Review – Notorious

From the disorienting days immediately after the Second World War comes this famous Hitchcock thriller. A suave intel operative (Cary Grant) recruits a traitor’s daughter (Ingrid Bergman) to infiltrate a cabal of Nazis who’ve escaped to South America. In the process the pair falls in love, which is inconvenient at best when her efforts to figure out what kind of no good the bad guys are up to leads her into a sham marriage with one of the chief conspirators (Claude Rains). Though the romance gets tedious in spots – give me spies over love-struck couples – the script is solid and the actors more than equal to the task. Worth seeing

Review – Hangmen Also Die!

Fritz Lang teams up with Bertolt Brecht (credited as “Bert,” which made me wish Ernie Hemmingway had been involved as well) to create a disappointingly pedantic propaganda piece. The subject at hand is the aftermath of the Reinhard Heydrich assassination, but what we get can be described as “highly fictionalized” only if we’re feeling charitable. In the wake of The Hangman’s death, the Nazis clamp down and begin murdering hostages. In response, the Czechs unite to protect the assassin, ostracize anyone who so much as suggests any other course of action, and gleefully go to their deaths reciting some of the worst patriotic poetry ever committed to paper. I know Hollywood liked to paint strictly in black and white during the Second World War, but even by the standards of the day this is over the top. It has a few moments, but overall it’s too silly to work. Mildly amusing

Review – Sanshiro Sugata 2

This is the movie I was afraid the first one would be. The print I saw was terrible, which is okay because the movie itself was no great shakes. Our judo champion hero violates the sacred rules of the dojo by fighting for money against an American boxer and accepting without permission a challenge from a couple of karate expert jerks. Though set in 1887, this was made in 1944. The resulting anti-American propaganda – particularly the sailor who mumbles like Popeye until Sugata throws him off a dock – is stiff and silly. Kurosawa later openly admitted that he had no interest in making this movie, and it shows. Mildly amusing

Review – Spellbound (1945)

If you’re going to make a did-he-or-didn’t-he murder mystery about a reality-challenged mental patient, this is the way to do it. The story is told not from the perspective of the suspect (Gregory Peck) but from the point of view of his doctor (Ingrid Bergman). Thus we don’t get stuck with two hours of rug-yanking what-is-reality nonsense. The all-too-infrequent dream sequences are clearly identified as such. Further, Salvador Dali designed them. Occasionally the plot takes an awkward twist, but for the most part this is the kind of expert storytelling one expects from Alfred Hitchcock. Worth seeing

Review – Return of the Fly

Junior picks up where Dad left off and manages to achieve the same result. And I mean exactly the same, right down to the head-and-arm swap with a fly. If you’re asking yourself why a young scientist wouldn’t make sure to stay fly free when running his molecular transporter experiments – especially after what happened to his father – well, it’s a convoluted series of events to be sure. Learning from the original, this one features the fly with a human head a bit more prominently. Happy ending aside, this movie loses a point for being extremely hard on the guinea pigs. See if desperate

Review – District 9

This movie works on several levels. It’s cinema a clef about problems in refugee camps in Africa in particular and the world in general. It’s a profound commentary about racism recast with space aliens in the victims’ role, robbing it of its social context and thus making it easier to see for what it is. And it’s an entertaining movie on top of all that. The filmmakers combine pseudo-documentary and straight narrative drama to tell the story of a government factotum in charge of a shantytown inhabited by stranded refugees from a broken spaceship. Our not-initially-heroic hero gets sprayed with some kind of goo the aliens have been brewing, and it starts to transform him into one of them. The script and acting are reasonably good, and the effects hold up under scrutiny. Occasionally they ladle in just a bit too much preachiness, but for the most part this is an impressive mix of thought provoking and fun. Worth seeing

