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