Review – Chisolm '72: Unbought and Unbossed

As we celebrate the historic election of 2008, we need to keep in mind that Barack Obama’s victory was the latest step in a long process. And one of the key moments in that process occurred back in 1972 when Shirley Chisolm had the guts to make a serious run for the Presidency. Though the racism and sexism thriving in society at the time were far too strong for her to ever have had a serious chance at overall success, the hard work ably documented in this movie helped pave the way for the future victories against bigotry. Thus this movie makes a good “feel good” piece if you need one. It’s also an interesting demonstration of how the mainstream media – particularly broadcast news operations – worked to marginalize all but a select few candidates (something they of course still routinely do). Mildly amusing

Review – The Wraiths of Roanoke

“Based on actual events”? Well, yes, in the late 16th century there was a colony at Roanoke, Virginia. And yes, the colonists all vanished. But even though nobody knows what exactly happened to them, I’m willing to bet that it wasn’t actually the demonic spirits of evil Vikings. Once again “Sci Fi Channel Presents” lives up to its reputation. See if desperate

Review – BloodMonkey

I guess if they called this “ButtMonkey” it wouldn’t have sounded as scary. Actually, what they should have called it was “NoMonkey.” The first half of the picture is all set-up (group of college students ventures into the jungle at the behest of an anthropologist who’s more than slightly off his rocker), and the last half hour is all screaming and running. That left about ten minutes sandwiched in the middle that might have been good except it wasn’t. The real surprise was that the title monsters don’t actually appear on screen until the final seconds of the show. Honestly that was for the best, because the computer animated gorilla-of-menace seriously didn’t work. Oh, and what evil befell F. Murray Abraham to knock him off the pedestal of respectable roles and reduce him to this lowly state? See if desperate

Review – Snuff

This documentary about snuff movies is as unsettling as watching the real thing. Indeed, several scenes do in fact show graphic human and animal death. Overall it doesn’t have anything particularly profound to say. Most of the pictures that are controversial for allegedly being snuff movies are in fact amateurish fakes. A couple of serial killers videotaped their victims. Wars have spawned atrocity videos. And yes, occasionally a “traditional” snuff movie – a murder deliberately filmed with the intent to sell the picture to perverts willing to pay big money for such things – surfaces. What it lacks in substance it partially makes up for in visceral nastiness, provided one has the stomach for such things. On the other hand, the absence of serious content makes it come across as a cheap excuse for stringing together death moments from other movies, making it a cheap exploitation movie about cheap exploitation movies. And though one expects a certain amount of animal violence in such a picture, here it’s really, truly excessive. Avoid at all costs

Review – Hydra

A volcanically-active island. A group of wealthy creeps who’ve paid a handsome sum for the privilege of hunting human beings. What does this drama need? How about a giant, multi-headed snake that grows two new heads every time it loses one. The script is weak, the acting lousy and the effects second-rate even by Sci Fi Channel standards. See if desperate

Review – Prom Night (2008)

After watching a documentary about snuff movies, I wanted some old-fashioned, fake Hollywood violence to wash the taste out of my mouth. This filled the bill. A psychotic stalker holes up in his obsession’s prom night hotel suite and slaughters everyone who comes in. When the girl of his dreams doesn’t fall into his clutches, he goes out after her. Nothing distinguishes this picture one way or another. It isn’t clever. It doesn’t feature anything memorable. On the other hand, at least it wasn’t extraordinarily poorly-produced or honestly any more stupid than most other pictures in the slasher genre. Mildly amusing

Review – The Matrix: Revolutions

I’m forced to retract an assertion I made by implication in my reviews of the first two pictures in this set. Until I sat down to watch the final episode, I earnestly believed that if they’d cut out all the pseudo-metaphysical crap and just stick to fight scenes that they’d actually end up with really good movies. Well, I must not have been the only person who thought so, because the philosobabble is kept to a minimum this time around. Oddly enough, it didn’t really make the movie any better. Of course that’s at least in part because they replaced the boring bits with extended, effects-intensive mega-battles that are a lot more noisy than interesting. And as usual with epic trilogies (think the original Star Wars set or Lord of the Rings) the end is exceptionally maudlin. Otherwise it’s a worthy conclusion. Mildly amusing

