Review – The Harryhausen Chronicles

Fans of special effects legend Ray Harryhausen will probably enjoy this documentary about his life and work. It’s a little short and more than a little superficial, but it does manage to supply at least some interesting behind-the-scenes insight. The stuff from his early career is especially fascinating, not because it’s outstanding work but because it shows the development of his art through the influence of Willis O’Brien and George Pal, not to mention his own experiments with stop motion. The interviews with Harryhausen are also worth watching. However, most of the rest of it is trivia well familiar to anyone who knows much of anything about the subject. Mildly amusing

Review – Scrooge

Despite dating all the way back to 1951, the Alistair Sim version of Dickens’ most famous work remains the favorite among many audience members, including me. Sure, Sim gets a little carried away at the end when he turns good and all, but he does a delightful job as the nasty Scrooge toward the beginning. This version also includes most if not all of the stock elements without trying to do anything excessively clever with them. Perhaps that’s why it’s endured as well as it has. It’s just the story, nothing more and nothing less. Worth seeing

Review – Missing

Ah, this takes me back to the days when U.S. involvement in South American right wing military coups wasn’t quite the matter of public knowledge it became years after the fact. For that matter, those were also the days when the public might actually be expected to give a crap about U.S. involvement in coups. As usual with Hollywood productions, the tale of the overthrow of Allende is told almost exclusively from the perspective of U.S. citizens. However, in this case it’s done to make a point rather than just to make the story more accessible to domestic audiences. At several points throughout the picture we’re reminded that the protagonist, a middle-aged businessman played by Jack Lemon, wouldn’t be paying any attention to Chilean affairs if his son hadn’t somehow gotten caught up in them and ended up missing. Hey, whatever it takes to get folks to care about what’s being done in their names behind their backs. Though this is a big-budget Hollywood production, it still has much of the look and feel of director Costa-Gavras’s earlier work. Worth seeing

Review – View from the Top

For the first two acts this is a pleasant little piece of fluff about a poor white girl (Gwenyth Paltrow) from small town nowhere trying to break into a more fulfilling life by becoming a flight attendant. Her trip from cheap-ass gambling junket flights to a major airline is full of moments that are entertaining enough in a Beverly Hillbillies kind of way. Even Mike Myers turns in a relatively understated (for him at least) performance as the lead instructor at the flight attendant training academy. But when we make it to Act 3 – in which our heroine confronts her nemesis co-worker and struggles to resolve conflicts between her personal and professional lives – things start to bog down a bit. That’s Hollywood for you. Always disrupting simple comedy with unwelcome message nonsense. Mildly amusing

Review – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Prediction fulfilled. For the most part this is on par with the first two movies in the set. I’ll confess a slight preference for the second one, but that’s at least in part due to the source novel. For instance, the big battle in number two was a lot more compelling than this one. It’s the same epic special effects, but in number three the tide turns in favor of the good guys after they enlist the aid of an unbeatable ghost army, which almost seems like cheating. On the other hand, by now we’re accustomed enough to the characters that they don’t have to work so hard to sell them. In particular, Viggo Mortensen seems to have settled into his role a bit better (or maybe I’m just used to him at this point), and Liv Tyler’s barely in it at all. The plot takes its time getting started, and it takes its time winding down as well. That added to a few slow spots in the middle make this a somewhat questionable choice for kiddie entertainment. Otherwise this is solid Hollywood fantasy film-making just like the first two. Mildly amusing

Review – Life of Brian

Though a lot of Monty Python fans prefer The Holy Grail, this one’s my personal favorite. It might be a name thing, or it might be that I admire the amount of chutzpah it takes to parody the gospels. But on the other hand, it might be my favorite just because it’s an exceptionally funny movie. The stoning sequence is at least semi-legendary. Anyone who’s ever dealt with academics and/or revolutionary wannabes should get a solid kick out of any of the scenes involving the People’s Front of Judea. And of course if you ever had to take Latin (and even if you didn’t) you should get a chuckle out of the graffiti sequence. Then there’s the closing musical number. And then there’s … well, you get the point. It’s the usual collection of Python skit comedy centered around a send-up of the life of Christ. Buy the disc

Review – The Last Samurai

Usual disclaimer: if you don’t like samurai movies as much as I do, you may well walk away with a different opinion of this than I did. However, I enjoyed it a great deal. Like Shogun, it suffers from the inherent weakness of showing Japanese culture in its effect on a westerner rather than strictly on its own terms. On the other hand, it does an excellent job of building respect for traditionalist resistance to the Meiji reformation. Sure it’s one-sided, but at least it’s one-sided on the side opposite the usual American take on the subject. Tom Cruise does a reasonably good job as an Army veteran with PTS from the wars against the Indians who takes a job training imperial Japanese troops to fight an anti-reformation insurgent and his forces. Taken prisoner, Cruise’s character comes to appreciate the merits of samurai training and commitment. Eventually he joins the rebels in their futile fight against cannon and Gattling guns. The fight scenes are well-choreographed, and the cinematography – while not quite up to Kurosawa’s standards – is nonetheless solid. Worth seeing

Review – Gregory’s Girl

Not many directors are good enough to shoot a comedy about the awkwardness of teenage romance and actually pull it off. Fortunately Bill Forsyth is just such a director. Though this is one of his earlier projects, fans of his better-known movies – particularly Local Hero – will recognize Forsyth’s unselfconscious, quirky wit. If I were to try to summarize the plot, I’d describe this as the story of Gregory, a Scottish teen infatuated with the new girl playing on his soccer team. But that makes this sound more like a John Hughes movie, and nothing could be further from the truth. The delight is in the details, the odd little jokes with no attempt at explanation that set this far apart from the countless rounds of Hollywood tedium on the same general subject. My only regret is that I didn’t see this when I was an adolescent, because there were many times in my own younger days when I would have relished a frank acknowledgment that even though the whole high school thing sucked there were at least some times when it wasn’t all that bad. Worth seeing

Review – A Christmas Carol (1938)

Like most television owners who grew up in this society, I’ve seen several versions of Dickens’s best-known story. Of all the productions I’ve seen so far – or at least of all of them that tried to do a straight job of re-telling the story without re-setting it in Las Vegas or re-casting it with Woody Woodpecker or some such – this one is my least favorite. The film-makers appear to have been working with a much shorter running time than usual, and thus they seem to have had some tough choices on what to leave in and what to leave out. The result, unfortunately, comes across as a Cliff’s Notes summary of the tale. And that doesn’t work for me, because my favorite parts tend to be the small touches that each movie does a little differently, or in this case frequently not at all. They’ve also cut out a lot of the character development during the Ghost of Christmas Past part that helps make Scrooge seem less like a cartoon miser and more like a person who might have a normal human need for affection and repentance buried within him somewhere. And even if Jacob Marley doesn’t exactly make or break the whole show, he does at least set the stage. This has got to be the most lackluster Marley I’ve ever seen. Anyone who objects to the wailing, chain-rattling histrionics of the usual portrayal should see this one just so you can get a taste of how bad understating the character can be. See if desperate

Review – The Reagans

I can’t for the life of me see what all the fuss was about. If anything, the folks who made this three hour biography of Ron and Nancy were far too kind to the both of them. For example, they left out the scene where the Gipper made his famous pact with Satan that guaranteed him perpetual popularity despite every rotten thing he ever did to the country. Seriously, the film-makers portrayed Reagan in the most charitable light possible. He’s shown as a kindly old dimwit, an actor who cracked jokes and dished out jellybeans while the people who really controlled the country committed everything from petty stupidity to high treason. Considering the alternative – that he was a brilliant statesman who masterminded everything from record-setting deficits to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of AIDS victims to the sale of weapons to our enemies – the light that shines on him here is more than a little flattering. Honestly, it’s almost enough to make me feel sorry for Alexander Haig. On the other hand, the movie’s reasonably well crafted, particularly for a made-for-TV production. In particular, James Brolin does a solid job as Ronny. Mildly amusing

Review – What’s Eating Gilbert Grape

I’m honestly not quite sure where this movie goes wrong. Actually, it really isn’t even fair to imply that it goes wrong at some point. The script is solid. The actors do a great job, particularly the supporting cast of relative unknowns. Even Leonardo DiCaprio turns in an impressive effort in his big screen breakthrough role, admirable despite the whole actor-earning-points-by-playing-a-mentally-disabled-person thing. I expect the theme – small town boy who may have to forego romance and other personal interests because he’s stuck taking care of his wacky family, particularly mentally damaged brother and drastically overweight mother – will naturally appeal to a fairly large audience. I even liked the production’s quirky sense of humor. I admit I thought it got a little too sentimental in parts, and occasionally quirky fell flat and turned into silliness. But otherwise this wasn’t a bad way to spend a couple of hours. Mildly amusing

Review – Like Water for Chocolate

I suppose if you’re going to make a movie about the joys of adultery you might at least toss in enough quirky humor and fine dining to make it worthwhile. The adultery is excused by the plot point early on that our heroine’s cruel mother prevents her from marrying her true love. Who instead marries her unattractive sister. So I guess that makes it okay. That aside, the characters are engaging and the plot reasonably clever. The writing and direction work well together to add amusing twists and turns to what would otherwise be a tedious Mexican soap opera. Mildly amusing

Review – The Night Porter

Though a bit dated and more than a bit heavy-handed, overall this is an interesting import exploring the relationship between sex and fascism. An ex-Nazi working as a night porter in a hotel is surprised to find out that one of the hotel’s guests is a former inmate at the concentration camp where he worked. Further, he had a kinky sexual relationship with her, a relationship they resume after some initial awkwardness. But all is not well in sadomasochistic paradise; our protagonist is also on the verge of being cleared by the courts, officially declared a non-Nazi. His old SS buddies want this to happen, and they’re willing to kill any and all potential witnesses who might make things go awry. Unfortunately that sets them about the task of eliminating his sex partner. As art flicks about obsessive attraction go, I’ve seen a lot worse. However, the story gets stale awhile before the director runs out of film, and the graphic sex and violence don’t quite manage to prop it up. Mildly amusing