Review – Shutter Island

Martin Scorsese helms an uneven blend of pretty pictures, mediocre acting and bad writing. Of course even Shakespeare couldn’t have saved a premise as dreadful as this. A marshal (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his partner arrive at an asylum for the criminally insane to search for a patient who escaped from a locked cell. And if you’re now asking yourself “why would an escaped mental patient be a concern to the U.S. Marshal Service?” then you’ve got your first taste of the deliberate absence of logic that pervades the entire picture. This “nothing makes sense because everything’s a delusion” approach to storytelling makes it impossible to care about the characters or the probably imaginary problems they face. Though Scorsese commands a big budget and a stellar cast, everyone involved has done better work elsewhere. The result treads some of the same ground as Hitchcock’s Spellbound without being anywhere near as good. See if desperate

Review – Sherlock Holmes (2009)

I’m more than a little surprised that this found an audience. It struck me as too stupid for Sherlock Holmes fans and too Holmes-y for anyone else. Further proof that any big, noisy, star-studded action movie automatically sells tickets. With a different character in the lead, I would have had an easier time of simply relaxing and enjoying – or at least tolerating – the expensive effects and extended fight scenes. But I admit a strong preference for the old Basil Rathbone Holmes pictures, movies from a time when wit at least occasionally prevailed over violence. Here Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law play the famous duo, chasing the bad guys around London while deftly avoiding directly confronting their affection for each other. And of course in the end we get a ham-handed setup for a sequel, with the actor playing Moriarty deftly hidden in shadow so as to make him easier to cast in the next go-around. Mildly amusing

Review – Dead Snow

The over-the-top zombie splatter of Dead Alive gets transplanted to the hills of Norway, proving yet again that the international community can come up with horror movies every bit as dumb as American products. Once again a squad of witless 20-somethings make the mistake of leaving the big city, and once again I found myself cheering for the walking dead trying to kill them. Or almost cheering, as in this case the zombies are the remnants of an SS division that fled into the mountains after Germany lost the war. Folks who love a lot of gratuitous gore should find this reasonably entertaining. However, the end bothered me (so spoiler alert). In the final minutes the lone survivor manages to placate the Nazis by giving them back their gold, which of course was most likely stolen from their victims to begin with. I don’t need a morally uplifting ending to a picture like this, but I didn’t welcome the intrusion of real-life horror into the otherwise safely imaginary realm of a standard zombie picture. Mildly amusing

Review – Charlie Wilson's War

One of the criticisms of Kevin Costner’s performance in JFK was that his approach to the role transformed a Confederacy of Dunces story into a half-baked Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Same problem here. Tom Hanks at least tries for a warts-and-all portrayal of Wilson by including the congressman’s addictions to sex and alcohol. But he still comes across as a basically decent guy trying to do the right thing. I just couldn’t get past one big fat omission – or perhaps “brief mention” would be a better description – in the story. We get an hour and a half of Wilson’s heartfelt, Reagan-era struggle to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan, but the end of the movie only briefly notes that what we accomplished with more than a billion taxpayer dollars was the transformation of the mess from the Russians’ problem to our problem. Decades later, Wilson’s “victory” continues to consume American lives and resources. That deserves more than a brief “oops” at the end. On the other hand, I enjoyed Philip Seymour Hoffman as the CIA operative who seems to be the only person in the whole thing who actually knows what’s going on. Mildly amusing

Review – Metropolis (2001)

Manga master Osamu Tezuka’s rework of Thea von Harbou and Fritz Lang’s classic tale makes it to the big screen. The 21st century anime format allows the filmmakers to do a lot of things that weren’t possible with live action in the late 1920s. Thus I was disappointed that this wasn’t any better than it was. The potential for vast, impressive cityscapes was under-utilized. And worse, the copious changes to the story are seldom if ever for the better. The result is a long, meandering mess that never lives up to its potential. A straight animation of the original script would have been better. Mildly amusing

Review – The Fourth Protocol

As semi-realistic spy movies go, this one isn’t too bad. A British operative (Michael Caine) must thwart a Soviet sleeper (Pierce Brosnan) tasked with destroying a U.S. airbase with a suitcase nuke. As usual with such productions, the plot takes a few more twists and turns than strictly necessary. But for the most part it’s a fun ride. I’ve been fascinated by small-scale atomic weaponry since I was a kid, so the McGuffin succeeded in holding my attention. Mildly amusing

