Review – Kinsey

Several times in other reviews I’ve complained about movie biographies that dwell excessively on their subjects’ sex lives. In this case, however, I suppose focusing on the intimate is at least somewhat justified. It’s also hard not to read a lot of one’s personal views into this. For example, I saw a portrait of a scientist who discovers that he likes sex and sets out to understand why. However, there are other elements here. Someone who sides with the conservative group that named Kinsey’s book one of the ten most dangerous works ever published might see this as the story of a man made desperately unhappy by his abandonment of faith and his unhealthy obsession with physical pleasure. Regardless of viewpoint, I thought this was a better movie than some critics indicated. I wonder if particularly male reviewers weren’t a bit disappointed that there wasn’t more sex in the movie. Mildly amusing

Review – Hellraiser: Hellworld

And yet they keep making them. In a realm beyond pleasure, beyond pain, beyond plot and character, beyond logic, beyond special effects, beyond acting, beyond directing, in the farthest extremes of human experience, dwells crap like this. The acorn that fell from the Barker tree nearly 20 years ago just keeps rolling and rolling, eventually making it all the way to the land of I Know What You Did Last Summer. Doing the whole reflexive thing late in the series worked for Freddy Krueger, but this movie doesn’t give it enough of a chance. There’s a lot of nonsense about computer games and cell phones. Doug Bradley puts in an appearance, though it’s more for show than anything else. There’s also a smattering of soft core porn, but it doesn’t work any better than the rest of the movie. Overall, well, there is no “overall” analysis because the movie isn’t structured as a cohesive whole. Instead it’s a patchwork of dumb little ideas, most of which don’t work on their own and none of which work together. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Maria Full of Grace

So what you’re saying is that it sucks to be a drug mule, huh? Who would have thought? Pretty teen Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno) hates her crummy job in a flower factory, so she quits. Unemployed and a couple months pregnant, in semi-desperation she decides to take a high-paying job as a smuggler. Overall I was somewhat disappointed by this production. Aside from a couple of too-strong-for-TV scenes, this comes across as a Spanish-language version of an Afterschool Special about the evils of the narcotics trade. A few parts are challenging to sit through, as one might expect when watching someone swallow fifty cocaine capsules or endure an international flight with a load of coke in her guts. But beyond that the story was bland, sometimes even cliché-ridden. I think the movie does what it sets out to do. I just expected a bit more. And on a somewhat irrelevant note, I can’t think about this movie without being reminded of the Weekend Update joke on Saturday Night Live reporting on a woman caught smuggling snails into the country, the punch line suggesting that she would be the subject of an upcoming movie entitled Maria Full of Snails. Mildly amusing

Review – Vietnam: A Television History

Sure, this is a miniseries rather than a movie. But after sitting through 11 hours of this, I feel a review of some sort is in order. There’s some really incredible footage here, particularly film shot by both sides on the ground during the war. Overall, as one might expect from such an ambitious project, the results are mixed. Any audience member is probably going to get more out of some episodes than others, and I’m no exception. I’m more interested in the early history of the war and the expansion into Laos and Cambodia than I am in some other Vietnam-related stuff such as the history of the protest movement. Accordingly, I’d like to watch some episodes again and others I regret watching at all. But anyone with an interest in the subject should check this out. Mildly amusing

Review – London After Dark

Half an E for effort to Turner Classic Movies. It isn’t every channel that will show a movie whose only surviving print was destroyed in a fire in the 50s. What we’ve got here, then, looks like an extended PowerPoint presentation cobbled together from a substantial supply of production stills. It’s fun to see some of Lon Chaney’s makeup, and the show gives some idea of how the plot was structured. However, there’s almost no sense at all of Todd Browning’s directing skill. As wonderful as it would have been to see Browning and Chaney paired up on the silver screen, this is a poor substitute for a real movie. It doesn’t help that the rich-guy-turned-vampire-sucking-English-blood story is more than a little evocative of another Browning production with a classic horror movie star produced just a few years later. The folks who threw this together had their hearts in the right place, and they did a good job with what they had to work with. Sadly, it just wasn’t enough. Mildly amusing

