Review – Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle

Cheesecake aside, the only attraction this production has to offer is an endless parade of references to other movies. The nods and homage fly fast and furious, including tributes to just about everything from Boogie Nights to Singin’ in the Rain. Sadly, it’s just not enough to make a feature-length movie entertaining all by itself. And the rest of the show is fluffy silliness punctuated by cheap fight sequences. See if desperate

Review – Demolition Man

Sylvester Stallone plays a 20th century cop awakened from cryogenic storage midway through the 21st century to stop his unfrozen former nemesis (Wesley Snipes) from destroying the peaceful, harmonious world of tomorrow. The sole attraction here are the “clever” jokes about future shock, such as the wall-mounted boxes that issue citations every time someone utters even mild profanity. Beyond that, this is nothing but an exceptionally mediocre action movie. Mildly amusing

Review – Kill Bill Vol. 2

I knew guys in college that wrote screenplays like this. Of course, most of them are still delivering pizza for a living. Oh that the same fate should have befallen Quentin Tarantino. By some miracle this one’s even worse than the first. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

What if we took a gaggle of late-19th-century literary characters and packed them all into the same comic book? Actually, as concepts go I’ve seen worse. But as movies go, worse productions are relatively scarce. The studio must have spent a lot of money on this, particularly to get Sean Connery to play an aged Allan Quartermain, leader of the motley band. Before the end of the movie we’ve also enjoyed the company of Captain Nemo, the Invisible Man, Mina Harker, Dorian Gray, Dr. Jekyll and his alter-ego, Tom Sawyer, Professor Moriarty, and probably a bunch of other adventure yarn stock characters I’ve forgotten already. Some of the personality-specific gags are vaguely entertaining. It just never comes together as a story. See if desperate

Review – Hustle and Flow

This got an Oscar nomination? Terrence Dashon Howard does a craftsmanlike job in the role of a pimp who wants to make it big in the music business. However, Howard’s skill does little to overcome the fact that this is a movie about a pimp who wants to make it big in the music business. The picture comes across as Rooney/Garland “Let’s put on a show” goofiness grafted onto the uncomfortable myth that black people are poverty-stricken criminals who can only achieve success as entertainers. Honestly, I liked MTV Films better when it stuck to movies about guys who talk to cockroaches. See if desperate

Review – Abe Lincoln in Illinois

Tall, lean, lanky Raymond Massey was born to play the title role in this picture. Every imaginable threadbare cliché gets worked into the screenplay for this biography of Lincoln’s early years. Every line of dialogue is delivered in the stiff, hushed sanctimony usually reserved for church services. Overall this brings me mindful of the remark in Amadeus about lofty-sounding characters. Mildly amusing.

Review – Visions of Light

Cinematography has always been a big deal for me. I’ll usually sit through a well-shot but otherwise dreadful production fairly willingly; a good script is the only thing I value more than good camerawork. So when this documentary about cinematography showed up on Netflix, I moved it to the top of my queue. For the most part my curiosity was rewarded. The movie takes a chronological approach, which I liked. The price paid for this convenience is several minutes at the outset when the films being discussed were shot by cameramen who had passed on before this documentary was made. Thus the commentary during the early scenes is weak on the practical information and long on the film school commentary about the beauty of it all. But once the cinematographers are actually given the chance to talk about their own movies (complete with clips), this is a fascinating exploration of “the liveliest art.” Mildly amusing

Review – The Haunted Mansion

I was pleasantly surprised by Pirates of the Caribbean. It turned out to be better than I expected from a movie based on a Disney theme park ride. This picture, on the other hand, was a lot closer to predictions. Eddie Murphy stars as a real estate agent lured to the title location along with his family. High jinks ensue. Jennifer Tilly is occasionally amusing as a disembodied head inside a crystal ball. Otherwise script, cast, effects, the whole nine yards are fairly forgettable. See if desperate

