Review – The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

Boy did this plot fail to translate into the 21st century. The Frankenheimer original and the Condon novel upon which it was tightly based were masterpieces of cold war paranoia played out on the grand scale of national politics and in the smaller but more compelling realms of multi-dimensional characters who follow rational – or at least believable – motivations. But while the machinations of Communist powers were easy to buy (or at least consistent with the world as most Americans knew it in 1964), replacing reds with corporate baddies proves fatal to the story. Why should a big, Haliburton-esque cartel bother to put a brainwashed agent in the White House when in the real world such cabals have managed to get their own CEOs openly elected? Further, I was particularly disappointed by the brainwashing flashbacks. I didn’t expect anything as brilliant and groundbreaking as the original’s mind control nightmares, but I’d hoped for something a little more compelling than henna’d women brandishing tomatoes. And don’t even get me started on the ending. The cast was good, production quality was good, but it was all wasted on a movie that almost seemed to set itself up to fail. If this was really the movie they wanted to make, they should have packaged it as a remake of The Parallax View. See if desperate

Review – Bulletproof Monk

Chow Yun Fat once again lends his talents to an all-too-Hollywood martial arts action movie slash goofy buddy comedy. This one wasn’t quite as bad as Rush Hour in the offensive ethnic humor department, and a lot of the choreography was pretty good. But it’s still the story of an Asian kung fu master who takes a westerner under his wing for no readily apparent reason other than potential box office receipts. If they’d left the dumb white kid out and just focused on the Tibetan monk (Chow) pursued by an evil Nazi and his mercenary henchpersons, this would have been a much better movie. Mildly amusing

Review – 13 Ghosts

William Castle once again works his gimmick magic on what would otherwise have been a fairly mediocre movie. The plot here is some trivial gothic silliness about a family that inherits a haunted house. The only thing that stands out is a fascinating bit of casting, with Margaret Hamilton playing a housekeeper who may also be a witch. The gimmick is Illusion-O, sort of a hybrid of the red/blue 3D process in which ghosts are visible in the red lens but not (or very nearly not) in the blue. It isn’t Castle’s finest moment, but it’s kinda clever. The DVD release features one side with Illusion-O and one side without (though I expect watching it without the gimmick wouldn’t be as much fun). Castle originally intended for audiences to watch the special sequences through either a red or a blue filter, but not both at once. I got the movie via Netflix, and it didn’t come with a viewer at all (so I can’t say what you get if you buy the disc). However, I had an old pair of 3D glasses from the theatrical release of Nightmare on Elm Street Part 6, and they seemed to work okay. Indeed, the half red half blue effect gave Illusion-O a strangely psychedelic feel. Mildly amusing

Review – X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes

Roger Corman at his vintage best serves up the tale of a scientist who takes the dream of every kid who ever ordered X-Ray specs out of a comic book and makes it a horrifying reality. Ray Miland stars as a doctor who invents eye drops that give him the ability to see through solid objects. The initial results are that he becomes a better surgeon (because he can see into patients before he cuts them) and a bit of a perv at cocktail parties. From there, however, things get really weird. If only the effects had been a little better this might have been a better movie. The spectroscopic stuff isn’t bad by sixties standards (indeed, some of the shots reamin impressive considering how crude they are), but if Corman had only had 21st-century computer generated stuff he could have done something really innovative with this. As things stand, the plot’s not bad but the production is more than a little dated. That notwithstanding, the end still holds up after all these years, one of the few moments in movie history in which the last line of the production actually adds something significant to the overall experience (however, I note that on the DVD version the last line appears to be missing, which Corman discusses briefly on the commentary track). Mildly amusing

Review – Mr. Sardonicus

Classic William Castle. The movie itself isn’t worth much, just a low-budget tale of a cruel baron who enlists the aid of a famous neurosurgeon to fix his man-who-laughs face. But the twist comes at the end with the “punishment poll,” a supposedly interactive (decades before anyone thought of the term) chance for the audience to decide whether the villain should get off scott free or die horribly. Needless to say, Castle only shot the “die horribly” ending. Still, it was a nice gesture. Mildly amusing

Review – Golden Years

I liked this Stephen King miniseries despite not thinking there was really all that much to it. A janitor gets exposed to some kind of radiation crud that reverses the aging process. As he gets younger and younger, he struggles to sort out relationship problems with his wife while the couple and a handful of helper characters run from a psycho from a sinister government agency. Despite plot holes big enough to drive a Greyhound bus through, the production remains fairly entertaining throughout. Awfully hard on the animals, though. Mildly amusing

Review – Darkman 2: The Return of Durant

Durant (Larry Drake) may be back, but he’s about it. The switch from Liam Neeson to Arnold Vosloo is fairly indicative of the change in the whole thing: the first had class and originality, while the second one is reasonably well crafted but uninspiring. Once again our hero battles crime while he searches for the formula for non-light-sensitive artificial flesh so he can have a face for more than 99 minutes at a time. There’s some mish-mash in here about energy weapons, and a new scientist gets stirred in so Durant will have someone new to kill. But beyond that this is strictly leftovers. Mildly amusing

