Review – The Odyssey

Armand Assante heads a cast of B-listers who take four hours to tell Homer’s classic tale. The whole production has a distinctly made-for-TV look and feel, which tends to undermine the epic scope of the drama. The acting and the script are similarly mediocre. Though this originally aired on one of the broadcast networks, now it’s far more at home on the Sci Fi Channel. Mildly amusing

Review – Out of Mind

I’ve gotta admit right off the bat that this is video pretty much exclusively for Lovecraft nerds. Thus it’s getting a higher rating from me than it would for someone who isn’t a fan. The story here is a blend of a handful of Lovecraft’s tales along with a few modern additions. Like the author’s work itself, the lack of technical polish actually adds to the spookiness. The main feature is an hour or so long, but the disc also includes a handful of shorts that are also worth a look. Worth seeing

Review – Tron

If you’re a fan of The Matrix or any of its kin, then sorry but you’re going to have to sit though this Disney picture from the early 80s. To be sure, the effects are very basic by current standards, however state-of-the-art they may have been at the time. The plot is threadbare and the script weak at best. But the whole cyberspace thing here finds its first cinematic incarnation, giving it historical importance well beyond its mediocre execution. Mildly amusing

Review – Death Race

Obviously Hollywood makes a lot of movies with sequences that are thinly-disguised promos for the cross-marketed video game. Indeed, some become little more than 90-minute plugs for the game. But this is the first one I’ve seen that sacrifices all semblance of plot and character for the sake of the Xbox element. The production borrows just enough plot from Death Race 2000 to get the ball rolling, but from there on out it’s like watching someone else play the game they should have made out of Car Wars. Heck, the competition itself actually includes power-ups. My personal favorite moment was the introduction of the Dreadnought. While this thing worked just fine as a “boss level,” it made no sense within the story. Who the hell would pay to watch a “sport” in which all the contestants but two are deliberately murdered? If I’d lost money betting on one of the victims, I’d be pissed. The result here is loud, action-packed and almost completely substance-free. See if desperate

Review – Burn After Reading

This isn’t a bad movie, but the combination of espionage and the Coen brothers should have been better. Frances MacDormand and Brad Pitt both do great jobs as health club employees who stumble onto a disc full of government secrets. Their bumbling attempts to profit from their discovery bring them into contact with several “beltway insider” types and no end of screwball situations. The comedy-of-errors stuff is done to a Coen tee, but unfortunately that’s about all we get. If this had somehow involved some kind of actual spy drama running parallel to the comedy threads, it might have been more fun to watch. Mildly amusing

Review – The House Bunny

Revenge of the Nerds for girls. Anna Faris stars as a Playboy bunny who gets kicked out of the mansion and finds a job as sorority house mother to a pack of misfits. Yeah, most of the humor is pretty sophomoric. There isn’t much of a story, and what little plot it does have gets tangled in its own threads during the third act. But hard as it may be to believe, some of the jokes are actually clever. And somewhere along the way the picture manages to make a legitimate point or two about striking a balance between rabid contempt for and mindless adherence to social expectations for women. Mildly amusing

Review – Traitor

Don Cheadle stars as a three-dimensional character lost in a sea of cardboard cut-outs. Our hero is a former Green Beret and devout Muslim caught between paper-tiger Islamic fanatics and tin soldier government agents (headed by Guy Pearce doing some kind of truly bizarre American accent). More than that I really can’t say without giving away too much of the plot. However, overall this is unusually intelligent for an action thriller, focusing less on the usual parade of double-crosses and more on the value of faith and loyalty in a world full of people who seek to exploit both. Heck, a time or two it actually borders on genuinely thought-provoking. Mildly amusing

Review – War, Inc.

Put on your hardhat and prepare to be clubbed over the head with comedy for the next hour and a half. On some level this must have been an attempt to recapture the brilliance of Grosse Pointe Blank. But while the joke there was subtle and clever, this is anything but. John Cusack once again plays a neurotic hitman, but here his cover places him in charge of a huge media event in a corporate-run “emerald zone” in a fake version of Iraq. There’s a point to be made here about American cultural imperialism, but it swiftly gets buried when a giant pile of ham-handed humor falls flat right on top of it. Overall this is yet another example of the new brand of comedy that starts with a brain-dead joke and repeats the punchline over and over again until even the dumbest audience member is sure to get it. That might be a prerequisite for a TV sitcom, but it’s unwelcome at best in a movie that could have been a lot better if a different approach had been taken. See if desperate

Review – Wanted

Not by me. The premise has some promise: an ancient cult of assassins with super powers kills people who are “fated” to die. But before we even get that far in the set-up, the movie is already dead in the water. Our young hero suddenly discovers that his birthright is to be a member of the cult, which is lucky for him because it takes him away from his life of office drudgery where he has to suffer the worst of all possible white boy humiliations: his girlfriend cheats on him with a co-worker while he must remain at the office getting bossed around by a fat woman. Further, his ticket into his new, glamorous life of international slaughter is “training” that takes the form of elaborate hazing rather than disciplined acquisition of skill. Once again Hollywood inadvertently demonstrates the hollowness of power in the absence of character. See if desperate

Review – The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

Hijackers take over a subway train and all they want is money? How sweet and innocent the 70s seem by today’s standards. Walter Matthau stars as a Transit Authority cop trying to cope with the criminals’ demands; he brings just enough dead-pan humor to this serious role to make the character interesting. On the opposite side of the law, Robert Shaw does a solid job as the cold-blooded mercenary in charge of the operation. In terms of look and feel, this is very much a creature of its time. But it manages to be entertaining nonetheless. Mildly amusing

Review – Wall-E

Eh, cute. Disney/Pixar once again produce a movie that’s charming without being especially inspirational. And as usual, story and character tend to take a back seat to technical quality. The story is simple enough: a robot is charged with the immense task of cleaning up the Earth after we clog our planet with garbage and then escape in a spaceship. Along the way he develops a personality and a penchant for collecting bric-a-brac. Then a scout robot arrives, resulting in robot romance. For me the real attraction was the parade of small touches and in jokes, though some of the physical humor worked for me as well. Mildly amusing

Review – The X Files: I Want to Believe

As with the first X Files movie, I suspect fans of the series will get more out of it than I did. In some ways I liked this better than the first one. The weird Russian transplant doctors were at least easier to believe (assuming one wants to) than space aliens. On the other hand, I thought the whole stem cell thing was an inappropriate intrusion of real world politics into what should have been escapist fantasy. Further, the romance between Mulder and Scully is strictly for the fans; it served no function for those of us who just wanted to watch the movie. Overall I’m not sorry I saw it, but then I wasn’t super inspired by it either. Mildly amusing

Review – The Incredible Hulk

The only entertaining aspect of this picture is the endless parade of Hulk in-jokes. In place of a largely-absent plot we get a constant supply of references to either the comics or the TV series from the 70s. Beyond that this is stupid stuff, though even so it’s better than the Ang Lee version. See if desperate

Review – The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes

For awhile toward the beginning of his career Kurt Russell made a living by starring in live action Disney movies intended strictly for the kids. The formula for three of them was that a mediocre college student somehow gets enhanced by a mishap of science. In this one – the first of the three – a bolt of lightning zaps a computer inside his head. The upside is that it makes him great at Quiz Bowl. The downside is that the computer used to belong to a mobster (Cesar Romero) who isn’t too happy to learn that Russell now knows the details of his gambling racket. The target audience for this is composed almost entirely of people with just one digit in their ages. See if desperate

Review – The Strongest Man in the World

Once again Kurt Russell plays the protagonist in a witless Disney kiddie matinee picture. This time around he eats a chemical-soaked breakfast cereal that temporarily gives him superhuman strength. High jinks ensue. I was a bit surprised at how little screen time Russell gets in this effort. A lot of the drama centers around Cesar Romero and his criminal sidekick. Otherwise it’s unique to me only that it’s the sole picture in the set that I actually saw in its original theatrical release (back when I was eight years old, a much better age than 42 to appreciate this sort of a picture). See if desperate

Review – The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

The first one’s still the best, but after that it’s a close call between the second one and this. The plots are sufficiently similar to be interchangeable. Cast-wise, Jet Li makes a better villain than Arnold Vosloo did (though Vosloo was good as well) but Rachel Weisz was a better Evie (though there’s nothing particularly wrong with her replacement). I liked the yeti in this one a bit better than the mini-mummies in number two, but once again it’s a near thing. So if you’ve seen the second one you’ve pretty much seen this one too, but if you liked number two you should get a kick out of this as well. Mildly amusing

Review – Redacted

Brian De Palma has done better work. I started out wanting to support his decision to tell his tale in a fragmented combination of home video, French documentary, news clips and security camera footage. But after awhile it becomes intrusive, particularly when canards about the voyeuristic nature of the omnipresent media start to creep into the story. But more than that, this is far too heavy-handed. In particular, the graphic rape scene was hard to take. I understand that it was supposed to be upsetting, but I think society is still a little too accepting of sexual violence against women for this to reliably demonize the bad guys without simultaneously providing a pornographic thrill for at least some audience members. Further, this good-soldier-bad-soldier approach is too simple-minded to do justice to a mess as complicated as the war in Iraq. De Palma’s heart may be in the right place, but it needs to find a way to drag his head along for the ride. See if desperate

Review – My Kid Could Paint That

Aspiring documentary film-makers should seek this out and watch it carefully, as it’s a fascinating picture of what can happen when a project abruptly switches gears. The subject at hand is Marla Olmstead, a four-year-old girl who paints gallery-worthy abstract paintings. So it starts out as an exploration of the nature of art, skill, talent and the like. But around midway through, 60 Minutes comes to town and points out that when the camera’s on Marla, she suddenly loses the ability to paint. Suspicion falls on her dad, who does come across as a little creepy. If nothing else, it’s an interesting exploration of the ethical dilemmas faced by a journalist who suddenly finds himself inside the story he’s trying to cover. Mildly amusing