Review – Kill Bill Vol. 1

The movie’s an almost constant parade of fight sequences, some of which work and some of which don’t. The swordplay in particular is probably a lot more impressive if you’ve never seen Toshiro Mifune or any of the other Japanese greats this stuff is “borrowed” from. And that pretty well sums up the rest of the experience as well: stylish but inept. Quentin Tarantino’s witless misogyny drives a big chunk of the story, so most of the production that actually counts as original isn’t worth watching. Finally, this clearly isn’t intended to stand on its own. So I expect if you’re going to devote two hours to this stinker you might as well go ahead and spend another 130 minutes or so to sit through the second part. See if desperate

Review – Parenthood

This is part Steve Martin comedy and part soap opera about the perils of the title subject. The ensemble cast makes its way through the panoply of things that can go wrong in the course of raising children (and some of the things that can go right as well). When the script stays light and funny, this is a reasonably clever bit of entertainment. Point-making, however, is as frequent as it is heavy-handed. Mildly amusing

Review – The March of the Penguins

Well, at least I didn’t hate it as bad as I hated Winged Migration. Sure, the production dwells on death more than it might if it was about human subjects. It just isn’t quite as mean-spirited as the first French bird movie I sat through. Further, I’m not sure why Republicans got so excited about the “family values” supposedly exhibited by emperor penguins. The birds take good care of their chicks to an extent, but they don’t seem to form the lasting, monogamous relationships that are supposed to be the hallmark of Christian households. Perhaps it’s just the animal death; in my experience a lot of conservatives tend to get a real kick out of that sort of thing. On the plus side, some of the footage is impressive stuff, particularly the video of the penguins swimming around under the ice. If nothing else, one has to admire the dedication of a film crew that would sit through an Antarctic winter just for the sake of filming a bunch of birds huddling together. Mildly amusing

Review – The Pacifier

I guess if they start out to make a really stupid movie, then saying that this is a really stupid movie ought to be a compliment. Mission accomplished, right? Sadly, this is Disney dumb without being Disney fun. Vin Diesel stars as a Navy SEAL assigned to protect a family of kids from evildoers while their mom’s in Switzerland helping the government recover their dead dad’s secret project. “Hilarious” babysitting high jinks ensue. The thinking must have been Kindergarten Cop, but aside from giving Diesel a hefty dose of humiliation, this production doesn’t accomplish a whole lot. This is the kind of movie that free preview weekends on the Starz networks are made for. See if desperate

Review – Hostage

Die Hard on a much smaller scale. Bruce Willis stars as a hostage negotiator whose own family is taken prisoner as part of a criminal plot to recover a McGuffin stored on a DVD hidden somewhere in an expensive house. This is yet another of these witless action movies that depends almost entirely on a long series of implausible plot twists and characters with flimsy motivations. And of course in the end it turns into a festival of violence and destruction. Maybe if it had been someone besides Willis. Or maybe if something worse had happened to him. See if desperate

Review – The Trials of Henry Kissinger

Though not particularly remarkable as a documentary, this movie is made worthwhile simply by virtue of its subject. Today Kissinger is associated primarily with Nixon’s diplomatic successes in China. Those who remember his tenure in the US government a little better recall his hard work to keep the Vietnam War going and –failing that – to illegally expand the conflict to Cambodia. But now we find some fresh bile seeping from old wounds. Kissinger emerges as a political opportunist willing to sacrifice superiors, subordinates, and of course thousands of human lives in order to secure his place in the corridors of power and the pages of history. The question of a trial enters the picture with the attempt by the British and Spanish governments to prosecute Augusto Pinochet for crimes against humanity, crimes in which Kissinger was implicated. Though neither of these monsters is ever likely to reap his just rewards, it’s nice to be reminded that at least someone still remembers what they did. Now if they could just make a movie like this about Oliver North. Mildly amusing