Review – Gothika

Here’s one Halle Berry’s may want to buy up and hide at some point later in her career (assuming she’s got any money left over from buying up Die Another Day). I liked Dark Castle’s remake of House on Haunted Hill, but ever since then they’ve gone downhill. And this one’s no exception. The story here is a trite bit of fluff about a psychiatrist who ends up in her own mental institution. Everyone thinks she’s crazy, but actually she’s in touch with a vengeful spirit who wants something or other from her. The protagonist’s efforts to unravel the mystery don’t keep the movie going for its full running time. As usual with mid-budget horror movies, this one’s got a fair number of booga-booga shots, some of which work and some of which don’t. Mildly amusing

Review – Mishima

Aficionados of the outré Japanese author should find this outré biography of Yukio Mishima quite entertaining. Director Paul Schrader interweaves three narratives into one: a fairly straightforward biography of the author, a recreation of the events leading up to his sensational suicide, and a triptych of stylized dramatizations of three of his books. It goes without saying that the homosexual sadomasochism and Japanese nationalist militarism are laid on fairly thick. But even if you’re among the many who – quite rightly – find Mishima’s life and work depressing, this production’s still worth it for the art direction alone. Worth seeing

Review – The Razor’s Edge (1984)

Anyone who’s read the source novel must immediately be charged with a simple task: abandon the notion that the movie is based in any meaningful way on the book. Once you’ve got that thought out of your head, you should find it a lot easier to relax and enjoy the show. In a way it’s odd that Bill Murray – who supposedly loved Maugham’s novel so much that he took a role he didn’t want in order to get the studio to back this production – would stray so far from the original work. Of course some simplification was necessary. But changing the story into Larry Darrell, The Motion Picture seemed like a strange thing to do, unless of course one has an ego big enough to play Darrell to begin with, let alone feature him even more prominently than Maugham did. It doesn’t help that Murray – despite obvious effort on his part – seems constantly on the verge of reverting to his usual persona. Every time Darrell is called upon to say something profound, I found myself waiting with dread to find out if Murray would deliver the line or let fly with “Zooly you nut, let me talk to Dana.” Those problems aside, however, this is a reasonably entertaining tale of a man seeking and finding spiritual enlightenment during an age in which the stuff was in short supply. Mildly amusing

Review – The Killing Fields

It seems a profound shame that Sidney Schanberg has to be such a major character in Sidney Schanberg’s account of the fall of Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge in 1975. It isn’t that his story is dull; quite the contrary. Sam Waterston does a solid job portraying the journalist’s transition from arrogant foreign correspondent to human being deeply concerned about a missing friend (of course no end of twists and turns bring about the change, but that’s a story best told by the movie itself). It’s just that the story going around the reporter and his friend is so large that it can’t help but overpower one American’s crisis of conscience. This conflict is also mirrored in the music, which is often needlessly dramatic at points when a simple, straightforward re-creation of events (perhaps even with no music at all) would have sufficed. As with most movies created either by director Roland Joffe or producer David Puttnam, it’s way better than most of Hollywood’s more recent product. It’s just not a finest moment for either of them. Worth seeing

Review – Terminal Velocity

Here’s another generic action movie with a generic title. This time around it’s skydiving with Charlie Sheen and Nastassja Kinski. Somewhere in here there’s a bunch of stuff about a plot by ex-KGB agents to steal a large shipment of gold and use it to finance a coup in Russia. But naturally that isn’t the point. The point as usual is to move as quickly as possible between gun battles and plummets from airplanes and so on and so forth. Some of the skydiving is sort of impressive, but otherwise this isn’t much more entertaining than the average A-Team episode. Mildly amusing

Review – The Pianist

I confess at the outset that I’m more than a little bothered by the “desperate plea for an Oscar” aspect of this movie. It’s not that this is a bad movie. Far from it. This is an outstanding movie, an admirably frank portrayal of the horrible conditions in the Warsaw ghetto and how things go from bad to worse when Polish Jewish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman escapes and must hide in various locations throughout Warsaw. It’s just that the whole thing seems to be custom designed to give lead actor Adrien Brody plenty of opportunities to show off his skills as a thespian. Then of course there’s the Academy’s inclination toward anything having to do with the Holocaust. Yet poor ol’ child-molesting Roman Polanski couldn’t come and claim his statue in person. Them’s the breaks, I guess. Oscar crap aside, the movie’s long and depressing as one might expect but still worth the time and the mood swing it’ll likely produce. Worth seeing

Review – The Cat's Meow

Finally Eddie Izzard gets a role he can sink his teeth into. If nothing else, he should get some kind of prize for being the first actor in history to portray Charlie Chaplin without doing the Little Fellow even once. Of course the story didn’t exactly call for it. Instead, here we have the infamous Hollywood tale of how producer Tom Ince managed to meet his end on William Randolph Hearst’s yacht. The most widely-accepted version of Ince’s demise is that Hearst was pissed off at Chaplin for trying to seduce Marion Davies (capably played here by Kirsten Dunst) and ended up shooting Ince after mistaking him for Chaplin. Director Peter Bogdanovich deserves a big scoop of respect for making excellent use of his cast and portraying Tinseltown decadence and violent homicide with almost no on-screen sex or violence. I suppose you need to bring at least some affection for the Roaring Twenties into this experience, but if you like this sort of thing you’re in for a real treat here. Worth seeing

Review – Sling Blade

Normally I want to support low-budget indie film-making, but somehow I just never managed to find a way to get behind this one. For starters, I’m flat out not impressed by the whole actor-playing-a-mentally-atypical-character. I was also put off early on by the pace of the production, which can only charitably be described as laconic. But my biggest gripe was that I thought the whole show came across as a lower class soap opera. Carl (Billy Bob Thornton, who also wrote and directed) is occasionally likable in a mentally-challenged-person-who-may-be-a-psycho-killer sort of way despite his many cliché personality quirks. But for the rest of the drama, well, I’ve got several trailer parks within easy driving distance of my house. If I need to see this sort of meandering, drunken nonsense I can catch the live show anytime I want. That makes an art film version thereof more than a little superfluous. See if desperate

Review – Hart’s War

Just about the nicest thing I have to say here is that I didn’t hate this movie quite as bad as I thought I was going to. And in all fairness I should concede that it’s probably time for me to stop watching Bruce Willis movies, especially any production that calls upon him to play a macho military type (especially a macho military type who turns out to be one of the big heroes). Willis aside, I’ll admit there might have been at least a small bit of potential to the notion of combining Stalag 17 with the courtroom drama from To Kill a Mockingbird. Sadly, once the humor is removed from the former source and the genuine human emotion sapped from the latter, all that’s left appears to be a lot of boring pedantry. A few years back this might have scored a couple of points for the quality of the production – particularly the brief but effective use of special effects – but ever since Saving Private Ryan I think audiences have just come to expect this level of production values from war movies. See if desperate

Review – 4 Little Girls

Spike Lee proves that he’s as good at documentary filmmaking as he is with narrative features. Of course he’s not up against much of a challenge making his subject compelling. The four girls killed by Klan bombers while attending church back in 1963 left quite an impression on their relatives, friends, and activists in the civil rights movement. So all Lee has to do is point his cameras and let the people speak for themselves. Still, he does an excellent job putting the production together. Worth seeing

Review – All the Queen's Men

Okay, here’s the plot. The Allies are trying to steal an Enigma decoder. They can get male agents into the factory that makes the things, but the workers there are all women. So guess what? Our intrepid heroes must learn to dress convincingly in drag. Eddie Izzard obviously has no trouble pulling it off as a transvestite forced into service to train the other three guys in a squad headed by ultra-macho Matt LeBlanc. The result ranges from genuine entertainment along the lines of the classic British black comedies to amusing farce to just plain silly. Even so, it’s one of the better movies of 2003 and might have been better still if they’d given Izzard a larger role. Worth seeing

Review – Radio Days

Though it would probably be hard to make an objective case for this movie as Woody Allen’s greatest contribution to the cinematic arts, subjectively I have to admit that it’s one of my favorite pieces of the director’s work. Sure, a lot of it’s just as silly as the old radio shows to which it pays tribute. But there’s something genuine about it, too. Perhaps it’s just that childhoods enjoy a certain number of common elements, making the characters and situations easy to appreciate regardless of where and when one grew up. Mildly amusing

Review – Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

I’ve never read any of Patrick O’Brien’s novels, so I can’t say for sure how faithful the movie is to the book. However, I have seen enough “heart of oak” dramas to be able to place this somewhere in the middle of the pack. The attention to detail was impressive, but it was offset more than a little by the King-and-Country brand of machismo that pervades the production. Further, not since John Carpenter’s The Thing has a movie featured so few women. That’s appropriate enough to a drama that takes place entirely aboard a Nelsonian British Navy vessel, but aside from Russell Crowe shirtless in a scene or two that doesn’t leave much for the average female audience member. That notwithstanding, anyone who likes stories about the age of sail and battles on the high seas will get at least something of a kick out of this. Mildly amusing

Review – Hedwig and the Angry Inch

If nothing else, this one’s a shoe-in for the palme d’or at this year’s Working It Way Too Hard Film Festival. And to be fair, I ended up liking this more than I thought I would. A rock opera about a transsexual’s journey from youth in East Germany to brief life as a military wife in Junction City, Kan., and from there on to success as a glam rock minor leaguer wouldn’t normally draw me into the audience. Plot aside, I found some of the music off-putting as well. Most of the score comes across as awkward blends of glam and pop, with one song sounding like a blend of the Velvet Underground and Brian Adams followed by another tune blending Freddie Mercury with Billy Joel. And I’m yet to see a rock opera – this one included – that doesn’t end with a big, over-wrought, go-nowhere nonsense number. However, parts of the movie actually manage to be cute and/or funny in a self-conscious but nonetheless genuine sort of way. Mildly amusing

Review – Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary

Here’s a documentary made compelling solely by the identity of its subject. The movie is two or three videotaped interviews with Traudl Junge – one of Hitler’s personal secretaries from 1942 until his death – spliced together into an awkward production that nonetheless remains fairly fascinating throughout. I know I’ve probably complained about the excessive use of this sort of thing elsewhere, but here it actually would have been nice for the talking heads to have been intercut with historical footage or at least some old stills showing some of the people and places being discussed. But even the minimalist approach chosen by the director does a solid job conveying the chilling normalcy of life inside the Third Reich’s high command, particularly in its final days buried in a bunker in Berlin. Mildly amusing