Review – America Beyond the Color Line

This is actually a four-part series originally produced for PBS, but it all fits on one DVD and works well as a single piece of documentary film-making. Harvard professor Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. roams across America examining issues facing black Americans in the 21st century. To tell the truth, after the first episode I almost quit watching it. Gates’s interviews with middle class black people weren’t bad, but they were very PBS (safe, comfortable beauty-of-diversity stuff). But then it got better. Episode two did a solid job of covering the class distinctions so intimately linked with racism. Episode three examined the success of black people who’ve “made it” in the mainstream. The portraits of programs designed to provide opportunities were interesting, but questions about loss of culture resulting from integration into “white America” went largely unanswered. The final episode focused on black celebrities in Hollywood, where it proved funny that a town famous for being all about fake artifice appeared to be one of the only places in the country where an honest conversation about racism was taking place. Though far from comprehensive, this was an interesting picture of the highs and lows of the current black experience. Mildly amusing

Review – The Matrix: Reloaded

Though nearly ten years have passed since I saw the original, this one brought me back to the Matrix world in short order. Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishbourne and Carrie Ann Moss once again find themselves pitted against the machines in the gritty, ruined real world and the cityscape of a vast virtual reality network. And once again the picture is a fair amount of fun during the action sequences. Too bad the good parts are once again separated by long dull passages of kindergarten philosophy lessons. On the other hand, the good parts actually are pretty good. Of the three pictures in the set, this one’s my favorite. Mildly amusing

Review – Murder by Decree

Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper are such a natural combination that I’m surprised Hollywood didn’t make the pairing before and hasn't done it since. The thesis is similar to the one used by From Hell two decades later: Saucy Jack was an aristocrat who was never caught because his fellow Masons hushed things up in order to cover for … well, if you haven’t seen either movie yet, I don’t want to spoil it for you. On top of the entertaining story, the cast includes Christopher Plummer (Holmes), James Mason (Watson), Donald Sutherland and John Gielgud. Though obviously I’m a bit older now than I was in 1979 the first time I saw this, I still get a little chill out of some of the spooky, over-cranked, foggy streets of Whitechapel. Worth seeing

Review – The Tooth Fairy

Wow, that’s one cranky fairy. Actually, she’s more of a witch out to kill kids and steal their teeth (some kind of Druid thing, apparently). So basically this isn’t much more than dumbed-down, slasher-ized sloppy seconds of Darkness Falls. See if desperate

Review – Nanking

This documentary begins with a gaggle of Hollywood celebrities sitting down and reading from the diaries and letters of the Americans and Europeans who organized the safe zone in Nanking during the Japanese invasion. So at the outset I thought, “hooray, here’s another tale of international woe seen primarily from the perspective of white people.” However, this turned out to be a much more extensive and much better chronicle of the tragedy than it seemed like it would be. The interviews with the Chinese survivors were astounding in their frankness and impact. And the integration of interviews, readings and archive footage was quite well done. Thus I was more than willing to accept the decision to add star-power gravitas to the production. I was even touched by the dedication to Iris Chang at the end. Even if you don’t have any particular interest in the subject, this one is worth a look. Worth seeing

Review – Thr3e

A number crammed awkwardly into a movie title naturally bodes a Se7en rip-off, which is pretty much exactly what we get. A psycho who enjoys toying with his victims latches onto a theology student with some skeletons in his closet. The result is a consistently annoying parade of misery. Further, this is one of those productions that bet the farm on a “surprise” ending. I won’t spoil it for you if you’ve a mind to take this thing on, but rest assured that you’ll find it a disappointment. Also, this loses a point for killing a dog. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Horror in the East