Review – Thomas Kinkade’s Christmas Cottage

Well, at least it’s no worse than Kinkade’s paintings. For the most part this is Hallmark Channel treacle-y nonsense designed for people who can stomach the work of the so-called “Painter of Light.” The one bizarre anomaly here is the appearance of Peter O’Toole as Kinkade’s dying mentor. He’s supposed to be a kindly old gent, but age and hard living have taken their toll on O’Toole’s ability to portray normal human emotion. His smile in particular makes him look like he eats babies for breakfast. Though that doesn’t make this experience worth enduring (not much in the world can make up for even a brief appearance by Chris Elliot), it does lend an unintentional bit of delightful creepiness to an otherwise far-too-fluffy production. See if desperate

Review – Expelled

Let me start by saying something nice: this movie does raise at least some legitimate concerns about the role of cultural conflict in the proper exercise of academic freedom. Colleges and universities shouldn’t permit the whole “liberal versus conservative” thing to play any part one way or another in decisions about research, tenure and the like. And if it had stopped there, it might have been worth a look. But of course it doesn’t stop there. Fans of Michael Moore should be forced to watch this picture just so they can see what it feels like to be the target of this kind of irrational name calling thinly disguised as documentary film-making. The sight of Ben Stein getting all watery-eyed in front of a statue of Charles Darwin – after comparing the scientist to Adolph Hitler – is a grim reminder of just how out of control this kind of crap has gotten. See if desperate

Review – In the Valley of Elah

I need to add Paul Haggis to the list of “directors to avoid” next to M. Night Shyamalan. Crash was bad enough, but now he’s trying his hand at murder mystery. One of the things that make this so spectacularly unsuccessful is Haggis’s inability to put a story together. A big part of the fun of mysteries is joining the characters’ quest to figure out what’s going on. And that’s annoyingly impossible when one can’t distinguish between genuine clues, intentional red herrings, and illogical gimmicks intended solely to tuck a few boob shots into the picture. Tommy Lee Jones stars as a crusty ex-Army cop trying to shed some light on the circumstances surrounding the death of his son. To be fair, the picture does make some good points about the damage wars can do to the emotional lives of the young people who fight in them. But Haggis goes about his task in such an ass-backwards way that it’s hard to side with him even when he’s right. See if desperate

Review – The Spiderwick Chronicles

Though this is a pretty blatant attempt to surf the Harry Potter / Chronicles of Narnia wave, it isn’t entirely unsuccessful. The story is entertaining without being too challenging. Three kids and their newly-separated mom move into an inherited house in the country only to find that it’s a hotbed of brownies, fairies, goblins and trolls. The production design owed a good deal to Brian Froud, though I didn’t notice his name in the credits. Overall this was a reasonable use of a mid-to-high production budget. Mildly amusing

Review – The Other Boleyn Girl

Who knew there was an intersection between Masterpiece Theatre and Jerry Springer? Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Eric Bana, expensive costumes and gold-filtered lighting combine to make this a very pretty movie. Visual appeal aside, however, this picture portrays Anne Boleyn as a scheming tart from ye olde trailer park who schemes to bring about the Protestant Reformation just to get back at her sister for beating her in the race for Henry 8’s bed. The movie attempts to make a point about the evils of a society that forces women to use their sexuality in order to gain power over men. But then the only character who gets a happy ending is the only woman who meekly submits to the whims of men without a single complaint. Sexual politics aside, however, this is entertaining in a “yo monarch nasty” sort of way. Mildly amusing

Review – Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium

This picture ping-pongs back and forth between self-consciously precious and uncomfortably depressing. Dustin Hoffman (when’s the last time this guy wasn’t annoying?) stars as the enigmatic owner of a magical toy store. After he forms an intent to die a cutesy death, he preps his assistant (Natalie Portman) to take over the joint. The movie’s relentless embrace-your-inner-child theme has been done to much better effect in other pictures. To be sure, this has a moment or two of visual entertainment. But after an hour and a half of this sort of thing, it’s less like eating a nice piece of pie and more like having a pie rubbed in your face. See if desperate

Review – The Untold

This should indeed have gone untold. Lance Henriksen picks up a paycheck for playing a millionaire who hires an eclectic expedition to search the backwoods for a crashed plane and his missing daughter (three months after the plane went down, no less). Naturally they soon find themselves menaced by an exceptionally pissed off Bigfoot. The acting is lackluster, the script ridiculous and the story implausible at best. The picture also gives up a star for the brutal, unnecessary killing of a bear. But the real idiot prize winner here has to be the editing. At first I thought maybe it was odd because it had been butchered for broadcast. But no, it swiftly became apparent that it had been deliberately put together in a manner so awkward that it looks as if it were assembled by someone who had never seen a movie before and tried running the bench with his elbows. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Scared to Death

Bored to death is more like it. Seriously, just how scary is a floating blue mask supposed to be? This is yet another one of those awful hack jobs that Bela Lugosi specialized in after his studio career ended. The only real difference between this and the notorious work he did with Ed Wood is that this one is shot in “Natural Color,” a process that produces an effect somewhere between finger paints and black light posters from stoners’ dorm room walls. See if desperate

Review – El Topo

I’ll bet that back in 1970 this was something really revolutionary. However, nearly four decades later it plays more like what it really is: a mix of spaghetti western satire, bizarre art movie and celebration of sexual fetishes. Director Alejandro Jodorowsky has a good eye for color, but he puts it to such strange and tedious use that it’s hard to appreciate this as anything other than a relic of its time. Oh, and it’s extremely hard on the animals. See if desperate

Review – The Dark Knight

Here’s yet another example of a movie that never stood a chance to live up to its own hype. Heath Ledger’s final performance is emblematic: he does a solid job as the Joker, but it’s not the greatest acting job in all human history. Likewise the rest of the picture has its moments but overall just isn’t anything to write home about. I was particularly disappointed that Maggie Gyllenhaal didn’t turn out to be dramatically better than Katie Holmes in the role of Bruce Wayne’s romantic interest, though blame should most properly be laid at the script’s doorstep for that failure. Though this is by no means a bad movie, it’s just not as good as it should have been. With this cast, the Batman Begins approach to the characters, and Batman’s two best nemeses in the mix, The Dark Knight should have been the movie that critics said it was. Mildly amusing

Review – The Right Stuff

How can they start with a subject this fascinating – the early days of the U.S. space program – and come up with something this dreadful? I haven’t read the source book, but Tom Wolfe isn’t supposed to be this bad. The lion’s share of the blame can be laid at the doorstep of the director, who appears to have no notion at all whatsoever about how to pace a movie. The picture dwells at great length on apparently irrelevant detail and then zips rapidly past the interesting stuff. We also get treated to gimmicks, such as an annoying clicking noise that shows up on the soundtrack every time there’s a reporter on screen. But the flat attempts at humor are what really slays this stinker. The antics of the fighter jockeys and test pilots who served as our early astronauts might amuse the former fans of The Man Show, but most other audience members will be disappointed at how crude and dumb a lot of our “best and brightest” apparently were. If you want to see a parade of actors such as Ed Harris and Scott Glenn back when they were still young and handsome, here’s your chance. Otherwise this is likely to disappoint. See if desperate

Review – Sabotage Agent

Here’s a rarity: a World War Two propaganda picture that actually doesn’t suck. Like a lot of movies from the first half of the 1940s, this is fun to watch purely as a relic of the time. But it also turns out to have a script, some passable acting, and above all else a twisting, turning plot worthy of a spy movie. Robert Donat stars as a British soldier whose chemistry background and fluency in German and Romanian makes him an ideal candidate to sabotage a Nazi poison gas factory. But after his contact with the local resistance is arrested, he finds himself on his own against the Germans and the naturally-distrustful Czechs. In other words, this actually has a bit of espionage realism to it. Certainly it isn’t as realistic as some of the Cold War pictures a couple of decades later, but for its time and place it’s a genuinely interesting movie. Worth seeing

Carols from Hell

I’m highly in favor of Christmas carols, at least in principle. I’ve got a perfectly dreadful singing voice, which I exercise as little as humanly possible. That always makes for awkward moments during sing-alongs, because I simply do not sing along. However, just because I can’t do it myself doesn’t mean I have to hate it when other people do it. As long as it’s a good – or at least heartfelt – attempt to “make a joyful noise,” it’s got my support.

With a handful of exceptions. Though the vast majority of the carol catalog doesn’t do much for me one way or another, a small set of Yuletide songs absolutely set my teeth on edge. Here’s a quick list of the culprits:

 

We Wish You a Merry Christmas – Actually, I’m fine with this one as long as the singers know when to cut it off. It’s got a bit too much of the Dickensian English flavor to it, but I learned a long time ago that I just have to be a good sport about that aspect of the holiday. If it’s sung too fast it gets a little eerie (we’ll get to “The Carol of the Bells” in a minute). But as long as it’s a simple wish for a happy holiday, it’s hard to reply with anything but “thanks, you too.”

However, if the performance lasts long enough we get to the trouble spot. It’s all happy this and good tidings that, and then suddenly it gets pushy. “Bring us a figgy pudding,” the wassailers demand. “And bring it right here.” How should one respond to such a shameless corruption of the give-without-expectation-of-reward theme of the season? “I don’t have any freakin’ figgy pudding, whatever the hell that is. And if I did, I’d be giving it to my family instead of feeding it to yodeling beggars.”

But then it gets worse! “We won’t go until we get some. We won’t go until we get some. We won’t go until we get some. So bring it right here.” Not going, eh? Okay, how about this: “Get your asses off my sidewalk. Get your asses off my sidewalk. Get your asses off my sidewalk. Or I’ll spray you with the hose.” There, now the whole Christmas spirit is ruined.

Sleigh Ride – You know the old joke about Job? The one I have in mind finds our hero bemoaning his fate and asking God why he’s made to suffer. “I don’t know, Job,” God replies. “There’s just something about you that pisses me off.”

That’s sort of how I feel about this song. Actually, if I had to put my finger on it, what really gets me is that I love Christmas for its underlying values, not for its superficial trappings. And this song’s all about the latter. Sleigh rides, Currier & Ives prints and the like are all things we can buy. To be sure, this is a glad-hearted celebration of such stuff, as opposed to the grim mania of Black Friday shopping riots. Nonetheless, it detracts from the simple spirit of Whos who can have Christmas even without the parties and presents.

