Review – You’ve Got Mail

The Shop Around the Corner gets Nora-Ephron-ized in this goofy romantic comedy starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. She’s the owner of a small bookstore fighting for its life against a huge corporate operation moving in nearby. He’s the heir to the corporate fortune. They establish a love/hate relationship with the love part conducted anonymously via AOL. I found the death-of-the-independent-bookstore stuff extremely depressing, so much so that it actually interfered with my ability to enjoy the rest of the movie. Also, try as I might, I have trouble imagining anyone falling in love with Tom Hanks (even on the Internet where she doesn’t know who he really is). That notwithstanding, as a romantic comedy it fulfills the usual genre requirements. Mildly amusing

Review – Quartet

This picture is based on a foursome of short stories by W. Somerset Maugham, who actually appears at the beginning to introduce the set. From there “The Facts of Life,” “The Alien Corn,” “The Kite” and “The Colonel’s Lady” spin out. By the time we’re done we’ve gone through just about all the standard British actors of the age and then some (including a small role for Ian Fleming). In keeping with the spirit of the author’s work, the plots are clever if perhaps a bit too English (though then again, the twisting and turning around proper British social customs is of course a big part of the point). Mildly amusing

Review – X-Men Origins: Wolverine

When I was a kid I used to love the “secret origins” superhero books. For some reason finding out how these folks got their jobs was a source of endless fascination. And I admit I did kinda like that element of this picture. The rest of it, on the other hand, was standard action picture dull. Flashy, expensive but not long in the coherent plot department. Mildly amusing

Review – Jesus of Nazareth

This Franco Zeffirelli production is one of the better film versions of the Gospels I’ve seen, thanks in no small part to a script co-written by Anthony Burgess. To be sure, it has some faults. The blonde-haired, blue-eyed kid who plays the title character as a youth looks more like Jesus of Stockholm. And sadly the adult Jesus, played by Robert Powell, is the same I-don’t-need-drugs-I’m-high-on-Me ethereal being portrayed by Jeffrey Hunter and Max von Sydow. But for a refreshing change, the rest of the characters in the picture have normal human reactions to Christ and his teachings. And though it doesn’t include every single moment from the Gospels, it is a bit more comprehensive than most other productions. Of course when you’ve got six hours to work with, it’s easier to pack in the kind of rich detail that transforms the story from bare-bones doctrine or exploitative Hollywood tripe into a tale rich with the sort of detail that makes for compelling viewing. Worth seeing

Review – Night Train to Munich

Carol Reed’s presence in the director’s chair helps put this a cut above the average World War Two propaganda picture. A young woman (Margaret Lockwood) is rescued from a concentration camp and reunited with her scientist father in England only to discover that she’s been used by an evil Gestapo agent (Paul Henreid) as bait in a trap to kidnap the good doctor and cart him off to Germany. Fortunately a British agent (played by a disturbingly young Rex Harrison) comes to their rescue, steering through a number of clever twists and cliffhanging turns while trying to save the day. Though this is a far cry from The Third Man, it’s still one of the better spy pictures of its day. Worth seeing

Review – Sea Beast

For a SyFy movie, this one isn’t too bad. A small fishing community is menaced by a horde of sea monsters that look a bit like Deep Ones from “The Shadow over Innsmouth.” Or perhaps “brood” would be more accurate than “horde,” as the creatures appear to be juveniles led by a single, large mother monster. They’re a little more interesting than the average CGI menace, which helps elevate this a notch above the usual parade of slasher-monster-menacing-a-small-town clichés. Mildly amusing

Review – Star Trek: Insurrection

This film represents the final triumph of the “Next Generation”-ization of the whole Star Trek thing, even though it’s the third one to feature the cast from the newer series; the first one with the new people was a joint venture that also included the original cast, and the second one still employed enough of the old tricks of the trade to keep it interesting. But by this point the charm of the original series has completely petered out, almost entirely replaced by the smarmy new-age nonsense that infected much of the new programs. The plot meanders through a touchy-feely story about an Eden-esque planet threatened by evil bad-skin people led by F. Murray Abraham. The occasional spaceship battles and other effects-intensive bits aren’t too bad, but the rest of it appears to be heavily driven by Scientology and director Jonathan Frakes’ ego. See if desperate

Review – Star Trek: First Contact

You probably shouldn’t make this your first contact with the world of Star Trek. It’s based heavily on characters and plots from Star Trek: The Next Generation and the movies and spin-offs spawned thereby. Even if you do know enough about the show to follow the story, you still may walk away feeling short-changed. Rather than functioning as a movie, this plays more like two episodes of the TV series mashed awkwardly together. In one, the Enterprise journeys back in time – never a good sign – to convince the inventor of warp drive to go through with a crucial test that will allow humans and Vulcans to meet for the first time. In the other, the Enterprise is taken over by the Borg, leaving Picard and company fighting to regain control of the ship while Data is kidnapped and tortured by the evil Borg queen. Either of these would have been fine as a ST:TNG episode, but they don’t work together or separately as a movie. Mildly amusing

My eight favorite horror novels

This was a hard list to put together. I’ve read literally hundreds of horror novels, collections and anthologies over the years, so I almost had enough possible choices to make the task impossible. Narrowing it down to novels helped a bit, but it was still no easy job.

Further, rating and ranking books isn’t as easy as passing quick judgment on movies. They require a much greater commitment of time and attention. Thus it’s easier to fall in love with a flawed book, as some of the entries here will doubtless prove.

What I tried for in this list was a mix of at least some of the genre’s dominant themes and prominent writers. Most of the books on the list defy genre conventions in one way or another, either taking traditional themes and twisting them around or departing entirely from the rules of the game. So it wouldn’t surprise me at all if in the future this set is joined by an “eight more” or two, perhaps populated with tales that are easier to define.

