Review – Freeway (1996)

I’m almost impressed by how stubbornly this picture rejects all possible opportunities to be clever or entertaining in any way. Reese Witherspoon (back when she wasn’t too big for roles like this) stars as a skanky teenager who falls into the clutches of a serial killer (Kiefer Sutherland). The tables turn back and forth several times as the plot unfolds, but the driving force is always brutish violence. The resulting tale is stupid, predictable (once you abandon any hope that it’s going to take an unpredictable twist) and dull. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Helvetica

Here’s a documentary in search of an audience. The only folks this is likely to appeal to are typography nerds willing to sit through an hour and a half about one type family. On the other hand, they’ll also have to be type nerds who don’t already know the history of the Helvetica fonts. Here and there we get a sprinkling of the circumstances surrounding the fonts’ historical development, particularly what they were a rebellion against and what in turn developed as a rebellion against them. But most of the interviews are self-indulgent babbling from artists who spend all their lives thinking about the tiny details that make one typeface different from another. Mildly amusing

Review – The Bridge on the River Kwai

For a war movie, this is an exceptionally morally ambiguous production. On the one hand we have an English officer (Alec Guiness) who seems like a decent, upstanding sort of guy. Yet he gets so deeply into cooperating with his Japanese captors that he actually ends up improving their chances of building a bridge that will carry troops and munitions to the front lines of the fight against the British. On the other hand we have William Holden as an American POW with distinct similarities to the character he played in Stalag 17. So who’s the hero, the noble traitor trying to build the bridge or the selfish commando trying to blow it up? The end helps resolve matters somewhat, but it’s still a strange journey getting there. It’s also a trip that could have been a bit shorter; the picture includes a lot of long, drawn-out sequences that don’t really contribute all that much to the plot. Overall, however, it’s an interesting relic from a time when war was more vague. Mildly amusing

The Macy’s Day Parade

Ah, once again the holidays are upon us. I don’t exactly let all my anti-social skepticism suddenly drop just because the first flakes of snow start to fall and I end up eating more turkey than anyone with sense would ever consume. Indeed, if anything the holidays make me even grumpier than usual.

Take the annual festival of avarice known in the halls of commerce as Black Friday, touted on the airwaves as After-Thanksgiving Sales, and celebrated in the Lens household as Buy Nothing Day. It could just be all the turkey I ate, but I actually get a little ill every year when the local news calls upon me to witness the spectacle of morons camped out in below-freezing conditions for two nights in a row (thus missing Thanksgiving dinner with their families) just so they can be first in line for sale prices at Best Buy.

That said, however, I must concede that I too have some masochistic holiday traditions that I observe religiously every year. Chief among these is my irrational addiction to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, also known as our annual reminder that for some reason Up With People still exists. I have a dim childhood memory of being taken to the parade when I was a wee toddler, but of course the tradition now centers not on the live, in-person experience but on TV coverage thereof.

This year, as ever, the televised versions sucked. I surfed back and forth between NBC and CBS, switching whenever one went to a commercial, dwelled on a marching band rather than the floats and balloons, or turned the broadcast over entirely to idle chatter between the co-hosts. I admit that a sane, detached person would never endure any of this. Indeed, Mrs. Lens usually sleeps through it or beats a hasty retreat to another room. The only way I can preserve my cherished childhood custom is to turn off the critical faculties upon which this column depends.

Every once in awhile something shows up that stirs me temporarily from my stupor. For example, the sight of The Crocodile Hunter’s widow and orphan doing a jump-up-and-down dance on a float that looked as if it might collapse at any moment suggested the possibility of a show-spoiling bit of grim coincidence. I was also disturbed by the Sesame Street float, which sported the desiccated corpse of Bob – the only cast member left from when I watched the show as a kid – still bravely lip-syncing away. Otherwise, however, I was content to turn my critical thinker off and just accept the spectacle at face value.

With one exception: the musical numbers. Before the parade itself gets within camera range, the networks (particularly NBC, though CBS did a little of it as well) kill time by airing performances from the Broadway stage. Or to be more precise, Broadway production numbers performed in front of Macy’s. Normally I try not to object to the practice too much, though of course I’d rather look at the parade itself.