Review – Mr. Frost

Because I’m not fond of the kinds of characters Jeff Goldblum usually plays, this picture started out on a short leash. Fortunately it had enough of a premise to get me hooked. Goldblum plays a serial killer newly admitted to an asylum. He’ll only speak to one doctor, and he tells her that he’s the devil. Though as Father Karras once observed, that’s like saying you’re Napoleon Bonaparte, this guy proves his point by getting other people to do some evil stuff. Unfortunately from there it goes downhill. Goldblum’s charmless charm is expected to carry the day, which as usual it doesn’t. And in the end the point the picture was trying to make goes unproven. Though I liked it better than I thought I would, I still thought it was a mediocre outing. Mildly amusing

Review – Red Sands

This is a lot like The Objective, only the monster in this one is more palpable and thus scarier. After a soldier destroys a statue in the middle of nowhere, his unit finds itself besieged by a djinn. The horror is mostly psychological, with special effects used in a perfect balance, neither too much nor too little. This is part of a new emphasis in independent horror movies on actual horror rather than sensationalism, titillation or other cheap thrills. I hope the trend continues. Worth seeing

Review – Dune

So in the future everyone will spend their lives stoned on worm secretions? Well, that’ll give humanity something to look forward to. Honestly, I’ve sat through this thing three or four times now (in at least two different versions, one of which was Alan Smithee’d), and it still strikes me as a noisy mélange of pretty sets, meandering story, rock star glitz (in the cast and on the soundtrack), Frank Herbert sci fi mysticism and general David-Lynchiness. I respect the effort it took to even attempt to make a movie out of Herbert’s book, but an E for effort isn’t the same as an A for quality. Mildly amusing

Review – Don't Look Up

Why? Is this hunk of junk playing on the ceiling? The IMDb notes made it appear that this is a remake of a Japanese production, though the database didn't feature a lot of info on either movie. The story is standard haunted movie set stuff, with "accidental" deaths aplenty. However, when the forces of evil actually manifest themselves they tend to take the form of clouds of houseflies. So if you suffer from Pteronarcophobia, this will probably send you to bed with nightmares. Otherwise it will work your yawn muscles but not much else. See if desperate

Review – The Domino Principle

I should have loved this movie. One of my big gripes about most conspiracy pictures is that they tend to dwell in the corridors of power where the plots are hatched. The parts I find far more interesting are the ground level stuff, tales of the shooters rather than the schemers. This production finally starts to deliver toward the end, but the first hour or so is all setup, with some parts so static they could almost be scenes from a bad stage play. Gene Hackman – backed by a cast of familiar faces – plays a gunman busted out of prison so he can shoot a prominent politician. Once things finally get moving this is a reasonably good movie. But the first half requires some patience. Mildly amusing

Review – Jonah Hex

Once again horror and the Western fail to mix. This time around that’s at least in part because the supernatural is superficial, almost an afterthought rather than an actual part of the plot. The hero (Josh Brolin) is out of every you-killed-my-family-prepare-to-die movie Clint Eastwood ever made. The villain (pathetically under-cast John Malkovich) is little more than cardboard leftovers from Wild Wild West, especially with his scheme to restart the Civil War and win the day for the CSA via a weapon of mass destruction. I felt sorry for Brolin stuck behind uncomfortable makeup designed to make him look like half his face was burned off. Other than sympathy for the actor, the only emotion I felt about this movie one way or another was mild annoyance at the hero for wearing a Confederate uniform. See if desperate

Review – The Land That Time Forgot (2009)

I’m willing to bet that no more than two months from now this will be The Movie That I Forgot. C. Thomas Howell proves as equally talentless in front of and behind the camera, slinging a pointless remake of an already plenty crappy rubber monster movie from 1975. This is exactly the sort of cheap junk one expects from Syfy. See if desperate