 

The Halloween Tree – Of all the books that first set my feet on the “dark fiction” path, this one still stands out in my memory. Ray Bradbury was one of my childhood favorites, and here he’s at the top of his game. He weaves a spooky blend of kid customs, Halloween history and real-life death as a group of boys chase through a fantastic “haunted house” trying to save their seriously-ill chum. Though a lot of Bradbury’s work is over-sentimental, here the level is just right.

The House Next Door – In a genre in many ways defined by its own conventions, this tale succeeds precisely because it defies the rules. In some respects it’s a haunted house piece, but the location isn’t gothic or creepy or even old. Indeed, it’s a suburban as it can be. Which is what makes it so chilling when it starts killing people with no explanation at all for why (until the end, which I admit does spoil things just a bit).

The Dead Zone – After reading 50-some books by Stephen King, I pretty much have to put him in here somewhere. I read this one so long ago that it isn’t even on my books-read list (which means I read it sometime prior to 1988, though I don’t honestly remember exactly when). But the story stuck with me. It’s not as complicated as The Stand or as popular as The Shining, maybe not even as good as Carrie. But it’s simple and straightforward, dealing with a relatively small psychic gift. It also features a likable hero and even a few good scares. What more can one ask of a horror novel?

The Witching Hour – Sorry, Anne Rice fans. I just can’t do the vampire thing. Nor for that matter did I get much out of the second and third books in the Mayfair Witches series. This one, on the other hand, was easier to enjoy. It has a lot of Rice’s annoying fascination with gothic crap. But it also has her sense of New Orleans decadence and Victorian sexuality without all the bloodsucking.

Summer of Night – Sure, his later novels (such as The Terror and Drood) are “bigger.” And the source of evil in this one does in the end turn out to be a teeny bit lame. But otherwise this is a good use of kids in the Midwest versus an unseen force destroying their town. Sort of like It only without the space spider.

Floating Dragon – This is another read-it-a-long-time-ago entry, my favorite by far of the Peter Straub I’ve experienced. This is a tale from the good old days before Straub decided that he couldn’t decide whether or not he was a genre writer. After enduring Mr. X, I backtracked to his earlier stuff and found that I liked it a lot better. This is a particularly fine specimen, a tale of ancient, invisible evil on the loose.

Weaveworld – Clive Barker did wonders for the horror world, breaking away from some of the ruts the genre had gotten stuck in. He also introduced a measure of graphic sex and violence without descending to the extremes of splatterpunk. This is one of the better examples of his work, more substantial than his short fiction (though plenty of good moments await readers of The Books of Blood set as well). By walking a line between horror and fantasy, he creates a world hidden in a carpet that is at once magical and scary.

Hell House – This is as close to a straightforward ghost story as I could come. Richard Matheson is more comfortable than most writers working across media, as his novels, short stories, teleplays and movie scripts have proven. This one was both a book and a movie, though oddly enough the book is a good deal more graphic than the film version. Still, this is an excellent blend of the psychological and the visceral, pushing the boundaries of the haunted house tale without stepping completely outside of them.

Review – She-Wolf of London

A-hoooo. She-wolf of London. A-hoooo. Just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Nor can this picture hold a candle to Werewolf of London. A young June Lockhart stars as a recently-betrothed woman who fears that she can’t get married because she’s a werewolf. Within the first ten minutes even the dimmest audience member has figured out that she isn’t really a lycanthrope but rather has fallen victim to a scheme by her “aunt” to drive her crazy in order to inherit her property. Which of course immediately raises the question, “if you’re willing to brutally slaughter innocent victims in order to do your ‘niece’ out of her inheritance, why not just kill the poor woman directly and be done with it?” The only pleasure to be had with such movies is the faint glimmer of hope that somehow it isn’t going to turn out exactly the way you think it will, a hope perfunctorily dashed by this mercifully brief outing. See if desperate

Take ‘em down from the roof, Christmas slackers

As part of the commitment the blog makes to serving the needs of the public in general and our readers in particular, I offer the following valuable and timely reminder: the time has come to take down your Christmas decorations.

I recognize that there’s no carved-in-stone rule on this. Nor should there be, either before or after Christmas. Just as some folks hang up their lights and inflate their snowmen shortly before Thanksgiving – earlier than that actually is pushing it, by the way – so others prefer to wait until a week or two later. Indeed, judging by the fact that some tree lots still stay in business until December 23 or 24, at least some people’s holiday traditions involve waiting until the last minute. Either that or there are some lot attendants in the world who get a strange thrill out of sitting in the cold and staring at dead trees.

Different households have different take-down times that generally correspond to their outlooks on life. Without naming names, I know at least one person who made a custom every year of yanking the tree down and carting it out even as the last scraps of wrapping paper from the kids’ presents were still settling to earth. This strategy tends to say “thank goodness this is over for another year. Now let’s eat supper, watch football and pretend that none of this ever happened.” Slightly more common is the practice of packing up and throwing out on or around New Years Day. Assuming the weather permits and the hangover’s not too bad to make for treacherous trips up and down the ladder, the start of the new year is as good a time as any to go ahead and take care of it. The holidays – at least the ones you get off from work – are officially over. It makes for a nice psychological break from the old year and its bric-a-brac. And if nothing else, doing it on the same day every year helps you to remember to do it, sort of like changing the batteries in your smoke alarms when daylight savings time starts and ends.

Still, Jan. 1 might be a little early for some folks. Sometimes it’s hard to give up that special holiday feeling. Sometimes it’s too cold out to troop around the yard gathering up plastic reindeer. And there are legitimate religious reasons for waiting awhile, too. For example, many households wait until the Feast of the Epiphany on Jan. 6 before officially calling a halt.

But for those of you who still at this late date have a smiling Santa hanging off your porch, I think you’re past the point of reasonable excuse. The kids have been back in school for awhile now. The weather’s been a little spotty, but we’ve had enough pleasant days that surely you could have taken advantage of one of them.

