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