Besides, if we can do away with this one then orchestras will no longer be forced to purchase the two-boards-slapping-together instrument that probably has to be made from special acoustical boards imported from the Black Forest. The only piece besides this one that actually uses it is J.S. Bach's little-known, seldom-performed Ausfahrt Nacht Die Kitchen Und Fetchen Sie Meine Weinerschnitzel in the original German.

I Saw Three Ships – Same gimme-presents deal here. Ooh, ships full of stuff for us! This song reminds me of the passage in Amadeus where Salieri accuses his father of praying to God to protect commerce. That’s a “why are you bothering God with this?” moment at any time of year, but in the Christmas season it should be considered particularly inapt.

O Come All Ye Faithful – If I ever get around to making a list of my favorite carols I’ll include “Adeste Fidelis” on it, so the problem here is entirely in the translation. I like the emphasis on the “Happy birthday, Jesus” aspect of the holiday. But then the original Latin gets twisted into some genuinely awkward English. I spent a year in high school unsuccessfully trying to learn Latin, but I’d rather go back and give it another try than sit through lines such as “Now in flesh appearing.” Sounds like an ad for porn. And don’t even get me started on “Lo! He abhors not the virgin’s womb.” Ick. Is this a Christmas miracle or an anatomy lesson?

Jingle Bell Rock – Somewhere in the 30s or 40s the world’s talent for producing Christmas carols abruptly pulled the croak chain. Though I admit I don’t care for the likes of “White Christmas” as much as some of the older, more religious stuff, I’d sit through Bing Crosby for hours before willingly enduring a single performance of bubblegum like this. It’s like “Sleigh Ride” retooled to climb the charts. The moment phrases such as “high rotation” apply to a song, it ceases to be a Christmas carol in any meaningful sense of the word.

And the same goes for “Rockin’ around the Christmas Tree” and other songs of this general ilk.

The Carol of the Bells – A stand-up comedian – sorry, I don’t remember who it was – once called this “The Christmas Psycho Theme.” That hits it right on the nose. I can just imagine Janet Leigh showering off when suddenly the curtain is yanked aside, this song starts playing, and she’s killed with a butcher knife by a fat guy in a red suit. The frantic pace and the minor key just don’t say Christmas to me at all.

Even if I liked the song itself, it’s got some bad associations. For obvious reasons, it’s a perpetual favorite of bell choirs. Bell ringers are like professional table tennis players or people who make houses out of playing cards; though I admire their skill and dedication, I’d prefer not to be called upon to appreciate them while they practice their art.

Then of course there’s the inclusion of this tune in the infamous Sweeney Sisters Christmas medley on Saturday Night Live. Once the Sweeneys do a song, it belongs to them forever.

Santa Claus is Coming to Town – After I bashed the Jolly Big Fat Lie last year, I couldn’t let this whole list go without at least one entry from the vast catalog of Santa songs. Of all of them, this one is by far the creepiest. Every time I hear it, I’m brought mindful that the loose translation of tonton macoute is “uncle with a bag,” an evil spirit who stuffs children into a sack and carries them off.

“He sees you when you’re sleeping”? “He knows when you’re awake”? Is this guy the joyous spirit of Christmas or a KGB operative? The whole thing has an eerie, Orwellian flavor. It gives me nightmares about Big Santa and the Ministry of Elves making a list and checking it twice to find out who’s been doubleplusgood and who’s going to get a ticket to Room 101 in their stockings this year.

The Twelve Days of Christmas – This song suffers from a host of fatal flaws. First, it is absolutely, positively, entirely too damn long. If you start with “On the 12th day of Christmas …” and just do one run-through, no problem. But when you have to sing each bit over and over just for the sake of trudging through to the end, it becomes a “99 Bottles of Egg Nog on the Wall” experience.

This problem is magnified a thousand times when one has to sit through an instrumental rendition. Years later, I still vividly recall a pre-Vespers performance of this ditty by KU’s xylophone choir. By the time they were done, I could have sworn we’d just sat through “The 247 Days of Christmas.” Indeed, the only thing that stopped them from tinkling merrily away was the need to clear the stage so the actual concert could commence.

The next question, naturally enough, is just how much you’d end up with if your so-called true love really gave you all that junk on all those days. Here’s how it breaks down:

            12 partridges in pear trees (1 bird/tree combo per day for 12 days)
            22 turtle doves (2 birds x 11 days)
            30 French hens (3 x 10)
            36 calling (or collie, if you prefer) birds (4 x 9)
            40 gold rings (5 x 8)
            42 geese a laying (6 x 7)
            42 swans a swimming (7 x 6)
            40 maids a milking (8 x 5)
            36 ladies dancing (9 x 4)
            30 lords a leaping (10 x 3)
            22 pipers piping (11 x 2)
            12 drummers drumming (12 x 1)

That’s 364 things you now have to find a place for, making your true love almost as bad as a stalker who gives you something every blessed day of the year.

Of course you can probably get rid of some of it. Unless you just happen to have a huge lake in your back yard, the geese and swans will probably depart on their own. And with a little chasing, the rest of the birds can probably be persuaded to leave. The gold rings can be pawned. But if you think regifting a fruitcake is tough, wait until you try to fob 40 milkmaids off on a friend or family member. Not even Goodwill is going to take that many lords and ladies. And by the time the neighbors have phoned in several noise complaints about the pipers and drummers, you’ll likely find yourself in search of a true love with either less money or more common sense.

Next, as Eddie Izzard points out, once you get past the five gold rings the rest of it is hard to remember. I won’t try to re-create his version of what you can sing if you don’t remember the actual words. If you haven’t seen “Dress to Kill,” quit reading this and go rent it right now.

Beyond how hard the whole shopping list is to recall, however, is the sheer strangeness of the gifts themselves. It’s such an odd set of choices that it leads me to suspect it’s one of those secret kabala or Masonic things that laypeople like ourselves aren’t supposed to know about. Are nine ladies covertly dancing over gateways to other levels of consciousness? Are the French hens actually supposed to be the architects of Solomon’s temple? Should we be scouring the backgrounds of DaVinci paintings in search of swimming swans and laying geese?

Still, the greatest and most enduring problem with this song would still be there if the gifts were limited to a gold ring and an orange with cloves stuck all over it. Yet again the prime purpose of Christmas is getting presents. This song doesn’t even bother with the notion that one should give in return. There’s no “and in exchange I gave my true love a bowling ball and a can of Simonize.” Just gimme gimme gimme.

If I’ve gotta sit through a carol this long, I insist that it be more morally uplifting than that.

Review – My Favorite Spy

But not exactly my favorite spy movie. Bandleader Kay Kyser plays himself in this dumb screwball musical from 1942. As part of the war effort, our hero is recruited into a counter-espionage operation that seems to mostly involve getting into embarrassing situations for no particular reason. Despite some well-known costars – Jane Wyman and Robert Armstrong – this has too much war-effort spy stuff to work as a musical and too much silliness to work as a spy movie. See if desperate

Review – Flawless

Whew, is this movie ever inaptly titled. Demi Moore stars as a career woman in the 1960s, frustrated by her inability to climb the corporate ladder at a huge diamond trading firm in London. A janitor (Michael Caine) takes advantage of her frustration to lure her into a plot to steal uncut diamonds from the company vault. Things twist and turn for awhile but don’t ever get particularly interesting. If you’re in the mood for a mediocre caper movie you’ve come to the right place. Mildly amusing

Review – Standard Operating Procedure

Errol Morris appears to be slipping. He can Phillip Glass as much as he wants, but slick production values don’t cover up the absence of substance. Sure, he gets some of the key players in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal to talk to him on camera. But he doesn’t really learn anything from them that hasn’t been covered a thousand times on “60 Minutes” or the Internet. Further, he gets no perspective outside the members of the military directly or indirectly connected to the scandal (plus a couple of civilian contractors). No interviews with Iraqis (victim or otherwise). Only a vague sense of what was really going on. Morris used to be really cutting edge, but frankly this was nowhere near as good as Taxi to the Dark Side. Mildly amusing

Review – Transsiberian

This was one of those movies that Blockbuster had dozens of copies of, so I figured if the chain thought it was going to be that popular that perhaps it would be entertaining. Nope, fooled again. This is the intensely tedious tale of a married couple riding a train from Beijing to Moscow. Along the way they get caught up with another pair of English-speakers who turn out to be drug smugglers. From there things twist and turn in ways that were probably intended to be thrilling but in fact move from dull to annoying to downright ridiculous. It’s hard to say more than that about the plot without ruining it for the hapless souls who are still considering renting it. Some of the train stuff is interesting, and some of the snow-covered wilderness footage is pretty. Otherwise this is just two hours of my life I wish I had back. See if desperate

Review – Conspiracy (2008)

Val Kilmer’s bloated corpse stars in this cheap First Blood reheat. A one-legged hero from Gulf War One shows up in a small border town in search of an old Army buddy. The townfolk turn out to be downright hostile, due at least in part to the fact that they’re caught up in some kind of suspicious land deal by day and murder undocumented workers by night. Unfortunately for them, the protagonist’s buddy and his family were among the victims, the crime implausibly captured and preserved on videotape. After a considerable amount of getting kicked around, our hero goes nuts enough to start fighting back. From there on out it’s pure Rambo. See if desperate

Review – Baby Mama

This had a good 22.5 minutes’ worth of humor, which might have made it a solid episode of 30 Rock. Unfortunately this is more than three times longer than a slice of sitcom, and there isn’t enough here to make it stretch. Tina Fey stars as an executive who can’t get pregnant, so she hires a lower-class woman (fellow SNL alum Amy Pohler) to be a surrogate. High jinks ensue. Despite occasional funny gags, overall this is an all-too-conventional take on American women’s obsessions with reproduction. Mildly amusing

Review – Journey to the Center of the Earth

At least this one is a little easier on the lizards than the original was. On the other hand, it’s every bit as dumb. The special effects are a lot more sophisticated, but the story is so empty-headed it probably won’t even amuse the juvenile audience for whom it’s obviously intended. Further, a lot of it is clearly designed with the IMAX 3-D theatrical release in mind, with lots of stereotypical stuff-jutting-toward-the-camera nonsense. Mildly amusing