But this year something about the numbers caught my eye. The acts I saw came from five musicals: Spamalot, Legally Blonde, Young Frankenstein, Xanadu and Mary Poppins. One immediately notices something about this set: they’re all musicals that were originally movies. The last two were musical movies, so I can only assume that translating them for the stage was a relatively harmless act. Likewise Legally Blonde was already sufficiently terrible that I don’t expect Broadway could damage it much.

The other two, on the other hand, did make my stomach lurch a bit (and no, it wasn’t the turkey, because the uncooked bird was still in the fridge at that point). I liked the movie version of Young Frankenstein, and the number they did from it was sufficiently dreadful to make me shudder at the thought of what the whole musical must be like. Perhaps I should just take comfort in the fact that Mel Brooks hasn’t turned Spaceballs into a musical. Yet.

But the one that really bugged me was Spamalot. The number they did was “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” Monty Python fans of course know that this song comes not from Monty Python and the Holy Grail but from Life of Brian. In its original context, the chipper lyrics are completely ironic; the song is performed by a group of people who are dying of crucifixion. But now it seems to be an earnest reminder that “if life seems jolly rotten, there’s something you’ve forgotten” belted out by gaily-cavorting knights and women in skimpy raincoats.

Perhaps it’s doubly ironic to take an ironically-sunny number and turn it into a genuinely-sunny number. But then again, perhaps not.

Review – American Assassin

This starts out to be a mildly amusing bit of low-budget documentary film-making about Lee Harvey Oswald’s defection to the Soviet Union and brief career in a radio factory in Minsk. Almost immediately we start getting bad reenactments of events in Oswald’s life (featuring an actor who bears little or no resemblance to the man he’s playing). But eventually – as all such productions apparently must – it departs from the facts and veers into speculation. And again following the usual Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorist pattern, speculation becomes evidence that in turn becomes a one-sided account of events. Even that would have been okay if this had added anything new or even interesting to the discussion, but it didn’t. See if desperate

Review - Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

I think I actually liked this one a bit better than the first one. It seems like just about every super hero movie I’ve seen lately has devoted an excessive amount of screen time to character development. I don’t want to hear about Spider-man’s relationship woes. Just let him fight the bad guys. The first FF movie suffered a bit too much from this problem as well. Though it’s not completely absent from this go-around, it seems like they’ve finally figured out that audiences come for the flashy effects, scary villains and dramatic fights. I think I would have done things a bit differently (for example, less Von Doom and more Surfer back-story), but overall this was fun to watch. Mildly amusing

Review – Miss Potter

I don’t care how deeply fictionalized this Beatrix Potter biography is. I’m just so damn grateful to finally see a biopic that doesn’t spend the whole time dwelling on sex or drug abuse that I’ll take just about anything as an alternative. To be sure, parts of this are a bit cutesy, and if you don’t like Potter’s books then you’re probably going to really hate this movie. But for the most part it’s simple, happy in the right places, sad for the right reasons, and overall just a charming experience. Worth seeing

Review – Bug (2006)

Small cast. Single location. Stiff dialogue. No special effects to speak of. Yep, it’s yet another bad play transformed into a bad movie. Actually, for all I know this might have worked well on the stage. But on the screen? No. Here it’s an annoying hour and a half about a woman who takes in a drifter only to discover that he suffers from a bizarre delusion about bugs. Or is it a delusion? Before we even got to the bug part, I’d already stopped caring. See if desperate

Review – La Vie en Rose

Just once I’d like to see an artist’s biography made into a movie without excessive attention to her sexual indiscretions and/or substance abuse problems. Guess I’m going to have to keep waiting. In a way it’s fortunate that Edith Piaf destroyed her body with alcohol and drugs, because this movie whips back and forth in the timeline of her life so frequently that her physical disintegration is the only way the audience can tell if it’s 1935 or 1960. Marion Cotillard does a superior job in the lead role, but the rest of the production is dingy and uninteresting. As I’ve remarked about other biopics, I’d rather be in the audience for a brilliant performance (of which Piaf had many) than a bystander at a car wreck. See if desperate