Review – The Fountain

This depressing outing isn’t really the kind of movie a guy wants to watch in the wake of his wife’s recent hospital stay. A doctor (Hugh Jackman) desperately searches for a cure for cancer hoping to halt the progress of the brain tumor that’s killing his wife (Rachel Weisz). A South American tree may hold the solution to his problem. The tree is also at the root of two other subplots, one that sets the couple in Inquisition-and-conquistador-era Spain and the other that takes place in a sphere floating in limbo. Though the story doesn’t make a lot of sense, at least it’s pretty to look at. Mildly amusing

Review – Ten Nights of Dreams

The nice thing about anthologies – cinematic or literary – is that individual entries tend to be short. So if you happen upon a bad one, at least you aren’t stuck with it for an hour and a half. That’s a particular blessing with this production. Ten Japanese directors team up to offer a set of stories loosely unified by the theme of dreams. The production rewards patience – or judicious use of the scene-skipping button – as the dull stuff is front-loaded. Though the picture is uneven, the good parts are definitely worth a look. Mildly amusing

Review – The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy

Actually, this bad movie free-for-all could have been called The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy vs. the Good Guys vs. an Evil Mastermind Called “The Bat,” except that would make a really long title. This movie dwells in the middle ground between an actual horror movie and an Ed Wood masterpiece. Mildly amusing

Review – 10 Rillington Place

Did the English ever have a murder that couldn’t accurately be described as “dreary”? John Christie’s crimes certainly don’t deviate from the rule. Richard Attenborough plays the notorious serial killer, backed up by John Hurt as Timothy Evans, the hapless, slow-on-the-uptake lodger who ended up unjustly convicted and hanged for two of Christie’s murders. Though some of his other crimes make brief appearances in the story, the anti-capital-punishment message of the picture puts the focus on the deaths of Evans’s wife and infant daughter. The movie was shot in the house next door to the actual address not long before the whole block was leveled, which lends a creepy sense of authenticity. Mildly amusing

Review – A Man Called Horse

When this first came out, it was innovative stuff. Hollywood was just beginning to acknowledge that American Indians were human beings with legitimate cultures of their own, not merely bloodthirsty savages fit only to be massacred by white men. An English lord (Richard Harris) roughing it in the American West is taken captive by a Dakota tribe. At first they’re cruel to him, but gradually they assimilate him into the group. The most famous scene is the sun ceremony, in which the hero undergoes a painful ritual in order to join the tribe and earn the right to marry a Dakota woman. The picture is unevenly paced and includes an unnecessary animal death and way more of Harris’s bare butt than I ever felt the need to see. Otherwise it’s a good experience both as an interesting story and a historical artifact. Mildly amusing

Review – Ghost Ship (1943)

I recorded this without checking the description, expecting it to be a standard haunted ship story. Thus I was surprised – and as it turned out pleasantly so – to discover that this was actually a Val Lewton production with no supernatural content. Instead, it’s a psychological drama about a cargo ship’s third mate (Russell Wade) who can’t get anybody to believe that the kindly captain (Richard Dix) is actually a power-mad psychopath. Some elements – such as voice-over narration from a mute crewman who serves as sort of a Greek chorus for the drama – clunk enough to detract from the picture’s power. But overall it’s a successful riff on the battle between good and evil. Worth seeing

Review – Splintered

A group of young people go wandering in the woods. Anyone care to guess what happens to them? The only unique features of this slasher stinker are the setting – Wales – and the amount of time the savage country bumpkins spend fighting each other in addition to their hectic city-folk-killing schedules. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Sanshiro Sugata

Though this is Akira Kurosawa’s first feature film, it includes a lot of the visual and plot elements that would later make him one of the world’s best directors. The story follows a man through the early years of his career as a judo student. By learning to quiet his mind and appreciate the beauty of life, he becomes a superior fighter. Overall the picture follows lines similar to Kurosawa’s later work but without the bloodshed or the epic running time. After watching disappointing early efforts from some of my other favorite directors, I was pleasantly surprised by how good this one was. Worth seeing