Perhaps you’re waiting for the Feast of the Conversion of Paul. If so, why? Wouldn’t it be better to stick to celebrations that are somehow directly related to Christmas? Otherwise heck, why not just leave the mistletoe out until the Feast of the Assumption in August?

Maybe we need to come up with a new feast day for you. How about the Feast of the Guys Who Showed Up Really Late for the Nativity? There’s no explicit biblical support for such a holiday, but you’ve got to figure that at least some of the shepherds were coming from a couple of towns over and thus took a little extra time to show up. Just because they aren’t mentioned in the gospels doesn’t mean that they weren’t there, however late they might have been.

Of course we’ll need some ceremonies and customs to go with this new holiday. I suggest that celebrants get a six pack, drink one, and then go outside carrying the remaining five by the empty ring. With all the lights out, wander slowly around your house looking in the windows and chanting “where’s everybody at?”

Ceremony complete, it’s time for dinner. After all, what would a feast day be without a feast? Unfortunately, the appropriate chow for this particular event is “the bread of you-should-have-made-a-little-more-haste.” Dishes must be things that are traditionally all that’s left after the first couple of hours of a party, such as cocktail wieners and a nut-covered cheese ball surrounded by sesame crackers.

Sound like less fun than a barrel of monkeys? There’s an easy way to escape this dire fate. Just take down your decorations already.

Review – One Wonderful Sunday

Though this early Kurosawa picture is as laconic as the title day, its subtle, honest optimism is probably exactly what moviegoers in postwar Japan needed. A young couple with very little spending money try to have the best day off they can. The day presents them with a series of ups and downs, the upshot of which is that happiness is possible without money. Indeed, money seems to get in the way of happiness. To be sure, it gets a bit too sentimental in the end, particularly the breaking-the-fourth-wall “Peter Pan” moment. Overall, however, it’s a charming, uplifting little picture. Worth seeing

Review – Foxes

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the strange world of 1979. Suburban girls growing up with divorced parents were apparently considered interesting enough to make a movie about. KISS was so big that their posters were on at least one wall in every home. Parents bought beer for their kids and didn’t think a second thing about it (actually that probably still happens a lot). A riot breaks out at a party and nobody busts out a cell phone to call the cops (because yes, believe it or not, there was an age before cell phones). Jodie Foster was young. Laura Dern (in a brief role) was young. Adrian Lyne was making his very first feature film, honing tastes for bad lighting and worse writing that would serve him throughout his over-long career. Like the song says, “those were different times.” Mildly amusing

Review – It’s Alive (2008)

Just how long is the Festival of Unnecessary Remakes now? Well, apparently it needed to be 90 minutes longer. The production values overall are a teeny bit better. And as if in exchange, the monster is nowhere near as good. Unlike the creature in the original, this one can pass for normal. In the end, of course, it turns into its true self, a Garbage Pail Kid called Nathan NoDentalPlan. Otherwise it’s the same stupid story of an overpaid white couple who give birth to a pet-killin’ devil child. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Frenzy

This is one of the ickiest movies Alfred Hitchcock ever made. The plot is standard Hitch: a lust killer with a necktie-strangling fetish is loose in London. Suspicion falls on a recently-unemployed asshole who happens to have connections to some of the victims. Do I even need to tell you that the actual culprit is someone else? I found a couple of things about this movie particularly disturbing. One was that the violence – particularly one rape/killing – was especially graphic. But even worse, the movie seemed to be trying for a sense of humor about the awful crimes. Though the English have a solid history of making successful, droll comedies (such as Kind Hearts and Coronets) about the most gruesome of subjects, the joke here falls flat. Typical of the problem is the scene in which the villain finds himself stuck in the back of a potato truck trying to wrestle his lapel pin out of the rigor-stricken fingers of one of his naked victims. I suppose it was meant to evoke a nervous chuckle, but all it made me wish for was the sudden reanimation of the corpse to exact a little choking revenge on the asshole as he burbles out one last “Bob’s yer uncle.” Needless to say, I didn’t get my wish. See if desperate

Review – 80,000 Suspects

Ugh. How can a picture about a deadly plague possibly be so boring? Well, for one thing it isn’t about a smallpox epidemic breaking out in England as much as it’s about doctors and their wives wrestling with their marital woes while a dangerous virus spreads in the background. Make a good epidemiology thriller and you’ve got my undivided attention. Make a dreary British soap opera and I’ll pass before even hitting “record” on my DVR. The only distinction this uneven blend of the two managed to earn was that I made it to the end without giving up and deleting it. See if desperate

Review – It’s Alive (1974)

I’m astonished that the cat made it two thirds of the way through the picture. I figured he’d be done in by the evil mutant baby in much shorter order than that. The plot is simple stuff: a suburban couple suddenly find themselves the proud parents of a bloodthirsty monster only Rick Baker could love. Unbeknownst to hubby, the stress-crazy mother shelters the beast as it murders its way through the neighborhood. The rubber baby effects are carefully shielded from long takes and clear lighting, which is probably a good thing. Despite a couple of chills here and there, for the most part this is slow and stupid. See if desperate

Review – Escape to Witch Mountain

After several disappointing brushes with movies from my childhood, I was nervous about watching this again. However, it turned out to be a bit better than other Disney live action fare from the 70s. To be sure, it isn’t a masterpiece of the cinema arts. The dialogue is simple-minded enough to appeal primarily to the target age group. And I fear that in a world of flashy CGI most kids nowadays won’t be impressed with the low tech effects used to create the kids’ telekinetics. On the other hand, the story – rich creep seeks to exploit psychic siblings, who go on the lam and befriend a crotchety old man who helps them escape – is clever enough. I was particularly impressed with a rare bit of studio sensitivity to animals, who appear in this production without being killed or even seriously imperiled. Overall this is a charming little picture from an age when movies for kids didn’t have to be packed with innuendo for adults. Mildly amusing

