he lacks the legal, ethical and moral woes of his predecessor (Robin Williams), our hero’s efforts to do the right thing at every turn soon put him at odds with the money men and a Mafia-esque charitable organization. With the mob and the disgruntled ex-host trying to do him in, our hero muddles on to save the day and get the girl. Clever allusions to other classic movies include the distinct flavor of Comfort and Joy in a couple of scenes and a sequence toward the end that must be a conscious tribute to The Manchurian Candidate. The only drawback here is that sometimes the film-makers strive so hard for quirkiness and irony that all they end up with is silliness. However, such moments are relatively few and concentrated mostly toward the end. Worth seeing

Review – Series 7

This has got to be the ultimate send-up of “reality” TV shows: a program where contestants actually kill each other. The strongest point here is that the film-makers keep an almost perfectly straight face throughout. Everything from the titles and overlays right down to the competitors themselves could easily have come directly from Survivor, Cops or The Real World (except the characters are somewhat more compelling than their “real world” counterparts). Throw in the blunt, sometimes brutal violence (facilitated in the plot by some sort of nation-wide mandatory lottery), and you’ve got some only-slightly-ham-handed criticism of the depths of the depravity we’re willing to watch. The only slight slip is the excessive attention paid to the somewhat implausible past romance between two of the would-be assassins. Mildly amusing

Review – XXX

Usually when one goes to a movie with three Xes on the poster, not to mention someone who looks and dresses like Vin Diesel, one expects something a little different. Rather than “Acres of Ass Part 18,” what we get is James Bond repackaged for the X-Games generation. So instead of skis and European sports cars we get snowboarding and a GT. Despite our hero’s humble origins, the NSA manages to make him into a formidable opponent for ex-Russian-military anarchists bent on turning bio-weapons loose on the world. Gadgets aplenty. Chase scenes. Explosions. An endless parade of thou-dost-protest-too-much models. Despite feeling no particular need for a twenty-something reheat of spy movie business as usual, I have to admit that I enjoyed this picture more than I thought I was going to. Maybe it was the company. Mildly amusing

Review – Van Wilder

If American Pie is Porky’s for the next generation and XXX is James Bond for the next generation, then this outing – particularly with the National Lampoon trademark slapped on it – is clearly intended as a bid for the distinction of becoming the next generation’s Animal House. The way this trend is going, I genuinely pity the next generation. For openers, this is way too nicey nice to even come close to the nasty wit of the movie it’s clearly intended to imitate. Instead of a group of losers taking revenge on their socially-acceptable nemeses, here we have a saintly goof-off of Ferris Buehler proportions who falls (mutually) for the knock-out girlfriend of the vaguely-homosexual head of the obnoxious-boy frat. It doesn’t help that the love interest is a journalist played by Tara Reid. Animal House was no shining beacon of hope for the cinema arts, but at least it wasn’t so inanely predictable as to become downright dull. See if desperate

Review – Super Troopers

Here we have one of those movies that I’m fairly sure actually sucks IQ points out of your head while you watch it. After an hour and a half even the brainiest viewer is in danger of being reduced to Beavis and Butt-head levels. And that’s actually a fortunate coincidence, because that’s just about the level of cerebral activity you’ll need to truly enjoy most of the jokes in this sophomoric (or should that be freshmoronic?) farce about inept Vermont state troopers trying to pull off a big drug bust so the governor won’t shut down their small town office. See if desperate

Review – The Mangler 2

The nicest thing I have to say about this stinker is a brief expression of gratitude for the simplicity of the title. No “Mangler: the Mangling,” no “The Lost Mangler,” no “Mangle 2K2,” or other such crap. Just a simple repeat of the name of the original with the sequel number tacked on the end. That makes it a lot easier to work alphabetically and logically into the Big List of Movies that Suck. If there were unanswered questions from the first Mangler flick, this sequel does little to put them to rest. Instead it strikes out into new territory, focusing on a college (or is it a boarding school? It’s sort of hard to tell) run by a massive computer system. When a disgruntled goth girl loads the Mangler virus into the mainframe, largely off-camera gore aplenty results. Lance Henrikson puts in a desperate-for-work appearance in this otherwise completely missable fiasco. Wish I’d skipped it