Review – The Incredibles

I liked this movie a lot more than I thought I was going to. The premise is clever: superheroes forced by liability lawyers to retire from crime fighting struggle to get by as normal people. Of course a new villain’s fiendish plot soon brings our heroes and their super-powered kids back into action. The animation is good, and even the voice talent isn’t too bad. It was also sort of refreshing to see a kid’s movie that wasn’t crammed full of thinly-veiled adult references. Even so, there’s enough silly yet charming humor to keep both younger and older audience members thoroughly entertained. Worth seeing

Review – Saw

Once again a serial killer with a strong urge to punish and more than a little too much time on his hands stalks sinners in the City of Filters and Jump Cuts. In contrast to Seven, however, Cary Elwes makes sort of a mediocre stand-in for Brad Pitt, Danny Glover does a good obsessive ex-cop but is still no Morgan Freeman, and there’s no Kevin Spacey at all. Just a lot of cheap gore and random brutality. Movies that depend almost entirely on the fiendish imagination of the villain should at the very least be a little more imaginative. Eerie puppets and foot sawing just don’t cut it. See if desperate

Review – Vampyr

Those with an interest in the historical development of the vampire sub-genre – or anyone just generally into early German cinema – should be glad that this one’s finally available on DVD. Many of the technical tricks Carl Theodor Dreier employs are nothing short of brilliant for 1932. However, be warned: the movie still has more than one foot firmly planted back in the silent era, and there are long stretches that don’t make great big oodles of sense. Certainly there’s nothing here as bloody or flashy as subsequent outings, but you can clearly see the seeds of many later pictures in this effort. Mildly amusing

Review – Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

All that money for actors and all they could come up with was a big, expensive clothes horse for art direction and special effects. To be fair, the look and feel of this show is genuinely impressive, once you get past the inherent discomfort of watching a movie in which every single shot has been filtered, effected or otherwise modified. The picture does an admirable job of bringing to the screen the future as it might have looked to pulp-schooled eyes in the 1930s. Unfortunately along with the cool aircraft and robots and all comes the pulps’ witless plots and cardboard characters. Applause to the filmmakers, cast and crew for producing exactly what they appear to have set out to do. It’s just unfortunate that their aim wasn’t a little higher. Mildly amusing

Review – 50 First Dates

Hey, let’s remake The Wedding Singer only with a bizarre medical twist. To be fair, this isn’t a total remake. But like its predecessor, this production relies heavily on the romantic tension of an unlikely relationship between characters played by Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. Here the frankly somewhat ridiculous complication is that Barrymore has a head injury that partially destroys her short-term memory in such a way that every night when she falls asleep she forgets everything that happened that day. Naturally that makes forming a relationship with Sandler more than a little tough despite their obvious mutual attraction. Some of the romance is cute, some of the jokes are funny, and some of the physical comedy works (especially Rob Schneider getting hit with a baseball bat). But overall this one’s just a little too silly for its own good. Mildly amusing

Review – The War Room

Though I can’t say for certain, I’m betting it’s more interesting to watch this movie in 2005 than it was after it first came out. Now that the Clinton presidency is history, it’s almost funny, almost quaint to see how simple it seemed behind the scenes as he campaigned in 1992. The real star of the show is James Carville, the manic, freakish mastermind behind the Clinton/Gore ticket. It’s strange how small the whole thing seems, more like a mayoral election than a run for President of the United States. Different times, too, when the Republicans ran a proven lemon and the Democrats actually had someone people could get excited about. This, then, is an interesting artifact of its time for anyone with an interest in reliving the experience. Mildly amusing

Review – Mighty Joe Young (1949)

I can practically hear the conversation between Robert Armstrong and his agent: “Ah jeez, Sid. Not another giant monkey movie!” “C’mon, Bob. It’s not like anyone’s exactly beating down your door with romantic lead roles at this point in your career. Take what you can get.” And so here he is, once again the sensationalist showman (though this time a nightclub owner rather than a movie producer) who finds an oversized simian in the wilds (Africa rather than an island) and figures that hauling the critter back to civilization (Los Angeles rather than New York) is his ticket to fame and fortune. And the pretty ingénue. And the lunk-headed and largely ineffectual hero. The key difference this time around is that the monster is actually the ingénue’s gentle pet, done in by culture shock more than bestial lust and rage. It’s almost like Kong remade by Disney (and of course decades later the Holy Rodent Empire actually took on the task by remaking this picture). Mildly amusing

Review – Nashville

This may have been interesting – even radical – back in the mid-70s. Decades later, more than two and a half hours of an ensemble cast improving away at the country music scene makes for some difficult viewing. It’s hard to say what works less: a gaggle of Hollywood types working without a script or a gaggle of Hollywood types pretending to be real people (or at least Tennessee bumpkins rather than “sophisticated” Californians). As a result most of the characters come across as caricatures, and the dialogue is often as mumbled and directionless as a Popeye cartoon. Though this isn’t a bad portrait of its era, overall it’s about as much fun as a drawn-out cocktail party where you don’t know anyone and everyone but you is stoned. See if desperate

