Review – The Wild

I’m sure a Disney-fication of Madagascar was necessary for some reason. Yes, the animation is better. The animals look a lot more realistic. The actors supplying the voices are more up-scale as well. And of course there’s the parent-child death and/or suffering trauma we’ve all come to know and love in productions from the Holy Rodent Empire. Trouble is, it just doesn’t work. While the Dreamworks version was cute in a cartoony sort of way, the realism of the animals in this go-around actually makes them less sympathetic when they behave like dumb cartoon characters. The pacing is almost constantly off, the dialogue is stiff, and the characters’ motivations are often vague. But the real killer is the flatness of the humor. Plot points that were no doubt intended to be clever and quirky instead come across as odd and awkward. Final thought: this isn’t the first movie I’ve disliked despite Eddie Izzard’s presence in the supporting cast, but this is the first time I’ve ever disliked the character Izzard was playing. See if desperate

Review – Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Although I’ve hated almost every previous Wallace and Gromit outing I’ve ever seen, oddly enough I kinda liked this one. It’s still nowhere near as good as Nick Park’s “Creature Comforts” work, but it packs at least a little charm nonetheless. The plot is pure kiddie corn, and even the effective sight gags are more than a little stupid. Still, it’s cute enough to be endearing. It would have been cuter still if the clever little clay rabbits hadn’t been sculpted with pig noses. Mildly amusing

Review – Over the Hedge

Eh, it’s cute. Bruce Willis is one of the few low points in this fuzzy little tale of a raccoon who has to replace a bear’s stash of junk food in less than a week, a task he can apparently only accomplish by duping a heterogeneous group of woodland creatures into helping him. And if you’ve got any experience at all with kids’ movies, you know exactly where the plot goes from there. The interaction between the animals and their new, suburban-sprawl environment provides plenty of physical comedy potential, and some of the supporting characters manage to be entertaining. Of course, any movie that takes a pro-environment, anti-homeowners’-association stance starts out on my good side. Mildly amusing

Review – Shock Treatment

I guess I can see why the studio thought this was going to work. It’s got a lot of the same ingredients of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Of course in hindsight it’s easy to see where it goes wrong, too. There’s nobody in this production who comes anywhere near the talent or screen presence of Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon or even Barry Bostwick. But more than that, the grim truth about the original is that – once all the audience-response cult appeal is stripped away – it isn’t really all that good a movie either. And with that in mind, what could possibly be worse than a cult movie with no cult appeal? Wish I’d skipped it

Review – James Elroy presents Bazaar Bizarre

I’ve long thought that the bizarre crimes of Kansas City serial killer Bob Berdella would make a good movie. Unfortunately, this ain’t it. Instead, this is a half-assed mélange of bad interviews, graphic re-creation of the crimes, and James Elroy opining that Berdella deserved to suffer for his misdeeds (which, however true, isn’t exactly the world’s most profound sentiment). As an extra added bonus, we get long interludes devoted to performances by an awful local band (friends of the producers, perhaps?) singing songs of no apparent direct relevance (except for the final song, which is actually about Bob). The re-enactments are sufficiently disgusting to provide a little shock value, but beyond that the most entertainment I got out of the whole thing was counting the fact errors in the Netflix description (three serious ones in a single paragraph). See if desperate

Review – How I Got into College

If you’re trying to make your way though every dumb teenage comedy from the 80s, eventually you’re going to have to take a deep breath and plunge into this one. To be fair, the experience isn’t entirely unrewarding. There are a lot of familiar faces drifting in and out, particularly Lara Flynn Boyle as the female lead. Overall, however, the only emotion stirred by this production is a vague resurgence of anxiety over SAT scores. Mildly amusing

Review – The Notorious Bettie Page

Anyone who’s ever seen Bettie Page’s old stills and shorts already knows that her work is tame to the point of boring, particularly compared to 21st century porn. However, it was disappointing to learn that the behind-the-scenes story wasn’t much more interesting than the photos themselves. Gretchen Mol does a solid job in the title role. The production is full of art house conceits (such as switching back and forth between black and white and color depending largely on location). Overall this is a so-so production, far from the worst movie I’ve ever seen on the subject of sex, but also not exactly the best. Mildly amusing

Review – A Place in the Sun

As I’m too lazy to read Dreiser’s novel, I expect this second movie version will probably have to do me. Montgomery Clift does a somewhat uninspiring job as George Eastman, a man stuck between the woman he loves (Elizabeth Taylor) and the woman he’s impregnated (Shelly Winters). Clift plays Eastman as a man overwhelmed by his own circumstances. That’s understandable when he’s trying to live the beautiful life with his true love while covering up his dreary little secret. Trouble is, the character seems befuddled right from the outset. It’s hard to share the character’s moral anguish when deciding whether or not to kill his ex-girlfriend, because he seems like he’d have the same sort of trouble trying to pick between paper and plastic. Clift aside, the supporting cast does a good job working with a good script. The courtroom drama toward the end struck me as unnecessary, but it effectively kept the suspense going. Mildly amusing

Review – When the Levees Broke

It’s Spike Lee versus Hurricane Katrina in this epic documentary produced for HBO. One suspects the combined clout of the director and his sponsor helped lure many of the politicians and other famous people who sit down for interviews. But the strongest interviews tend to be the ordinary people, the folks who have concrete slabs where houses used to be, the son of a woman who drowned after she wouldn’t leave her house, and so many other victims of the storm and its aftermath. Though it’s only half the length of Shoah – and fortunately nowhere near as boring – there’s a similar sense of epic tragedy here. Obviously there’s a time commitment involved in the viewing, but the expenditure is well rewarded. Worth seeing

Review - The Feeding

In the first five minutes a werewolf kills two redneck hunters who are out jack-lighting deer. After that things predictably go straight downhill. Law enforcement is hunting the beast. Unsuspecting college students are out camping in the woods. You can see where this is going without sitting through it until it gets there. The budget is low, which doesn’t make too much difference except where the creature itself is concerned. A movie of this quality can get by with bad acting and a useless script, but if the menacing monster looks like two pancakes with teeth surrounded by a big mat of leftover muppet fur, well, let’s say it sort of kills any chance of a successful suspension of disbelief. Clearly the director is aware of the problem, because almost all of the werewolf’s appearances are shot (or later edited) with thick color and filter work that serves no apparent purpose beyond hiding the weakness of the special effects. Also, jumps in the plot of the copy I saw on pay-per-view left me wondering if the editing was really that bad or if semi-explicit sex scenes were being clipped out. See if desperate