Review – The Norliss Tapes

The initial success of The Night Stalker inevitably spawned knock-offs. However, it’s a shame that this unsuccessful pilot produced by Dan Curtiss and written by William F. Nolan isn’t any better or more original than it is. A writer (Roy Thinnes) who investigates the paranormal runs up against a vampire who’s trying to play Pygmalion to a blood and clay sculpture of a demon named Sarloth. Supporting cast members Angie Dickinson and Claude Akins provide a good indication of the era and the budget. Other than a handful of good shock shots of the vampire, this is completely missable. See if desperate

Review – The Bedford Incident

It’s been quite some time since I’ve seen a movie with a surprise ending that actually surprised me. But this one did. More about that I won’t say for obvious reasons. A journalist (Sidney Poitier) goes out on a ride-along with a Navy destroyer prowling the North Atlantic. The captain of the vessel (Richard Widmark) is an intriguing character, neither a weak-willed Queeg nor a cruel Bly. Nonetheless, he is most intent on messing with a Soviet sub caught lurking where it oughtn’t. The psychological drama that plays out between the characters is well scripted with just the right balance of tension. Worth seeing

Review – Samourais

Judging by the names in the cast and crew, this is one of the most international movies I’ve ever seen. It’s also one of the biggest messes. After several hundred years in the same body, a demon needs to be reborn. So he impregnates a Japanese girl living abroad, forcing her father to fly all the way to France to try to kill her. It proves to be no easy task, as he doesn’t want to do it and a French friend and a squad of the demon’s henchmen protect her. For the most part this is just garden variety bad. But one element particularly bothered me: the friend has a stupid, annoying sidekick who appears to be of North African descent. I’m not sufficiently familiar with French culture to say for certain, but I’m willing to bet that the guy is an ethnic stereotype that would be considered highly offensive as a Black or Hispanic caricature in an American movie. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – RFK Must Die

I’ll hand one thing to documentarian Shane O’Sullivan: he’s one of the few conspiracy theorists I’ve ever heard use the words “I don’t know.” Most of these folks are so gospel certain of their points of view. The evidence presented here tends to support the theory that the CIA was involved in Robert Kennedy’s assassination. The case has appeal overall but frays around the edges. For example, some of the people photographed at the scene before and after the shooting resemble known CIA operatives, but then the resemblance could have been coincidental. And while Sirhan’s bizarre behavior might support the case that he was a brainwashed “Manchurian Candidate,” he might also just be plain ol’ crazy. The evidence presented in the Documentary Channel’s epilogue is likewise inconclusive. But it’s the refusal to draw absolute conclusions that makes this a powerful work. Anyone who claims he has all the answers automatically looks like a nut. “I went looking and here’s what turned up” is a much more compelling story. Worth seeing

Review – Incident at Oglala

Michael Apted turns a critical, documentary eye on the suspicious circumstances surrounding the arrest and conviction of Leonard Peltier for the murder of two FBI agents. Though both sides get their say, the forces of law and order come across as dishonest. The picture that emerges is of a man in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, railroaded by law enforcement because he knew yet refused to divulge the identities of the real killers. The presentation is mostly talking heads and archive footage, standard documentary stuff. The only real surprise is that they didn’t make more out of the fact that the shooting at the heart of the story took place 99 years and one day after Custer’s Last Stand. Mildly amusing

Review – Doctor Blood's Coffin

If your family name is Blood, wouldn’t it be a good idea to either change your last name or seek work in a profession other than medicine? I mean, who would voluntarily see a physician named Doctor Blood? That’s like trying to get students to enroll in a class taught by Professor Homework. And yet the denizens of a small English village don’t seem to have a problem with this guy. Of course relations take a turn for the worse when everyone learns he has a secret lab in an abandoned mine where he’s trying to revive corpses by implanting fresh hearts from vivisected victims (which seems like it would be something of a zero-sum game rather than a genuine boon to humanity). We finally get a Frankenstein-y monster in the last few minutes, but the first hour and a half of the picture are pure boredom. See if desperate