Review - The Fall of the Roman Empire

I’m not completely sure the actual Roman Empire took as long as this movie’s running time to collapse. This golden oldie has at least some in common with the more recent epic Gladiator: both center around the death of Marcus Aurelius and the mis-rule of his son Commodus, and both are ultimately over-wrought costume dramas. However, this one’s a little more political and a lot more drawn-out. Christopher Plummer does an interesting job as Commodus, though especially toward the end he comes across more like Caligula than the bad emperor he’s actually supposed to be playing (which is as much the writer’s fault as it is his). Roman pageants from this era in film history are generally a bit too tame for my taste, but that aside this one isn’t too terrible. Mildly amusing

Review – Melvin and Howard

What a great double feature this would make with The Aviator. An old Martin Scorsese making a movie about a young Howard Hughes, and then a young Jonathan Demme making a movie at least in part about an old Howard Hughes. But of course Hughes isn’t the real point here. The hero in this production is Melvin Dummar, a poor white guy with Ralph Cramden dreams. His wife leaves him repeatedly because he’s such a loser. Indeed, much of the movie plays like an episode of “Cops” only without the cops. The trick here is that early on Melvin rescues an aged Howard Hughes from the cold, nighttime desert where he’s been stranded by a motorcycle accident. Though at first the two don’t exactly hit it off, before the end of the trip Melvin has Howard singing along with the stupid “Santa’s Souped-Up Sleigh” song he’s made up. Evidently the experience may have left a lasting impression on Hughes, because when he died one of the wills that turned up included a multi-million-dollar bequest to Dummar. That few believe Melvin’s story is almost beside the point. Instead, one can’t help but agree with his ultimate conclusion: the fact that it happened at all is almost better than the money would have been. Worth seeing

Review – Unconstitutional

There must be something more profound than this to say about the USA Patriot Act. A good-sized chunk of the first half of the production is devoted to how unfairly immigrants are being treated in the wake of Sept. 11. Like nothing like this ever happened before the Patriot Act was passed (think “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos” for a minute here). Still, valid points. Trouble is, Americans have a long-standing track record of not caring about anyone who can be distinguished from themselves, particularly when it comes to civil rights and civil liberties. The sneak warrants and secret monitoring of bookstores and libraries hit a little closer to home. But the key point in my opinion – present in the tape but scarcely emphasized – is that only the most mentally-differently-abled terrorist would fall afoul of the easily-avoided restrictions of the Act (for example, pay cash for a book and the bookstore has no record of who bought it). Clearly, then, the point behind all these new powers is something else. COINTELPRO, anyone? And we’re not just talking the neo-hippie protestors shown cruelly victimized in the movie. Scratch the surface just a little deeper, and a genuinely interesting production might have emerged. As it is, though, it’s Michael Moore without Michael Moore. A step in the right direction, but a long way from the whole distance. Mildly amusing

Review – Spider

The promo blurb for this movie proudly proclaims that it was directed by “goremeister” David Cronenberg. However, by the looks of things at this point in his career perhaps the appellation “boremeister” might fit a little better. Ralph Fiennes plays a poor crazy man released too early from a mental institution. He struggles to piece together his traumatic childhood, a string of events surrounding the death of his mother that play as pure, unadulterated Freud. Miranda Richardson plays the whore/Madonna characters that haunt our protagonist in a series of flashbacks that follow a fairly predictable course. I’m happy to see Cronenberg working again, and I’m glad he decided to branch out away from the splatter-intensive stuff of his younger days. Unfortunately the direction he appears to have chosen has left most of his interesting visuals and grasp of deranged characters behind and focused instead on his art-film conceits. It’s just not enough to keep a movie going for an hour and a half. See if desperate

Review – Tomb of Terror

So this is where they bury terror when it dies, huh? What we’re being served here is three Full Moon Video movies cut down so they’ll fit in one hour-and-a-half production. The first one is some Dogma-wannabe mish-mash about a nubile young demon who yearns to come to earth and mete out vigilante justice. The second I confess I skipped, as it was a cut-down version of The Lurking Fear, which was bad enough on first, full viewing. The third and thankfully final piece was some crap about a demon-haunted boys’ school. The production values are so bad here that the chapter markings on the DVD don’t even match up to the beginning and end of the three stories. Overall this comes across as nothing more than an attempt to make a few more bucks off a stinker cobbled together from three other stinkers. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Kwaidan

Nobody does ghost stories like the Japanese. This 1964 classic of production values from director Masaki Kobayashi is one of the quintessential examples of the country’s approach to the supernatural. The art direction is very theatrical, as is a lot of the lighting. But the editing is pure cinema. Further, the key descriptor here is “subtle.” The production makes use of few special effects and no gore. And compared to Hollywood horror pictures – at least a couple of which have borrowed from this quartet of short tales – the pace is downright laconic. But the quiet, drawn-out nature of the storytelling only serve to make it all the eerier. Worth seeing

Review – Dirty Harry

If you’re a big fan of rogue-cop-with-his-own-brand-of-justice movies, here’s the one that more-or-less invented the genre. Further recommendation: despite being driven largely by simple-minded clichés, this is still an entertaining picture. Acting and script are both good, to the point when even an old die-hard individual rights advocate like me can’t help but cheer for Inspector Calahan as he takes on a psycho loosely based on the Zodiac serial killer. And on top of all this, there are actually subtleties to be found here, such as Calahan’s personal foibles (including a voyeuristic streak). In the realm of vicious cops versus vicious killers, you could do a lot worse. Worth seeing