Review – Blood Simple

This early effort by the Coen brothers does an astonishingly good job of playing out the theme suggested by its title. What starts out with a sleazy bar owner mad at his wife for running off with a bartender ends up as an impressive parade of scummy characters doing the dumbest things imaginable thanks to a simple inability to cope with their own culpability in a domino line of crimes. If nothing else, it’s fun just to watch the number of obvious finger print specimens everyone keeps leaving everywhere. The humor here isn’t as broad as it is in some of the Coens’ later work, and there’s pluses and minuses to that. Overall this is a delightful little white trash thriller of murder so stupid you’d almost swear it had to be a true story. Worth seeing

Review – Phone Booth

Of all the movies that take place almost entirely inside a phone booth, this is probably the best. Colin Ferrell plays a small-time hustler who gets pinned in the title location by a sniper who keeps him on the phone, ordering him to confess his various shortcomings to the cops, his wife, and just about anyone else who happens to be standing around. Overall the story is entertaining enough, but at several points throughout the picture the drama switches from tense to downright annoying. And our hero’s being punished only for fairly venial sins (sure he’s a creep, but it’s not like he killed anyone), I suppose in part to make him more sympathetic and in part to make the sniper seem more crazy and evil. However, somehow the relatively trivial nature of the protagonist’s “crimes” makes him seem silly and pathetic, scarcely worth the time of a skilled psychopath. Mildly amusing

Review – James Elroy’s Feast of Death

Fun fact to know and tell: Elroy knows a genuinely astounding number of meat-related slang phrases for sex. He also appears to have some lingering issues related to the murder of his mother decades ago. The grief isn’t surprising, but the Freudian elements … well, let’s just say they’re sort of unwelcome. As are the random camera contortions, hideous ECUs of Elroy’s mouth, and other witless video tricks the director apparently thought he had to build in to the movie just to keep it going. Instead, the camerawork and cuts merely intrude upon what would otherwise have been interesting (albeit often bizarre and/or disgusting) conversations between Elroy and cops, true crime authors, and – for no readily apparent reason – Nick Nolte. At the end of the experience I walked away with little more than a vague wish that I’d just stuck with Elroy’s books rather than learning anything about him as a person. See if desperate

Review – Black Widow

Wealthy single men beware! There’s a beautiful serial killer (Teresa Russell) out there looking to worm her way into your life, marry you, bump you off and walk away with all your money. Unfortunately for her, crypto-lesbian tendencies leave her vulnerable to a sassy little stalker (Debra Winger) who figures out her game. If only the stalker wasn’t a federal agent, things might have gone more smoothly for our sultry anti-heroine. As it turned out … well, as with all mystery thrillers you should probably watch the movie if you want to know how it turns out. Aside from the empty-headed Hollywood take on lesbians, this is a reasonably good example of the mystery genre. Mildly amusing

Review – The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer

Here’s the back-story from Stephen King’s Rose Red expanded and recut as its own little production. As isolated incidents intercut into the King miniseries it kinda worked, but here it plays like a silly soap opera with supernatural hocus-pocus thrown in. Without the tie-in to the bigger show, I doubt if this would ever have been made. Even if it existed, I probably wouldn’t have gone out of my way to rent it. And perhaps that would have been for the best, because to be blunt this is one of the most boring horror movies I’ve ever seen. Even an undercurrent of kinky sex isn’t enough to stir any interest. See if desperate

Review – The Perfect Storm

This movie proves a rather interesting point: apparently it’s actually possible to make a low-key epic. The vast seascapes – especially the towering waves of the storm sequences – alone clearly indicate that the studio dumped millions into special effects. And the cast is plenty expensive, too. But the Hollywood A-list has been hired here not to play secret agents, super heroes or glamour girls but rather working class commercial fishing workers and their families. To be sure, the tale is more than its share of depressing (and I’ve got a big gripe about the end that I can’t share without spoiling the movie for those who haven’t seen it yet). Yet it ends up being a little uplifting as well. I kinda liked the idea that people who aren’t born with vast wealth or super powers can nonetheless even in failure attain a certain nobility of effort. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it and should just take it for its surface value as a fairly entertaining action yarn about man versus nature. Worth seeing

Review – Twisted

This foursome of shorts from Down Under comes across as a weak-witted grandchild of The Twilight Zone. If you happen to find it on DVD, use the “chapter select” feature to watch the first story last. It’s not great – certainly not a younger Geoffrey Rush’s finest hour – but it’s the best of the four. With all four about the only entertainment to be had is pre-guessing the surprise twist at the end of each episode (a difficult task only in the one that actually bothers with red herrings). See if desperate

Review – I Spy

Believe it or not, this is even worse than you’d expect an Eddie Murphy / Owen Wilson action comedy to be. Wilson plays a mediocre secret agent saddled with an egotistical boxer (Murphy) who’s supplying the cover story to get him close to an international arms dealer. Somewhere in here there’s a stealth jet, silly gadgets, double-agents, and the like. I guess maybe there’s a snicker or two in here someplace, but for the most part the flick wavers between mildly boring and downright annoying. See if desperate

Review – Coven

If you’ve seen American Movie then you already know that the title of this unique little picture is pronounced with a long “o” because otherwise it would sound too much like “oven.” Normally I don’t review movies this short (only 40 minutes or so, thank God), but it makes such a natural combination with the documentary about its creation. To be completely fair to Mark Borchardt, this production isn’t anywhere near as bad as I expected. It’s plenty bad, coming in around midway between Begotten and an especially uninteresting episode of The Twilight Zone about an AA meeting that turns out to be run by a coven of evildoers. But aside from the technical quality (and the script and the acting) I guess I’ve seen worse. See if desperate

Review – The Eye

This is one of those movies that makes me wish I knew a little more about the folk traditions in the land from whence it came – in this case China – because they seem to play at least some role in the visuals. And truly the visual horror elements are the strongest part of this otherwise run-of-the-mill offering from Hong Kong. The plot’s standard stuff about a transplant recipient who ends up with the power to see ghosts after getting eyes from a psychic woman who died a violent death. The art direction has a lot in common with the better-known Japanese offering, Ringu. But at least some of the ghostly doings are more than a little on the creepy side, including at least one booga-booga shot that really works. Mildly amusing

Review – Amen.

After Mad City I just about gave up on Costa-Gavras, but I’m glad I decided to give him another try. This tale of the Catholic church’s complicity in the Holocaust is a lot closer to the director’s traditional stomping grounds. The plot follows two idealistic young men – an SS officer with a crisis of conscience and a priest in whom he confides – as they learn some hard lessons about international diplomacy and the Pope’s unwillingness to speak out against the mass slaughter of Jewish people. The story remains intriguing throughout, depressing and unflinching enough to do justice to its subject matter. Worth seeing

Review – Possessed

If not for the steady stream of profanity that spouts from the carrot-topped victim of evil in this bargain basement Exorcist rip-off, I’d swear it was a made-for-TV affair. It’s just that bad. Even grand ham Timothy Dalton appears to have trouble spouting the dialogue he must deliver as the valiant priest doing battle with the forces of darkness. The parts that are clearly intended to be scary fall so flat that they very nearly make it to comedy. Fans of the sub-genre may want to check this out just so they can say they’ve seen it, but otherwise there’s little entertainment to be found in this silly production. See if desperate

Review – The Handmaid’s Tale

Here’s a heavy-handed story about how awful life would be if the religious right actually gained firm control over society. First constant war and utter disregard for environmentalism poisons the planet and renders the majority of the population infertile. The few women who are still capable of conceiving become the sex surrogate slaves of couples in the power elite, following a ritual based on the procreation-oriented love triangle between Abraham, Sarah and Hagar. The production makes some solid points about the subjugation of women in Western religious practice, and parts of the drama are intriguing in a soap opera sort of way. However, the constant pessimism and pedantry tends to make the whole thing start to seem a little silly after awhile. Mildly amusing

Review – Final Destination 2

I’m not sure what drew me to the sequel, inasmuch as I’m already on record as not regarding the original as one of the great moments in American cinema. Guess I was just in the mood for a cheap horror movie. And on that front, mission accomplished. Some of the gore wasn’t too terrible in a “dude, you just got blowed up” kind of way. But beyond that much of the production is nothing short of annoying. Sympathetic characters are in short supply, and many of the suspense scenes are so laboriously constructed that they almost descend to self-parody. I was especially un-fond of the choking sequences that seemed to drag on and on and on. Perhaps I should applaud the film-makers for actually inspiring the physical sensation of suffocating, but by the end of this barker I wasn’t in the mood to dish out any brownie points in exchange for making me uncomfortable. See if desperate

Review – Dreamchild

Mix the innocent childhood magic of Alice in Wonderland with the considerably less-than-innocent real life of the Reverend Charles Dodgson (a.k.a. Lewis Carroll). Throw in some creepy Muppets and this is what you get. The main plot follows a journey to America undertaken by the little girl who inspired the Alice tales now grown to doddering old age. A handful of other silly subplots intrude, but the really compelling stuff here are the flashbacks done as a combination of Alice’s traumatic childhood memories and scenes from Carrol’s work. Unfortunately in the end the movie does away with its own apparent point. Hooray for happy endings and all, but it’s rough to see even true love prevail when that love takes the form of the bond between a ten-year-old girl and a dirty old man. Mildly amusing

Review – The Core

I’ll let you all invent your own “rotten to the” jokes for this one. I guess I should be grateful that at least this time the trauma threatening to destroy the entire earth isn’t a meteor. But somehow the notion that the planet is doomed because the fluids in the core stopped spinning because of some stupid government plot actually makes the meteor thing seem downright plausible. Certainly by the time you’ve crammed a group of mavericks and misfits into a giant vibrator that can somehow resist the heat and pressure of the mantle (let alone the core itself) … well, let’s just say that it’s hard to maintain much interest in the virtually endless parade of implausible plot twists and sophomoric character development. See if desperate

Review – Corpses Are Forever

I wonder if they’re going to try to make it all the way through the panoply of Bond titles. Though I’m sure I would have loved to have seen “Corpsefinger,” “The Man with the Golden Corpse” or “Octocorpsey,” my guess is that we’ve seen the last of whatever series this might have turned into. If nothing else, this one wins the Mark Borchardt prize for the actor/writer/director who turns out to be equally inept at all his various jobs. Though the choices were legion, I think my favorite part was when – in a post-apocalyptic world supposedly inhabited almost exclusively by zombies – cars kept driving past the backdrop. I suppose they might have been going for so-stupid-it’s-funny, but they only managed the first half. The final icing was the sad, withered husk of what was once Linnea Quigley still valiantly trying to act. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Orange County

