Review – The China Syndrome

Okay, wait. I’m still not quite clear. Are you saying that nuclear power plants are a bad idea? Yeesh, this thing is heavy-handed, even for 1979. We’ve got the whole post-Watergate cliché parade here: the crusading journalists, the guilt-ridden whistle-blower, the evil corporation that cares nothing for human life, sinister attempts to hide the truth no matter what the cost, and so on. The days of Barbarella are clearly well behind Jane Fonda now, though she almost takes a back seat to costar Michael Douglas in the liberal fanatic department. And Douglas is a bit of a surprise; I would never have guessed that he was as annoying when he was young as he is now. More so, if such a thing is possible, because throughout the picture he keeps saying “nucular.” The only sympathetic character in the whole movie is the power plant employee (Jack Lemmon) who discovers that his employer has put millions of people in jeopardy just to save a few bucks on construction costs. This might have turned out to be a total footnote even in its own sub-genre if not for the Three Mile Island incident proving the dumb story oddly prescient. Mildly amusing

Review – Messiah of Evil

To borrow a line from Life of Brian, “There’s a mess alright, but no messiah.” Oddly enough, when this production sets about the task of being spooky it actually kinda works. It has a certain Carnival of Souls quality (though not quite as stylish as its black-and-white predecessor). In particular, there’s a scene set in a movie theater that struck me as a bizarre zombie twist on the jungle gym scene from The Birds. I also liked the “trapped in the supermarket” part. Sadly, such solid moments are few and far between. Most of the production is a stiff, slow and amateurish telling of a story about a small town full of people who are somehow a little (and then later more than a little) off. Mildly amusing

Review – Eragon

This dwells somewhere in the realm between the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Dungeons and Dragons in almost every way. The script, acting, story, and effects are nowhere near as good as Jackson’s versions of Tolkein, but thankfully – for Jeremy Irons’ sake if nothing else – they don’t stink anywhere near as bad as the clunker loosely based on the popular role-playing game. Heck, the dragon’s even kinda cute at times. Though this one will probably play better with the juvenile set than with older fans of the fantasy genre, it’s still not exactly the worst example of the species I’ve ever seen. Mildly amusing

Review – Casino Royale (2006)

I actually liked this one, despite the movie’s heavy reliance on a high stakes poker game (about as much fun as watching paint dry) for a lot of the “action” in the middle of the show. Die-hard Bond fans made a fuss about Daniel Craig, but I thought he did a fine job. His Bond was more down-to-business and less smarmy charm, something I found frankly refreshing. Also, this was set up as a “new beginning” for the character (sort of like what they tried to do for Jack Ryan in The Sum of All Fears). This Bond is a young-ish agent who has just recently earned his double-O number. This gives them some fresh plot possibilities. The stock stuff from the series is here, but it’s been re-tooled to make it more interesting. Case in point: the traditional gun-barrel shot at the beginning is actually part of the plot. Mildly amusing

Review – My Country, My Country

Somewhere in here there’s a good point about democracy, interventionism and the newly-“free” nation of Iraq. The mere act of following one of the Sunni candidates for office around in the months prior to the country’s first open election provides at least some solid human interest. Unfortunately, this is an ineptly-assembled mess. It’s often hard to tell exactly when what we’re seeing is taking place. The day of the election? Months earlier? Unless there’s recently been an overlay announcing the date, it’s difficult to keep the action in proper context. The politics are also odd. As any left-leaning person in Kansas can tell you, it isn’t much fun to feel constantly marginalized, denied a meaningful voice in the government. So the guy’s got my sympathy, even when he despairs (which is frequent). However, in spots (such as the extended, bloody, and frankly somewhat pointless chicken throat-cutting) the director also seems to be actively working to make the protagonist unsympathetic. Not that the non-Iraqis fare much better. The Americans come across as insensitive rubes, and the creepy Australian mercenaries come across as, well, creepy. From an Oscar-nominated documentary I expected something a bit more profound about Iraq than “Jeez, what a mess.” See if desperate

Review – Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave

Pity these poor monsters, driven to eat brains yet stuck in a rave. It’s kinda like taking a vegetarian to Outback for dinner. Just so I can say I said something nice, I’ll admit that it actually was marginally better than the previous entry in the set. However, that’s not saying much. College students find one of the series staple barrel-o-zombies and decide that the green goo will make a great party drug for an upcoming rave. Believe it or not, things go downhill from there. It also goes from a one to a zero thanks to the heroine’s strangely callous handling of some fluffy lab animals. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – A Day at the Races

