Review – Matchstick Men

One of the most instantly fatal things that can ever happen to a movie about con men is when the story becomes predictable. The whole fun of these things is watching the schemes unfold, seeing how the games work, following along with the “matchstick men” as they make their dubious livings. I guess we just have to expect that we aren’t going to get two solid hours of rip-offs in progress, and perhaps I should be grateful that the script at least went with something offbeat: a con man with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Our protagonist (Nicolas Cage) longs for a stable family life, and his attempts to make peace with an estranged daughter don’t make the movie all that much more interesting. But the capper is that you can see the end coming a mile away, and for me at least that just sapped all the enjoyment out of waiting to see how it all turns out. The movie also suffers from Ridley Scott’s extremely self-conscious visuals, which I used to like a lot better than I do now. Mildly amusing

Review – Killer Shrews

Here’s a concept that works less and less the closer you look at it. As a general idea, there’s a lot of merit to making a movie about science gone bad. Goodness knows no end of better movies have been made around experiments with disastrous results. But things start to go wrong when the experiment in question is designed to produce giant shrews. The logic isn’t bad. I’m sure if shrews really were as big as the rug-draped dogs that play them in this movie, they’d probably be quite troublesome indeed. However, it’s just hard to get past the notion that the film-makers are trying to scare us with … well, with giant shrews. Even that might have survived if the production – particularly the script and acting – hadn’t been so awful. Thus the final product is good for not much more than a few laughs at the dreadfulness of it all. See if desperate

Review – Super Size Me

Watch as a preachy East Coast yuppie pukes after spending just three days trying to live off food that poor people eat all the time. The concept is sort of cute: an experiment to see if it’s possible for a healthy adult to survive for an entire month eating nothing but McDonald’s food. It picks up a few Michael Moore elements along the way, but even that wasn’t automatically fatal. The big problem here is that the audience is treated to an hour and a half worth of sanctimony about how terrible it is that we’re all slaves to evil fast food corporations with barely a moment’s thought to the racist, sexist, regionalist, discriminatory, and ever-so-pro-corporate assumptions upon which concepts like “ideal weight” are based. The production is entertaining in spots and I suppose well-intentioned at heart, but it just seems to miss its own point. See if desperate

Review – Hollywood Shuffle

It’s sad just how on-point this movie remains all these years after it first came out. Director/writer/star Robert Townsend became the hero of indie film-makers everywhere by financing this picture by running up a tab on dozens of credit cards and shooting without permits. He also does a great job of re-using cast (a few of whom later became stars in their own right, particularly a couple of Wayanses), not to mention props, sets, etc. But the real charm here is the script. Townsend finds several clever ways to use satire to criticize Hollywood’s race lines. Worth seeing

Review – The Bad News Bears

Anyone who played Little League baseball in the 70s is pretty much morally obliged to like this movie. Even if you didn’t, there are still plenty of entertaining moments in this tale of a down-and-out pool cleaner (Walter Matthau) who takes on the job of coaching a ball team full of misfits and losers. Along the way the story takes the de rigeur side-trips into serious exploration of the competitive nature of youth sports, but fortunately even these are usually delivered with the movie’s sarcastic sense of humor. Certainly this is a creature of its time; if nothing else, ten-year-olds with filthy mouths were a little more risqué in 1975 than they are now. But as kid flicks go, this is still one of the better ones. Worth seeing

Review – 10,000 Black Men Named George

For a Showtime production, this isn’t too bad. Here we have the tale of the founding of the Pullman Porter’s union and the various trials and troubles therewith. I suppose it comes across as a bit of a cartoon version, packed with virtuous union activists and evil, racist, corporate types and their thug henchmen; however accurate that might be, it seems like a typical Hollywood over-simplification. I also would have liked a little more screen time devoted to the plight of the porters themselves; the focus instead is almost entirely on the union organizers. That aside, however, the story here is just too good by itself to make too terrible of a movie. Mildly amusing