Review – Sherlock Holmes (2009 mockbuster)

Even by mockbuster standards, this is an odd duck. Clearly it seeks to create confusion between itself and the big-budget, Guy Ritchie production of the same name, a fairly standard marketing tactic. But the story is just strange. A young Holmes and Watson take on an evil genius who's unleashing dinosaurs on England in an attempt to cover for his efforts to sneak a robot into the palace to blow up Queen Victoria. Yeah, you read that correctly. And that summary barely scratches the surface. See if desperate

Review – Cross of Iron

I first saw this movie during its original theatrical release in 1977. Toward the end of the movie the hero – a battle-weary Wehrmacht sergeant (James Coburn) – has one of the double-crossing bad guys at gunpoint. A guy in the front row lost it. He started bouncing up and down in his seat and yelling “Stick him! Stick him!” at the top of his lungs. Without the floor show, this movie is substantially less entertaining. The story is unusual in that it’s set on the Eastern Front in World War Two, and the Germans are the heroes. Coburn’s character won’t sign a false statement that would allow his arrogant captain (Maxmilian Schell) to get the Iron Cross he wants. As a result, the officer leaves the sergeant’s platoon to the tender mercies of the advancing Soviet forces. The picture features a lot of Sam Peckinpah’s hallmark macho posturing and slo-mo death scenes, not to mention a hearty dose of unhealthy sexuality. Otherwise it’s a run-of-the-mill war movie. Mildly amusing

Review – The Man Who Fell to Earth

Nicolas Roeg was the Las Von Trier of the 1970s, which is to say that his visuals are slick and sometimes intense but otherwise his movies tend to be a bit on the pointless side. This one’s case in point. A weird looking space guy (David Bowie) comes to Earth and sets up a huge corporation selling alien technology to raise money to ship water back to his barren world. After that a lot of weird things happen. Even the copious sex scenes are odd. Though I’m sure this was stylish and innovative when it first came out, now it’s little more than a peculiar relic. See if desperate

Review – Where Eagles Dare

This is the kind of movie I inaccurately remembered The Guns of Navarone being: lots of World War Two combat sequences. Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood star as Allied commandos dropped behind enemy lines to rescue a prisoner from a Nazi stronghold. The picture pauses every once in awhile for a plot break, but for the most part it’s all cliffhangers and gunfights. Mildly amusing

Review – Children of the Corn 3: Urban Harvest

If my memory serves me correctly, this is the only picture in the series in which He Who Walks Behind the Rows makes an actual appearance of any significant length. Of course if he’s going to look like a cross between a lizard and a big pile of poo, perhaps it’s better that he limits his exposure in the rest of the set. A couple in Chicago adopts two orphaned country brothers: normal Joshua and creepy Eli. In short order a corn patch grows in the vacant lot next door, and things go downhill from there. See if desperate

Review – The Man in the Glass Booth

Though I’ve enjoyed Robert Shaw’s work as an actor – particularly as one of the villains in From Russia With Love and of course the quintessential Quint – his writing (if this script is any indication) is strictly amateur hour. He starts with an Eichmann-like abduction and trial, which should have supplied plenty of fodder for solid storytelling. But the production swiftly becomes mired in implausible drama and ludicrous speechmaking. The first act is insanely boring, composed of the inane ramblings of an old, rich, Jewish man (Maximillian Schell) who is seized by Israeli commandos and dragged off to stand trial as a Nazi concentration camp officer. His hearing drags on and on, the usual horror-filled testimony punctuated by the booth occupant’s absurd explanations for the Holocaust. And don’t even get me started on where it ends up. Actual footage from Eichmann’s trial was a million times more compelling than this weak, over-dramatized nonsense. What a tremendous disappointment. See if desperate