Despite a title that implies yet another set of Chinese ghost stories redubbed for the American market, this is actually a BBC documentary about human rights violations associated with Japan before and during World War Two. I say “associated with” because this is one of the rare productions that covers not only the atrocities inflicted by the Japanese but also some of the horrible things that happened to them in turn. Coverage is scattershot. For example, Nanking is described in some detail, but medical experiments on POWs are scarcely mentioned at all. Nonetheless, this is worth a look. The interviews with participants on both sides are fascinating, as is some of the old footage. Mildly amusing

Review – Dead & Deader

All you really have to see to judge the overall quality of this picture is the scene where a short zombie bites a biker in the crotch. Perhaps this could be re-edited with Dumb and Dumber to make “Dead and Dumber.” On the other hand, maybe that’s what we got anyway. The title was a good indication of what was in store, even though the Netflix description made this sound like something way different than it turned out to be. I thought I was going to get some cool secret ops in Cambodia, but it turned out that the military angle was just a flimsy excuse to get the story moving. And once things are underway, it’s yet another witless zombie-fest. Heck, we didn’t even get beetles causing the zombie plague. Someone can’t tell the difference between beetles and scorpions. Dean Cain stars as a semi-zombified war hero, though for some flimsy reason he spends most of the picture wearing Don Johnson’s cast-off wardrobe from “Miami Vice.” See if desperate

Review – The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

After sitting through “Valerie on the Stairs” a second time, I watched this in the hope that if Tony Todd played the title character that perhaps the only black guy with a significant role in the picture would get to spend at least half the time playing the good guy. Um, nope. This Jekyll spends most of his time as Hyde, and even when he is his human half he’s constantly on the verge of a rage-inspired shift. Most of the movie is a painful parade of badly-assembled violence capped off by Todd’s transformation into a were-chimp with all the cringe-inducing racism that implies. Honestly, if that had happened a little earlier in the picture, I probably would have just turned it off. In addition to being the crummiest thing ever done to Robert Louis Stevenson, this also sports the most ear-straining musical number ever included in a horror movie. Wish I'd skipped it

Review – Imaginary Witness

This is an excellent documentary about Hollywood’s treatment of the Holocaust, starting even before the war and ending with Schindler’s List and its progeny. The evolution of mainstream American media’s relationship with the evils of Nazism remains consistently uneasy, though the reasons for the ill-ease shift from era to era. The clips and talking heads do a great job of exposing the country’s discomfort with anti-anti-Semitism in the 30s and 40s, the suppressed guilt of the 50s and 60s, and then the open confrontation of even the more horrible aspects of the tragedy starting in the 70s. I was a bit disappointed that they didn’t do more with the commercialization of the Holocaust following Spielberg’s award-winner, but otherwise this was some really good work. Worth seeing

Review – The Art of War 2: Betrayal

Other than a slightly lower budget, this is much like its predecessor. Wesley Snipes once again plays an international hit man, this time pitted against a corporate conspiracy out to assassinate U.S. Senators standing in the way of a bit defense contract. I instant-viewed this because I was in the mood for a reasonably-well-produced picture with some martial arts sequences, and with those minimal standards in mind it did not disappoint. Mildly amusing

Review – Exhumed

I’ve developed a certain amount of affection for low-budget indie producers who come up with clever combinations of horror themes and classic movie pastiches. And this one goes two for three. The first entry in this zombie trilogy pits the undead against Kurosawa-esque characters (actual Asian actors speaking Japanese, no less). The second isn’t quite as good, but as a vaguely horror-fied hardboiled detective piece, it’s okay. Then the show falls flat. The third tale begins life as a Mods vs. Rockers reworking of Underworld, but it swiftly devolves into what we’ve all come to dread from the straight-to-video horror market: crappy gore and cheap sex. If you’ve been hankerin’ for a vampire-werewolf goth girl lesbian love-‘em-up, here’s your dream come true. Otherwise, feel free to pull the plug when the noir comes to an end (even though the story doesn’t wrap until it’s tied in with the third story at the end of the set). Mildly amusing

Review – W.