Once again the Marx Brothers are up to their wacky antics. Though this is a more polished production than many of their earlier efforts, at the same time it’s not quite as funny. The routines are reminiscent of classics such as A Night at the Opera, but somehow the humor seems stiffer, more forced. Though it’s still considerably better than a lot of other comedies out there, it’s just not up to par with what Groucho, Chico and Harpo were capable of doing. Also, the non-Marx musical numbers seem even longer than usual (though that might have been my imagination). Mildly amusing

Review – Blood Diamond

The whole time I was watching this movie I just kept thinking how much better it would have been if it had been a small, independent production rather than a big-budget Hollywood mess. To be sure, a couple of scenes – such as the refugee camp – were helped by hefty doses of the studio’s cash. But for every place the money was put to good use, two or three other parts are actually damaged by presence of big stars – especially radically-miscast Leonardo DiCaprio – or other expensive baubles. Of course part of the problem is that the movie wants to be a criticism of the international trade in conflict diamonds; it aims and aims but somehow never quite seems to pull the trigger. For example, when rattling off the roll call of nations playing this particular game, both South Africa and Israel somehow escape mention. And the “what have we learned?” title cards at the end advise us that we can do our part by insisting that the diamonds we purchase be conflict-free (ignoring the assurances earlier in the picture that blood diamonds are indistinguishable from their more politically-correct cousins). The result is a couple of hours’ worth of pricey paving stones for the road to hell. Mildly amusing

Review – Werewolf of London

Wow, his hair really is perfect. The rest of the movie, on the other hand, leaves something to be desired. When it’s being a werewolf movie, it’s actually quite good. There’s some nifty mad scientist stuff, some Tibetan mysticism, even the Jekyll / Hyde atmospheric stuff one would expect from a shape-shifting movie set in the UK capital. However, trouble arises when it strays from the horror movie path and becomes some sort of very British comedy / soap opera. The inept blending can be at least partially excused by the production date; in 1935, there weren’t a lot of previous werewolf movies to borrow from. So this one’s worth a look, but be prepared for some dull patches. Mildly amusing

Review – The Sentinel

There’s a chance that I might have liked this better if I hadn’t just finished watching the DVDs of the first season of “24.” The common characteristics – particularly Kiefer Sutherland – between the two practically screams for comparison, and in the balance this one’s found wanting. When one is called upon to come up with only two hours’ worth of story, it really needs to be more tightly plotted than this. Michael Douglas stars as a Secret Service agent who gets framed for attempting to assassinate the President. Rather than take his lumps, he breaks free of his captors and goes on a half-baked, one-man crusade to find the real terrorists. This of course causes his former fellow agents – particularly his one-time protégé (Sutherland) – to chase after him as the number one suspect rather than pursuing the actual criminals. Why that makes Douglas’ character the hero is completely beyond me, except of course that it works out okay in the end. This one scores a point or so for technical quality, but the script and acting are too terrible for it to rise any higher. See if desperate

Review – The Alligator People

Movie scientists usually mean well, so it’s sad that their experiments always seem to end badly. A guy is in a terrible plane crash, and the only way to save his life is to give him a miracle drug based on reptilian DNA. So now he can grow body parts back like one of those lizards that can grow a new tail. Trouble is … well, you can imagine for yourself what the trouble is. When the side-effects disrupt the guy’s honeymoon, he flees to the bayou-based clinic full of patients who have suffered similar mishaps. His wife pursues, only to become entangled in plot twists that make the movie go on longer than it really needs to. The saddest part of the production is that the alligator people makeup works fairly well in an understated sort of way right up until the end, when for some reason the film-makers opt to take it completely over the top, a decision they didn’t have the effects budget to pull off. Otherwise this is yet another run-of-the-mill science-run-amuck piece from the 50s, inept but for the most part blandly inoffensive. Mildly amusing

Review – Happy Feet

Apparently one of the big problems with penguins is that they’re hard to tell apart. Thus this animated tale of the waterfowl of Antarctica goes to some strange lengths to help the audience distinguish one character from another. The story here is a sappy tale of a misfit, dancing penguin trying to get by in a colony that chooses mates solely by singing talent. Of course our ostracized hero manages to befriend fellow misfits and save the day in the end, making this an expensive, opposite-pole knock-off of the old Rankin-Bass “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” The slick production values and strong (indeed perhaps a bit on the preachy side) environmentalist message do a little to redeem the show, but otherwise it’s a run-of-the-mill parade of celebrity voices and simple-minded screenwriting. Mildly amusing