Review – Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

I was surprised at how much I ended up enjoying this movie. I really shouldn’t have. It has all the classic crappy kids’ movie elements: mediocre computer animation, a silly story, a preachy message and plenty of action sequences tailor made for easy media convergence into a videogame version. But on top of the usual nonsense it also packs a steady stream of little clever touches that help the picture appeal to people with two digits in their ages and three in their IQs. A ne’er-do-well inventor comes up with a device that turns water into food. When it’s accidentally propelled into the sky, it starts raining food. It’s the small stuff rather than the big picture, but at least the small stuff is good for a change. Worth seeing

Review – Cruel World

I’ll let you invent your own “goodbye, cruel world” joke here. You’ll have an easier time of it if you actually see this stinker, as it’ll make you want to say goodbye to it in short order. A bloated Edward Furlong plays a psycho who got kicked off a reality show and now seeks revenge – with the help of his dim-witted brother – by starting his own contest and slowly killing off the contestants. The result plays like a bargain basement blend of Fear Factor and Saw. See if desperate

Review – Ninja

If this had come out back in the 1970s, I would have considered it one of the best non-Bruce-Lee martial arts pictures I’d ever seen. However, three or four decades later this is strictly derivative stuff. The plot – American ninja battles former fellow student angry about being passed over for promotion to head of the ninja school – is all too familiar. The choreography is way better than old Chuck Norris productions, but it’s nowhere near as good as the fancy fights in most 21st century kung fu flicks. Though it has a few good stabbings, for the most part it’s just dull. See if desperate

Review – Paranormal Activity

The previews made this look like yet another cheap Blair Witch wannabe, so I ignored it until it hit video. I’m actually a little glad I did, because watching it on DVD helped preserve the fake amateur video of evil gag. Though it includes a few Blair Witch defects – such as a whole lot of unnecessary bickering between the protagonists – it has some genuinely creepy moments as well. A young couple starts videotaping their lives in search of evidence that some sort of supernatural being is haunting the woman. It’s a rare demonic possession movie that can merit the word “subtle,” but it fits here. For example, at one point the woman gets up in the middle of the night and just stands next to the bed staring at her boyfriend for two or three hours. Eerie stuff. Worth seeing

Review – Twilight: New Moon

This thing needed way more werewolves. The shapeshifters were cool in a CGI sort of way. The rest of the movie was more boring teenager/vampire crap straight out of the first one. Again, I concede that they didn’t make this for me. And obviously they’re quite popular with the target audience. That’s a shame, because this really is unimaginative stuff. Mildly amusing

Review – Avatar

The big disadvantage to missing “the most popular movie of all time” in theaters is that for what seemed like months everyone was making Avatar references I didn’t completely get. The big advantage, however, is that it’s a lot easier to appreciate the picture for its own merits rather than for the hype. And it certainly has shortcomings. The story – especially the romance – is straight out of Ferngully. The effects are expensive, elaborate and occasionally impressive, but they create a world that’s half video game and half drug-addled day-glo from Spencer’s Gifts circa 1978. Most troubling, however, is the treatment of the conflict between the indigenous “savages” and the technologically sophisticated Earth people. The movie hedges its bets by simultaneously extolling the virtues of war and condemning its destructiveness. And despite the happy Custer’s Last Stand ending, I can’t help but wonder if a realistic Avatar 2 wouldn’t inevitably include a Wounded Knee destruction of the entire planet. Overall this wasn’t the worst blockbuster I’ve ever seen, but it didn’t merit all the hoopla either. Mildly amusing

Review – Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Tim Burton and Johnny Depp do to Alice what they did to Ichabod Crane and Willie Wonka, creating another effects-intensive reimagining of a classic story. This time around Alice is a bit older and a bit more in charge of her own destiny, an improvement over the creepy age and gender politics of the original story. On the other hand, Burton twists the characters around in uncomfortable ways. Sometimes it works. For example, I loved the Cheshire Cat. In other cases it’s less successful. Though overall I prefer Carroll’s version, I found this a reasonably entertaining summer rental. Mildly amusing