Life is hard on upper middle class white boys, especially when they don’t get into Stanford because their dingbat guidance counselor mixes up their standardized test results. Actually, that’s the point at which life gets hard for the audience. Because when our youthful protagonist – an aspiring writer, no less – loses his bid for the college of his choice the wacky antics ensue. And with screwball divorcee parents, druggie older brother and oddball friends, you can bet those antics are going to be pretty wacky. Actually, to be fair some of the gags work on a small scale. But for the most part this is an MTV production with all the limitations on audience demographics thereby implied. Mildly amusing

Review – Rat Race

This one sure puts the screwball in screwball comedy. A gaggle of bad actors (and maybe one or two good ones) struggle through a nearly endless parade of improbable situations in their pursuit of a train station locker stuffed with a couple million bucks. The production sports a funny moment here and there, but to be honest if you’ve seen the preview then you’ve already seen most of the best this flick has to offer. Even if you haven’t seen the preview, it’s doubtful that you’ll regard a small collection of sight gags worth the whole running time of this dog. See if desperate

Review – A Mighty Wind

Every step these movies take away from Waiting for Guffman seems to be a step in the wrong direction. Or maybe the whole set even traces all the way back to Spinal Tap. In any event, imagine Best in Show only with folk singers rather than dogs and you’ve got the general idea here. Trouble is, most of the humor is too silly and too broad by far. Having grown up with parents who were into the whole folk music thing, I recognized some of the characters (or at least the character types). It helped that the acting was solid as ever. However, the plot and the dialogue just didn’t do enough to hold the production together and make it funny enough to justify the running time. Mildly amusing

Review – The Shunned House

Aside from small snippets here and there, this should be “The Shunned Movie.” Elsewhere I’ve tagged Brain Dead as an even lower rent version of Full Moon, and I guess the BD people took that as a challenge. So here they import a bad Italian shot-on-video production loosely (and I do mean loosely) based on not one but three H.P. Lovecraft tales (the title tale at least very briefly “The Music of Erich Zann” and “Dreams in the Witch House”). The Zann piece has a moment or two, even if it does turn out to be an awkward Erica Zann rather than a more literal interpretation. But the other two plotlines are little more than muddled messes filled with actors struggling with the English dialogue and gore so cheap most bargain basement haunted houses would reject it. The production’s final downfall is the curious decision to intermix the three tales so that they run together in a really uninteresting way. See if desperate

Review – The Cucumber Incident

Here’s a bargain basement video documentary about a rather outré subject: three women who took a dislike to a guy. Of course by “guy” I mean “spouse of one of the women.” Oh, and throw in “convicted child molester supposedly rehabbed yet apparently still French kissing the girl he previously molested.” But wait, it gets better. By “took a dislike” I actually mean “tied him up, shaved him above and below, rubbed Icy Hot on his man area, and then sodomized him with a cucumber.” The working class dramatis personae alone make this a worthwhile investment of an hour or so. And that’s fortunate, because the production values aren’t too whippy, especially the dreadful and frequently intrusive soundtrack music. Mildly amusing

Review – Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey

Though clearly intended to be more of the same from the successful original, this first (and no doubt only, considering Keanu Reeves’ lack of incentive to do another) sequel somehow lacks the charm of the “Excellent Adventure.” Maybe it’s that what works for history doesn’t work for theology. Maybe it’s that the humor here is even more juvenile than before (if such a thing can be imagined). Maybe it’s just that the joke’s worn a little thin. In any event, the picture features a few sincerely funny moments (most of which center around the Grim Reaper). But overall if you’ve seen the original you’ve clearly seen the best of the two. Mildly amusing

Review – Down with Love

Ewan McGregor and Renee Zellwegger have both been in more charmless movies, but that’s at least in part because he did Star Wars Episode 2 and she did Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. This movie has a number of things going for it. The cast is solid, or at the very least capable of keeping up with the sitcom plot. The art direction is likewise good, creating a 1962 that never existed outside home décor catalogs. The dialogue isn’t even all that bad; indeed, it manages to be charming in a silly sort of way. The problem turns up when the film-makers try to graft 21st century sensibilities onto a 60s-era battle of the sexes. By the second or third false ending it should be apparent to all just how hard they’re working to get the two incompatible outlooks to mesh somehow. Moral of the story: screwball comedies don’t need to be morally uplifting. In fact, they may actually be better when they aren’t. Mildly amusing

Review – Dreamcatcher

If you liked the novel, you’ll probably like the movie (aside from the fact that the ending’s a bit different). Funny, though, how dialogue that doesn’t distract in the book sounds really false when actors actually have to deliver it. Some of the plot devices that worked well in print failed to make the jump to the silver screen. That notwithstanding, this isn’t the worst alien attack movie I’ve ever seen (hey, there’s always Signs). Of course that’s at least in part because it “borrows” copiously from several more successful predecessors. Overall the acting and production values are at two-star level, so that’s the rating I’ll end up giving it. However, the picture came dangerously close to a lower rating because of genuinely excessive animal suffering (particularly the prolonged torment of a dog toward the end). Mildly amusing

Review – The Italian Job (2002)

I haven’t yet seen the original, so at this point I can’t compare the two. I expect the Cooper Minis played a prominent role in the first version. Beyond that, however, this is a typical Hollywood caper movie. Marky Mark stars as the brains (yeah, no kidding) behind a gold-theft scheme that goes awry when he and his quirky cohort are betrayed by the most sullen of their number (performance phoned in by Ed Norton). Big production values but not a whole big bunch beyond that. Mildly amusing

Review – Underworld

Vampires vs. werewolves. Aristocracy vs. proletariat. Goths vs. metal heads. Could they have built a couple more simple-minded, plot-churning dichotomies in here someplace? The action sequences aren’t too shabby, though many of them have an unpleasant Matrix-ish under-taste. On the other hand, the characters follow the worst vampire comic book traditions, and because I come into this from the werewolf camp I guess I could have done without the goth clichés, neurotic vampire whining and uninteresting machinations. And the logic falls massively apart in a couple of spots, with the story clearly catering to the need for gore and flying fists of kung fu death rather than a coherent plot. I guess I’ve seen worse, but I’ve seen better too. Mildly amusing

Review – The Emperor's New Groove

For a Disney production this is sort of a small animation, with production values somewhere between usual theatrical releases and their straight-to-video sequels. For example, the cast is solid enough, but almost all of them are sitcom vets rather than more well-established movie stars. The story – a simplistic bit of fluff about an obnoxious Incan emperor turned into a llama – depends heavily on lead voice David Spade’s personal brand of humor. Beyond that it’s mostly sight gags, well-executed but still little more than physical comedy. There’s the usual collection of in-jokes only adults will get combined with a strictly-for-kids moral about the importance of friendship. If you like Spade’s usual humor (toned down for the Disney audience, of course), then you’re likely to have at least some fun with this production. Mildly amusing

Review – Frailty

Imagine you’re 11 years old or so, and imagine you’ve got the perfect dad. Now imagine one night he comes in to the room you share with your younger brother, wakes you both up and announces that an angel of God has ordered him to kill demons. Further imagine that the demons look just like ordinary people and might in fact not be demons at all. Not so good. Apparently that sort of thing can really mess a kid up. On the other hand, it makes a really good premise for a creepy horror movie. If only Bill Paxton had decided to stick with the central plot rather than snapping back and forth between the kids and their psycho dad and one of the sons grown to adulthood telling the tale to an obnoxious cop. I can’t say much about the surprise ending without spoiling it, so suffice it to say that it features some genuinely bizarre theology. Despite not caring much for the “present day” part of the production, I did get kind of a kick out of the whole Hand of God Killer thing. Mildly amusing

Review – Topsy-Turvy

Not that I’m any great connoisseur of their catalog, but if I had to pick one Gilbert and Sullivan operetta as my favorite, it would probably be The Mikado. Sure, the racism and sexism are hard to take, but under all that there’s a genuinely charming story and more than a couple of funny songs. So I suppose it’s only natural that I was charmed by this backstage comedy about the trials and travails of the thespians working on the first-ever production of the operetta. It was interesting to see the characters struggle with the racism in the plot as well as their various individual problems. However, I was glad the filmmakers decided to keep it fairly light. Good acting and a good script combine to make this an entertaining piece of work. Mildly amusing

Review – 13th Child

“Legend of the Jersey Devil Volume One”? Don’t count on a sequel to this outing. It wasn’t that good. However, it was at least somewhat better than I expected. I’m a big Jersey Devil fan, so I’m picky about how the subject is handled. Just another slasher movie with the Devil grafted onto it isn’t likely to impress me much. However, this one had a few things going for it. Sure, it’s a low budget production with the usual shortcomings that entails. And Cliff Robertson, Lesley-Anne Down and Robert Guillaume serve to lend the show a certain circus-of-the-out-of-work-actors quality. But Robertson’s got co-writing credit, so maybe he wasn’t just a hired gun. Shortfalls aside, however, the story was moderately engaging and at least a little anti-hunting (a sure way to get onto my good side). The monster was cheap, and Gieger should probably sue over its teeth. But throughout almost the entire picture it’s handled in a sufficiently subtle way to avoid working it beyond the limitations of the effect. As cheap horror movies go, I’ve seen a lot worse. Indeed, the only thing I could have genuinely done without was the exploitation of Native American culture, a plot element that should have been completely unnecessary given the number of Jersey Devil origin stories that don’t have anything to do with indigenous people. Mildly amusing

Review – The Mummy’s Kiss

Okay, this one was my fault. One look at the box should have told me that this was soft-core porn rather than an actual mummy movie. Sure, there’s a mummy in it briefly at the beginning, but it’s almost immediately magically transformed into a topless woman. From there on out it’s a quasi-rip of the Fraser/Weisz mummy movies only with a pseudo-lesbian twist. And though I have little use for soft-core smut, I’ll confess to being at least a little peeved to discover that the tape rented from Hollywood Video is missing most of the sex scenes (or at least so I suspect, considering that anything that looks like a sex scene gets cut abruptly short, in at least one case leaving a gap in the plot). I wanted a mummy movie, but once denied that I guess I would have preferred to at least gotten what I did end up renting however dreadful it turned out to be. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The Endurance