I’m glad I waited until the guy was gone before watching Oliver Stone take his best shot at one of the nation’s all-time worst Presidents. I don’t think I could have sat through two solid hours of being reminded that our country was in the hands of a doofus frat boy and his incompetent, greed-obsessed cronies. The only part of this I found more interesting than painful was the stuff about the relationship between the title character and his father, a man who for all his faults was a better President than his son. Mildly amusing

Review – Bangkok Dangerous

I’ve no idea what “Bangkok Dangerous” means, but after an hour and a half of this I feel like I’ve got an ample understanding of “Nicolas Cage Boring.” Cage stars as a contract killer plying his trade in Thailand. Implausible plot elements fly left and right, but if you can set aside any need you might have for story or character, the production is stylish and some of the action moderately entertaining. Mildly amusing

Review – The Dam Busters

For the most part this is a fascinating British production about RAF efforts to destroy dams in Nazi Germany and flood vast industrial areas. The story follows two heroes: the scientist who comes up with the odd, bouncing bomb designed to find its way to the dam’s most vulnerable spot and the pilot in charge of the airmen who will have to pull of the precise flying required to deliver it. The two men working together and separately in their respective areas of expertise are an excellent model for the high-tech warfare born during World War Two and even more crucial during the Cold War raging when this movie was made in the mid-50s. The detail is so minute that it would probably have become dull after awhile if it hadn’t been so well-woven into the plot. If only the pilot’s dog hadn’t had such an unfortunate name. Mildly amusing

Review – What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Clearly the main attraction here is the pairing of Bette Davis as a mentally-unhinged former child star and Joan Crawford as her helpless, wheelchair-bound sister. Poor Blanche’s torments at the hands of boozy psycho Jane are entertaining in a how-will-she-get-out-of-this way for awhile, but the story wears out its welcome as the writers scramble for more and more ludicrous ways to keep Blanche alive yet un-rescued. If this had been a half an hour or so shorter, it would have been a much better movie. Mildly amusing

Review – Locusts

For reasons that may have been explained after I lost interest and stopped paying attention, a USDA lab is breeding locusts with a taste for meat. When they inevitably escape from confinement and go on a deadly rampage, it’s up to government troubleshooter Lucy “Xena” Lawless to rein them in. Most of the 90-minute running time is taken up by things that don’t actually put a stop to them. See if desperate

Review – Grey Knight

The premise had potential: a legion of zombie soldiers arises during the Civil War, threatening both sides with its morally-ambiguous agenda. They even appear to have spent some money on the cast, including a brief appearance by Martin Sheen and a surprisingly-not-too-terrible performance by Corbin Bernsen. Unfortunately, the actors must have drained the budget. The script has a good moment or two, but it lacks focus and direction. The worst shortcoming, however, has to be the special effects. The revenants look exactly like normal guys with white greasepaint streaked across their faces. On the scariness scale, that doesn’t rank real high. Mildly amusing

Review – Frontiere(s)

Looks like folks in the non-English-speaking world are learning something from watching old American slasher movies. Unfortunately, what they’ve learned so far isn’t good. This plays like a French adaptation of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, slightly more political and with Saw levels of torture and gore. A group of four petty criminals flees riots in Paris only to fall into a TCM­-style trap set by neo-Nazis. The plot takes approximately half an hour to unravel, and the hour-plus of movie after that is nothing but an intensely tedious parade of screaming, flailing and general misery. The dubbed version, released as Frontier(s) (which is also the U.S. DVD title), managed to pull an NC-17, which kept it out of Horrorfest 2007. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – In Search of Dracula

Wow, I hope they find the guy. He’s certainly been a nuisance over the years. Seriously though, this is a “documentary” about Bram Stoker’s fictional monster and the real Romanian nobleman upon whom the character was based. Christopher Lee’s narration and appearances in some of the scenes are the highlights of what is otherwise a cliché-ridden parade of vampire myths and legends. Mildly amusing