Review – You Don’t Mess with the Zohan

And if you have an ounce of sense, you don’t see this movie. This Adam Sandler sitcom plays like an hour and 45 minutes of one of those really terrible Saturday Night Live skits. Indeed, a big chunk of it actually was a terrible SNL segment years ago. The premise is pure Sandler: a super Israeli commando comes to America in search of a job as a hairdresser. Along the way we get such an immense pile of ethnic stereotyping and crude sexual innuendo that any chance this production had to shine is smothered under vast heaps of garbage. Truth be told, I probably wouldn’t have seen this at all if there had been anything else on pay-per-view. So this is a valuable lesson for me about being too lazy to just go to the video store. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – I Am Legend

Who knew the end of the world could be so depressing? Will Smith stars as the last man on earth, the sole survivor of a plague that killed most of the population and turned the rest into blood-crazed monsters (sort of like 28 Days Later only done entirely with CGI so they look really fake). Our hero and his dog explore post-apocalypse Manhattan, looking for other survivors, a cure for the plague, or at least something to help the guy maintain his sanity. The exciting moments – and there are some – are offset by the annoying moments (endless alarms going off, prolonged waits for the booga-booga moment, and so on) and the depressing moments (do I even have to tell you not to get too attached to the dog?). This is the third screen adaptation of Richard Matheson’s classic novella. Though it’s the first to use the title of the source story, it isn’t really any closer to Matheson’s tale than numbers one or two. And that’s a shame, because just a straight version of the original would – or at least could – be made into a genuinely good picture. Mildly amusing

Review – British Intelligence

Despite the oxymoronic title, this is actually fairly clever for a spy movie from 1940. Unlike many of its contemporaries, this picture actually features some elaborate twisting, turning and double-crossing. It also helps to have Boris Karloff play the bad guy (or is he?). Mildly amusing

Review – They Made Her a Spy

And after that they made me fall asleep. The first time I tried to watch this I dropped off almost immediately, and the second time (after a decent night’s rest) I started to drift a bit in the middle. For the parts I managed to stay awake through, this dwelled somewhere between an average pre-war propaganda piece and an Ed Wood movie. Our heroine becomes an intelligence operative after her brother is killed by Nazi saboteurs. Or at least I think the bad guys are German. Apparently in 1939 RKO was a bit cagier than the folks at Warner about exactly who we were going to end up fighting. Despite the dull story and wooden dialogue, I’ve seen worse spy movies. Mildly amusing

Review – Spy Ship

Yeesh, what a ham-handed piece of propaganda. This movie has a lot in common with its pre-war predecessors from Warner Brothers. We’ve got fifth columnists trying to keep the United States out of World War Two. However, this one was made in 1942, clearing the way for even more flagrant racism (including a Japanese character guaranteed to make 21st-century audiences cringe). Symptomatic scene: the valiant reporter who cracks the spy ring chucks one of the malefactors over the side of the title vessel, shoots him in the water and justifies it with a “That’s for Pearl Harbor!” Most of the plot revolves around a pair of sisters, one of whom is in love with the hero. The other is a saboteur-for-hire working for the Nazis. The most disappointing aspect of the production is the complete lack of subtlety. The bad guys are all bad – filled with greed, deceit, you name it – and the good guys are all good. Though that’s perfectly in keeping with action movies of the era, it doesn’t make for a particularly good spy movie. See if desperate

Review – Hellboy 2: The Golden Army

Second verse, very similar to the first. Aside from a few interesting visual twists from Guillermo del Toro, this production is pure comic book. As with many other sequels, the characters develop more complicated emotional connections. But otherwise this is the same end-of-the-world-monster-attack-narrowly-averted-by-obnoxious-hero soup from round one. Just be sure to watch the first one first, because otherwise you’ll come in late on a lot of essential character development. Mildly amusing

Sooey, pigs!

When I was a kid my family had a semi-tradition known as the Sunday Drive. Hard as it may be to believe in the 21st century, at one point in our nation’s history gas was actually cheap enough that people could drive around aimlessly for hours on end without taking out a bank loan for the privilege.

The quality of such outings tended to be mixed. Some of them were among the most interesting experiences of my childhood. For example, one time we ended up in the woods during one of the cicadas’ cycles. The things were impressively deafening. On the other hand, sometimes the trips were just a lot of aimless driving around on afternoons when something else might otherwise have been going on.

When we lived in Lawrence, one occasional stop on Sunday rambles was a pig farm a few miles outside of town. We’d pull over to the side of the road, and my dad would lean out the window and yell “Sooey!” at them. Every pig in the place would dash for the side of the pen next to the farmhouse, expecting to get fed. Watching them all running around in a big mass was no end of hilarious.

Years later when I told Amy about it, her response was “So your dad lied to pigs?” Sure, if you say it that way it sounds bad.

I’m brought mindful of the Pavlovian response of swine every holiday season on the day after Thanksgiving. There they sit, camped out in the freezing cold, waiting for the mad dash into the pig sty of frenzied consumerism.

Makes me wonder if there’s even any slop in the offing, or if the advertising industry just likes lying to people.

Remember, Friday is Buy Nothing Day. It's not about wrecking the economy (mortgage bankers and oil speculators have already done that for us). It's about sending a plea for sanity to Wall Street and Madison Avenue.

Review – Capricorn One

Conspiracy theories and O.J. Simpson? The fun never stops. The premise here is that NASA needs to fake a voyage to Mars, a thinly-veiled presentation of the old faked-moon-landing stuff. Fortunately for our three brave astronaut-heroes-turned-sound-stage-actors, the evil government decides not to kill them right away even after announcing to the world that they’ve been killed in a re-entry accident. The desert chase sequences that ensue are spectacularly dull. This picture gets at least a B for its premise, but the execution is a C- at best. Mildly amusing

Review – Espionage Agent

Like Confessions of a Nazi Spy, this was a 1939 attempt by Warner Studios to get the United States jazzed about taking a more active role in the war in Europe. Our hero is all set to begin an illustrious career in the State Department when it turns out his new bride is actually a Nazi agent. However, because she loves her husband more than she loves Der Fuhrer, she helps him crack a German spy ring and restore hubby’s credibility. Though this is mostly a typical action movie from the late 30s, there’s a disturbing undercurrent in here as well. Several times throughout the picture characters mention that Nazi spies would be much easier to fight if Congress would just change the law to restore some of the war powers lost after the conclusion of World War One. Though I’d like to play along – anything that’s bad for Nazis is okay by me – this just sounds far too much like the Bush administration begging for a renewal of the USA Patriot Act. That element notwithstanding, this was a fun piece of propaganda and not much else. Mildly amusing

Review – Kung Fu Panda

Once again Dreamworks serves up a big bag of kiddie corn. Jack Black (who oddly enough is a little less annoying when we don’t actually have to look at him) lends his voice to a bumbling panda who gets selected to become the “Dragon Warrior.” Of course this misfit can only succeed with the aid of a whatever-the-hell-it-is (Dustin Hoffman) and the Furious Five, each of whom represents a traditional animal style of kung fu. The physical comedy is amusing, the plot is entertaining, and the animation is good. Further, if this movie helps get kids hooked on the martial arts, that’s at least potentially a good thing. My only real gripe here is the “Secret” approach to achievement: wanting to be the Dragon Warrior is sufficient – with only minimal training – to make our hero into the Dragon Warrior. That aside, this is an enjoyable experience. Mildly amusing

Review – Constantine's Sword

This documentary seems to be an uneven combination of two different scripts. One thread is author James Carroll’s discomfort with the Roman Catholic church’s anti-Semitism, particularly Pope Pius XII’s complicity in the Holocaust. The other is a criticism of mega-churches’ efforts to evangelize in the U.S. military in general and the Air Force Academy in particular. To be sure, the two stories have some common elements, such as the use of the blood libel. But there’s a qualitative as well as quantitative difference between continuing a centuries-old practice of persecution by aiding and abetting Hitler and being a garden-variety right-wing bigot. Further, Carroll’s point that God doesn’t sanction violence – however accurate – isn’t really directly demonstrated by either of the beefs he raises. The result of this lack of focus is a meandering movie that does a poor job of proving a rather obvious point. See if desperate

Review – Mongol

This Genghis Khan: The Early Years biopic suffers from at least one of the same defects as Elizabeth: it ends just as it starts to get interesting from a historical point of view. However, Temujin’s childhood and youth amid the feuding tribes of Mongolia does make for some intriguing drama. I also enjoyed the non-Hollywood production values, particularly the decision to shoot the whole thing in Mongolian. Overall I found this an entertaining way to learn something. Mildly amusing

Review – Confessions of a Nazi Spy

This picture bears an uncanny resemblance to the likes of Reefer Madness, only with less pot and more Nazis. Even prior to the start of U.S. involvement in World War Two, the threat posed by Hitler and his minions was obvious to FDR and his buddies at Warner Brothers. Hence this piece of ham-handed propaganda pitting the FBI – headed by Edward G. Robinson – against the jack-booted menace from abroad. The portrayal of “social clubs” like the German-American Bund as hotbeds of treason was controversial at the time, but of course history vindicated the Warners. The production is entertaining simply because it’s fun to watch this sort of jingoistic fear-mongering directed at someone who actually has it coming. Mildly amusing

Review – Nazi Agent

Conrad Veidt co-stars with himself as twins: a bookish stamp collector and a Nazi spymaster. When our bookworm hero is forced to kill his evil brother, he must assume his sib’s identity. This has a nice sense of 1942 mid-war paranoia, but otherwise it’s a bit on the dull side. Mildly amusing

Review – Darklight

The scariest thing about this production is that it appears to have been designed to breed a series or at least a sequel. A young woman has forgotten that she was once Lilith, the mythological first wife of Adam. Fortunately for humanity, when she forgot who she was she also forgot that she was evil. So when some CGI thing called a “demonicus” threatens to destroy civilization with a rapidly-spreading disease called the Red Plague, Lilith turns out to be our only defense against it. Script, acting and production values are all unfortunately the equal of this lame plot. Mildly amusing

Set materializer to “golden brown”

The fall colors have been a little disappointing this year. Of course we all knew in advance that they would be. Whatever dark, brooding mood possessed the weather gods toward the end of the summer virtually guaranteed our trees and bushes would have little chance at bright foliage when the time came for the annual change.