Review – The Reaping

A small town in backwater bayou Louisiana is beset by the Ten Plagues of Egypt (in more or less biblical order). Is it the wrath of God, or is it Satan at work through a tween-age girl? The production goes in a couple of different directions with this. As a straight horror movie – including the reactions of a skeptical scientist both to the phenomena and to the townspeople’s reaction to it – this isn’t too bad. Unfortunately we also get a lot of mooning around about questions of faith, and that part isn’t so hot. Overall it had enough interesting tricks to keep it going. Or perhaps I just liked it more than I should have because I watched it right after sitting through Bug, compared to which most anything would have seemed like a masterpiece. Mildly amusing

Review – Sicko

Michael Moore does it again. This time around he starts with some valid points about health care in the United States. Yes, we should all be ashamed to live with a system that kills people by denying them medical care merely because they can’t afford to pay for it. And yes, the socialized medicine systems in place in other countries could alleviate a lot of suffering if implemented here. As usual, however, what could be a persuasive argument sinks almost immediately under Moore’s shrill, one-sided brand of humor. He paints a picture in which everything in the United States is bad and everything in Canada, Great Britain, France and Cuba is wonderful. Anyone above the age of five should be able to recognize the inherent falsehood of such drastic oversimplification. But worse, he openly makes himself a liar. His love for the Cuban system (expressed in obviously-orchestrated photo ops) is undermined by a quality ranking of national health care shown earlier in the movie, a list that clearly places Cuba below the United States (though not by much). He also includes a clip of a British journalist reporting that on average even poor English people are in better health and live longer than wealthy Americans. If that’s the case, then health care alone isn’t the issue. Even Moore doesn’t contend that good medical care isn’t available to rich people in the United States. So the answer must lie at least partially in other factors, which of course he leaves largely unexplored. So shame on you once again, Michael Moore. If only you had used your film-making talent to produce an honest consideration of this serious problem, you might have actually helped us do something about it. Polemic like this only further polarizes the issue, adding to the problem rather than aiding the search for a solution. See if desperate

Review – Voodoo Island

This low-budget Boris Karloff picture starts out with some promise, which should come as a total shock to anyone who’s watched a lot of low-budget Boris Karloff pictures. But fear not, crap fans. You won’t have to wait too long for the bad dialogue and rubber plant monsters to climb into the driver’s seat and steer the production along more familiar roads. As an added bonus we get some weird sexual overtones, particularly between the typical love interest and another member of the exploration party, a lesbian as blatant as production standards of the time would allow. Overall this comes so close to not sucking that it’s actually somewhat disappointing when it turns out as it does. Mildly amusing

Review – The Lives of Others

Here’s a rare piece of cinema in the 21st century: a film that works on more than one level. As a straightforward – if fictionalized – account of how the secret police operated in East Germany in the 1980s, this works quite well. But it gets even better when the protagonist – one of the Stazi’s best surveillance guys – spends so long spying on a playwright that he begins to empathize with his victim. The result is a fascinating exploration of both state control and the emotional qualities of voyeurism. This production definitely rewards the effort required to read the subtitles. Worth seeing

Review – 1408

Once again Stephen King’s writing fails to translate to the big screen. John Cusack stars as an author who specializes in travel guides to “haunted” locations. But his cynical skepticism meets its match in room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel, a spot that’s actually haunted (and by something worse than ghosts). The premise is solid, but the execution is inept. The protagonist slowly moves from one phobia to the next, so no matter what bugs you, you’ll probably find it somewhere in this parade of nastiness. Of course you’ll also have to sit patiently while someone else’s secret fears get tweaked for awhile. Overall it resembles the short story upon which it’s based by playing like a condensed version of The Shining confined to a single room rather than an entire hotel. Mildly amusing