Review – First Blood

This is how America comes to grips with the Vietnam War. Or fails to come to grips, as the case may be. Actually, standing alone this isn’t a terrible movie. Vietnam-vet-turned-drifter Rambo (Sylvester Stallone in one of the two roles that made him famous) just wants to be left alone, but a small-town sheriff messes with him a bit too much. The bulk of the movie is taken up by a game of cat and mouse between the super-special-forces vet and local yokel deputies and National Guard. The point that America gave short shrift to the guys who served in Vietnam is well made and at the time of the movie’s original release was long overdue. The story is marred a bit by Col. Troutmann (Richard Crenna), whose constant carping about how Rambo has been trained to ignore things that would make a billy goat puke and will thus kick everybody’s asses makes him the movie’s answer to the Tweety Bird. And Stallone isn’t equal to the task when his character has to display emotions that can’t be conveyed via a constipated grimace. That notwithstanding, the production is reasonably entertaining and conveys what at the time was and to an extent remains an important message. The trouble with this series – the Reagan associations that accompany the name Rambo – really don’t start until the second movie in the set. Mildly amusing

Review – Lord of War

It’s refreshing to see Hollywood take on an actual, serious moral issue for a change. Nicolas Cage plays an international arms dealer who goes rags-to-riches by selling misery in third world countries. Naturally by the end of the tale the chickens come home to roost. It’s a bit on the melodramatic side, and sometimes the editing tricks become a bit intrusive. Further, Cage is his usual, goofy self. That works in some scenes, but in others it makes the drama fall flat. But overall the script is solid, the drama engaging, and the points well made. Worth seeing

Review – Isle of the Dead

At first blush this appears to be a movie based on a Boecklin painting. What it turns out to be is a slow-moving story about a small group of people trapped on an island that doubles as a cemetery. Are they dying one by one from the plague, or are they being picked off by a vorvolaka, some kind of a Greek vampire? Val Lewton was famous for producing psychological horror movies, but here he pushes the murky drama a bit too far. The result is something that alternates between vaguely intriguing and painfully dull. The aim seems to be something along the lines of the original Cat People, but sadly this one falls well short of the mark. See if desperate

Review – Tupac Resurrection

MTV takes a documentary they appeared to be making about Tupac Shakur while he was still alive and turns it into an extended tribute. The picture that emerges is of two almost completely different people. On the one hand, the subject is portrayed as a talented, intelligent, clean-cut young man with a bright future in music and movies, not to mention a genuine concern about problems of race and poverty. On the other hand, considerable time is devoted to his homeless period, time in prison and “thug” lifestyle. It’s almost as though he’s being simultaneously marketed to parents and kids. Hmmm. If you’re a fan, you’ll probably enjoy this documentary. It’s slickly produced and provides a decent overview of its subject’s life. However, don’t expect much by way of genuine insight into the man or his music. Even after his death, it’s still about pitching him to an audience (or audiences, as the case may be). Mildly amusing

Review – Brokeback Mountain

Several years ago I recall seeing Desert Hearts, a western about lesbians. That production didn’t make anywhere near the noise this one did. Of course Ang Lee didn’t direct Desert Hearts, nor did it star Heath Ledger or Jake Gylenhall. But the real hook here is the open exploration of the gay underpinnings of one of the most ultra-macho genres around. The concept had some potential. But aside from the novelty of the theme this is an extremely boring movie. Even the landscapes, which should have been consistently breathtaking, are only rarely put to good use. Throw in the de rigeur animal suffering, and this is by far the worst of the best picture contenders this year. See if desperate

Review – Y Tu Mama Tambien

Here we have an interesting blend of Mexican art movie and Friday After Dark soft-core porn. When it’s being artistic, this is a fairly good production. I particularly liked the pauses the tale takes every once in awhile to allow an omniscient narrator to fill us in on a character’s back story or other colorful-yet-superfluous trivia. The main story itself is peppered with quirky moments that serve to keep things reasonably entertaining. The cinematographer also manages to make good use of the landscapes. On the other hand, this tale of two teenage boys off to an isolated beach with an attractive, slightly older woman absolutely drips with immature sexuality. Sex is a theme or subtext almost the whole way through, and in a few places the portrayal of same is quite graphic. Overall it seems like the audience that might enjoy this the most – male adolescents – may be excluded by sex a little to graphic for their parents’ taste and/or the need for non-Spanish-speakers to read the subtitles. Mildly amusing