Review – The Mangler

Tobe Hooper directed this turd? Wow. He used to be way better than this. Somewhere under a pile of amateurish crap is a reasonably good source story by Stephen King about an industrial laundry machine with a will to kill. The original tale was based in part on King’s own experiences working in a laundry back before he was a best-selling author, and thanks to my own time in a similar job I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for it. The movie version, however, is a pale shadow of the simplicity of King’s tale. Here we have an evil laundry owner, a bumbling cop, a haunted ice box, and no end of other unnecessary nonsense. See if desperate

Review – The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm

This picture is remarkable for a handful of reasons. First, it’s just weird to see Laurence Harvey in something besides The Manchurian Candidate, especially a role as benign as the one he plays here. Second, George Pal’s Puppetoons are always a treat to see, even if they were somewhat outmoded by this point in film history. But the big “star” here is Cinerama, a technique that achieved a really wide aspect ratio by breaking the picture down into three separate strips of film shown side by side. Cinerama allowed for some disturbingly short focal lengths, giving the movie a simultaneous stretched-out and fish-eye look. It also caused problems for the print I saw: the seams between the projections were often painfully visible, and sometimes the film quality varied between thirds of the same picture. Beyond the movie’s technical daring, however, it’s mostly just remarkably long and remarkably boring, yet another picture too dumb for adults and too dull for kids. Mildly amusing

Review – Strategic Air Command

After watching Dr. Strangelove as a kid, I figured working on a SAC bomber would be really cool. Whatever regrets I might have had about not pursuing it as a career path were obliterated by this picture. Who knew flying around with the end of civilization in your back seat was such an intensely boring occupation? Jimmy Stewart does a surprisingly lackluster job as a ballplayer dragged away from St. Louis Cardinals spring training and forced to resume his duties as an Air Force pilot. Some of the actual airplane footage was fun to watch, but that’s ten minutes out of two hours. The most dramatic moments in the rest of the picture are mostly tense interactions between our hero’s long-suffering wife and a cigar-chomping Curtis LeMay stand-in. As a Cold War recruiting ad, this is strictly no-sale. See if desperate

Review – Season of the Witch

Like Martin, another mid-70s offering from George Romero, this one’s better in theory than it is in practice. The plot is ever so much a creature of its time, sort of a half-baked combination of free love and Faust. A bored housewife dabbles in the occult, with initially good but ultimately disastrous consequences. I’m willing to sit through a certain amount of the experimental “artiness” typical of the period. But some of the pacing and a lot of the writing are downright bad, regardless of when the picture was made. Further, Anchor Bay gets the show off on the wrong foot by starting the DVD with an apology for the terrible quality of the print (though for what it’s worth, it was pretty terrible). Incidentally, I’m listing this under its video release title rather than the original theatrical release title – Hungry Wives – in part because I saw this on video rather than at the theater and also because Hungry Wives is a far dorkier thing to call a movie. However, in many ways the original title was more apt. Mildly amusing

Review – Black Sabbath

Sorry, kids. No Ozzy. This is an Italian anthology piece narrated by (and partially starring) Boris Karloff. Act One reminds us that if we’re charged with prepping the body of someone named Madame Zenovia (or really Madame Anything) for burial, it might be better not to steal jewelry from the corpse. Act Two pits a woman against the disembodied spirit of her dead brother, who keeps calling her up. In addition to more phone ringing than anyone should have to sit through in the course of an evening, we also get dialogue like “You’re dead! Don’t you understand? You’re dead!” Ah, but then we get Act Three, in which a family is devastated by a wurdalak, a Central European vampire that can only suck blood from loved ones. Karloff’s presence starts out as a plus, but then he has to deliver lines such as “Woman, can I not fondle my own grandson?” Overall this is another one of those inept productions that steadfastly eschews every possible opportunity to be clever or interesting. At least it helped spare us from the spectacle of songs such as “Iron Man” and “War Pigs” being performed by a band called Earth. See if desperate