Review – Phantasm 4: Oblivion

The cleverest element of this entire picture is the exploitation of the fact that the middle letters of “oblivion” are the Roman numeral “IV.” And when the title is the best part of the whole movie, well, that’s just not good. The production aspires to have more plot than previous entries, even including an “origin of the Tall Man” bit. Unfortunately it starts to meander, turning into yet another dull parade of effects and random weirdness. The result is an 80s music video excuse for a horror movie. See if desperate

Review – Phantasm 3: Lord of the Dead

Needed way more balls. The deadly flying spheres are the high point of every movie in this set, and here they’re used extremely sparingly until the end. The rest of the story is the usual mish-mash about the Tall Man and his Black Sabbath midgets stealing corpses from graveyards, trashing small towns and moving on, our heroes on his trail the whole time. Some of the eeriness is actually eerie, but the rest of it is only entertaining in a “that dude has a shotgun with four barrels” sort of way. See if desperate

Review – Kind Hearts and Coronets

Leave it to the English to come up with a clever comedy about a greed-motivated serial killer. Of course this guy isn’t exactly a member of the Bundy-wannabe club. Instead, his victims – give or take an innocent bystander or two – all stand between him and the D’Ascoyne family title. The gimmick here is that all the members of the family are played by Alec Guiness. But the multi-role trick is backed up by some excellent writing employing the driest of dry wit common to British black comedies. The only gripe I have about this picture is an unfortunate use of the “N word” at the last minute. Worth seeing

The view from 3000

Though it’s been nearly a month – and several more movies under the bridge – since the blog hit the 3000 movie review mark, I’d still like to pause and share a little perspective (not to mention some fun stats).

Clearly 2009 was a banner year for movie reviews. I added 627 new reviews, not quite double the previous annual record of 380 (in 1999) but more than four times the total for 2002, with only 135 reviews. Indeed, we went through a “dry patch” from 2002 to 2005, during which only 594 reviews were added for the whole four years.

The longest movie month was July 2009 with 74 movies.

The shortest movie month was a tie between April 2002 and September 2004 with one review each (Phantasm and The Station Agent respectively).

The longest movie day was May 1, 2009 with nine movies (though one or two of these were pictures that I’d started the day before).

It’s hard to say what month was the all-time best for movie viewing. But the worst was most likely March 2004. I watched Cabin Fever, which was mediocre bad, but it was sandwiched by Gigli and The Cat in the Hat, two of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.

Here are some other random stats from the first 3000:

Categories:
Horror 1154
Drama 676
Documentary 165
Comedy 424
Action 581

Ratings:
Buy the disc 73
Worth seeing 347
Mildly amusing 1438
See if desperate 899
Wish I’d skipped it 235
Avoid at all costs 8

And here’s a flaky stat, the eight most common words that begin the titles of movies reviewed on the blog:

Dark 20
House 20
Night 19 (32 if variations such as “nightmare” are included)
American 19
Day (and Days) 19
Death 19 (five of which are Death Wish movies)
Black 16
Blood 15

Review – Rodan

Not exactly a high point in the world of giant Japanese monsters, though the title character went on to bigger and better things in later team-ups with Godzilla. Miners dig up a pocket of prehistoric beasts, including oversized bugs and a giant egg. In short order not one but two huge, fast-moving, high-flying monsters that look like a cross between a pterodactyl and a chicken plague the skies over Japan. With no other monsters to help do the job, humanity must defeat the creatures itself. It takes some doing and leads to a genuinely dreadful conclusion about “noble death.” Though this isn’t the worst model-smashing-guy-in-latex-suit movie Toho ever made, it isn’t exactly the best either. Mildly amusing

Review – Bringing Godzilla Down to Size

This documentary about the behind-the-scenes history of the Godzilla franchise was an unexpected bonus on the DVD of Rodan. Indeed, this turned out to be better than the main feature. The production features extensive interviews with just about everyone from the guys who wore the Godzilla suits to the guys who made them to the guys who made the miniature cityscapes that got stomped time and time again. To be sure, the story would have been a bit more interesting if it had included more backstage footage or at least more clips from some of the older pictures discussed by the interviewees. Nonetheless, this is fun and fascinating stuff. Worth seeing

Review – Destination Moon

Writer Robert Heinlein and producer George Pal team up to create this surprisingly sober speculation about a trip to the moon nearly two decades before Apollo 11. No space monsters. No space bimbos in shiny silver bikinis. Just a straightforward exploration of the political, economic and technical pitfalls of space travel in the middle of the 20th century. It’s largely a propaganda piece, extolling the virtues of a well-funded space program and threatening that we need to build missile bases on the Moon before you-know-who gets there first. Of course if the real U.S. rockets had been as deco-snazzy as the spacecraft here, they might have been easier to sell to the American public. Mildly amusing

Review – Gallipoli (2006)

A little ingenuity goes a long way in documentary filmmaking. The folks who made this one don’t appear to have a huge budget, but they do some good things with what they have. For example, rather than do large-scale re-enactments of some of World War One’s more famous battles, they do more limited work that showcases the effect of bombs and machine gun fire. And although the story is told primarily from the perspective of the ANZAC troops, the Turkish side is also given at least some screen time. Celebrity narration by Jeremy Irons and Sam Neill lends gravitas without intruding excessively. Overall this was quite good. Worth seeing

Review – Terror House

Fanboys with cameras, yay. Despite one of the characters being named Crawford Tillinghast, this has nothing to do with the works of H.P. Lovecraft. Instead, it’s the tale of three boneheads stuck in a house haunted by a monster that looks like Chaka the Pacuni in a cheap Halloween mask. I wonder if anyone out there ever starts making a movie like this, watches it in the editing stage, says to himself “hey, compared to good horror movies, this is just crap,” and then doesn’t finish the work. I guess we’ll never know. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Astro Boy