But autumn is hands-down my favorite time of year, and I refuse to let a little lack of cooperation from the elements dampen my mood. So rather than give in to the dingy spirit of lackluster leaves, I’m going to put my best marketing spin on them Hey, I ought to be getting some value out of that Master’s in Journalism with an emphasis in advertising I completed many years ago and for which I will still be paying for years to come.

Thus I choose not to see the leaves this year as “dusty grey” or even “unenthusiastic taupe.” Instead I choose to regard them as “golden brown.”

You’re probably already familiar with golden brown. It’s the color all food turns when it’s spent just enough time in the oven to pass “too frozen to eat” without making it all the way to “too burned to eat.” Everything from tater tots to fish sticks to pot pies all seek this Nirvana-esque hue. Indeed, golden brown is such an exalted condition that its subjective majesty even trumps otherwise cold, hard, objective cooking instructions. If you don’t believe me, check the bags and boxes in your freezer and see how many instruct you to “cook for [however many] minutes or until golden brown.”
The only food in our society that doesn’t seek golden brown status are those odd meals we occasionally find time to prepare from scratch or things that we microwave. And over the years I’ve become distrustful of microwaves. Again, it’s all in the marketing.

When we were young – at least those of us who were wee tykes in the late 60s and early 70s – we were fairly certain that by the time we reached adulthood all the stuff we saw on Star Trek would turn out to be real. It wasn’t an unreasonable belief at the time. After all, we made it to the moon in a fraction of the time most sci fi authors thought it would take us. Could miracles like the Starship Enterprise really be that far behind?

Of course it was not to be. More than 40 years after the original series’ three-year run, we’re still not scooting around the galaxy at nine times the speed of light. We aren’t dissolving in our living rooms and then re-integrating at the office, thus saving hours of annoying commuting every day. We don’t even have cool weapons that allow us to either knock opponents unconscious or make them disappear in a no-fuss-no-muss sort of way. Even if they have been invented, the Pentagon isn’t sharing them with the rest of us.

The one Star Trek gizmo that we actually got – or at least this was the hype at the time – was the Food Materializer. Remember when someone on the show wanted something to eat? All she or he had to do was press a couple of buttons and zzzzap, there was dinner. Anything from tomato soup to London broil just popped into existence right there in a handy little hole in the wall.

Microwaves were supposed to do this for us. Or to be a little more realistic, we were supposed to be able to buy wonderful meals pre-made in boxes. We’d pick them up at the grocery store, drop them in our magic microwave, and zzzzap, there would be dinner.

Of course microwave meals don’t work that way. Naturally the new TV dinners don’t taste any better than their toaster oven predecessors. Nobody with an ounce of sense expected anything else. But really, honestly, nuclear meals aren’t any more convenient than their conventional counterparts.

Just look at the directions on the back of your average nuke meal. They usually read something along the lines of: “Open box. Remove tray. Discard box. Dig box back out of trash when you realize cook times are printed on it. Pull plastic film away from apple crisp. Stare at apple crisp. Put plastic film back over apple crisp. [Apple crisp just likes to be admired, I guess] Poke holes in plastic film over vegetables. Poke more holes in plastic film over vegetables. No, that’s too many holes. Cover some of the holes with Scotch Brand Magic Transparent Tape. Place in microwave and heat on low for two minutes six seconds. Microwave on high for one minute 30 seconds. Microwave on low for three minutes four seconds. Remove and let cool. Remove film from mashed potatoes. If potatoes still resemble cold, soggy paper towels, microwave on high for an additional 15 minutes. Let cool. Serve.” That last instruction’s my personal favorite. It’s bad enough that I’m eating this slop myself. What makes them think I’m going to serve it to someone else?

Clearly this isn’t the Star Trek Food Materializer. If I wanted to spend that much effort on dinner, I’d probably just go ahead and cook. At least then I could guarantee all my food would come out golden brown.

Most of this entry was originally printed as a column in the Kansas City Kansan.

Review – Heartland Horrors

It came from Lawrence, Kansas! This collection of short subjects from the Horror Channel showcases what’s right and what’s wrong about the tech-spawned revolution in independent movie-making. On one hand, writers, actors and directors have a lot more freedom to play around with ideas. None of these things would ever have stood alone as a feature-length, must-make-millions-to-turn-a-profit production. But they don’t have to. Each needs to last only long enough to tell a simple tale. On the other hand, the absence of the filter imposed by the studio system means that anything can be produced no matter how stupid or crappy it happens to be. The result – predictably – is a mixed bag of “oh, that’s clever” (such as the “Woman’s Intuition” short), “that made no sense at all” (“Out to Pasture”) and “jeez, that was dumb” (“The Last Laugh”). Overall these were entertaining, and I’m not sorry I rented it. But if there’s a lesson to be learned here, it’s that if one turn of the screw results in a hackneyed cliché, adding a second twist doesn’t necessarily make it better. Mildly amusing

Review – The Guns of Navarone

I absolutely loved this movie when I was a kid. Of course that was probably at least in part because I had a “Guns of Navarone” play set I enjoyed for hours and hours. And to be honest, I wonder if in my youth I might have been a bit too tolerant of the picture’s flaws. Though the story is solid and the action is entertaining when it’s happening, we go for long – and I do mean long – stretches between the good parts. In particular, there’s a “ship in rough weather” sequence that seems to stretch for hours without advancing the plot a jot. Dull spots aside, however, this one should be on every must-see list of World War Two movies. Worth seeing

Review – Becket

Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole star in this historical drama about the relationship between King Henry II and Thomas a Becket. The period pageantry is fun, and both lead actors are at their scenery-chewing finest. But like Single White Female, this is a dishonest treatment of homosexuality. Though of course the movie isn’t free to openly acknowledge it, the lead characters are portrayed as obviously gay. So when Becket abandons the King in favor of God, Henry’s reaction is pure jilted lover. His psychotic rages and eventual death sentence for his ex-friend are the product of his perverted sexuality, though again this is implied rather than explicitly stated. If that aspect of the drama had been downplayed – or better yet eliminated altogether – this would have been a more enjoyable movie. Mildly amusing

Review – The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

The Assassination of My Last Goddamn Nerve by the Cretins Who Made This Movie is more like it. This is like some satanic combination of the forced artiness of the dreary westerns my dad used to love back in the 70s and the political consciousness of a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. Brad Pitt turns in a mugging-intensive performance as the white supremacist terrorist “hero” James, and his killer comes across as an obsessed fan. Honestly, I had to watch this in chunks just to keep it from becoming so annoying that I stopped watching it altogether. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Yeti

The Sci Fi Channel strikes yeti again. A high school football team on its way to Japan to play an exhibition game ends up crashing in the Himalayas (yeah, don’t bother to check the map on that one). Just as the jocks are trying to decide if they’re going to go all rugby team on the corpses of their companions, up pop a couple of Abominable Snowmen to show them how to chow. “Highlights” include yetis that hop around like giant fleas and a guy getting beaten to death with his own severed limb. If you’re in the mood for a so-awful-it’s-funny picture, I guess this’ll do. See if desperate

Hooray!

For the most part I just want to continue breathing deep sighs of relief.

But for the younger generations, I need to point something out really quickly. Back in 1992, at the ripe old age of 26, for the first time in my life I got to vote for the guy who won. Actually, if we’re going to split hairs, the Electoral College deprived me of my shot at voting for the guy who won (as it always does). But it’s the thought that counts, right?

Sixteen years ago I felt like many of you do now. At last we were in for a change. The social and economic injustices of the Reagan era would soon be put right.

I hope we don’t all find ourselves in 2010 feeling as let down as I did by the time 1994 rolled around.

Review – Taxi to the Dark Side

I don’t know if truth is stranger than fiction, but sometimes it’s sure a lot more interesting. After sitting through two mediocre dramas about extreme rendition – one Hollywood and one indie – it was nice to see the subject covered by an award-winning documentary. This starts out to be the story of an Afghani taxi driver beaten to death in U.S. custody, but then it expands to cover Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and terror suspect detention in general. This was made by the same director who did Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, and it suffers from some of the previous production’s editing weaknesses and left-leaning sentiments. On the other hand, it supplies an unflinching look at what military intelligence is doing in our names. Worth seeing

Review – Bedknobs and Broomsticks

This is a relic from the not-really-trying age of Disney live-action-and-animation combos. And that’s a shame, because the source story might have been turned into a better picture. In the early days of World War Two, a spinster (Angela Lansbury) living in the English countryside attempts to master magic via mail-order lessons in order to aid the war effort. Her practice is disrupted when three kids evacuated from London are dropped into her care. High jinks ensue. The strictly live action parts of the picture are okay despite an excess of musical numbers. But around midway through the production is marred by the inclusion of an animated section of the cheapest quality. Cut that out and this would have been a better experience. Mildly amusing

Review – The Forbidden Kingdom

It was cool to watch Jet Li and Jackie Chan work together. Occasionally we get some good cinematography. The rest of this is mostly a Sci-Fi Channel picture artificially inflated to big screen proportions. The Chinese folk legend stuff could have been fun, but as usual with Hollywood it has to be about a white kid magically transported to the land of legends. If only the writer and director had been a bit less self-indulgent, I think they could have made something solid out of this. Mildly amusing

Review – Happy-Go-Lucky

This sort of movie isn’t my usual cup of tea, but every once in awhile I like to take a break and watch something silly and romantic. And this movie fit the need nicely. Sally Hawkins plays Poppy, a perpetually cheerful woman who weathers the ups and downs of her life – including a stolen bike and a psycho driving instructor – with quirky good humor. The plot flow (to the extent the movie even has a plot) is a bit uneven, but that actually works in its favor. If it had been entirely, relentlessly upbeat, it probably would have turned to treacle after awhile. As it was, this was a pleasant little picture that probably won’t win a lot of Oscars but nonetheless did a better job of pure entertainment than most movies with bigger stars and more lavish budgets. Worth seeing

Review – The Signal

The first couple of minutes made this look so much like another low-budget pile of torture porn that I almost shut it off. However, I’m glad I stuck with it. After they got the opening vignette out of their systems, the film-makers get down to a much better piece of indie horror. The thesis seems familiar at first: a mysterious signal transmitted by televisions and phones causes everyone to go insane. However, unlike King, Romero and other predecessors, this time around the victims don’t become mindless, blood-crazed zombies. These lunatics retain at least some capacity for thought and can even pass for normal when they have to. Of course that makes them far more dangerous than shambling corpses. The picture is a bit uneven, at least in part because the running time is divided between three different writer/directors who take slightly different approaches to the same set of characters. But overall this is a lot more innovative and interesting than the DVD box made it look like it would be. Worth seeing

At least say “trick or treat”

I suppose none of us ever really grows up to be what we thought we’d be when we were kids. Sometimes the best we can hope for is avoiding becoming the kinds of adults we hated when we were younger. Thus I was considerably upset when – after some recent self-examination – I discovered that I’d turned into one of the most loathsome creatures ever to haunt childhood’s otherwise happy hours.