Review – Black Hawk Down

With such an interesting story to tell and such a gifted storyteller at the helm, this should have been a better movie. Visually this is Ridley Scott business as usual, with lots of jump cuts and heavy filter work. The MTV rah-rah should have made an interesting combination with the sad tale of an American military mission gone horribly wrong in Somalia. However, the story soon sinks under its own weight. Perhaps if the cast had been more tightly focused on a smaller group of characters, or at the very least not been so jam-packed with interchangeable 20-something white boy Hollywood hunks, it might have been easier to empathize with the protagonists. As it was, the whole thing comes across as stupid and random, accurate perhaps but not as genuinely tragic as it might have been. Mildly amusing

Review – Barry Lyndon

This is a visually stunning, technically brilliant, virtually unwatchable movie. If memory serves, this is the first big budget drama ever shot with film stock so sensitive that the whole thing was done with available light. Combine that with Stanley Kubrick’s natural gift for shot composition, and you get some of the most impressive images ever incorporated into a motion picture. Getting the Chieftains to do the soundtrack didn’t exactly hurt, either. Unfortunately, it almost seems like Kubrick decided that he didn’t want plot or character to interfere with his technical genius. So he employed his talent to make a movie out of a dreary old Thackery novel, a story so vastly uninteresting that it wouldn’t sustain a production half as long as this three hour monster. The acting is of similarly dubious quality; if nothing else, Ryan O’Neil is better suited to movies in which a young Drew Barrymore wants to divorce both her parents than to Napoleonic costume drama (especially given his inability to maintain a consistent accent). Thus while I admire the skill involved, there’s just no getting around the fact that no matter how beautiful it may be, minute after endless minute of watching British aristocrats pay their bills just doesn’t make a good movie. See if desperate

Review – The Bone Snatcher

The Thing relocated to the desert. Here’s another batch of leftovers that didn’t reheat especially well. The characters aren’t interesting, and the plot meanders so much that after awhile I kinda lost interest. The basic premise is that a group of scientist (or technicians and hangers-on) unearth some kind of creature that’s approximately half Thing and half flesh-eating ooze. Some of the monster effects were bush leagues cool in a big-black-blob-of-goo-with-a-skull-for-a-head kind of way, but that’s about it. See if desperate

Review – Being There

If this had been Peter Sellers’s last movie, there wouldn’t be a curse named after him. Certainly this is the last good movie he made, and it’s a quiet, subtle, high-quality capper to a legendary career. Sellers plays Chance the Gardner, a gentle, elderly, mentally-differently-abled gentleman who finds himself cast out into the cold, cruel world after the man he’d served his entire life passes away. Through a series of coincidences he ends up the toast of Washington, houseguest to a terminally-ill captain of industry, object of the old guy’s wife’s affection, advisor to the President, and accidental political pundit. Throughout he maintains a genuinely touching sense of innocence and simplicity, something that I usually find annoying but here found compelling. The odd yet oddly charming ending helped seal the deal. Worth seeing

Review – Jeepers Creepers 2

Jeepers creepers, where’d they get the money for this crap? We’re not even bothering with plots anymore, just enough story to give the characters some motivation. Beyond that it’s a bus full of high school football players and cheerleaders broken down on an isolated highway and served up like a big, yellow tin of sardines for the baddie from number one. At least this thing only awakens once every 23 years. Maybe that’ll mean we can go for another 23 before Jeepers Creepers 3. Heck, I could be dead by then. Gives me something to hope for, anyway. See if desperate

Review – Spider-Man 2

Okay, way too much character development. A little is fine; indeed, even in an action movie a little is necessary. But come on. Peter Parker’s a young man trying to balance the demands of his career with his personal life. The fact that his career happens to be “super hero” doesn’t make his prioritization woes radically more interesting. I also thought the ending worked too hard setting up number three. On the other hand, Alfred Molina does a great job as Dr. Octopus, backed up by some genuinely impressive octopus arm effects (though I do wish he’d been provided with a shirt a little more consistently). So aside from some pacing problems, this is a worthy follow-up to the popular original. Mildly amusing

Review – The Chronicles of Riddick

At least it wasn’t as boring as Pitch Black. Of course that’s due at least in part to the decision of the film-makers to steal from several different sci fi movies rather than limiting their pilferage to Alien. The main “homage” here is to the Borg, unfortunately proving that even good Star Trek is still Star Trek. Even the art direction – probably the high point of the picture – was all shamelessly derivative. Vin Diesel is his usual ham-handed self (but then what kind of hands would one expect a ham to have?). The script is bad, as is the acting. Toward the end I actually started to drift off, no mean feat considering I caught a matinee and wasn’t especially tired going in. I assume that isn’t the effect they were going for. See if desperate