Osamu Tezuka’s most legendary creation gets Americanized and computer animated to no particularly good effect. The recognizable voices for the cast (including Donald Sutherland and Nicolas Cage) must have cost so much that they had to cut corners on the visuals. The result lives somewhere between the quality audiences have come to expect from theatrical-release animation and the junk we expect kids to tolerate on TV because producers don’t want to waste a lot of money on them. Given the “classic” nature of the undertaking, I expected something more respectful. Mildly amusing

I, Claudius: The d-d-decadence of R-R-Rome

If the BBC made a series out of Bob Guccione’s Caligula, it might be something like this. Room with a View of Poison. Staircase of Scheming. Pond of Sex. And not good sex, either. British nighttime telly sex. The decadence and depravity of ancient Rome ends up liberally mixed with Masterpiece Theater boring.

Oddly enough, the series is a lot better than the simple description makes it sound. What looks at first like a wallow in Roman sleaze turns out to be a halfway effective way to learn some warts-and-all history. And though the slow spots are plenty dull, their dullness makes them all the more chilling because the characters discuss the murdering fates of an empire in what-is-it-Sebastian-I’m-arranging-matches tones.

Almost every episode begins with an aged Emperor Claudius (Derek Jacobi) at the end of his reign, striving to complete his memoirs. This provides the structure for the series, which is a fictional autobiography from Claudius’s perspective. The convention gets tedious after a couple of episodes, but fortunately it never drones on for too long.

The story proper begins before Claudius is even born. His grandmother Livia Drusilla (Sian Phillips) has connived to marry the emperor, Augustus Caesar (Brian Blessed) and will now stop at nothing to cement the claim of her son Tiberius (George Baker) upon the throne. Unfortunately for the rest of the royal family, “stop at nothing” includes everything from petty intrigue to cold-blooded murder.

Into this messy, dangerous world comes young Claudius, a stuttering, limping boy widely assumed to be an idiot. The lad is smart, but he’s good at hiding it. The subterfuge of feigned harmlessness ends up saving him more than once.

As our hero grows old enough to be played by Jacobi, Livia’s intrigue extends to assassinating Augustus himself. The poor ol’ guy is so fearful of being poisoned that he’ll only eat figs straight off the tree. So of course his crafty wife puts the poison straight on the unpicked fruit. A fake will is read, and Tiberius is emperor.

And here’s where the series starts to get good. The new Caesar slips rapidly into paranoia, egged on by his vicious grandnephew Caligula (John Hurt). Convinced that everyone is out to get him, the emperor and his powerful right-hand-man Sejanus (Patrick Stewart) institute a reign of terror. But the old man is old and weak (consumed by a “disease of Venus,” though the show doesn’t say as much), and as a last spot of foolishness he makes Caligula his heir. Stupid man. He lasts around half an episode after that.

The psychotic new emperor begins a tyranny of cruel stunts, not the least of which is proclaiming himself a living god. He’s particularly mean to poor Claudius. Our hero used to be able to protect himself by pretending to be mentally-differently-abled, but no longer. It isn’t that Caligula sees through the ruse. He just doesn’t care. He torments his old uncle not as a matter of political expedience but rather as a way of having a bit of fun.

Fortunately for Claudius, the reign of Little Boots is fairly brief. Unfortunately for him, after Caligula is assassinated, the Praetorian Guard – afraid that they’ll be out of a job if Rome reverts to a republic – seize on Claudius as next in line for the throne and swiftly move to install him as emperor.

From here on out the set settles back into the Masterpiece Theater groove. Claudius tries to establish himself as a wise and just ruler, but his efforts are undone by the usual scheming and by his intensely unfaithful wife Messalina (Sheila White). Despite efforts to spice things up with a lot of sexuality (and even a little nudity), the series sputters to an end with Claudius in a drunken rage ordering his wife’s execution and then in turn being poisoned by his new spouse in order to put her son Nero on the throne. And so it goes.

You can get the essence of the whole 12-episode set from what you just read (or from any other bargain basement history of the Julio-Claudian emperors, if somehow you managed to get here without reading any of the rest of this text). The real charm of the show, however, lies in the details. I was particularly fond of the performance turned in by Jacobi as our long-suffering narrator / hero and Hurt’s over-the-top turn as the over-the-top emperor Caligula.

To be sure, the series has some problems. Almost all the male characters are cowardly blowhards, and almost all the female characters are lascivious conspirators. The women push their menfolk into one plot or another, and it always turns out badly. Yes, it gets old after awhile.

But that’s more than compensated for by the fun of watching the former rulers of the earth deliver stuffy dialogue in accents that make them sound like they shit marble and yet behave like the lowest form of Springer guest. The contrast between the lofty look and feel on one hand and the petty evil of these people’s lives on the other is truly delightful.

I should close by confessing a strange sort of nostalgia for I, Claudius. When it first aired on PBS in 1976, I was only ten years old and still too young to watch such a show. My best friend Matt, however, was a year older – not to mention a member of a somewhat more free-wheeling family. Not only did he love it, but he also delighted in telling me all about how great it was. I think the idea that this must have been something good because I wasn’t allowed to watch it must have stuck with me even all these decades later.