I’ve turned into a Halloween Grinch.

When I was a kid I absolutely loved Oct. 31. Next to Christmas – of course nothing could compete with Christmas – Halloween was the best holiday ever. To this day I remember my costume from just about every year. The werewolf get-up complete with my first full-head latex mask and furry wolf paws my mom sewed for me. The invisible man costume with sunglasses – not the smartest idea for crossing streets after dark – and bandages that swiftly unraveled, leaving me more “burn victim” than “invisible.” Even the store-bought jobs had their own measure of magic.

When I got too old to trick-or-treat, I switched to distribution duty. Throughout high school, college, grad school, law school, and even the real world, I’ve tried where possible to station myself next to the door from dusk to 9:00 or so with a plastic jack-o-lantern full of candy. And that’s good candy, by the way. Not those vaguely-peanut-butter-flavored things that come in the orange and black wax paper wrappers and are universally considered nasty by everyone everywhere except maybe the folks who hand them out.

Indeed, one of the things I was really looking forward to as a new homeowner three years ago was really getting into the Halloween thing. One of my teachers in junior high used to convert his front yard into a mini-graveyard. He’d dress like Frankenstein and shamble after us down the walk once his wife had dished out the treats. I’m too short to pull of the Frankenstein thing, but the rest of it would have been really cool.

Early in October of our first year in our current neighborhood, we got our first hints that things might not work out exactly as planned. The neighborhood association’s newsletter said that kids in our area would trick-or-treat a day early in order to avoid some vague, undefined problem with the traditional day. It made me wonder what exactly I’d moved into.

Then I found out. I was out of the house until late that first All Hallow’s Eve, but I arrived home to a scene of utter pandemonium. Honestly, I hadn’t seen that large a crowd of cars parked on the streets and people milling around since I lived less than a block from the KU football stadium. Actually, except for the Nebraska games, even the football fans weren’t this numerous.

To be honest, the crowds and the chaos didn’t especially bother me. I admit that the tradition I recall from childhood was no more than three blocks – give or take – in any direction from home. That’s a far cry from kids coming in from so far away that they have to be driven into the neighborhood. But I’m willing to adapt to new customs. And it’s not like I can’t afford a few extra bags of treats for kids that pile out of cars with out-of-state tags.

However, I’m less flexible about a few other Halloween traditions. So this year I’m asking parents to help their children help me un-Grinch myself. If you have kids who are planning to trick-or-treat this year, please pass three things on to them for me.

First, 13 is the limit. The moment you can officially be called a teenager, trick-or-treating is officially over for you. Even if your birthday is Oct. 31, you’re still out. Sorry, but that’s the rule. Maybe it isn’t fair, but if you’re 13 then you’re old enough to understand that life isn’t always fair. You’re also old enough to leave the candy for the kids.

Second, you must wear a costume. Michael Vick is scary. You in a Michael Vick jersey ain’t. I’m not asking for much. Don a ratty old coat and beat-up hat and go as a hobo. Throw on overalls, blow a buck on a straw hat, and go as a hillbilly. Put your clothes on backwards and go as Mr. Crazy Backwards Man. All I’m looking for here is some effort.

Even if you can’t manage either of the first two simple requests, please at least try to master this third one. Spend 20 minutes or so practicing it in the bathroom mirror if you have to. Two simple phrases. The first is “trick or treat.” The second is “thank you.” No magic words, no magic.

And if Halloween isn’t about magic, what is it about?

Most of this entry was originally printed as a column in the Kansas City Kansan.

Review – The End of St. Petersburg

This film – Pudovkin’s take on the October Revolution – would make an interesting companion piece to Eisenstein’s October, assuming one could endure two over-edited Soviet silent movies in one sitting. My favorite part about this picture was that it was less grandiose than most other cinema treatments of the Russian Revolution (October, Doctor Zhivago and Reds in particular). The plot focuses on a peasant who comes to the city seeking work only to find himself caught up in the turmoil of the times. Before the end, he’s suffered just about every ill experienced by the lower classes: starvation, homelessness, labor riots, military service in World War One, and so on. Though the production is plagued with Soviet propaganda clichés such as the Honest Workers versus the Greedy Capitalists, it still manages at least a little genuine human interest. Mildly amusing

Review – Earth

This may be a classic of Soviet propaganda film-making from the late silent era, but beyond that it’s mostly just weird. The bare bones of a plot is about a collective farming champion murdered by a selfish landowner. Throw in an atheist funeral, a grieving wife thrashing around naked, some powerful tractor obsession, and a motivational speech about the glories of Communist aircraft, and you’ve got some idea of just how odd this picture is. So while it’s a brilliant piece of cinema as graphic art, it leaves something to be desired in the talking-the-peasants-into-giving-up-their-land department. Mildly amusing

Review – The Curse of the Living Corpse

This crappy old horror movie is a lesson in how awkward foreshadowing can ruin a production. Assemble a gaggle of greedy relatives at the reading of a millionaire’s will. The will states that the relatives have to take special precautions to make sure the ol’ guy isn’t buried alive. If they fail to perform their duties, he’s going to kill them using whatever they fear most (fire, drowning, etc.). So right away the audience knows 1. the guy was buried alive, and 2. he’s going to kill them using whatever they fear most. The only remedy for the ensuing tedium is to pull a twist out of left field at the end of the picture, a cure that’s almost worse than the disease itself. This experience is noteworthy as an early appearance by a very young Roy Scheider and not much else. See if desperate

Review – The Mysterious Doctor

For a movie that barely makes a 60 minute running time, this sure does pack a lot of weirdness into a small amount of space. In the first half of the 1940s, even horror movies often ended up working for the war effort in some way. So here tin miners in England have been frightened away from their jobs by a headless phantom, costing the motherland access to a badly-needed resource. The whodunit that ensues is bound to involve a Nazi saboteur, but I admit I was disappointed when the culprit turned out to be a life-long limey with distant German ancestors. The once-a-kraut-always-a-kraut racism was an unwelcome element from this distant time and place in film history. Mildly amusing

Review – Persepolis

Usually I wince and prepare for a big face-full of Film Board of Canada anytime blockishly-animated characters start speaking French. But this was a pleasant surprise. For starters, it’s an actual French production, not a Canadian grant-funded tax dodge. But more than that, it’s the genuinely touching story of a woman growing up in Iran (and as an exile in Europe) in the late 70s and early 80s. The chunky animation doesn’t even come across as cheap; instead, it’s an artistic mirror of the style used in the minimalist comics that served as the basis for the movie. This is welcome proof that movies don’t have to be expensive and elaborate in order to be profound. Worth seeing

Review – Torn Curtain

It’s a spy thriller from the height of the Cold War. Alfred Hitchcock directed it. Paul Newman and Julie Andrews star. How can it possibly be this bad? The major failing here is that the plot is set up to keep the protagonists in edge-of-your-seat peril constantly, and it sacrifices logic, character development, and just about everything else for the sake of maintaining tension throughout. In particular, the characters’ willingness to do things that only the most mentally-atypical spies would ever do (such as meeting a contact on a tractor in the middle of a field with absolutely no cover story for why either of them should be there) is absolutely fatal to the story. What a disappointment. See if desperate

Review – The Golden Compass

If nothing else, it’s nice for Hollywood to take a chance on a story that doesn’t treat organized Christianity as the realm of benevolent, CGI lions. Instead we get the Magisterium, a sinister organization that seeks to dominate the universe by stamping out individualism. The effects are the real star of the show, presenting a steam-punk world in which every human has an animal “demon” for a companion. Though the pictures are pretty and the plot is at least somewhat thought-provoking, overall this just isn’t all that interesting a movie. Mildly amusing

Review – Diary of the Dead

What a dreadful disappointment. The first two entries in George Romero’s “Dead” series are genre classics, and the last two – though not quite as good – are at least entertaining. This one, however, is almost nothing but Cloverfield except with zombies. Romero is a more talented director than the boneheads that made Cloverfield, but that just makes his mindless preaching about media addiction all the more annoying. See if desperate

Review – The Kremlin Letter

This is one of those movies from the 60s that leaves one wondering how a cast this good could make a movie this bad. Orson Welles and Max von Sydow are just two of the actors who briefly decorate this boring excuse for a spy thriller. The McGuffin is a letter that exposes a plot involving the United States, the Soviet Union, and China. Perhaps a more straightforward production might have been able to do something interesting with the set-up. This one, on the other hand, immediately strays into an almost surreal parade of macho posturing that goes on well beyond the point where it loses all entertainment value. Some good spy stories came from this period in film history, but this certainly isn’t one of them. See if desperate

Review – The Cry

The first La Llorona movie I tried to watch was so terrible I had to shut it off. So I went into this with a fair amount of trepidation. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the experience. The horror here is masterfully understated, relying on creepy editing and spooky voice-overs rather than tons of gore. The script is good. The acting is good. Of course the nature of the legend requires that children be the targets of the evil spirit’s wrath, so that element – however essential to the plot – is upsetting. But overall this is one of the better genre movies I’ve seen in awhile. Worth seeing

