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