Review – Green River

Some of the woodland landscapes are pretty. Unfortunately they’re wasted on one of the most dreadful reverse-slasher movies I’ve ever seen. Two women spend the weekend bickering in a cabin in the stomping grounds of a notorious serial killer. When a guy in a pickup truck behaves strangely in their general vicinity, they get the drop on him and tie him up in his own house. While one of the women goes for help – injuring herself and having hallucinations in the woods – the other torments the maybe-he’s-a-killer-and-maybe-he-isn’t guy, cutting him up and threatening to kill him. In other words, this thing starts out bad and just keeps getting worse and worse. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The Haunting of Winchester House

Note to insomniacs with family members sleeping in the room across the hall: skip this picture. It’s one of the noisiest movies I’ve ever seen. Loudness aside, it’s yet another example of a perfectly good haunted house premise that doesn’t go anywhere thanks to a bad script and mediocre acting. The “surprise” ending was particularly annoying. See if desperate

My eight favorite horror movies of the 00s

Looking back at decade’s end, I note that the movies of the new millennium don’t appear to be featured prominently on many of 8sails’ “our eight favorites” lists. In particular, most of the stuff on the horror-related lists tends to be 1980s or earlier.

In part that’s justified. The lists reflect the staff’s taste, and our tastes tend to stray away from movies that fit with the trends of the new century. But some folks out there are still making good horror pictures, usually despite the current flow of the industry as a whole. So at the start of the 10’s, here’s a quick nod to the good horror movies of the past decade.

The Call of Cthulhu – Though this is of recent vintage, it consciously imitates the expressionist horror movies of the silent era. In other words, if someone had made a movie out of H.P. Lovecraft’s classic tale shortly after it first saw print, it might have looked a great deal like this. The production is a delightful demonstration of just how much can be done with a small budget and a little imagination.

The Burrowers – This entry is distinguished by two elements. First, it’s one of the few times that horror and the western have been successfully combined. Second (and better yet), the monsters are both innovative and scary. As is their modus operandi.

The Last Winter – Global warming is frightening stuff, so it was only a matter of time before somebody found a way to make it into an effective horror picture. Thankfully this isn’t some epic global destruction slop like 2012 or The Day After Tomorrow. Instead it borrows a trick from The Thing – something gets thawed out that shouldn’t have – and takes it in a sinister new direction.

Let the Right One In – To Sweden we go for this icky little vampire movie. Though it has its faults – not the least of which is that it’s a vampire movie – it does some interesting things with bloodsucker mythology.

28 Days Later – And next to England. This takes Romero’s flesh-ripping zombies and speeds them up to a frantic, dangerous pace. Thus in short order all Britain is awash in innocent people transformed into rabid, hungry monsters. Thank goodness the place is an island.

From Hell – Okay, let’s be fair. Though Hollywood hasn’t exactly been at the forefront of good horror cinema for awhile now, every once in awhile the studios do turn out something that’s worth a look. This isn’t exactly the first time a gifted detective has been pitted against Jack the Ripper. Nor is it the first time that a conspiracy of aristocratic Masons has been implicated in the killings. But Alan Moore’s version of the tale combines historical detail with solid storytelling, and the Hughes brothers trim it down nicely to bring it to the screen.

The Ring – This is the most popular picture on the list; it made a bit of a stir when it hit theaters thanks to the watch-a-video-and-die-in-seven-days gimmick. Though it might have been just as good with a smaller budget (or in the original Japanese version), the slick cinematography is a nice addition.

The Cry – And finally, here’s a hope that the increasing Hispanic presence in the United States will eventually bring Latin American folk legend into the horror genre. Thus far most of what I’ve seen from this area has been mediocre vampires and a couple of poor excuses for chupacabras. So even though this La Llorona tale isn’t exactly an immortal classic of the silver screen, it is nonetheless a significant and potentially important step in the right direction.

The eight biggest media moments of 2008-2009

A couple of years ago I finished the year with a summary of the eight biggest media moments of 2007. Then last year I didn’t do one. So this entry will have to serve for both 2008 and 2009.

Michael Jackson overkill – Saying anything more about this would just add to the problem. So I’ll just note in passing that it happened.

I was President Palmer – Nearly a half a century after Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, white people still tend to learn most of what they know about Black people from television. But at least they finally seem to be learning some positive lessons. Though Bill Cosby first broke the jive-talking, ghetto dumdum sitcom mold some time ago, the most obvious TV precedent for America’s first Black President is Dennis Haysbert’s portrayal of President Palmer on 24. Now if only the intelligence community could be similarly inspired and come up with a real Jack Bauer.

TV on DVD – Obviously TV shows have been available on DVD for some time now, but last year and this year I started seriously taking advantage of the opportunity to get caught up on the previous seasons of popular shows. When it comes to trends in broadcasting and cablecasting, I don’t tend to be an early adopter. So if I had to join a show like Lost when it’s already five seasons in, well, it just wouldn’t work. But when we can get caught up in a month or two of steady disc viewing. The only disadvantage to this scheme is that when a good show is in danger of dying for lack of audience, I don’t start watching it until it’s too late. Alas, poor Deadwood.

Netflix instant view – At the end of 2008 Netflix finally made its Instant View option available for Mac OS. After the start of the new year, I took major advantage of it. By year’s end I’d watched 115 movies and several episodes of the Masters of Horror TV series. Though I was already used to watching DVDs on my computer at home, my guess at the outset of the Instant View experiment was that it wouldn’t work. And though it isn’t effective for anything I actually want to see (or anything with subtitles), it’s great for anything that requires only half attention while I get some work done.

DVR in the office – The other new bit of technology that contributed to the tremendous increase in the movie review rate in 2009 was the addition of a DVR to my office at home. Though we’d had a Tivo box in the bedroom for awhile now, we mostly used it to time shift TV shows. The DVR in the office at home swiftly became the equivalent of Instant View at work. I thought at first that being stuck with only the movies that happened to be on the non-premium channels would be limiting, I soon found out that I was recording more than I could possibly watch. By the end of the year I’d learned to be a bit more selective.