Review – Cold Creek Manor

This movie left me bitterly disappointed, and I blame the marketing campaign at least in part for letting me down. The ads for this clunker made it look like a haunted house picture of some kind, but instead it turned out to be sort of a Cape Fear thing in which a happy family is menaced by a ne’er-do-well with a not-entirely-justified grudge against them. Trouble is, I (generally at least) like the kind of movie I thought I was going to get. And worse, I hate the kind of movie this turned out to be. The gaggle of former-A-list actors didn’t help matters much. By the time our ex-con antagonist has murdered the girl’s horse and left it floating in the pool, this production had worn out what little welcome it might otherwise have enjoyed. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Return of the Living Dead 2

Cinemax cheated me. The guide said this was going to be Return of the Living Dead, but instead they served up this sequel. The first one was a minor classic of the zombie genre, but this one is little more than a mix of some of the elements and most of the cast (surprising, considering their characters tended not to survive to the end) from number one with an oh-too-kid-intensive story. Some of the makeup effects aren’t too bad, or at least they’re no worse than the first go-around. It’s just that the film-makers appear to be making fun of the genre and thumbing their noses at anyone who enjoyed part one. That sort of left me wondering who they thought the audience would be, not that anyone who makes an R-rated movie with a pre-teen protagonist is giving much thought to marketing. See if desperate

Review – Extreme Ops

Snowboarding thrill-seekers in the Alps shooting an ad for something or another. Serbian war criminal in the Alps along with his gang fleeing from the scene after faking his own death. The two groups collide. Result uninteresting. I can’t say the movie was disappointing, because it delivered pretty much exactly what it promised: lots of elaborate downhill stunts, some expensive pyrotechnics, a feeble excuse for a plot, and not much else. See if desperate

Review – Meet the Feebles

Recipe: start with a good-sized lump of "The Muppet Show." Add just a dash of “New Zoo Revue” and flavor to taste with “H.R. Pufnstuff.” Then stir in a heapin’ helpin’ of LSD. Not the good stuff, either. A big load of acid cut with horse tranquilizers and/or drain cleaner. And voila! Feebles. Puppets doing just about every disgusting thing you could imagine (and probably a thing or two that wouldn’t even have occurred to the more mild-mannered among us). The whole thing has a naughty-child-using-bad-words feel to it. It’s too bad the DVD doesn’t come with a director’s commentary from Peter “Lord of the Rings” Jackson. It would be a real hoot to spend an hour and a half listening to him mumble “I’m so sorry I made this” over and over. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Big Fish

This should play in a double bill with What Dreams May Come as a special treat for people who have too much happiness but not enough beauty in their lives. Tim Burton’s visual style is all over this movie, and when the focus is on the young Edward Bloom (Ewan McGregor) the story is charming if often a bit on the silly side. However, the bracketing story finds an aged Bloom (Albert Finney) on his deathbed while his adult son (Billy Crudup) struggles to come to grips with his father’s refusal to deal in reality. The message about the importance of fantasy – or at least the importance of telling a good story – is well made. It’s just sort of a depressing way to get the point across. Mildly amusing

Review – Hopscotch

A spy movie in which not a single person gets killed? Where’s the fun in that? Well, apparently there’s a great deal of fun to be had in this intriguing little story of an old-timer CIA agent who has a falling-out with his obnoxious boss and decides to publish his very-embarrassing memoirs. Walter Matthau is perfect for the lead role, and the rest of the cast does a solid job behind him. The most impressive thing about the picture (aside from the aforementioned lack of death) is the incredibly even mix of comedy and drama. It’s genuinely impossible to classify this either as a thriller with funny elements or a comedy with some serious espionage mixed in. Heck, even the script was good. Worth seeing

Review – Used Cars

This is the dumbest movie I think I’ll ever give four stars to. Yeah, it’s a sexist, juvenile, very 1980 comedy about salesmen caught in a used car dealership comedy of errors. But I can’t help it. This is one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. In particular I love the guerilla-pirate-TV ads for the car lot and just about anything with the mechanic and/or the dog. Hands down Kurt Russell’s finest non-Carpenter moment. Buy the disc