Review – For Your Consideration

It breaks my heart to say it, but this movie stunk. I loved Waiting for Guffman. I also enjoyed Best in Show (though not quite as much). However, the downward trend cemented by A Mighty Wind culminates here. The Guest set applies their talents to the tale of the cast of a small, inept production. Rumor circulates that critical acclaim may attach, and hilarity is supposed to ensue. It worked in Guffman. Part of why it doesn’t work here is that the setting has been shifted from small-town Missouri to Los Angeles. Normally I’d be greatly in favor of mocking Hollywood folk rather than Midwestern rustics. However, here it robs the story of whatever charm it might otherwise have had. Above and beyond that, the fatal flaw is that it just isn’t funny. The gags almost universally fall flat. The performers seem to know it, too; just about everyone looks like they’re as tired of telling the jokes as we are of listening to them. If this is indeed the latest point on an arc of dreadfulness, I shudder to think what the next step might lead to. Let’s hope we never find out. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Flushed Away

How far Aardman has drifted from the days when it used to be worth something as a studio. Wallace and Grommit were one thing, but this is just silliness. Gone are the simple scenarios that made “Creature Comforts” such a clever short (and even the new TV series based thereon has more going for it than this circus). Instead of skillful writing, now all we get are celebrity voices and elaborate production values. And even the expensive effects don’t work all that well; there’s just something about using computers to simulate extruded clay that robs the show of the benefits of both the older and the newer technology. I liked the rat city constructed in the London sewers, but otherwise I thought this was a pretty charmless picture. Mildly amusing

Review – American Hardcore

I don’t know. Maybe it’s just a requirement that if you make a documentary about a music genre that’s been dead for two decades, it just has to come out boring. What we get here from the “stars” of the hardcore punk scene in the early 80s is exactly what we get from the aged stars of any other faded form of music: an endless parade of talking heads extolling the virtues of their glory days, grabbing credit for punk’s innovative “firsts,” and generally wishing they’d died before they got old. I guess it was nice to learn that some of these folks were still alive after all these years. But I don’t feel like I came out of this much wiser about the genre than I was when I went in. Mildly amusing

Review – Barbie Fairytopia: The Magic of the Rainbow

I’m half sorry I wasn’t stoned when I watched this and half really glad I wasn’t stoned when I watched this. Intoxicated or not, you’ll get pretty much exactly what you’d expect if you rent this. See if desperate

Review – Stranger than Fiction

I’m genuinely surprised this didn’t get nominated for a screenwriting Oscar. It’s the sort of laboriously script-intensive effort the Academy usually goes for in a big way. The premise – man discovers that he’s a character in a novel – is of course tailor-made for such a film. Beyond the writing, this is yet another production that demands a little too loudly to be taken seriously. The cast is crammed with important-movie thespians (with the exception of Will Ferrell, who I’m guessing hoped this production would do for him what Punch Drunk Love did for Adam Sandler). And the few funny, touching or in any other way genuinely human moments to be found are swiftly smothered under a thick blanket of artifice. This might have been a much better movie if it had been made for audiences rather than for critics. Mildly amusing

Review – The Lost Continent (1968)

When I was a kid, this was one of my all-time favorite movies. Of course we’re talking about a time in my life when movies of this sort could only be viewed during summer kiddie matinees at the local single-screen theater. Further, all those many years ago a ship full of explosive chemicals, a shark attack, carnivorous vines, a spooky cult living in a Spanish galleon and feeding errant cult members to a monster in the hold … well, that was more than sufficient to satisfy my standards for “good movie.” Viewing it again all these years later as a harder-to-please adult, it’s easy to recognize the production’s many, obvious flaws. However, it’s still sort of a good time assuming one is in the mood for some brain-dead entertainment Hammer style. Mildly amusing

Review – The Lost Continent (1951)

This may well hold the record for the dullest action movie ever made. The premise (scientists on expedition to retrieve wayward rocket encounter plateau of animated dinosaurs) isn’t any worse than most other sci-fi movies of the era. The cast (Cesar Romero, Hugh Beaumont, Aquanetta putting in a brief appearance for her last time on the big screen) isn’t exactly Oscar material, but it wasn’t the kiss of death either. But the pacing, oh my lord the pacing. It takes our heroes half the movie to make their way up to the plateau, and the climbing sequences are some of the most exceptionally boring things ever put on film. We have to sit and watch as each of the team members slowly clambers up every obstacle. As MST3K’s Crow aptly puts it, “I’ve seen rock climbing movies that don’t have this much rock climbing.” See if desperate