Review - The Fall

I was rooting for this picture most of the way through. It was an interesting blend of a bracket about a man in a hospital who tells stories to an injured child and the stories themselves. The visuals were rich and colorful, artistic enough to keep things interesting even when the plot got slow. But then with around half an hour to go it was like the film-makers decided we were all having too much fun and started pouring ice-cold water on our heads for the rest of the running time. The storyteller begins making his story tragic to the point where it’s an act of unwarranted cruelty against the girl he’s telling it to. If it had ended before it took that particular twist, it would have been a much, much better movie. See if desperate

Review – Dolores Claiborne

I liked this better than I thought I would. That’s at least in part because Stephen King novels usually make such lousy movies that even a tolerable production turns out to be a treat. I must also admit that the source novel isn’t exactly one of my favorites; I like King better when he sticks to simple scares rather than exploiting serious issues such as sexual abuse of a minor. Thus my expectations were sufficiently low to make this seem like a good movie just because it didn’t suck. Kathy Bates, Jennifer Jason Leigh, David Strathairn and Christopher Plummer all do solid jobs in their roles. The highly-filtered cinematography gets overworked in spots, but otherwise the production values are quite good as well. If only other King movies could have focused so strongly on character and spent less time relying on the booga-booga shot. Mildly amusing

Review – The Bible Tells Me So

This documentary examines Christian and Jewish attitudes about homosexuality. The main focus is on how religious families react when their children come out of the closet. Reactions range from parents who accept and even advocate down to others who reject (including one woman who came to acceptance only after her rejected daughter committed suicide). The movie also examines various interpretations of scriptural references to homosexuality. I suspect that this might make good viewing for folks who find themselves torn between the love of their kids and the values they’ve learned from a church. Mildly amusing

Review – Scoop

Woody Allen turns out a cute little comedy about a journalism student (Scarlett Johansson) who gets the scoop of her life: a hot tip from a ghost about a handsome British aristocrat (Hugh Jackman) who may be a serial killer. Though it features some classic Allen touches here and there, for the most part this is a silly but inoffensive farce and not much else. Mildly amusing

Review – To End All Wars

Just before Kiefer Sutherland’s career got a shot in the arm from 24, he played a supporting role in this stinker about inmates in a POW camp during World War Two. For the most part this plays like a grittier, preachier and (fortunately) somewhat shorter version of The Bridge on the River Kwai with a non-humorous dose of Stalag 17 stirred in for good measure. See if desperate

Review – Speed Racer

I really like the original animated series. Even if I didn’t have fond childhood memories of it – and I do – I think I’d still like it for its earnest-yet-inept quality from the early days of Japanese animation. This movie, on the other hand, is a heartless Hollywood attempt to capitalize on the staying power of the original. Gone is the charm, replaced by a relentless parade of flashy special effects. If you find yourself easily distracted by loud noises or shiny objects, this masterpiece of ADD theatre may be for you. Otherwise it’s just a two-plus-hour parade of witless smirking and video-game action. See if desperate

Review – Shrooms

Five American twenty-somethings journey to Ireland for a magic mushroom drug tour. Or was it four? Or six? They look so much alike that it’s hard to keep count. In any event, the movie starts sucking almost immediately, with unnecessary animal death quickly followed by a descent into total plotlessness. The result is a picture that reeks of Blair Witch Project only with a slightly bigger budget. Hey, at least it’s plausible that if you’re stoned on mushrooms you might actually not be able to find your way out of the woods. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Monster Ark

Somewhere in the middle of this movie I began making up new plot developments in my head, trying anything to make it more interesting than it was. Though I didn’t come up with anything brilliant, it wasn’t hard to imagine something better than what this turned out to be. Apparently before Noah saved the rest of the animals on earth from the great flood, God tasked him with boxing up a monster and carting it away. Needless to say, pesky archaeologists dig it up and uncrate it, leaving a squad of soldiers in Iraq to track it down and get it back in the box. See if desperate

Review – Ba'al: The Storm God

Bu’ll: The Shit God. The story here is some mash about a crazy archaeologist trying to unleash the wrath of an ancient weather god upon the helpless world. This comes across as a bargain basement combination of The Mummy and The Day After Tomorrow. That by itself wasn’t automatically fatal, but the picture is so ineptly executed that it’s just bad enough to be bad without being bad enough to be funny. Quick example: one of the valiant Air Force guys trying to stop the evil weather systems is referred to as “lieutenant” even though he’s wearing captain’s bars on his collar and corporal’s stripes on his sleeve. Most of the rest of the picture shows a similar degree of attention to logic and integrity. Also, it occurs to me that this turd is likely to float forever at the top of the “B” section of my alphabetical list of reviews. Maybe someday I’ll luck out and someone will make a movie about sheep and call it “Baa!” See if desperate

Review – The Reich Underground

Toward the end of World War Two, the Nazis tried to build massive underground complexes to hide their people and – more important, of course – their missile production operations from Allied bombing. Though the subject has potential, it turns out to make a perfectly wretched documentary. The whole thing is an almost endless parade of video of caves that have been abandoned for more than half a century. The footage goes from kinda interesting to kinda monotonous to totally relentless. Before the end we were envisioning what the chapter list on the DVD must look like. “Holes.” “More holes.” “Still more holes.” “And yet more holes.” “OMG how many holes are there?” “Who knew there were this many holes in the whole world?” “Archive footage of Nazis torturing a monkey and a cat.” “Holes don’t seem so bad now, do they?” “Seriously, though, how many more holes are there?” And so on. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – At the Death House Door

The description on the disc box said this was about a man who may have been wrongfully executed in Texas. However, it turns out to be mostly about the former chaplain at the prison that houses the state’s death row. The ol’ guy made audio tapes of his thoughts about the executions of each condemned prisoner he ministered to. The subject matter alone is fascinating enough to carry the documentary for its whole running time. However, the production itself is a bit bargain-basement-Errol-Morris. Mildly amusing

Review – Extraordinary Rendition

This production comes across as Rendition with the Hollywood crap replaced with indie crap. We’re spared the spectacle of big stars and slick production values making torture look glamorous. But we end up saddled with muddled writing and over-arty direction. Particularly nettlesome is the decision to ping-pong back and forth in the timeline. On the one hand, I understand that if all the torture sequences are concentrated in one lump that the pacing would become extremely uneven. On the other hand, cutting back and forth between the rendition and the aftermath creates the feeling that the protagonist has a really crummy day job where he’s water-boarded all day and then goes home to have angry scenes with his wife. Overall this picture’s heart is in the right place, but its head doesn’t quite get with the program. Mildly amusing

Review – Dragon Wars

Once again Hollywood takes a tiny pinch of Chinese folk legend and tries to stretch it into an hour and a half of dragon stew. Do I even have to say that it doesn’t work? I was vaguely entertained by some of the monster-intensive effects sequences, but the rest of the story was a missable mess about a woman who holds the key to stopping a terrible dragon curse that occurs once every 500 years. See if desperate

Review – Rat Pfink a Boo Boo

This thing makes Ed Wood look like Stanley Kubrick. I’m assuming it was originally supposed to be released as Rat Pfink and Boo Boo, but the title must have been changed to emphasize the omnipresence of low-quality go-go music. Our heroes – assuming we can call them that with a straight face – are two crime-fighting dorks who don costumes that look like they were assembled from a Salvation Army rag bag. They sally forth to wage poorly-choreographed battles against wrongdoers everywhere. Though nothing in this movie is good, the direction stands out as particularly terrible. Scenes go on and on with no plot development or even dialogue; in particular, a sequence in which a criminal follows a woman down the street seemed like it lasted for around half an hour without achieving anything that 30 seconds or so wouldn’t have done. And the whole movie is like that. It’s almost like they had several cans of film and felt duty-bound to use all of it. Perhaps I was just in a bad mood when I watched it, but this wasn’t even funny-bad. Just bad-bad. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Doctor Zhivago

Someday someone is going to make a small movie about the Russian Revolution. From October to Reds, just about everything set in this place and time turns out to be a sweeping epic filled with huge casts, overblown cinematography, brain-bending running times, the whole nine yards. So it goes without saying that director David Lean isn’t going to break the mold and depart from the big-movie formula that brought him success with The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia. And in a way that’s a shame, because the story here (based on Boris Pasternak’s novel) centers around normal human relationships amid turbulent times. Indeed, if not for the aspect ratio, army of extras and lavish location work, this would rarely rise above the level of common soap opera. And Lean seems ill-equipped to deal with human characters, particularly women. Though this is by no means the worst movie I’ve ever seen, it falls short of other work done by just about everyone involved. Mildly amusing

Review – Bride of the Monster

Bad script. Bad acting. Terrible production values. Bizarre editing. Bela Lugosi. Tor Johnson. Must be an Ed Wood movie! In all honesty, this isn’t the worst movie I’ve ever seen. It lacks the charm of Glen or Glenda? and the renown of Plan 9 from Outer Space. But in a way that actually makes it easier to watch. One can set aside the greatest-cult-movie-ever hype and just enjoy it for what it is: a delightfully incompetent attempt at a picture about a mad scientist with a giant squid problem. Mildly amusing

Review – The Bridge

So I guess if you point a camera at the Golden Gate Bridge long enough, you end up with footage of someone jumping. Or several someones jumping. Then follow up with friends and relatives, and you’ve got a documentary. The concept is enough to carry the picture, not to mention creating a considerable amount of controversy. Many of the interviews fail to shed much light on the possible motives of the jumpers, but they do fill in some sometimes-dull, sometimes-touching back-stories of the people whose deaths we watch. Overall this comes across as a combination of Errol Morris and Faces of Death, which oddly enough sort of works. Worth seeing

Review – Dragon Storm

This is just about exactly what one would expect from a Sci Fi Channel movie about dragons: a D&D plot, bad acting (seriously John Rhys-Davies, did you lose a bet or something?), mediocre CGI and not a lot else. A war between neighboring kingdoms is disrupted when a flock of dragons shows up and starts chowing on both sides. Dullness ensues. See if desperate

Review – The Unknown Trilogy

For an amateur horror production, this should get at least an E for effort. It’s cheap and inept, but its heart is in the right place. Using an awkward bracket, the production weaves together three stories of vaguely Twilight Zone-ish quality. In the first, a gambling-addicted loser makes a deal with the devil to improve his luck. The second segment stars a trio of child actors who actually aren’t too terrible by amateur standards. In this episode, a boy tries to overcome his fear of the neighborhood funeral home. Rounding it off we get a stale tale of a grieving father who suddenly finds himself quite literally alone in the world (and the end here is telegraphed at least a mile away). The picture features walk-ons by Abe Vigoda and several other actors of a similar “hey, isn’t he that guy from that other thing?” ilk. Mildly amusing