Review – The Marsh

A children’s book author (Gabrielle Anwar) writes books about a little girl menaced by spooky stuff in a swamp. After the writer has a bit of a breakdown, she moves to the country to get away from it all. However, she ends up in a house that just happens to be next to a swamp and also just happens to be haunted by the ghost of a little girl. With the help of a psychic (Forest Whitaker) she unravels her personal connection to the place. The theme of the day is the sexual abuse of children, which gives the whole thing an unpleasant taste. However, it’s professionally put together, well acted, and genuinely scary in parts. Mildly amusing

Review – Martin

I’ve seen this movie three or four times now, and the thing that keeps bringing me back is that I want to like it more than I do. This is a post-Night and pre-Dawn offering from George Romero, but here we’ve got a vampire rather than zombies. Or do we? Martin (John Amplas) has an obsessive thing for blood, but otherwise he’s more of a garden variety psychopath than a supernatural creature of evil. Indeed, Romero deliberately flaunts vampire conventions throughout the story. This bloodsucker doesn’t even suck blood. Lacking the hypnotic charm of a Dracula, he can only get victims by injecting them with sedatives and then bleeding them with a razor blade. The production has a working-class Pittsburgh look and feel, further departing from the European flavor of the traditional, goth vampire. I dearly love the concept. I’m just left somewhat flat by the execution. Mildly amusing

Review – The Manson Family

Of all the movies made about Charles Manson and his followers, this indie production is the most unflinching. The pseudo-documentary style makes the Family look far creepier than they do in slick, Hollywood pictures. We also get a heapin’ helpin’ of hippie nudity, sex and gory murder. The graphic visuals shot and edited with a heavy LSD look and feel do a great job of dragging the audience into the environment that bred Manson’s bizarre, deadly cult, making the fanatical murderers hateful in a way that more sanitized productions could never approach. The movie is marred just a bit by the intermixing of a pointless subplot about a documentary film-maker menaced by neo-Mansonites. That aside, however, the video is worth it for the gut-wrenching re-creations of the murders alone. Worth seeing

Review – Tales from the Grave (2004)

I suppose one way to look at movies like this is that they save us from having to watch three crappy horror movies by cutting them down and mashing them together into one crappy horror movie. On the other hand, I’ve already seen The Dead Hate the Living, so this only-better-‘cause-it’s-shorter serving of sloppy seconds didn’t spare me from anything. The second piece – bimbeaux on a haunted house reality show get done in by real haints – looked as if it might have had more nudity in it before it got edited. The third one was a nonsensical tale of a witch who takes revenge on some hillbillies who mess with her (killing either her cat or her kid, the cut-down version wasn’t clear on which). Overall if you like movies like this then you should probably go rent the originals so you can get the full experience. And if you’re like me and you only watch them out of a sense of obligation and/or boredom, then honestly why bother with them in long or short versions? I should have learned my lesson after Tomb of Terror. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Resident Evil: Extinction

Third verse, same as the first. Actually, this one’s even more like a bad video game than either the first or second outing. The action has shifted from Raccoon City to a post-zombie-apocalypse Las Vegas and vicinity. But it’s still super karate Mila Jovovich versus the undead hordes. See if desperate

Review – Wyvern

Here’s another reason why it’s too bad Jim Varney passed on a few years ago: if he was still alive, they could shoot a sequel to this thing called Heyvern, in which a dragon annoys its neighbor with inane chatter. Honestly, that would have been better than this patchwork of illogic and time-wasting subplots detracting from the main story about a dragon munching its way through a small town in Alaska. See if desperate

Review – The Painted Veil (2006)

At least this is better than The Razor’s Edge. Or at least I assume it is. I confess I haven’t read the source novel for this one. Still, this seems a bit more Maugham-y than the Bill Murray thing. Ed Norton plays an angry man who drags his unfaithful wife (Naomi Watts) into the middle of a cholera epidemic in rural China in the 1920s. The story is romantic enough, if a bit on the dull side. The real star of the show, however, is the cinematography. The countryside provides no end of beautiful vistas. The result is a pretty if not particularly interesting picture. Mildly amusing