Review – Transformers

I think this is the noisiest movie I’ve ever seen. When you’ve got giant robots busily transforming back and forth between their true forms and their disguises as various easy-to-sell-to-pre-teen-boys vehicles, naturally they make quite a racket. But the dialogue is delivered with the same frantic urgency. Characters rush their lines and talk over one another like people with pre-paid cell phone plans who are about to run out of minutes. The script is fairly minimal, leaving the action sequences to do most of the work. A few years ago the transforming and fighting would have been genuinely impressive, but by now we’re all accustomed to what computer animation can do. So if you’ve got a fidgety five year old on your hands, this might keep him quiet for awhile (though perhaps not for the whole two-and-a-half hour running time, which was difficult to sit through even for those of us with longer attention spans). See if desperate

Review – The Black Hole

After Star Wars caused such a stir in 1977, other movie studios tried hopping onto the sci fi bandwagon. This was Disney’s less-than-successful bid to join the club. The cast sports some talented – or at least familiar – actors (Anthony Perkins, Yvette Mimieux and Ernest Borgnine, to name just three). The effects aren’t up to ILM par, but they’re good for the time. The script is bad, but the underlying story has a few interesting twists and turns. The problem here isn’t what the movie is, it’s what it isn’t. And what it isn’t is Star Wars. The characters, the robots, the villains, just about everything in the whole show finds a parallel in its more popular predecessor (except in the end, when it suddenly turns into 2001 for no readily-apparent reason). The result is a picture that screams “bargain basement” almost the whole way through. See if desperate

Review – Bright Lights, Big City

This should be Big 80s. It has the cast; Michael J. Fox alone should have been enough to assure it a spot on the decade’s Q-list. Add a lot of drinking and cocaine, and you should be getting a good picture of upper-middle-class white America thought about itself at the time. Trouble is, it’s so damn boring that it’s hard to stick with it long enough to draw much of a cultural look-and-feel from the experience. The plot is pure soap: Fox plays an under-employed yuppie trying to party away his dissatisfaction with life. His wife leaves him for a more glamorous life as a fashion model. His boss is a jerk. His best friend is a jerk. He’s still trying to come to grips with the death of his mother. And half of New York (with the audience along for the ride) has to play therapist as he shares his life story with anyone who will at least pretend to listen. I’m genuinely astonished to find myself typing this, but Less Than Zero was actually a better movie. See if desperate

Hi, I’m an a-hole. And I’m a PC.

A long time ago IBM tried selling PCs using one of the world’s most beloved symbols of innocent, non-corporate fun: Charlie Chaplin’s famous Little Tramp character. Following swift on the heels of the advent of this campaign came the inevitable parodies. The one I remember the best ran in a humor magazine (National Lampoon, if memory serves). On one side of the ad was the “public icon,” the Little Tramp extolling the virtues of purchasing a personal computer from IBM. On the other side was the “in-house corporate icon,” The Great Dictator outlining IBM’s labor practices and various other misdeeds.

Thanks to my DVR and the advent of baseball’s off-season, I’m not currently watching a lot of television advertising. But Mrs. Lens and I have gotten hooked on the Hi-I’m-a-Mac-And-I’m-a-PC ads. Some of them are clever. They’re cheap enough to produce that Apple doesn’t have to keep showing the same ones over and over again (an excellent advertising strategy that more companies should seriously consider adopting). But more than anything else, as Mac users we still seem to need occasional reassurance that we’re the cool kids and the majority of computer users are dorks.

But earlier this week I saw one of these things that actually ticked me off. In this go-around, PC hired a PR flak to answer questions about problems with the Windows Vista operating system. Whatever PC said about it would be re-interpreted by the flak. Most of this was innocuous enough. But when PC admitted that the first release of Vista had some serious bugs in it, the PR woman bent this around to “Some early adopters experienced a few difficulties” or words to that effect.

Who the hell does Apple think it is picking on anyone else for releasing insect-ridden products? The iPhone debacle that prompted the company to offer discount coupons to overcharged “early adopters” should by itself have made this a point of embarrassment to the company.

But of course those of us with longer, more extensive experience with Apple know that the iPhone thing was not a fluke. I would be humiliated to admit how many times I installed the new Mac operating system before letting at least two or three revisions drift by. And if you really want to know how willing Apple is to screw its own customers, dig back into computer history and see if you can find someone who bought the Lisa. Or instead, try finding someone who will admit to buying the Lisa.