Despite the aspect ratio, this comes across as a PBS production. A slickly-produced member of the species, but a public TV artifact nonetheless. That notwithstanding, this is an excellent documentary about the ill-fated Shackleton expedition. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that despite the hardships faced by the crew – especially after they were forced to abandon their ice-locked ship – they managed to save a vast quantity of motion picture and still film of their experiences. I found the fates of the expedition’s dogs and cat a little hard to take, but other than that the production was nothing short of fascinating. How anyone could survive for nearly two years under such conditions is almost beyond imagining. This is a must-see for anyone with an interest in Antarctica or the Age of Exploration or just a general curiosity about the outer limits of human endurance. Worth seeing

Review – Piñata: Survival Island

I’ve got to start paying closer attention to video boxes. Around midway through watching this stinker I grabbed the box, and yes there it was, the word “piñata,” in smaller type than “Survival Island” but nonetheless unmistakably there. We rented this at least in part so a friend who wanted to be able to claim he’d seen every Jamie Presley movie ever made could move one step closer to his goal. And on that front, mission accomplished. Beyond that, however, there’s not much reason to sit through this stinker. The acting is abysmal, the script almost nonexistent, and the production so cheap that they actually had to use video effects to make it look like an ATV was on fire rather than just setting an ATV on fire. I expect it probably goes without saying, but I’ll go ahead and say it anyway: the killer piñata is about as scary as, well, a piñata made menacing by bad video game graphics. It’s not quite bad enough to be funny, but it does come close. See if desperate

Review – Chicago

If you go into this expecting a Bob Fosse musical starring Renee Zellwegger, Richard Gere and Catherine Zeta-Jones, you’re going to get exactly what you expect. The production’s expensive and elaborate, but still at its heart its just a big Broadway musical. Zellwegger does a fine job as Roxy the homicidal ingénue, and Gere matches her as her smarmy lawyer. Zeta-Jones doesn’t have quite the screen presence her co-stars enjoy, but she can dance the steps well enough. The supporting cast is solid as well, especially Queen Latifah. Upshot: if you like musicals you’re in business, because this is a fine example of the genre. Worth seeing

Review – Identity

Do writing teachers no longer do the lesson about not writing shaggy dog stories? If not, they seriously need to consider restarting the practice. This movie starts out as a Hitchcock/Serling style thriller about a group of 11 people trapped together by unlikely circumstances in a motel in the middle of nowhere. One by one they’re murdered a la the explicitly-referenced Agatha Christie novel not to mention dozens of other closed-environment murder thrillers (though the gore here is somewhat more graphic than in most of the older productions that take this same path). As the cast thins, the remaining characters discover that they’ve got an unnatural number of trivial things in common. And then … well, then comes the plot twist that made me almost entirely lose interest in the whole show. I guess it was original enough, but it made the drama a little less than compelling. The acting was fine, production values were solid, and even the dialogue wasn’t the end of the world. The movie was just undone by its own plot. See if desperate

Review – They

Somewhere around midway between Darkness Falls and previous Wes Craven effort A Nightmare on Elm Street lies this mediocre production. In keeping with 2003’s official theme – movies that have great premises that never quite seem to pay off – the wind-up is much better than the pitch. The thesis is that night terrors aren’t just bad dreams; rather, they’re a window into a dark dimension full of evil demon things. But when the demon things turn out to be something between big bats and pinky mice with old men’s heads, they start to seem a great deal less menacing. They manage to get a couple of decent booga-booga shots out of the monsters, but not much else. The production is further defeated by the lead actor, who does a passable – if somewhat over-wrought – job as a woman descending into madness. Trouble is, we seem to be intended to believe that she isn’t really crazy and that her “delusions” are actually things from beyond out to cart her off to their evil realm. So when she acts like she’s completely nuts, it sort of defeats the purpose. Unless, that is, you go with the alternate “Wizard of Oz” ending available on the DVD. Mildly amusing

Review – The Life of David Gale

There’s a big problem with movies that put all their eggs in the mystery thriller surprise twist basket: they’ve got to walk a razor-fine line between twists so obvious they aren’t surprising and twists so surprising they end up coming across as ridiculous. I’ve griped heavily in the past about the latter, so perhaps when confronted with the former I shouldn’t gripe too much. But I’m afraid I’m going to anyway. The surprise twist at the end of this production is so completely set up early on that the audience spends the whole rest of the show waiting for the set-up to pay off or for the filmmakers to find a way to keep the plot from going in the obvious direction. Briefly summarized, the picture tells the story of an anti-death penalty activist who finds himself on death row after being convicted of murdering one of his colleagues. Kevin Spacey and Kate Winslett do their usual craftspersonlike work in the leads, but they’re just not given all that much to work with. Mildly amusing

Review – Daredevil

So okay, I guess after Spider-Man they must just figure that any super-hero crammed into a couple of hours’ worth of movie will be just as good. Guess not. One of the problems here (and it cropped up in The Hulk as well) is that the “origin” sequence had to be done as back-story rather than flowing conveniently into the main plot. But that’s only where the trouble starts. The next problem is Ben Afleck as the hero. This guy seems to lose more charm with each successive project, and considering the short supply he started with and the number of movies he’s made, that’s just not good. Then there’s the Kingpin, an odious white criminal played in this movie by a black man. And don’t even get me started on Colin Ferrell. On top of all that, there’s the hackneyed plot and the ineffective special effects. Really it’s too bad. I kinda liked the old Daredevil comics. See if desperate

Review – The Hours

Three interwoven stories, only one of which was worth a darn. Nicole Kidman actually does a solid job as Virginia Woolf. The plot’s a standard story about a brilliant woman suffocated by her well-meaning but ignorant husband, but it’s touching stuff. Odd, then, that the other two present such awkward treatments of women that they effectively undo the work carefully woven by the Woolf strand. The 1950’s plot dwells on a woman who appears to be emotionally scarring her young son thanks to her suicidal neurosis, and the contemporary plot brings that scarring to fruition when the boy-now-grown-to-a-man, driven by AIDS and ennui, decides to kill himself in front of his own personal Mrs. Dalloway. The final product (again with the exception of the Woolf plot) reeks of gay-man-who-thinks-he-understands-women, an NPR-ish no-really-I-care-about-your-feelings charade that isn’t ultimately any more sensitive to its female characters than the average episode of “The Man Show.” Mildly amusing

Review – Gangs of New York

If only Martin Scorcese had done a better job making up his mind what he wanted out of this movie, he might have done a better job getting it. In part it’s a historical drama with a distinct Luc Sante flavor. In part it’s a largely unsuccessful Leonardo DiCaprio / Cameron Diaz romance, and in part it’s just a great big overblown action movie. It might have worked as any one of the three (well, maybe not the romance), but crammed together the elements just get in one another’s way. And given the amount of space available to fit everything in, the conflict took some doing. Daniel Day Lewis doesn’t help matters much, using a genuinely dreadful Marlon Brando impression to ham it up as the villain. And then there’s DiCaprio as the hero in a revenge plot so silly they should have called his character Inigo Montoya. Some of the art direction is sort of interesting, but even that more often than not ends up undone by the ham-handed direction, the scenery falling victim to the scenery-chewing. The Civil War era history of the Five Points had more than a little potential, but except in rare moments the production doesn’t live up to the promise. Mildly amusing

Review – The Hindenburg

Despite the relatively low loss of life, the conflagration captured on film when the pride of Germany’s dirigible fleet caught fire is dramatic enough to keep this disaster at least interesting enough to make a movie out of it decades later. George C. Scott stars as a Luftwaffe officer assigned to ferret out a saboteur aboard what turns out to be the final flight of the Hindenburg. Various suspects crop up during the voyage, so many in fact that it’s almost a shame when the bomb-planter is finally uncovered. As conspiracy movies go this one has trouble competing with other events that had a slightly greater impact on world events (though I suppose folks in the blimp industry might beg to differ). Still, it’s an entertaining story in a JFK meets Titanic kind of way. Mildly amusing

Review – Freddy vs. Jason

I think they’re on to something here. Next they should pit Michael Myers against Leatherface. Then the winner can play Jason for the all-time championship. They could even have a Seniors Tour and get Dracula to battle Jack the Ripper. Novelty aside, this is more than a little sub-par even by the relatively lax standards set by previous entries in both series. I kinda liked the Freddy caterpillar, but beyond that the effects were uninspiring. The gore was amateurish, and the gratuitous nudity early on didn’t exactly make up for it. Overall the production had a lot more in common with the Friday series than the Nightmare set, particularly in the distinct lack of engaging characters among the victims. I guess I’ve seen worse horror movies, but given this movie’s potential – not to mention all the hype – I hoped for a little more than I got. Mildly amusing

Review – SWAT

I swear these things are being written by machines. Only a computer could pack this many clichés and predictable plot twists into less than two hours’ worth of movie. But hey, why not? Computers do most of our special effects. They’ve even replaced actors in some recent Hollywood successes. Surely writers couldn’t be that far behind. The product of this miracle of scriptwriting technology is an action movie made entertaining almost exclusively by the quality of the gun battles. Guys in particular need to take care to stay clear of football games and weightlifting for at least 24 hours prior to taking in this flick in order to avoid testosterone poisoning. But surprises that wouldn’t surprise a 12-year-old notwithstanding, at least it wasn’t boring. Mildly amusing

Review – A Letter to Three Wives

Against my better judgment I found myself being drawn into this dated drama about three post-WW2 wives musing about their relationship woes. Sure, it’s full of the sexism and racism typical of the period, but there’s more to it than that. Our three protagonists jointly receive a letter from a woman from all their husbands’ pasts informing them that she’s run off with one of their husbands. Throughout a day trip with some school girls the trio is left to muse about their various relationship woes (war bride married above her station, career woman married to underachieving scholar, and gold-digger who actually loves her sugar daddy), each anxiously waiting to find out if she’s the one. Oddly enough, it doesn’t turn out to be quite as misogynist as it sounds. Further, the script is clever and the acting for the most part up to the job. Though I suppose this isn’t normally the sort of thing I’d seek out, I’m not a bit sorry I saw it. Mildly amusing