Review - ffolkes

Almost every line Roger Moore utters in this action flick is a blatant case of contrast with the role that made him famous. The oddly-named protagonist here is Bond’s opposite: a cranky, openly misogynistic, Scotch-swilling jerk rather than suave, hypocritically misogynistic, wine-sipping sophisticate. However, once the action gets started, the personality issues aren’t all that big a deal one way or another. Anthony Perkins co-stars as an extortionist threatening to blow up North Sea oil rigs unless paid not to, a plot our hero must thwart despite a parade of setbacks. While the set-up and the fight scenes are okay, the production spends a lot of time mired in go-nowhere negotiation sequences. Overall this is an earnest but awkward start to the cinema of the Reagan / Thatcher 80s. Verdict: mildly amusing

Review – The Day of the Triffids

Even by movie apocalypse standards, this one’s elaborate. Not only is the earth beset by ambulatory, man-eating plants, but the same meteor shower that activated their carnivorous tendencies also manages to blind the vast majority of the human race. The concept has potential, but it’s largely squandered on a bad script, meandering story and cardboard characters. Whatever spookiness the Triffids might have packed is further undone by the poor quality of the print used to create the DVD; this thing looks like it spent the last four decades or so at the bottom of a vat of formaldehyde. Verdict: mildly amusing

Review – Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon

I know that during World War Two England expected every man to do his duty, but it still seems strange that the call would go out to a Victorian-era sleuth who by rights should have been dead for a half century. Nonetheless, the studio decided that the world’s most famous consulting detective and his faithful sidekick (played by the classic combo of Rathbone and Bruce) were needed against the forces of darkness. Here the Nazis have enlisted the aid of Holmes’ nemesis Professor Moriarty in search of the genius inventor of a hyper-accurate bomb sight. Though the actual Doyle stories are better, this one’s entertaining in a “buy bonds” sort of way. Mildly amusing

Review – Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid

Apparently only semi-daunted by the mixed response to Pennies from Heaven, Steve Martin serves up this odd little send-up of film noir. Much of the production comes across as a parody along the lines of Neil Simon’s The Cheap Detective (though slightly less goofy). However, there’s a twist: some of the scenes are created by editing new footage of Martin with old clips from actual noir movies. The result is absurd conversations between our hero and Humphrey Bogart, Veronica Lake and other genre favorites. The result is clever without being exceptionally funny. Mildly amusing

Review – Babel

What is it about uncomfortable situations that make Hollywood think they’ll be fine fodder for a two-and-a-half hour movie? In the abstract the inter-weaving of four story lines from four different cultures might have seemed clever, but here it mostly just quadruples the agony of squirming through the tales of sad little people and their sad little lives. This one picks up a point or so for the technical quality of the production. Some of the acting was okay as well. But the production is ultimately undone by the weakness of the script. Mildly amusing

Review – Sherrybaby

I felt really sorry for Maggie Gyllenhaal in this effort. She’s got talent, and better yet she’s got the guts to take on roles that other big-name actresses wouldn’t touch (which no doubt is part of what she’s doing here). However, she’s largely squandered in this indie production (funded by IFC and Netflix) that appears to have no goal loftier than creating an hour and a half worth of embarrassing situations. This has the potential to be a genuinely moving story of a lower-class woman struggling to re-establish her life – particularly her relationship with her daughter – after getting out of prison. Unfortunately the rookie director complicates the narrative with no end of tense moments. As if it weren’t bad enough that the protagonist has to have some kind of sexual contact – often graphic – with every adult male speaking role in the movie (literally) except her parole officer and her brother. But watching her try to win back her daughter’s love by singing a humiliating rendition of an old Bangles tune in front of her entire family, well, it all just got to be too much. Not for the first time I found myself wondering why independent film-makers, liberated from the restrictions (such as sexual taboos) of Hollywood productions, seem to have so much trouble making skillful use of their freedom. Mildly amusing

Review – Gojira

More than 50 years after the fact, the original Godzilla is at long last released for the North American market. To be completely fair, the Japanese original isn’t radically unlike the American recut. Aside from the absence of the Raymond Burr scenes spliced in for U.S. audiences – and of course subtitles rather than dubbing – the two aren’t really all that much different. Still, I have enough “see it in its original form” left over from film school indoctrination to appreciate at least having the opportunity to experience what the director originally intended. Worth seeing