This mistake is especially damaging to the Mac’s product position. The last thing anyone at the too-cool-for-school table in the lunchroom wants to hear is that we’re all secretly the thing we hate most: witless stooges eating a big plate of corporate propaganda. Even if that’s what we really are, it’s a mistake to call our attention to it.

So dump on the suckers all you want, Apple. Just don’t throw your own customers into the sucker basket.

PS - Don't forget Buy Nothing Day this Friday!

Review – Black Book

It takes some doing to make the Holocaust take a back seat to the other dramatic elements of a movie, but this one does it. Yet again a thriller becomes so obsessed with the twists and turns of double-crossing that it loses track of just about everything else. The story starts out earnestly enough: a young Jewish woman joins the Dutch resistance after her family is massacred by Nazi thieves. But from there it sinks almost immediately into a mire of who’s-on-which-side. Some minor league violence and sex help keep things somewhat interesting, but otherwise the whole thing is fairly dull. Mildly amusing

Review – Hamlet (1948)

I know Olivier is supposed to be the ultimate cinema Hamlet, but frankly I found his performance a bit stiff, better suited to the stage than the screen. At least the acting was in keeping with the overall look and feel of the production. The sets all looked like stages. The gestures and line delivery clearly had the poor folks in the back row in mind. And yet the camerawork and editing were self-consciously cinematic, constantly manipulating the point of view in ways that worked not at all with the theatre-like job everyone else was doing. I’m glad they decided to play around with some unusual techniques, but nearly 60 years of subsequent perspective show that a lot of this just doesn’t work. Mildly amusing

Review – Snake King

Okay, reviewing this one is a problem. Normally with movies that run on the Sci Fi Channel I can just toss in some random rude remark – such as “Snake King, you make my butt sting” – and call it done. The quick treatment is a strong temptation. The hero is played by Stephen Baldwin. The monster looks like the CG baddie from Basilisk: The Serpent King, only with more heads. And don’t even get me started on the talking-like-Tonto jungle denizens. But buried somewhere under all that there’s something else going on. The bad guys turn out to be the people pillaging the rain forest, not the monster. And the Snake King actually manages to live to the end (sorry if that’s a spoiler). So even though this follows the usual plenty-terrible formula, it actually turns out to be a notch or two above most other pictures of this ilk. Mildly amusing

Oprah eats shit (at least it wasn’t green)

It could happen to anyone. You set up a girls’ school in South Africa, basing the students’ educations in part on The Secret. In order to keep things under control, you cut the kids off from their families, sharply limiting their contact with the outside world. But that’s okay, because you hire only the finest staffers South Africa has to offer.

Except oops, apparently one of the people you hired to “mother” the girls turns out to be an alleged sexual predator. The tiny autocracy you created proves ideal for this sadistic bully, allowing her to victimize the children at will. Or at least that’s the story as it stands now.

And by “you” of course I mean Oprah Winfrey.

In Oprah’s defense, when the ugly truth came out she sat down at the table with the big plate of shit in front of her and dug in like it was a HungryMan entrée. She acknowledged the problem and immediately began discussing ways to deal with it. Normally I’d be against praising someone just for showing a little basic honesty. But in 2007 it’s all too easy to imagine George W. Bush sitting at the same table. “Why do the Democrats want to play politics with this? We tried hard to set up a school like the American people wanted, and all the liberals can do is criticize.” At least Oprah managed a bit more dignity than that.

However, that doesn’t smooth over the underlying problem: Oprah’s empire reeks of the control fallacy much mused-over in the original Jurassic Park movie. The more she tries to establish absolute authority over everything around her, the more sand squeezes through her fingers. We’ve seen it with the Million Little Pieces fiasco. We’ve even seen it with the new, revamped, and now-suddenly-off-putting Rachael Ray. And now it afflicts some of the most vulnerable people on earth, sad proof that absolute power doesn’t even have to bother with corruption.

