Review – Diamonds Are Forever

With the probable exceptions of Thunderball and its off-brand remake, Never Say Never Again, this is the worst of the Connery Bonds. He’s too old for the part, and would have done better to have stayed gone after You Only Live Twice. As for the story itself, there isn’t much to it. There’s a Howard Hughes-esque character, a rare nod to the real world in a series that lives largely on the strictly imaginary. Beyond that just about the only unique feature is the pair of gay hit men. Oh, and the acrobatic female bodyguards Bambi and Thumper. Beyond that, this will be a necessary experience for anyone trying to watch all the Bond flicks but otherwise can safely be missed. See if desperate

Review – Rhapsody in August

Late in his career, Akira Kurosawa attempts to cope with the bombing of Nagasaki, an issue that even a half-century after the fact clearly hasn’t been faced by people on either side of the Pacific. The result is the compelling tale of four children spending the summer with their grandmother while their parents spend time overseas sucking up to rich Japanese-American relatives. At first the kids are anxious to persuade the old woman to journey to Hawaii to meet her long-lost, dying brother. But as they experience the lingering traces of the A-bomb – not the least of which is the death of their grandfather – the kids gain new perspective on the importance of the past. The production doesn’t offer much for movie-goers who are strictly fans of the director’s samurai-intensive work, but anyone willing to give this quiet little story a chance will find patience richly rewarded. Worth seeing

Review – The Hollow

No doubt a description of the heads of some of the folks involved in creating this charming little production. Actually, I’ve seen worse horror movies. I like the whole Headless Horseman thing, so it simultaneously pleased me to see a new twist on the tale and saddened to see this new twist turn Washington Irving’s villain into a run-of-the-mill supernatural serial killer. The script was a little weak, but at least they tried using one rather than just wasting 90 minutes hacking people up. The cast features a gaggle of B-minus celebrities, including Stacy Keach as the annoying old man who seems to be the only one who knows what’s going on. Even the effects are middle-of-the-road, cheap but not so terrible that they detract from the production. The result is one of the two-est of all two-star movies I’ve ever seen. Mildly amusing

Review – Duck Soup

Though I’m sure this was revolutionary stuff back in 1933, at this point in film history the Marx Brothers are a bit of an acquired taste. They’re good and all, but they take a little getting used to. I was also surprised at how close some of their routines are to the comparatively low-brow Three Stooges. That aside, this is a solid piece of comedy. Sure, a lot of Groucho’s shtick is cliché, but it wouldn’t be cliché now if he hadn’t done it so well and made it so famous back when it was fresh. And Harpo’s physical comedy never gets old. I could spend hours watching the scenes where he and Chico scrap with the lemonade vendor. This production is also notable for its cleverly subtle exploration of themes that Chaplin would take on with a more ham-handed approach later in The Great Dictator. Overall this is a funny if somewhat dated bit of entertainment. Worth seeing

Review – Dead Men Walking

This movie has more puking than movies about puking. Zombie blood barf appears to be the theme of the first half of the production. But once most of the cast finally makes the transition to zombie-dom, it’s mostly straight splatter from there. All you need to know about the plot is that the dreaded zombie virus gets loose in a maximum security prison, transforming prisoners and guards alike into the rampaging undead. For awhile there’s some pretense at dialogue, all whispered in sub-sonic levels in keeping with Asylum’s usual technical standards. But that’s swiftly abandoned in favor of endless gore shots. In a way, the honest embrace of pointless carnage in place of a plot actually made this a slightly better movie than it might otherwise have been. Verdict: see if desperate

Review - Fever Pitch

The baseball parts of this production aren’t too terrible, but the romance woven through the Red Sox 2004 season isn’t anywhere near as interesting as the game. Of course with a finish like the 2004 baseball season, it was hard for Hollywood to come up with anything to match the drama of “real life.” Even so, this production falls considerably short. Jimmy Fallon does a much better job as an obsessive Sox fan than he does as a romantic lead. And though Drew Barrymore has successfully played the foil to Adam Sandler in the lovable loser / cute girl story line at least twice now, here her performance with Fallon comes across as mailed in. The result is a romantic comedy where the romance doesn’t work at all. See if desperate

