Review – Trilogy of Terror 2

Lysette Anthony stars in all three of the vignettes, which means she enjoys the distinction of being menaced by giant rats, a boy back from the dead, and of course the redux of the ever-popular Zuni Warrior Fetish Doll. I guess I’ve seen worse horror anthology movies, but overall this plays like three episodes of Tales from the Crypt only with fewer boob shots. Mildly amusing

Review – Mr. 3000

The baseball parts of this movie aren’t nearly as bad as I thought they were going to be. If only they hadn’t filled so much of the total screen time with, well, filler. Bernie Mac stars as a power hitter who makes it to 3000 hits and then retires right in the middle of a pennant race, displaying a distinctly Barry-Bonds-ish disregard for anything beyond his own personal success. Then it turns out that the record books are wrong and that he actually retired three hits short of the mark. As the shortfall – plus his abrasive personality – are keeping him out of Cooperstown, back he goes to play for the Brewers once more in hopes of getting the hits he needs. The comeback process humanizes the guy, which makes for a reasonably entertaining baseball flick. If only they hadn’t felt the need to stir in a bunch of boring nonsense with a love interest and then make it a significant part of the movie. If you’re into the cliché-ridden realm of the baseball movie, this is a passable specimen. But keep a finger on the fast forward button, and fire away whenever Angela Bassett shows up. Never have I seen her talent so badly squandered. Mildly amusing

Review – Point of No Return

La Femme Nikita does a little bit of business stateside, and in comes John Badham to re-make it. This one gets the full Hollywood treatment, with B+ stars, big explosions, the whole nine yards. If nothing else, Bridget Fonda strikes me as easier on the eyes than the star of the original. However, American slick and pricey don’t really make for a better movie. The French version had production values good enough that the remake wasn’t overwhelmingly different, and the original was edgy in a way the remake wasn’t. So my advice would be to see them in reverse order so you can save the better for later. Mildly amusing

Review – Dirty War

HBO and the BBC combine to give the “what if” treatment to terrorists blowing up a radioactive “dirty bomb” in the heart of London. The production strongly evokes memories of The Day After only on a slightly smaller scale and with more racial tension. And even more preaching, if such a thing can be imagined. The whole “Sept. 11 could have been a lot worse, and we’re still not ready for it” message gets hammered in over and over again, occasionally even entering directly into the dialogue. Overall this is unlikely to show up on anyone’s ten-best list, but it serves just fine as a bit of disturbing diversion. Mildly amusing

Review – Paper Clips

This starts out as the heart of a good idea: middle school students in a small town in Tennessee attempt to fathom the magnitude of the Holocaust by collecting six million paper clips. But several problems soon arise, ranging from the simple difficulty of coming by six million of anything – let alone paperclips – and ending up with the dilemma of what to do with 25 million of them after an NBC news report sparks international interest in the project. The scheme is well-intentioned, but somewhere something started nagging at me. Maybe it was when they brought Holocaust survivors in to speak at the local Methodist church. Maybe it was when some of the more obsessive personalities involved managed to import a WW2-era cattle car all the way from Germany just to house the clips. In any event, the thing that bugged me was that so much time and effort was being expended to teach about one particular bit of inhumanity. Certainly we face an ever-present danger of forgetting one of history’s biggest lessons about prejudice; Mel Gibson’s continuing career proves that it’s all too easy to ignore the suffering caused by anti-Semitism. But aren’t there other lessons – slavery comes immediately to mind – that might be a bit more immediately relevant to Americans in general and kids in the rural South in particular? Well, maybe one step at a time. Mildly amusing

Review – Seed of Chucky

Too bad I wasn’t responsible for potting this one. As I’ve proven on any number of occasions, I somehow manage to kill just about any seed before it grows into a full-fledged plant. And this one desperately needed to die before it flowered onto the screen. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a Chucky movie, and it’ll be even longer before I watch another one (assuming another one ever gets made). John Waters caught my eye in the preview, and though his role is all too brief, it is a small ray of entertainment in this otherwise-dull parade of recycled deadly doll shtick. This one’s a bit grosser than some of the earlier entries in the series, but otherwise it’s undistinguished. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The Interpreter

Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn star in yet another one of those “thrillers” that thrives almost exclusively on its own cleverness. And that’s a skimpy diet here. The premise has potential – evil African leader may be assassinated during UN speech if Secret Service and eavesdropping interpreter can’t foil the plot. Then the interpreter turns out to be more than she seems, and things start to slide downhill from there. This one might actually have kinda worked if not for Penn, who has apparently spent so long playing the mentally-differently-abled that even a straightforward government agent character gets twisted in his hands into a borderline head-case. The plot also turns on a few too many improbables to sustain a really good international political drama. Otherwise this is slick but slightly boring Hollywood fare. Mildly amusing

Review – The Wicker Man (2006)

Lackwit writer/director Neil Labutte somehow manages to combine the worst parts of the original Wicker Man and The Dark Secret of Harvest Home into one royal stinker of a movie. Though I can’t honestly say that this left me longing for the days of the Britt Ekland nekkid pagan booty dance, it did make me wish that the remakers’ money had been better spent. Nicolas Cage plays a cop lured to a strange island of new-age, man-hating cultists who all seem intent on covering up the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of a young girl. Perhaps the protagonist is made deliberately unsympathetic in order to make his ultimate fate a bit more palatable, but smoothing the way for the end doesn’t make the rest of the movie any easier to swallow. Several spots in the production also left me wondering if we won’t ultimately be treated (and I use the term loosely) to a DVD release that includes scenes too explicit for a PG-13 rating. But that in turn made me wonder whom they thought would be in the audience. Aiming for the mid-teen crowd seems like a waste of time with something this dull, so why not spice it up and settle for the R? Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Cry Wolf

I just never get tired of movies about teenagers getting savagely murdered by serial killers. There’s some kind of wrinkle here about an elaborate game of liar’s poker played between privileged kids at an exclusive prep school. But that’s really just the excuse to get the ball rolling. Once the guy with the ski mask and the hunting knife shows up, things proceed according to formula. Mildly amusing

Review – Top Secret!

All these years later I’m still amazed that a movie with so many explicit anal sex jokes could ever get a PG rating. On the other hand, most of the humor here is on an emotional level that cries out for the sixteen-and-under audience. A young Val Kilmer stars as a singer based on – if not directly parodying – Elvis in some of the worst of his movies. The overall plot is very much a creature of the 80s, but fortunately the story isn’t really the point. The gags that form the bulk of the screen time and entertainment value are as timeless as they are corny (though sometimes they do manage to be clever as well). Thus there’s a good time to be had here as long as one doesn’t expect too much. Mildly amusing

Review – Days of Thunder

I hated this one the first time I saw it, only that time it was Navy pilots rather than NASCAR drivers. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Inside Man

Would a typical Hollywood bank robbery thriller be better if Spike Lee directed it? Apparently yes, at least a little. The elaborateness of the robbery scheme is the big draw here; without the hearty supply of novel twists and turns even Lee’s direction wouldn’t have helped much. The picture has a few drawbacks. Jodie Foster is miscast as a creepy “fixer,” a character that could have been removed entirely with some simple re-writing. The movie also goes on for ten minutes or so after its natural conclusion. However, overall this show breathes some fresh life into a drastically overworked genre. Mildly amusing

Review – Robots

In the hit-and-miss world of kid-oriented, computer-generated, feature-length animation, this one’s a miss. They got quite the cast together (Robin Williams was unwelcome, but everyone else is adequate), and the technical quality of the animation’s not bad. But I’m surprised that Fox would go to production with a script this weak. The story is trite and the dialogue pitched straight into the limbo between “goofy enough for kids” and “smart enough for adults,” ultimately succeeding with neither audience. With plenty of good examples to borrow from, this could have been a better picture. See if desperate