Review – House of 1000 Corpses

I didn’t bother to count, but I’m willing to bet they didn’t make it all the way to 1000. Unless, of course, you count all the poor audience members who were bored to death sitting through this stinker. This is one of those movies where it’s hard to pick the worst part of the production. The lousy acting? The spastic, bad-music-video editing? The lame excuses for sex and gore? No, though it’s a close race, I think we have a clear winner in the script. The plot – to the extent that there is one – is largely borrowed from other movies that weren’t all that good to begin with, and the dialogue can really only have been generated by the mental and moral equivalent of Joe Eszterhas after someone hit him in the head with a hammer several times. Honestly, this sorry excuse for a slasher movie comes across as writer/director Rob Zombie deliberately making fun of anyone stupid enough to willingly sit through this dull nonsense. Unfortunately, judging by all the hype he’s got a good-sized number of willing dupes. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The Quiet American (2002)

Parts of this movie are really good, and parts are more than a little on the uninteresting side. That’s because roughly half the movie is devoted to early 50s political intrigue in Indochina, and the other half is squandered on a thoroughly boring love triangle between an aging English journalist, his Vietnamese mistress and a young American economic advisor who may be more than he seems. Sure, the romance is obviously supposed to be an allegory about the desires of colonialists old and new to possess the inscrutable East, but that doesn’t make the romantic comings and goings any more entertaining than the average soap opera. However, the espionage thriller aspects of the production are more than enough to make up for the sappy soap, especially if you’re like me and you start with at least a little interest in the subject matter. Mildly amusing

Review – Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines

Hooray once again for computer-generated special effects. The robots in this one look a lot less like puppets than they did the first two times around. The action’s also more than a little slicker. And the post-Sept. 11 ending’s sure a far cry from Cameron’s episodes. But somehow it’s as if the cinema gods demand that overall quality be a constant and that gains in one area must be counter-balanced by reductions in others. As a result, the characters are considerably less engaging, a matter that isn’t helped by the drop in acting quality. The script’s also a bit on the weak side. At least the movie itself wasn’t as bad as the ads; TV spots made this look like an action comedy, and as a result I very nearly didn’t bother to go see it. I guess I’m at least a little glad a lazy summer Friday gave me enough incentive to overcome my fears. Mildly amusing

Review – Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl

So now Disney’s making movies out of its theme park rides. What’s next, The Haunted Mansion? Or maybe Space Mountain? Well, count me out of the potential audience for the EPCOT movie. This one, on the other hand, wasn’t too bad. Johnny Depp does an entertaining job as the slightly mentally “off” anti-hero, matched by Geoffrey Rush as the villain. The romance is a little awkward, but the animated ghost pirates more than make up for it. Overall this was a pleasantly diverting piece of brain candy. (Oh, and just for what it’s worth, I wrote this review before I found out that Disney was indeed releasing a movie version of The Haunted Mansion. I suppose Space Mountain the Motion Picture is probably next.) Mildly amusing

Review – Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

If you liked the first one, well, here’s another dose of it. The formula’s pretty well set, right down to the de rigeur Quidditch match. So most of what I said about the last one applies here as well. I was interested to see Rowling attempt to address the elitism question by assigning racist motives to some of the evil characters. Other than that, however, it’s familiar characters in familiar situations with familiar results. Mildly amusing

Review – The Vault of Horror

This is a more-than-worthy follow-up to the 1972 version of Tales from the Crypt. True, there’s nothing quite as good as motorcycle-riding scary skeleton from the first one, but overall the technical and plot quality of this set is at least a little better. Two of the five vignettes depend at least in part on awful racist clichés about how “swarthy people” possess magical powers and thus should not be messed with. And one hinges on a level of sexism that’s downright laughable 30 years later. But if you can get past these dated drawbacks, there’s more than a little Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors-style amusement to be had. Mildly amusing

Review – The Day Reagan Was Shot

To this day the memory of the time when this nincompoop was in control of our country is still enough to send shivers up my spine. And I don’t count myself vastly comforted by this made-for-cable movie’s revelation that most of the people around Reagan were just as stupid as he was, at least when it came to dealing with the crises that arose after the President was shot by a Jodie-Foster-loving nutbar. This movie focuses on the problems in leadership that arose while Reagan underwent surgery, particularly Alexander Haig’s now-legendary “power grab.” The plot’s reliance on Haig as a character makes Richard Dreyfuss an especially odd choice for the role. He’s clearly cast against type, and if the producers were hoping that this would be one of those quirky-yet-effective choices then they hoped in vain. Oh, and while we’re talking about the producers, I note that Oliver Stone was among their ranks. The box copy banked on his presence to market this as a movie along the lines of JFK, but though there were several elements of Hinkley’s attempt on Reagan that might have suggested at least some sort of conspiracy, none of them appear here. Instead this is a bush league tragedy of errors, an unflattering portrait of an unpleasant moment in an unfortunate time in our nation’s history. Mildly amusing

Review – Dark Blue

If this worked in L.A. Confidential, it’s bound to work here, right? Heck, they even got James Elroy to write the story. Unfortunately, the brutal cop violence and racism that worked to good dramatic effect in 1950’s Los Angeles waver between uninteresting and downright offensive within the context of the Rodney King riots. The plot is a standard Elroy yarn about corrupt cops struggling with their ambitions, failed relationships and general morality. The cast isn’t the end of the world. But what really kills the story – aside from the conscious and unconscious bigotry – is the script. Honestly, this production features some of the most poorly-developed characters spouting some of the most dreadful dialogue I’ve ever heard. See if desperate

Review – The Hulk

Though I’m bound to be disappointed by the response to this movie, I still hold out the hope that this will be the final proof in many movie-goers’ minds that Ang Lee is a drastically overrated hack. I concede that I may not be the best person to judge this flick’s appeal to Hulk fans inasmuch as I was never among their number even as a kid. To this day I don’t see much merit in a character who alternates between ineffectual nerd and brainless bruiser. Nonetheless, I sat down in the theater prepared to be won over by the experienced cast and expensive effects. Unfortunately, Lee squanders both on a genuinely dreadful script. Endless dwelling on back-story and exposition constantly bog down the action. The audience is constantly discouraged from identifying with any of the characters. And by the end even the basic plot logic has disintegrated so badly that even the smashing and explosions can’t keep things interesting. Just about the only fun I had with this was an occasional cameo (Stan Lee and Lou Ferrigno in the same shot, for example) or nod to the comic book or TV series. Oh, and it was also mildly entertaining to watch the lengths to which they had to go to keep the Hulk from ever killing anyone (not to mention the implausibility of whatever fortuitous circumstance happened to keep his pants on). Overall the movie might have picked up at least one point for technical quality, but even that small merit is offset by the frequent, mean-spirited cruelty to animals. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – 28 Days Later

This is hands-down the best zombie movie that’s come out in ever so long a time. Elements present in previous outings come together here for the first time. The zombie logic is consistent and plausible. The characters are realistic and sympathetic (or not, as their roles demand). Production values are neither too cheap nor too slick. And best of all, the monsters themselves are genuinely scary. To be sure, the director’s handling of some of the technical details – particularly soundtrack and pace – occasionally leave a little to be desired. I could also have done without the ending. But such minor setbacks are easily forgiven in light of the gripping scenes when the “infected” make an appearance. Worth seeing [I should also note that nearly six years after seeing this in theatrical release I encountered a 1981 BBC miniseries version of The Day of the Triffids. The resemblance between the two productions is uncanny.]

Review – Jason and the Argonauts

Considered by many to be the height of Ray Harryhausen’s career, this certainly has all the usual hallmarks of a Dynamated production. In other words, show up for the special effects, but don’t feel like you have to stay for the rest of the movie. And as usual, the animated monsters are sprinkled thin throughout a lot of cheap scenery-chewing that would otherwise barely pass muster as a gladiator flick. Talos isn’t bad; indeed, he’s at least a little scary right when he first starts to move. The harpies are cool if a little indistinct. But of course the real stars of the show are the skeleton warriors who don’t show up until the very end. Worth seeing

Review – Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger

Though not Ray Harryhausen’s finest moment, this one’s got some good effects. I’m especially fond of the fire demons, which call to mind the famous skeletons from Jason and the Argonauts (though they’re too early in the movie and last too briefly on screen to have the same impact). I’m also fond of the Minoton (in fact, I’ve got a small one on my bookshelf). Beyond the effects, this is a fairly typical fantasy flick, notable only for juvenile antics. Still, the Dynamation as usual makes it all worthwhile. Mildly amusing

Review – Sanitarium

One of the things that keeps me from pursuing my nearly life-long dream of making movies is the nightmare dread that if I ever actually gave it a try that it would come out as sloppy, amateurish and just generally bad as this. Of course, I’m at least capable of stringing two coherent thoughts together, so by the looks of things I’d have a leg up on the bozos that wasted magnetic media on this muddled mess. Somewhere in here there’s some sort of story about mentally ill people being treated with an experimental drug that causes deadly side effects. Not a bad concept. Unfortunately it’s completely smothered under a suffocating pile of awful writing, bad camerawork, bad effects, bad editing, bad acting and bad just about anything else you can think of. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Deadly Species

Wow, Predator with women. Better yet for the likely target audience, women who take their shirts off. Easily amused teenage boys may consider this a must-rent, but most of the rest of us won’t get an awful lot out of this outing. The story’s something about a group of archaeologists looking for a McGuffin in the Everglades, little suspecting that their rich sponsor and his male companion are merely using the expedition as a pretext for a hunt for guys in cheap rubber suits and/or the Fountain of Youth. Production values could have been worse for something shot straight on video, but otherwise this is a missable experience. See if desperate

Review – Time After Time

As high concept goes, this is one of the highest. H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) actually manages to construct a working time machine. But it’s just his bad luck that one of his dinner guests turns out to be Jack the Ripper (David Warner) in desperate need of a fast getaway. Further plot twists find both men transported to 1979, where the killer goes back to work while the author tries to catch him and drag him back to the 19th century. One of the more interesting moments in sci fi history occurs when protagonist and antagonist meet face-to-face in the latter’s hotel room and they discuss how closely their respective outlooks on life coincide with the future into which they’ve been thrust. The rest is an entertaining action movie and not much more. Mildly amusing

Review – Bloody Sunday

My hat’s off to the folks who put this together if for no other reason than this is the only time in recent memory that anyone’s managed to do the whole Peter Watkins fake-documentary-recreation-of-historical-event and actually pull it off. And goodness knows they aren’t the only ones who’ve tried. I can’t accurately describe this as an entertaining movie, because the subject matter is too damn depressing and the recreation of the events surrounding the Bloody Sunday Massacre is too vivid to make this any fun to watch. I suppose that pro-English critics might point out that this is an Irish production and thus may not exactly do justice to the British paratroopers who shot unarmed marchers. Of course, that might raise the question about what exactly would be justice for the paras. I found it helpful to turn on the captions, inasmuch as the accents, frequently heavily laced with slang, are sometimes difficult to understand. I also thought including all of an extended live performance of U2’s song about the massacre at the end of the movie (which required keeping a black screen up even after the credits finished rolling) was sort of excessive. Otherwise this is an outstanding film. Worth seeing