Disappointing attempts to relive my childhood – During the last couple of years I’ve had several chances to relive experiences I remembered enjoying when I was a kid. Many of the movies I loved when I was younger turned out not to be as good as I remembered them. For kid-oriented fluff like the goofy movies Kurt Russell did for Disney back in the day, it came as no surprise when they turned out to be, well, dumb. But for some productions – particularly Frankenstein: the True Story and The Guns of Navarone – I was surprised to discover that what thrilled me at seven barely held my attention at 43. Oh, and don’t even get me started on the giant dump the Speed Racer movie took on a cherished childhood memory.

Successful attempts to relive my childhood – On the other hand, a few repeat experiences from my younger years proved more successful. For example, I re-watched all of the episodes of the original Jonny Quest series. Sure, they’re bad by 21st century grown-up standards. But they were still fun to watch. Likewise a prowl of the back shelves at a local hobby store netted some recent reissues of the old Monster Scenes model kits, the kind I was forbidden to buy when I was a kid. I haven’t finished assembling them all yet, but they’re still fun to have around. So at least the news on the inner child front wasn’t all bad.

The 10th anniversary of the first time we saw Dress to Kill – We’ve never been big New Years Eve party people, so it wasn’t terribly surprising that even the big millennial to-do ten years ago found us camped on the couch enjoying our adult beverages of choice and watching TV. As we surfed, we came across what at first looked like just another stand-up act on HBO (thank goodness we had HBO at the time). But after watching it for just a couple of minutes, Amy and I said to each other, “Hey, this guy’s really funny.” And the rest, as they say, is history. The performance was Eddie Izzard’s Dress to Kill show, and it remains one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. So on Dec. 31, 2009, we re-watched it on DVD (as we have many times in the past). We started to keep a count of all the things Izzard says during the show that we’ve picked up and used in everyday conversation, but the tally swiftly grew too high to track. What a wonderful way to start and end the first decade of the new century.

Review – Bride and Prejudice

Jane Austen gets an awkward Bollywood makeover in this musical romance. Producers would obviously love to create a movie that successfully employs the look and feel of movies made for the huge Indian market while at the same time luring audiences in the United States by shooting in English and using American and British actors. Unfortunately if this production is any indication, the two may be at least somewhat mutually incompatible. I can’t speak from the perspective of audiences in India, but as an American movie it has some problems. The musical numbers are full of pretty choreography, but they’re awkward and the lyrics are dumb. The story is sometimes hard to follow, either because the script is trying to follow Austen too closely or because it’s just ill-conceived on its own. The result is fluffy and cute but not especially satisfying. Mildly amusing

Review – Affliction

If you’re in the mood for a bargain-basement lecture about the dysfunctional psychology of rural American masculinity, then boy does writer/director Paul Schrader have a treat for you. Nick Nolte plays an average mook making a living as a cop and general maintenance worker in small town New Hampshire. The poor guy’s slowly being driven insane by his own powerlessness. He hates his boss. He suspects a fellow worker of shooting a wealthy lawyer in a “hunting accident,” a murder mystery plot that either should have been the main point of the movie or should have been left out altogether. His daughter (correctly) thinks he’s a jerk. His ex agrees. His girlfriend doesn’t want to marry him. His mom dies. His tooth hurts. And on top of everything else, he has a pathetic relationship with his abusive, alcoholic father (James Coburn, who must have gotten his Academy Award for this role based on the “give the ol’ guy an Oscar” sentimental vote). Right up through the total collapse at the end, his distant brother (Willem Dafoe) periodically supplies a useless, over-wrought voice-over. I’m going to give this thing one star, but that’s based solely on my ill-advised choice to watch this cold, snowy picture in the middle of an uncomfortably cold, snowy stretch of weather. Maybe in July it would have been more welcome. Unlikely, but there’s always a chance. Some of the snowy landscapes were pretty. See if desperate

Review – Lilith

This is one of those wretched productions endemic to the 60s and 70s that conflate “profound” and “ponderous.” Warren Beatty plays a new hire at an insane asylum for patients from wealthy families. Ever so slowly he sinks into a torrid affair with an attractive female patient. Most of the drama depends in one way or another on her quirky behavior and his stiff efforts to cope with it. The production also supplies Beatty with copious opportunities to perfect that hallmark of his acting career: the vacant stare that he must think makes him look intense but in fact suggests nothing but rock-headed stupidity. Nor is he alone in this particular school of the performing arts. There’s more vacant staring in this than in a movie that’s actually about vacant staring. Some of the cinematography is solid, and the story tackles some controversial issues – such as bisexuality – albeit in an exploitative way. Otherwise it’s a Beatty vehicle that doesn’t go anywhere. See if desperate

Review – Marked

A brother / sister pair and their ghost-hunting buddies get more than they bargain for when they run afoul of a professor trying to raise evil demons from the dead. This low budget production suffers from a bad case of boring. See if desperate

Review – The Corpse Vanishes

As does Bela Lugosi’s career. After being the toast of the horror movie world in the 1930s, his career sped right through the guardrail and over a cliff. This picture is from 1942, but already it’s so cheap and dreadful that it presages what would eventually become of this tragic, talented actor. In this ordeal he plays a mad scientist who knocks out brides on their wedding days and then snatches their bodies, drags them back to his lab, and sucks out their bride juices to make an eternal youth formula for his aging wife. Though the cast might have done something better with a better script or at least better film stock, this turns out to be a romp of incompetence. See if desperate

Review – H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds

The last time I watched the Tom Cruise version of this story, I found myself longing for something with a little less Scientology (not to mention a little less Tom Cruise). And though I was willing to sacrifice the big-budget Steven Spielberg special effects in order to get something with a better script, this production turned out to be the evil opposite of what I was in the mood for. Sure, it’s Cruise-free. But in his place we get an old, haggard version of C. Thomas Howell, a guy barely able to mumble his lines. Indeed, if his character had been called upon to do anything more complicated than wander around in a daze as the world collapsed around him, Howell likely wouldn’t have been equal to the task. And though the Scientology is gone, in its place we get a doubt-stricken minister who won’t shut up with his musing about God’s plan and the End Times and so on and so forth. Overall this is one of those lonely little productions that sits on the shelf at the video store and hopes that somebody rents it by mistake. SyFy also showed the sequel, but after enduring this I figured one was enough, so I deleted it. See if desperate