Review – Legion of the Dead

Do six mummies and a reanimated nekkid Egyptian queen really constitute a legion? Perhaps they should have called it “Legion of the Plot Holes So Huge You Could Build a Pyramid in One.” Low production values. Virtually script-free. Zach “Gremlins” Galligan and Bruce “Not Mark Hamil” Boxleitner were the acting highlights, and the director took pity on Galligan and killed his character off early. The rest is strictly amateur hour, with a handful of “college students” stumbling around a story that has something to do with bringing aforementioned queen and minions back from the dead to rule the universe or some such. The only real distinction here is that this has to be one of the all-time worst sound jobs I’ve ever suffered through. The dialogue is whisper-quiet, requiring viewers to turn the sound up so high that loud sound effects (particularly the apropos-of-nothing thunderclaps that frequently punctuate scenes) become eardrum-destroying assaults. Other than that, if cheap gore and a minimal number of bare boob shots float your boat, then prepare for your boat to be floated. Otherwise avoid with care. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Dominion

Wow, did this one ever end up taking a strange path to the screen. After Paul Shrader’s prequel to The Exorcist didn’t work with test audiences, the studio brought in Renny Harlin to completely re-shoot the movie. And now I guess Warner has decided to recoup some of its losses by DVD’ing the Shrader cut as well. Oddly enough, I think somewhere between these two productions might have been a really good horror movie. Harlin’s version is too stupid to be engaging, but this outing’s too boring to be scary. I really liked the emphasis on the archaeological, especially early on. The script was also reasonably well put-together. On the other hand, the thrills here were few and far between. And the characters were more engaging in the other one. When you do less with your actors than Renny Harlin does, that says nothing good about your picture. Taken together, these two pictures would make an interesting – if somewhat disorienting – double feature. Mildly amusing

Review – Madagascar

This is a cute movie, but it might have worked just about as well as a screen saver as it does as a feature-length production. The computer-animated animals are entertaining, particularly the penguins and the lemurs. Beyond the cuteness, though, there isn’t much here. Indeed, what little plot does manage to develop seems poorly thought-out. Zoo animals end up “returned” to the wild, where it turns out the lion is actually a carnivore. What are we to take away from this? As one might expect from a Dreamworks kid-oriented DVD, we get a ton of extras on the disc, including a short starring the penguins, who rightfully turned out to be the most popular characters in the picture. Mildly amusing

Review – War of the Worlds (2005)

I’ve seen a lot of bad movies in my life. Heck, I’ve seen a lot of bad movies this year. But this is the first bad movie in awhile that I’d actually classify as a disappointment. Though Wells’ novel wasn’t an eternal work of staggering genius, it could nonetheless have been turned into an entertaining – maybe even interesting – movie. Certainly this monster-budget picture had all the technical quality needed to pull it off. But then Tom Cruise gets cast in the lead role. His charmless charm and witless smirking may have made him ideal for roles in movies such as Top Gun, but two decades later it just doesn’t work anymore. I also suspect Cruise’s presence may have been in some way connected to the Scientology elements that appear to have crept into the story. But oddly enough, the direction is far worse than the acting. I’ve never been the world’s biggest Spielberg fan, but in the past I’ve at least been impressed by his ability to pace a production. But no longer, or at least not here. The story moves relentlessly from one peril to the next with almost no gaps in between for plot or character development. The result is a two-hour movie-going experience roughly akin to the interminable chase sequence in Texas Chainsaw Massacre only with Martians instead of a guy with a chainsaw and the entire human race rather than a teenage girl. The combination of Wells, 9/11 and a lot of expensive effects could have been used to make a much better movie. See if desperate

Review – L.I.E.