Elsewhere in the world, last week we were treated to a bizarre spectacle known only as the Environmental Media Awards. Big media drew a handful of B-list celebrities to a ceremony patting the collective corporate back for all the good work they’ve done for the environment over the past year. The only award category missing was “Most Successful Act of Pretending to Care About the Environment So People Will Watch Our Shows.” I’m sure it would have made a great, show-stopping grand prize.

And fast on the heels of this parade of cynical capitalism came NBC’s “Green Week.” I only watch two NBC shows regularly – My Name is Earl and 30 Rock – but I’m given to understand that all the network’s programs were expected to have some kind of pro-environment theme. Both shows rose to the occasion in ways well-suited to their themes and audiences.

On Earl our hero was forced by the warden to add a green theme to the “scared straight” production he put together for local school kids. And Tina Fey’s show featured a new, “green” mascot being used to sell GE products. So we all keep our too-cool-for-school reps while at the same time doing the company’s business. Welcome to the 21st century’s version of the best of both worlds.

Review – The Wind that Shakes the Barley

Someday someone will make a movie about Ireland that isn’t sad. Needless to say, however, anything set during the Irish Civil War probably isn’t gonna be it. And indeed, this production is full of the awful, self-destructive rage rampant at that time. But here we’re given at least some sense of understanding via dramatic re-creations of the crimes of the Black and Tans and the retributive violence they helped inspire. To be sure, Anglophiles will not enjoy this picture. But for anyone else willing to sit through some unpleasant stuff, this is a reasonably good job of storytelling. Mildly amusing

Review – Meet the Robinsons

For a fluffy little kid-oriented movie this isn’t too bad. The story is a typically tangled time travel tale, and the punch line becomes obvious way before it’s finally delivered. But some of the jokes are clever, and the animation is good. Overall it plays like a Disney-fied version of The Addams Family, celebrating a clan of oddballs but without the darkness and irony. Mildly amusing

Review – Blades of Glory

Zoolander on ice. Verdict: wish I’d skipped it

Review - Fido

Leave it to Beaver meets Night of the Living Dead in this post-zombie-apocalypse set in the 1950s. In the peaceful green land of small town America everyone who’s anyone has a domesticated zombie. They’re great for all your household chores et cetera as long as nothing interferes with the collars that keep them docile. Needless to say, an accident shuts off the collar of a boy’s pet reanimated corpse (the title character, played by Billy Connolly) and things go downhill from there. The production is mostly concept and ham-handed allegory, though it’s somewhat entertaining to watch Connolly convey zombified emotion from behind a mountain of makeup. Mildly amusing

Review – Truth or Consequences, N.M.

Once again a studio gives money to an edgy young actor and he brings back a mess. Apparently Kiefer Sutherland’s one great ambition was to make a Tarantino-style ultra-violent caper movie, and that’s just what he did. The story is dull and the script is stiff and clumsy, reminiscent of one act plays written by college boys who think they’re smart. All this stinker needed to be a perfect example to sub-genre crap was Vincent Gallo. Oh no wait, he was in it. Never mind. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Ratatouille

The last 15 minutes or so of this animated tale about a gourmet chef who happens to be a rat are actually fairly entertaining. That’s in part because the story and the action finally pick up a little pace, in part because technically this part is well put together, but mostly because the hour and a half preceding it don’t amount to much more than a lengthy set-up for where we’re all sure it’s going to end up. So when it finally gets there, it’s quite a relief. However, much of the set-up is hard to sit through. We’re treated to a lot of obvious plot twists, a stiff romance, and generally too much unnecessary nonsense. To be sure, the cooking-related stuff is fun in a Food Network sort of way. It just makes an odd blend with the generally cartoony nature of the production. And speaking of cartoons: the animated short that accompanies the movie on the DVD is quite good, in some ways better than the feature itself. Mildly amusing

The Green M&M vs. RockStar

I don’t mind that the CBS Evening News featured a story on the latest ultra-violent video game from RockStar. I don’t mind that what they aired could scarcely be considered news. Has RockStar really produced something scandalous? Isn’t that what they do? Is there really anybody in the country who cares anything about videogames and yet has not heard of the likes of Grand Theft Auto?