Review - Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero

Technically this is an episode of Frontline, but it’s movie-length and certainly worthy of the title “documentary,” so I’m gonna go ahead and review it. Parts of this piece were fascinating, particularly the Sept. 11 footage that many other news outlets have shied away from showing (such as people jumping out of the upper floors of the World Trade Center). Some of the interviews also made for interesting viewing. If nothing else, the film-makers did a solid job of capturing a range of reactions to the tragedy. However, some of the discourse was more than a little weak. I was particularly disappointed by the section on the nature of evil. I thought surely some of the people who had stared such experiences directly in the face would have put at least some thought into the subject, perhaps finding a way to go beyond George Bush’s “Legion of Doom versus the Superfriends” approach to the question. Sadly, most of the subjects came up lacking. But overall this was an interesting if not always enlightening exploration of the interaction between tragedy and religious belief. Mildly amusing

Review – A Comedy of Terrors

If this isn’t the all-time champion, it’s at least one of the most flagrant cases of movies that squander good casts. Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, and Basil Rathbone struggle with dialogue so bad it could make an audience get up and leave a dinner theater production. Even Rhubarb the Cat looks like he can’t wait for the director to call “cut” so he can rush back to his trailer, call his agent and scream his lungs out. I suppose this silliness is supposed to be vaguely reminiscent of Poe, but if Poe is fine, fresh French pastry then this is a Twinkie that rolled under a car seat two years ago and has been there ever since. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Return of the Living Dead

Dan O’Bannon takes the zombies from Night of the Living Dead, twists the rules around a little, and comes up with monsters a lot more menacing than Romero’s. Then he turns around and squanders them on what for the most part is that most annoying of productions: the horror comedy. There are a few thrills to be found here and there, but for the most part this is just a bit too silly. Oh, and very, very 80s. Mildly amusing

Review – Sin City

As one might expect from Frank Miller, the art direction is as excellent as the rest of the movie is dreadful. I was genuinely impressed with just how well Miller’s design work made the jump to the screen, thanks in large part to the power of digital special effects. The result is a movie that is a lot of fun to look at. It’s almost enough. Almost. The problem here is that along with Miller’s art comes Miller’s writing, and no amount of high tech manipulation can fix it. What works well in graphic novels sometimes comes across as stiff and corny on film, and unfortunately that applies to a lot of the plot and almost all the dialogue in this production. I also didn’t care much for some of the casting, though I concede that the actors were all appropriate to their roles. Overall I was sorry that this disc had to go back to the video store, because I would have liked to have watched it again with the sound off just to see if it was any better that way. Mildly amusing

Review – Death 4 Told

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve seen a low-budget horror movie I actually liked. And though this single effort doesn’t exactly revive my faith in the sub-genre as a whole, it at least stirred a little hope. As implied by the title, this is a set of four vignettes cleverly interwoven without benefit of a bracketing story. The second tale is more than a little mediocre, overshadowed even by the original short version that’s included in the DVD’s special features. However, the first story has the same disregard for complexity that made the Scary Stories series such fun to read. The third and fourth outings are clever enough without being too inspiring. To be sure the director makes plenty of rookie mistakes, especially in the editing process. However, my hat’s off to anyone who can take kisses-of-death like Margot Kidder and Tom Savini and still churn out a reasonably entertaining product. Mildly amusing

Review – The Thing Below

Imagine a movie cheap and unimaginative enough to be truly worthy of such a title. Imagine Deep Rising reshot with bargain basement special effects. Imagine yourself renting something else. Terrible performers struggle to act out a story so stupid it actually sucks IQ points out of your head while you watch it. My particular favorite aspect of this production was the “clever” twist that an un-killable sea monster somehow has to use its power to cloud its victims’ minds before tearing them limb from limb. Illogical to the extreme, but it gave the director an excuse to stir in a western gunfight and a strip tease apropos of nothing. As much as I’d like to support low-budget horror movies, I need them to meet me at least partway. This one doesn’t make any effort at all. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Alexander

Any further complaints from Arlen Specter and Jack Valenti about Oliver Stone playing fast and loose with history? Not this time around? Hmmm. Well, that’s okay. Departures from the historical record aren’t exactly the biggest problem here. That distinction belongs to the script, which is as intensely boring as it is poorly put together. The action bounces back and forth randomly in the time line, with an astounding amount of screen time devoted to go-nowhere speeches. The direction doesn’t help either, as Stone makes copious use of pace killers such as extended shots of Colin Ferrel and the rest of the cast gaping vacantly into space. Stir in a heap of animal violence and this one’s headed for the reject pile. However, the production was plenty expensive, with some of the money going for effects that work well enough (especially compared to the rest of the picture). See if desperate