Review – Universal Horror

This is a reasonably good documentary about the heyday of Universal Studios’ monster movies, particularly Dracula and Frankenstein. The production features some interesting tidbits and plenty of good interviews with experts, stars’ relatives and even a few direct participants (mostly women, oddly enough). I was hoping they’d get a little farther into the history, at least into the 50s so they could have said something about The Creature from the Black Lagoon. I would have been willing to give up at least some of the stuff about non-Universal productions from the silent era in order to make room. Otherwise this delivers what it promises. Mildly amusing

Review – Heavenly Creatures

Right on the brink between his early career as a crapslinger and his later career as an epic hack, director Peter Jackson managed to make two movies that are actually worth a look. One is The Frighteners, and this is the other one. Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet are the highlights of this tale of two teenage girls who get lost in their own intricately-designed fantasy world. As their commitment to each other and their imaginary world intensifies, they become less and less able to cope with reality. So when circumstances appear certain to separate them, the only solution they can come up with is to kill one of their mothers. Jackson does a superior job of coming up with visuals that create a sharp contrast between fantasy and reality that keeps the two united and divided at the same time. Worth seeing

Review – Zaat

If this thing had ever spawned a sequel – God forbid! – they could have called it Ziis. A mad scientist who looks more like a mad janitor is obsessed with fish. So he figures out how to transform himself into one, or at least into something that looks like a combination of the Creature from the Black Lagoon and the contents of a broken garbage disposal. He then begins a campaign of slaughter and mayhem against recreational fishermen and other not-really-the-biggest-problem victims, which is odd considering that he’s as cruel to fish as they are. And it just gets worse from there. The Creature Features Movie Guide informs me that this was also released under the title Blood Waters of Dr. Z. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The Bad and the Beautiful

This movie avoids being a standard Tinseltown-behind-the-scenes production by focusing on a low-budget producer (Kirk Douglas) whose biography bears a resemblance to film legend Val Lewton. To be sure, it spends a lot of time on run-of-the-mill Hollywood melodrama. But it packs a clever twist or two along the way. A director, an actress and a writer all hate our hero’s guts because he betrayed each of them in one way or another. But after he asks them to do a movie together to help him make a comeback, they slowly realize how much they actually owe him. If nothing else, the picture is worth it just for the scene in which Lewton’s approach to horror is explained in connection with a Cat-People-esque production. Mildly amusing

Review – Vacancy

Given the frequency and duration of the ad breaks on Lifetime Movie Network’s cablecast of this nasty little movie, I assume a good deal was cut out. So if something of Shakespearian brilliance was edited away, I’m doing this picture an injustice. If on the other hand all that got removed was cheap nudity and violence, then it’s unlikely they would have made this a better picture. I’m genuinely surprised that either Luke Wilson or Kate Beckinsale would have much interest in appearing in garbage like this. It has one briefly entertaining moment, when the annoying couple stranded at an isolated motel realizes that the snuff movie they’re watching on TV was shot in the room where they’re staying. Otherwise it’s purely dreadful. The tunnel-crawling sequences in particular made me itch. Thank goodness they were brief. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster

For the first two thirds of the picture, this should have been called Godzilla vs. Nothing, because the big guy isn’t even in it until 50 minutes in. Before that, the picture is nothing but an annoying struggle between a band of island-stranded misfits and the Red Bamboo, a pack of bad guys reminiscent of the Gargoyle gang from Johnny Sokko. Even after the giant monster action finally does get underway, it’s Godzilla vs. Whatever We Happened to Have Lying Around. He plays boulder pong with a giant crawdad. He barbecues a flying monster that may have been intended to be Rodan, though it looked more like an overgrown turkey vulture. Then with less than five minutes to go the hapless islanders finally manage to get Mothra to wake up. Needless to say, the result is a disorganized, disappointing mess. See if desperate

Review – Son of Godzilla

Not exactly Godzilla’s finest hour. If nothing else, he doesn’t get to stomp a single building the whole time. Instead he’s stuck on an island rescuing his offspring from giant bugs. This might have worked out okay if only Junior had been a miniature version of his dad. Instead he’s a lumpy little salamander with a face only an atomic, fire-breathing monster could love. See if desperate

Review – After the Thin Man

Though not quite as good as the original, this one still packs the same class and charm. Nick and Nora are back in San Francisco, this time trying to unravel a murder mystery involving her side of the family, which made it an interesting culture clash of American wealth encountering the seamy side of the street. A young Jimmy Stewart turns in quite a performance in one of the supporting roles. Worth seeing

Review – Waking Ned Devine

Though not quite as good as Local Hero, this Irish picture is in the same general ballpark. The quirky folks of a small village learn that one of their number has won millions in the lottery. However, it turns out the lucky winner died of shock when he learned he’d won. So the good folks swiftly find themselves caught up in a scheme to pass someone off at the dead man in order to collect the winnings and split them amongst themselves. The picture’s actually a lot more charming than the plot summary makes it sound. The acting and the script are both good, as is the technical quality. What a nice way to start the year. Worth seeing

Review – The Thin Man

The Hoffman Lens crew all agree that when we were kids we thought this was what being grown-ups would be like. The witty repartee. The fabulous apartment with all its jazz-age architecture and furnishings. The elegant outfits. The endless flow of cocktails from fancy shakers. Indeed, Dashiel Hammett’s well-crafted mystery plot is almost superfluous. William Powell and Myrna Loy are both at their best as Nick and Nora Charles. This is a must-see for mystery fans and highly recommended even for people who don’t generally enjoy the genre. Worth seeing