Review – Man in the Attic

This is the only time I’m aware of – other than the “Saucy Jack” routine from This Is Spinal Tap – that the story of Jack the Ripper has ever included musical numbers. Jack Palance stars as the killer, and here he’s so young that initially it’s a little hard to tell whether it’s really him or not (though as soon as he starts speaking all doubt disappears). The script is weak, paying little attention to the details of the actual murders and offering no significant plot or character development in exchange for our tolerance of historical inaccuracy. Palance does a solid-if-hammy job, but otherwise this is mediocre fare. Mildly amusing. [And it turns out I was wrong about the musical number thing, inasmuch as this is a remake of The Lodger, which itself had a song-and-dance or two]

Review – Black Swarm

So here’s where Robert Englund’s career went to die, stung to death by killer CGI wasps. The local exterminator tries to rekindle a relationship with the widow of his dead twin brother while her daughter eats a peach grown by a mad scientist who works on genetically modifying bugs for bioweapons use, and the fruit transforms her into the queen of killer CGI wasps, and then … well, you get the idea. They might even have been able to pull this off in a limited way if only the wasps’ stings hadn’t transformed their victims into homicidal zombies. I don’t know why the zombie thing was the ridiculous twist that finally pushed it too far, but it did the trick. See if desperate

Review – Harakiri

Most of my serious-samurai-movie-watching experience up to this point has been Kurosawa, but if the rest of Kobayashi’s stuff is as good as this, I need to broaden my horizons a bit. The set-up is elegantly simple: a ronin shows up at the doorstep of a wealthy samurai clan house requesting the privilege of ending his life of poverty and disgrace by committing suicide in the courtyard. Suspecting that the guy is a beggar just looking for a handout, they attempt to force him to go through with it. From there it’s hard to say much without spoiling the story, so suffice it to say that things don’t go at all the way the landowner planned. This ends up being an anti-samurai samurai movie, employing the genre’s conventions to criticize authoritarianism and dishonest dedication to duty. Impressive. Buy the disc

Review – Perfect

If this was the movie it wanted to be, I would make my Reporting I students watch it. The capsule-description of the story makes it sound like perfect viewing for young journalists-to-be: a reporter for Rolling Stone becomes intimately involved with one of the interview subjects for a story he’s doing about health clubs. Along the way the picture touches on several important points about objectivity, damage to people in news stories, and even the legal issues surrounding the protection of confidential sources. Unfortunately, this solid framework supports nothing but crap. John Travolta is radically miscast as the reporter; I don’t buy the notion that this guy can read stories, let alone write them. Jamie Lee Curtis is also disappointing as the aerobics instructor slash love interest. She’s done better work. But the major downfall here is that this “gem” from 1985 surfs the mid-80s trend for making movies that transform even the most important of subjects into cheap excuses for witless dialogue, artless sex and soap-opera goofiness. See if desperate

Review – Return of the Vampire

Bela Lugosi stars in this dreadful Dracula knock-off. The film-makers assume (fairly, I suppose) that we’re all familiar with the vampire sub-genre conventions, so most of the plot is a rapid march-through on par with Danny Kaye’s knighthood ceremony in The Court Jester. Indeed, the innovations here are few. The villain’s sidekick is a werewolf (and a terrier-looking creature at that). The drama takes place during the Blitz, with the vampire unearthed by an air raid and de-staked by a pair of comic relief civil defense workers. And that of course raises a question about whether folks had bigger evils than a bloodsucker and his hairy companion to worry about back in 1944. See if desperate

Review – Atlantis, The Lost Continent

If there had been a Sci Fi Channel in the 1960s, I’m sure it would have produced this movie. This is the meandering tale of a Greek fisherman who gets conned into helping an Atlantean princess return to her homeland. Once they get there, the bad guy enslaves our hero, plots the conquest of the earth, and ignores the warning signs from the island’s volcano. Though it has a moment or two, overall this is George Pal corny and dated without being George Pal clever and interesting. See if desperate

Review – The Nazi Officer’s Wife

A&E serves up the story of Edith Hahn, a Jewish woman who managed to escape Austria shortly after the annexation using the identity of an “Aryan” friend. Through a series of twists of fate, she ends up marrying a factory supervisor who in turn ends up drafted into the German Army. Though the story resembles the plot lines from movies such as Europa Europa and The Black Book, there’s a subtlety here that’s more intriguing than fictional and semi-fictional tales. For example, the film-makers interview Hahn’s daughter about what it was like to have a father who felt ashamed that he had a Jewish child. But the best parts are the interviews with Hahn herself, adding a real personality to the floating photographs and archive footage. Overall this is one of the better documentaries I’ve seen on the subject, quite a surprise coming from a channel with a reputation for producing “documentaries” about pseudo-archaeology, Nostradamus and the like. Worth seeing

Review – October

Ten years after the October Revolution, Sergei Eisenstein directed this classic of the silent era, a retelling of the events that swept the Bolsheviks into power. To be sure, the picture has some problems. By modern standards – or even by the standards of silent movies from Hollywood – the production is rough around the edges and strangely experimental in spots. It’s also strangely similar to Nazi propaganda pictures in its characterization of the enemies of the revolution as dark, sinister, Semitic stereotypes. Oh, and it’s pretty hard on the horses. Otherwise, however, this is an important moment in the development of propaganda film-making, worthy of the attention of any serious student of the subject. Mildly amusing

Review – The Gorgon

For a crappy old Hammer horror movie, this one isn’t all that bad. It helps that I think the Gorgon sisters are among the cooler members of the monster family, and here we get “Megara” rather than the more famous Medusa (according to Ovid, Medusa’s sisters were names Stheno and Euryale, but then again Ovid says only Medusa had snake hair, so we’ll need to avoid strict adherence in order to get our movie made). The head of a mental hospital (Peter Cushing) aids townspeople in hushing up the circumstances surrounding the deaths of a local girl and her wealthy artist boyfriend. But the boy’s family digs deeper into the mystery, enlisting the aid of a college professor (Christopher Lee) willing to believe that an ancient Greek monster might be lurking in a nearby castle. I guess the fact that the victims were turned to stone was a big clue. We even get a side-point or two about the ability of a totalitarian society to sweep great evil under the carpet. To be sure, the plot’s a little threadbare in points, and 21st century computer graphics would probably have been able to conjure hair snakes more convincing than the rubber appliances used here. Overall, however, this is one of the better entries in the Hammer catalogue. Mildly amusing

Review – The Last Winter

Every time I’m just about ready to swear off indie horror movies for good, something like this comes along and temporarily restores my faith in the potential of the sub-genre. On the surface this comes across as a blend of The Thing and An Inconvenient Truth. But it’s more than that, to the point where some parts are actually scary. The story posits that the damage humanity has done to the environment has provoked the earth into a supernatural counter-attack, which begins at a small outpost of oil company explorers in the Alaskan wilderness. The picture has a plot, multi-dimensional characters, and special effects that are employed subtly to much greater effect than if they’d been constantly in-your-face. This was a total impulse rent at Blockbuster. If only I could be so lucky every time I pick a movie this way! Worth seeing

Review – Doomsday

It’s a bit unfair to fault this production for including excessive, pointless violence against animals, because in truth the entire movie was excessive and pointless. Almost the whole thing was “lovingly borrowed” from other pictures. The set-up is 28 Days Later, but once the plot gets going it turns into Escape from New York with a female protagonist. Along the way we get a hefty dose of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, some Aliens, and a handful of other horror/action movies sprinkled in for good measure. What we don’t get is a coherent plot of any kind or even interesting characters. If you can endure a couple of hours of nothing but witless, visceral nonsense, then you’re welcome to it. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The Phantom of the Opera (1962)

This time around, Hammer tries its hand at movie-izing Gaston Leroux’s classic tale. Herbert Lom dons a one-eyed phantom mask to star, but for the most part this is a cheap British reheat of the plot from the 1943 version. Mildly amusing

Review – The Brides of Dracula

No Dracula. Not really much in the way of brides. Instead Hammer serves up a muddled mess of a picture, one of those things that looks like it was torn apart at some point in the production process and never sewed back together quite right. Ingénue gets stranded at an inn and then taken in by a baroness who keeps her handsome-yet-creepy son chained in his room. Do I even have to say that he’s a vampire? When our gullible heroine unchains him a festival of sucking (literally and figuratively) commences. Even Peter Cushing can’t do much to save this one. See if desperate

Review – Stephen King’s Thinner

Are you a successful lawyer with a weight problem? Have you recently killed the daughter of a fortune teller in an auto accident? If so, better take your punishment rather than walking free with the aid of a friendly judge and police witness. Otherwise you might end up with a terrible curse that makes you lose weight until you waste away to nothing. The movie follows the “Richard Bachman” source novel fairly closely, making an occasional improvement here and there. Overall the most interesting thing about the story (aside from the novel nature of the curse) is the conflict between ancient magic and modern, non-magical viciousness. Mildly amusing

Review – Haunted Boat

Ghost stories are entertaining. Sea stories are entertaining. But this sea ghost story is so far from entertaining it isn’t even funny. It starts out as a simple story of a guy who inherits a haunted boat (hence the title) and takes a group of his friends out for a cruise. But it swiftly degenerates into a meandering mess of barely-related subplots that serve no function beyond providing a handful of very cheap thrills. Even if this ever had a chance to be good, it’s too ineptly produced to have any entertainment value at all. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Letters from Iwo Jima

Here we have the other half of Flags of Our Fathers, the story of the battle for Iwo Jima told from the Japanese perspective. Overall this one’s the better of the two. It’s a straightforward war-is-hell account of the doomed efforts of a small handful of soldiers to defend positions in the face of overwhelming odds. Of course we also get plenty of cliché hapless-soldiers-versus-cruel-officers stuff. But overall this is a reasonably touching production, a nice blend of big budget and personal storytelling. Mildly amusing