Review – Invasion

The human race in danger from a microorganism from outer space that works like an infection that takes over our bodies and turns us into aliens? Yes folks, here’s a TV dinner version of The Thing with a hearty dose of Robin Cook’s medical mumbo-jumbo thrown in for good measure. In order to stretch it out to nearly three hours (no doubt so it could run as a mini-series) they’ve packed in a lot of extraneous plot twists and unnecessary characters. And the effects aren’t especially special. That aside, I suppose I’ve seen worse. Mildly amusing

Review – Beneath Loch Ness

In the immortal words of Groundskeeper Willie: “Ach! Back to the loch with you, Nessie!” Seriously, a legend as potentially cool as the Loch Ness Monster deserves a much better horror movie than this turned out to be. It’s not that this is a terrible movie or anything. The monster’s kind of scary as cheap CGI creatures go. The suspense sequences are ineptly executed, but every once in awhile there’s a minor thrill to be had. The acting’s not great, but for a horror movie it’s not the worst I’ve ever seen. In other words, this isn’t a huge disappointment. I just think that given what they had to start with they could have come up with something better. Mildly amusing

Review – Darkwalker

A haunted house that’s actually haunted. A scheming owner. Teenagers right and left. I kept expecting Shaggy and Scooby to pull up in the Mystery Machine at any moment. Actually, even cartoon crime fighters would have been a welcome relief from the relentless parade of rubber monsters and slasher movie clichés. And just because you don’t have much of a production budget doesn’t mean that you have to pepper your script with dialogue so bad that even the personal friends who agreed to appear in your movie mouth it with I-can’t-believe-I’m-saying-this grimaces on their faces. See if desperate

Review – Finding Nemo

Fish certainly seem to lend themselves well to the whole Pixar animation thing. They’re colorful, geometric, and tend to move in ways easy to simulate on computers. Slap a typical Disney plot line on top of the animation and you’ve got … well, a typical Disney movie. Actually, there are a lot of small, humorous touches to be found throughout that make the experience a treat above and beyond the usual bag of tricks. Indeed, the details were almost enough to offset the spouse/parent death that led the parade. The DVD also includes some worthwhile extras. Mildly amusing

Review – The Recruit

Okay, this explains a lot. I’ve been wondering why spy movies have been using other agencies (particularly the NSA) in plots of the sort that almost always used to call for the CIA. I thought it probably had something to do with “the Company” becoming a cliché and movie makers looking for something a little fresher. But as it turns out – at least if this outing is any indication – that folks are bypassing the former spymasters because now they’re focusing on some of the most phenomenally boring high jinks ever. The story has something to do with an obnoxious old prima donna teacher playing brain games with an obnoxious young recruit at the Agency’s training facility. There’s some kind of sinister software smuggling going on here, but to be honest I lost interest in it around midway through and watched the back half of the movie out of the corner of my eye while I put a bookshelf together. Sad, too. I can remember a day when Al Pacino was good enough to keep me interested even in a bad script. Well, the next time he phones in a performance he needs to phone it in to someone else. See if desperate

Review – Star Trek: Nemesis

How can a movie with this many fighting space ships possibly be this dull? I expect fans of the Next Generation cast will like this entry as much as the rest of them (not to mention the further “adventures” that are sure to follow). However, for those of us who aren’t instantly enthralled by the characters from the newer TV series, it might have been nice to have had a bit more of a plot. The story gets rolling okay (if somewhat implausibly), but then it just doesn’t go anywhere. More than that I expect I can’t say without giving away too much. And believe me, this movie needs to keep as many secrets as it can. Without the “surprise” twists, it just doesn’t have much going for it. On the other hand, maybe I’m just disappointed because the trailers made it seem like the nemesis mentioned in the title was going to be a lot more sinister than it turned out to be. See if desperate

Review – Die Another Day

Nah, that’s okay. Go ahead and die now if you feel like it. As bad as death sucks, it can’t be much worse than this script. All the usual Bond elements are here: implausible action, implausible gadgets, implausible sex, and plenty of gratuitous explosions. The effects are good, obviously much better than the older episodes in the series. But the plot – some muddled mess about using a space laser to blow up mines in Korea’s DMZ – leaves something to be desired. And while I concede the dialogue in these things has never exactly been Shakespeare, this time around it’s exceptionally bad. Or maybe I’m just getting too old for Bond flicks. I’m certainly old enough to resent the inclusion of “London Calling” on the soundtrack, though perhaps if I even vaguely thought it was intended to be ironic I’d be more tolerant. And finally, I know the Bond series is under pressure to respond to Vin Diesel and all, but really the NSA stuff – not to mention the surf commandos – was a bit ill-conceived. See if desperate

Review – Wrong Turn

The biggest wrong turn here is whatever twist of fate takes you into a room where this movie is being shown. I guess it would be really easy to dismiss this as a cheap combination of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Deliverance (and no, just because they mentioned the latter movie by name doesn’t transform it from a rip-off to a homage). But I’ll go a step or two further: the scariest part of this whole picture is the opening credits. The whole rest of the show is a thoroughly predictable alternation between booga-booga shots and annoying, ill-paced chase scenes. Oh, and when the end credits start to roll let them go for a few seconds. Otherwise you’ll miss the “epilogue” that sets up an unless-God-is-merciful-or-the-profits-are-low sequel. See if desperate

Review – Zombi 3

Hey everybody, let’s play Stupid Zombie Movie Bingo! Here’s how it works: everyone get a Bingo card (or make your own grid) and randomly write the names of George Romero movies in the squares. If you run out of Romero flicks, jot in the names of Romero “homages” such as Return of the Living Dead. Then watch this awful stinker – ostensibly directed by zombie shlockmeister Lucio Fulci – and mark off every time you see an element “borrowed” from one of the pictures on your card. First one to Bingo wins! Seriously, that’s about the only way you’re going to get much amusement out of this dreadful farce of a movie. Fulci was supposed to have been seriously ill during filming, so that might be at least part of an excuse. And to be fair, there are one or two genuinely oogy zombie shots. But the rest is bad actors delivering bad dialogue twisted around a bad story line. See if desperate

Review – The Cruel Sea

In the mood for a two-fisted tale of men and ships during the Battle of the Atlantic? Then boy are you in the right place. The movie remains true to the Nicholas Monsarrat novel, which I finished reading just a week or so before I saw the film version. Thus I liked the latter if for no other reason than having the chance to actually see some of the ships described in the former. Though history buffs may get more out of this than fans of things like character and plot, if you come in looking for an almost documentary feel and adopt a tolerance for the manly-man baggage attached to the core drama, you shouldn’t walk away disappointed. Mildly amusing

Review – The Demon Within

It’s hard to say exactly where the blame for this one lies. Perhaps the production was doomed from the start by a decision early in the process to squash a serial killer, a demon, and around a dozen other horror movie clichés into the same movie. Then they made the decision to emphasize sex in some of the most spectacularly un-sexy ways imaginable. Then they hired Jeff Fahey, who’s clearly seen better days, to play the demon-possessed, schizophrenic ex-priest, ex-actor serial killer. And so it went from there. If nothing else, they might at least have re-thought the decision to make the whole show pointless and boring. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Darkwolf

I suppose that if the box said “Dullwolf” they’d have trouble renting it even to suckers like me. I like a good werewolf story, but this is so far from good that even I can’t find much charity in my heart for it. The plot is some stupid mish-mash about a hyper-werewolf – a thing that spends half its time as a blow-fish biker and the other half as a big rubber dog – who needs to mate with … oh, never mind. The plot’s not important. All you need to know is that if you like characters and themes more appropriate to a vampire role-playing game, this one may be for you. Or if you like computer animation effects that wouldn’t pass muster in a Playstation update of Altered Beast, this one may be for you. Or even if you’re just too young to rent real pornography, this one may be for you. Otherwise probably not. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The Vault

Okay, imagine that you’re a creepy night watchman and that your only job for all eternity is to keep folks from opening a vault in the basement of an old school and letting Evil roam free. Now imagine that mere days before the school is scheduled to be torn down (presumably burying the Evil forever) a group of meddling kids shows up. Do you 1. stand diligently outside the door and make sure nobody comes near it, or 2. wander aimlessly around the building telling eerie stories to the kids’ chaperone? Decisions, decisions. Under different circumstances I’d applaud Full Moon for casting dim-witted black teens to play roles that would normally go to dim-witted white teens. Unfortunately the film-makers appear to be making casting decisions no so much out of a sense of multiculturalism but rather as part of a tasteless scheme to exploit slavery, inner-city crime and other real-world wrongs to make their crappy ghost story resonate. It didn’t work. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Life Is Beautiful

I confess that I didn’t come into this experience with any expectation that I was going to like it. In general European comedies don’t do that much for me. However, there have been some notable exceptions over the years, and this is one of them. Judging only by clips and trailers, I would have guessed that I’d find Roberto Benigni extremely annoying, but oddly enough he’s kind of endearing in a silly, grows-on-you sort of way. The first half (or so) of the movie is a Chaplin-esque screwball comedy about a free-spirited waiter’s adventures in pre-World War Two Italy. Only occasionally do dark jabs at the nation’s descent into Fascism intrude upon the light-hearted, romantic flavor of the film. But then the production does an abrupt about-face as our hero, his wife and their son are sent to a concentration camp. The rest of the movie is one grim graveyard joke after another. For the most part it’s charming and sad in equal parts, but every once in awhile I found myself musing about Jerry Lewis’s legendary, unreleased Holocaust comedy. Worth seeing

Review – Django Unchained

This might have been a much better movie with a different director at the helm. As ultra-violent action movies go, I’ve seen a lot worse. This even manages – or at least attempts – to make some points about racism here and there. The trouble is that Quentin Tarantino gets so caught up trying to make a loving tribute to 70s era exploitation movies that he sometimes seems to forget to tell a story in the process. Mildly amusing