Of course companies like RockStar thrive on this kind of publicity. Games such as GTA and the new one (which I’m not going to name because I don’t intend to help them plug it) don’t look very good. Even in their ads – where presumably they have their best foot forward – the graphics look boxy, very last-gen. But hey, if you can’t make a game good enough to sell itself, why not move product by tweaking some noses and cashing in on the resulting publicity?

And the nose tweaked this time belonged to Katie Couric. At the end of the story we were all treated to her Church-Lady-esque snipping about how she couldn’t see why anybody would buy such an awful game. Because you said not to, Katie. Precisely because you and people like you say they’re bad. And for almost no other reason.

Obviously the purpose behind bemoaning the passage of the legacy of Murrow and Cronkite faded away sometime during Dan Rather’s tenure. But surely such obvious side-handed hucksterism ought to be beneath anyone who puts the word “journalist” on a business card.

Review – Q: The Winged Serpent

Let me lead by trying to say something nice. I liked the animated flying lizard. It was cute. Some of the chopper shots of the rooftops of NYC in the early 80s were kinda cool. I also liked the interiors of the top of the Chrysler Building. I always wondered what was up there. Beyond that, however, this is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. The script and editing are on par with what one might expect from someone who’s never even seen a movie, let alone tried to produce one. The concept had potential, but it’s ruined by the bad execution. Even the casting could have done wonders – David Carradine and Richard Roundtree have certainly done good work elsewhere – but all the performances end up buried beneath mounds of bad editing and even worse writing. Michael Moriarty deserves special recognition for his performance as the movie’s ne’er-do-well co-protagonist. He turns in what is either the best performance ever as a hateful character or the most hateful portrayal ever of a guy with whom the audience is supposed to sympathize. Overall this is the sort of picture that unfortunately might encourage low-budget film-makers to think about going into the insurance business instead. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Paragraph 175

Here’s a new slant on Holocaust film-making: a documentary that focuses on Nazi abuse of homosexuals. This focus produces some interesting results. For example, the Nazis had an awkward time reconciling their bigoted hatred of homosexuals with the presence of gay men in prominent positions in their own ranks (though this angle isn’t explored much beyond the death of Ernst Rohm). The interviewees are quite a set as well, ranging from a witty Jewish man to a senile German to a French man who was still understandably bitter about what happened to him. The researchers who put this production together assert that only ten victims of the Nazis’ anti-homosexual persecutions remained alive when the movie was made, and eight of them agreed to be interviewed. The value of their preserved insight makes this a solid contribution to an under-considered aspect of the Holocaust. Mildly amusing

Review – Brother Bear

Jeez this movie has a lot of death, even for a Disney production. The studio continues to make its way through the world’s various ethnicities, here ostensibly telling an American Indian story of a young man transformed into a bear. The production has an amusing touch here and there, such as Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis voicing a pair of distinctly Great White Northern moose. Otherwise this is more depressing than it is entertaining. Mildly amusing

Review – The Kennedy Assassination: Beyond Conspiracy

This was an ABC News special rather than a movie, but I’m reviewing it here because it’s available on DVD, because it’s movie-length, and because a thing or two needs to be said about it. I’m deeply disappointed that a journalist with Peter Jennings’ reputation would associate himself with something this terrible. The report is an openly biased endorsement of the lone gunman theory, a recitation of the “facts” that makes no meaningful attempt to present more than one side of the story. Particularly galling is the repeated insistence that there is no evidence to support any other point of view. This is a lie. Two quick examples: the connections between Oswald, Guy Bannister and David Ferrie are almost completely ignored, as is the ease with which Oswald the defector managed to return to the United States. One might legitimately contend that this evidence is outweighed by other evidence supporting the theory that Oswald acted alone. It’s also legit to argue that the facts supporting conspiracy theories are inconclusive and don’t amount to positive proof. But when Jennings states that no such evidence even exists, he makes himself a liar or an idiot or an idiotic liar. This sort of “reporting” isn’t cold water on the flames of doubt about the official version. It’s just more fuel for the fire. Wish I’d skipped it