Brian Cox plays a chicken hawk. He’s the hero (or at least the only sympathetic character in the protagonist’s life). You can pretty much draw your own conclusions from there. Perhaps if I’d ever been a gay teenager coming to grips with my sexuality amid the chaotic ennui of the Long Island burbs, I might have had a little more sympathy for this picture. As things stand, however, I mostly thought it was boring, predictable and more than a little too morally ambiguous, particularly on the topic of child molestation. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The Piano Teacher

She’s a very kinky girl, the kind you don’t take home to mother. Except in this case she already lives with mother, at one point even attempting to rape the old lady. That should provide a sample of the flavor here. This is basically Alt.sex.bondage The Motion Picture. The protagonist is a piano teacher (hence the title) leading a repressed little life of Schubert and masturbatory kink. Along comes an attractive young student who wants a normal – or at least normal by comparison – relationship with her. The two wrangle back and forth in an exceptionally boring manner. In a more interesting movie some of the bizarre sex might have struck me as innovative, but here it’s just the creepy icing on an annoying cake. See if desperate

Review – Good Night, and Good Luck

This was a good movie, which is unfortunate because in more skillful hands this could have been a great movie. Murrow’s battle against McCarthy was a fascinating and most film-worthy tale. David Straithairn does an excellent job in the lead, backed by a solid supporting cast. However, the script (when not quoting Murrow’s broadcasts directly) and the direction are weak. It wasn’t all bad. For example, I appreciated the decision to include some dry humor here and there. It was just so ham-handed. For example, try playing a drinking game in which you do a shot every time a group of characters is sitting around having a conversation when suddenly someone enters the scene to solemnly announce the next major plot development. You’ll be plastered (if not dead from alcohol poisoning) by the end of the movie. Further, those not old enough to remember McCarthyism directly (a good-sized chunk of the audience by now) might have been better served by at least some indication of the depths of the menace of the HUAC (Guilty By Suspicion did a better job with this). Without the full sense of paranoia, Murrow appears to be crusading based solely on principle rather than out of a desperate need to rid the country of a great wrong. All that aside, however, this is an hour and a half of solid, inspirational entertainment. Worth seeing

Review – Cinemania

I didn’t think this was nearly as funny as it was supposed to be. The blurb on Netflix made this sound like a documentary along the lines of Trekkies only about movie buffs rather than Star Trek fans. But the five people trailed during the production of this movie aren’t fans. They’re mentally ill people with obsessive fixations on movies. Though one might argue that fandom in general is a mild form of neurosis, these folks are well past the mild stages. In particular, Roberta is so far gone that she appears to sit on the verge of the “danger to self or others” standard for involuntary commitment. Even her more functional compatriots left jobs, friends, family and any other semblance of normalcy behind long ago in favor of trying to see as many movies as possible. Mocking Star Trek nerds is bad enough, but making fun of sick people sinks to a whole new level. See if desperate

Review – The Fog (2005)

Ever see a movie in which a character – a real, historical figure for example – is played by a bad actor who makes a mess of the role? This is like that, only it’s a whole movie pretending to be an earlier production. Some of the effects are bush leagues fun, but overall this is a muddled, messy version of the original. Even the casting is odd, with no big-name stars (at least the first one had Janet Leigh) and Selma Blair playing Stevie Wayne despite the fact that she doesn’t look anywhere near old enough to be the mother of a tween-ager. If Carpenter and Bottin had access to some of the digital effects used in this effort, they could have made a movie good enough to render a remake completely pointless. As it was, there didn’t turn out to be that much point to it anyway. See if desperate

Review – Doom

The cut scenes from the game had a better plot. Or at the very least, the plot in the game was clearer and more engaging. Here character motivations are frequently so poorly constructed that it’s hard to believe anyone is doing what they’re doing. Toward the beginning the already-more-or-less-interchangeable Marines get shuffled around so frequently that it’s impossible to keep track of who’s doing what. This problem resolves itself when the monsters start whittling the cast down a bit, but by then it’s already more than a little hard to care about any of the remaining characters. By the end the production breaks down into an extended sequence of first-person-shooter framing followed by that great dark spot endemic to the action movie: the extended hand-to-hand combat sequence. The final result falls well short of the entertainment value of the games (even the old, motion-sickness-inducing versions), and given that the only audience for the movie is probably the game’s fans, I wasn’t exactly surprised to find myself completely alone in the theater just a week or two after the movie’s release. See if desperate