Review – Dragonfly

Sit back, relax, and get ready for some serious dead spouse action. Kevin Costner plays a doctor whose beautiful, brilliant, do-gooding wife is killed in a mudslide while doing good in South America. Soon after her death he begins to get indications that she’s trying to contact him from The Other Side. Or is it just his grief-stricken mind playing tricks on him? The answer’s nowhere near as interesting as it might have been. For all the money they spent on actors and production values, seems like the film-makers might have spared a buck or two on a script with more compelling characters and interesting (or at least plausible) plot twists. Mildly amusing

Review – Belphegor: The Phantom of the Louvre

Though this isn’t a terrible movie, the quality doesn’t quite justify the effort required to read subtitles. Instead it comes across as a strange middle ground between French comedy and SyFy horror. Though normally I don’t like to criticize movies by claiming I could have done better, in this case I genuinely believe that if I’d gotten permission to shoot in the Louvre after hours that I would have conjured something better than this. Mildly amusing

Review – The Grey Zone

Even by normal Holocaust movie standards this one’s more than a bit of a bummer. The main story – the true tale of a brief armed revolt among the crematoria sondercommando at Auschwitz – is genuinely fascinating. Further, the production comes complete with an ensemble cast of borderline A- and B-list stars who do an admirable job despite the against-type roles some of them caught. Indeed, the only real drawback is that the action and dialogue sometimes strongly reek of the stage play this production was before it made the jump to the big screen. Even the occasional dramatic stiffness is more than made up for by the unflinching portrayal of some of the worst aspects of concentration camp horror. Worth seeing

Review – Enigma

Caveat at the outset: if you’re not as instantly enthralled by codebreaking or World War Two sub stuff as I am, there’s a good chance you won’t get as big a kick as I got out of this movie. To be sure, a lot of screen time is taken up by a not-entirely-necessary soap opera romance somewhat interconnected with Bletchley Park’s efforts to crack the “Shark” Enigma code system and a mole’s attempts to inform the Germans about such efforts. Thus it practically goes without saying that this isn’t the sort of movie you can just turn on and watch out of the corner of your eye while you’re doing something else. Further, you get something pretty close to what you’d expect when Michael Apted directs and Tom Stoppard writes. Such relatively minor drawbacks aside, this is a fine piece of polished film-making. Worth seeing

Review – Catch Me If You Can

The whole time I was watching this movie I couldn’t help but wonder if it wouldn’t have been a better production in the hands of a talented indie rather than being helmed by the ever-grandiose Steven Spielberg. Of course Leonardo di Caprio and Tom Hanks didn’t help matters much; the former ran out of the boyish charm required for his role several years back, and the latter keeps trying a Boston accent that sounds more like the unwelcome resurgence of Forrest Gump. The story itself is entertaining in a when’s-the-con-man-protagonist-finally-going-to-get-caught sort of way, but the plot twists only sustain the production for roughly half its total running time. Mildly amusing

Review – Simone

Or “S1M0NE” if you prefer the studio’s hokey spelling. The premise here isn’t anything to write home about: a down-on-his-luck director of crappy art flicks can’t get any living actresses to appear in his movies, so through the beneficence of a dying computer genius he inherits a virtual star who becomes an overnight sensation. The high jinks that result aren’t exactly the height of hilarity. Whatever chance the story might otherwise have had is swiftly done in by the ham-handed direction and the sorry excuse for a script. However, the acting’s the real death of this flick. The newcomer they got to play the beloved-by-everyone digital babe is a real meat puppet, and whatever they expected to get out of Al Pacino in the Pygmalion role didn’t end up delivered. Lay that one squarely at Pacino’s doorstep; he almost literally stumbles through the whole production, appearing as if he constantly had to be heavily sedated to even get him on to the set of this barking dog. See if desperate

Review – X-Men 2

If you liked the first one, then here’s a couple of hours’ worth of the same. In fact, it would probably really help to see the first one first, because several of the characters are set up there and don’t get a lot of development here. Interesting – or at least novel – new things in this go-around include the ultra-religious Nightcrawler and a scene in which a teenage mutant must “come out” to his parents. Beyond that, however, lies only a continuation of the effects- and action-intensive comic book drama of the first. I guess the producers know how to please their audience. Mildly amusing

Review – Reversal of Fortune

Jeremy Irons and Ron Silver appear to be equally at home in their respective roles as Claus von Bulow and Alan Dershowitz in this dramatic re-creation of the latter’s efforts to get the former’s murder conviction overturned by the Rhode Island Supreme Court. Though the legal shenanigans are bound to entertain those who are entertained by such things, most of the non-lawyer amusement value featured herein is provided by Irons as the enigmatic von Bulow, particularly his deadpan delivery of the German aristocrat telling gallows humor jokes about himself. The moral of the story isn’t anywhere near as compelling or uplifting as the Dersh seems to think it is, but that doesn’t stop this from being a moderately compelling tale. Mildly amusing

Review – Auto Focus

Here’s the sad life and strange death of Bob Crane turned into Hollywood entertainment. Overall this comes across as a cautionary tale about the perils of an unhealthy obsession with sex, though one suspects that most “sex addicts” don’t end up murdered by their bisexual partners in crime. Greg Kinnear does a solid job as Crane, and Willem Dafoe actually does too good a job as video technician John Carpenter, the most likely suspect in Crane’s murder (though he was never convicted). If nothing else, this movie deserves the Caligula prize for taking an unflinching look at an unseemly subject. Well okay, there was one flinch where a blow job shot was blurred out. But otherwise this is an instant classic of the too-much-of-a-good-thing genre. Mildly amusing

Review – Caligula

What an interesting society we live in, where it takes an exploitation-meister like Bob Guccione to make an unflinching movie version of the brief, tyrannical reign of Rome’s most infamous emperor. Of course, if you’re watching the R-rated version, the movie’s a good deal less unflinching than the story really calls for. For some strange reason when the hard-core sex got cut out a lot of the violence (pretty tame stuff by later standards) and even some of the harmless plot points got tossed as well. But then on the other hand if you’re watching the unrated version then you get to see a bunch of extra sex that was cut in to help the movie play in the porn market after it failed to make it into major mainstream distribution. Somewhere between the two is probably the movie that should have been made, though you’ll have to use your remote with one cut or your imagination with the other in order to see it that way. In either event, you’re in for the uncomfortable experience of watching a talented cast struggle with awful dialogue and a version of history that’s been cranked around to dwell on the kinky elements (particularly Caligula’s not-exactly-brotherly love for his sister Druscilla). See if desperate

Review – Path to War

HBO presents the battle for Lyndon Johnson’s soul between Robert McNamara and Clark Clifford. The movie follows LBJ and his closest confidantes from the inaugural ball in 1965 to the President’s announcement that he wouldn’t run in 1968. As a result, much of the drama centers around McNamara and Clifford flip-flopping back and forth on the wisdom of continuing U.S. involvement in Vietnam. This isn’t exactly the height of John Frankenheimer’s directorial prowess. If nothing else, it’s a bit too full of Hollywood conceits, such as the implication that McNamara began to doubt the wisdom of the bombing campaign primarily as a result of witnessing Norman Morrison’s suicide (even if it’s true, it’s too theatrical an explanation). But the production is well crafted, and Alec Baldwin and Donald Sutherland do workmanlike jobs in their roles. Overall if 60s-era political intrigue entertains you then you’ll probably get a kick out of this effort. Mildly amusing

Review – Darkness Falls

As ghost stories go, this one’s not too bad. Of course, I’m not the world’s biggest ghost story fan, so take it for what it’s worth. The premise is a little thin: a disfigured woman murdered by townspeople a century earlier is still exacting her ghostly revenge upon the town’s children by assuming the role of an evil killer Tooth Fairy. The ghost herself is sort of cool, and the trick of defeating her by staying out of the darkness makes for some engaging plot twists (despite the fact that the plot device itself is more than a little “borrowed”). So by all means come for the spooky stuff, but don’t feel like you have to stay put during the story or character development scenes. They never amount to much. The deleted scenes on the DVD are a bit odd in that big chunks of them appear to have ended up in the movie itself. The disc also features a fakeumentary about the “real” legend that supposedly inspired the movie. Mildly amusing

Review – Blue Thunder

If you like car chases then step right up to the next level: helicopter chases. As action movies go, this is standard, almost formulaic fare. A heapin’ helpin’ of Roy Scheider as a PTS-suffering ‘Nam vet who flies choppers for the LAPD. A dash of Malcolm McDowell as a creepy government agent up to no good. A large dose of military helicopter converted to civilian use to aid with security during the 1984 Olympics. Coat with corporate conspiracy. Bake for 90 minutes. Let cool. Serve. Aside from some brief nudity and language, this might have worked quite well as a made-for-TV movie. However, the plot is too simple-minded and the chopper-centric action a bit too extensive for this show to provide much more than a few cheap thrills. Mildly amusing

Review – Secretary

Oddly enough, I think this is the most genuinely romantic movie I’ve seen in a long time. Sure, it’s got flaws. The portrayal of the sadomasochistic relationship between a lawyer and his secretary dwells a little too much on clichés. Likewise the protagonist’s attachment to self-laceration early in the story comes across as a mildly insensitive portrayal of mental illness. And how’s this for an unusual criticism: the plot lacks the elegant simplicity of the Mary Gaitskill short story upon which the movie is based. However, the lead characters actually seem to have some genuine affection for each other despite their somewhat outré way of expressing it. Perhaps exploring the clichés of S&M allowed the film-makers to abandon the clichés of the traditional Hollywood romance that bury so many other love stories. It also doesn’t exactly hurt that Maggie Gyllenhaal does a really good job in the female lead. James Spader (as her counterpart) is his usual charmless self, but his co-star more than makes up for him. Worth seeing

Review – Bloodthirst

“Legend of the Chupacabras” indeed. I think they should have gone ahead and called this one “Goatsuckers.” That at least would have been more in keeping not only with the monster in question but also with the cheap, video production values. Actually, I kinda hate to say anything bad about a movie that – however amateurish – seems so gosh darn sincere. Everyone involved clearly appears to be giving 100%, so who am I to fault them for coming up a bit short? And as amateur productions go, I’ve seen a lot worse. Sure, the script has problems (stiff dialogue, too many characters and subplots) and the effects aren’t very special. But honestly my only serious gripe is that with a folklore base as potentially cool as the chupacabra, it would have been really nice if they’d come up with something better than zombie vampires for bad guys. See if desperate