Review - Fame (2009)

How on earth did they manage to make a movie more vapid than the original? The basic formula is the same: spotty coverage of four years in the lives of a handful of students at New York City’s performing arts high school. And of course both versions exist primarily to showcase teen angst and musical numbers. But in the 80s edition at least some of the characters faced what older generations would have considered real problems: poverty, abortion, coming out and the like. The worst things that happen to anybody in this one are that their parents aren’t sufficiently supportive and they don’t become famous fast enough for their liking. Verdict: see if desperate

Review – The Man Who Wasn’t There

Late last night while I did sit / I saw a film that wouldn’t quit. / I think it’s running even yet. / If only it would leave my set. This movie suffers from the same big problem as most productions that take the “right man” approach: when the protagonist is a criminal scumbag, it’s hard to care enough about him to get involved in his story. Billy Bob Thornton in the stiffest, most rock-headed role of his stiff, rock-headed career doesn’t exactly help. He plays a barber whose scheme to blackmail his wife’s lover backfires, setting an endless stream of complications into motion. Though the picture includes a few cute Coen brothers touches, the endless parade of ways a creep can end up not getting arrested proves to be too much. See if desperate

Review – Stir of Echoes: The Homecoming

I barely remember seeing the original, so I suspect that in a few years I won’t remember much about this one either. An Iraq War veteran (Rob Lowe) suffers from post-traumatic stress, so when ghosts start visiting him at first everyone thinks it’s just a symptom of his disorder. But then it turns out they’re trying to tell him something. The movie would have been shortened considerably if they’d just come out with it. As it was, we’re treated a lot of nerve-grating everyone’s-embarrassed-by-the-crazy-guy stuff and not a lot of anything else. See if desperate

Review – Bordertown

This might have been a better movie with fewer big stars in it. Jennifer Lopez in particular is distracting in the lead, doing a better job as herself than as her character. And that’s a shame, because this movie has an important story to tell. The movie’s thesis is somewhat complicated: NAFTA made cheap manufacture of consumer goods for the U.S. market a particularly lucrative business in Mexican border towns such as Juarez. Women who flock to the factories in search of work are easy prey for serial rapist/murderers who waylay the workers when they’re trying to get home after a late shift. And of course the police and evil capitalist overlords want it all hushed up so as not to interfere with business operations. Enter a crusading journalist (Lopez) who finds a woman who miraculously survived an attack but must now be protected from her assailants and the authorities seeking to silence her before the story gets out. The picture develops third act problems as the filmmakers try to plot a course between an ending that’s too happy and an ending that isn’t happy enough. Mildly amusing

Review – Premonition (2005)

Okay, I admit it. A big rainstorm blocked the satellite signal for the final ten minutes or so of this movie. So if it suddenly turned into a work of earth-shattering brilliance right after the 75-minute mark, this review will do it an injustice. However, if as I suspect it continued the sucking trend it eagerly pursued throughout the part I actually saw, then losing the end was actually a stroke of good fortune. The one curiosity I actually did have was a byproduct of several elements of the production, specifically the bad script, mediocre production values and Casper Van Dien in the starring role. Often such a mix turns out to be an all Left-Behind-y fundamentalist message piece, though the part I saw didn’t appear to be. Van Dien plays a cop who suffers a near death experience and starts having precognitive visions of disasters. See if desperate

Review – Creepies

Thank goodness someone’s still willing to hire Ron Jeremy, even if it’s just for apropos-of-nothing walk-on roles in the middle of low-budget horror movies. I wouldn’t want to live in a nation that would abandon its superannuated porn stars (or worse, make them get actual jobs). Jeremy aside, the most expensive things in the whole production are the mutant spiders who will take over Los Angeles if the Army and/or a group of assholes at a recording studio can’t come up with a way to thwart them. In the first five minutes we learn that jeans have become part of standard military uniforms. With attention to detail like that, this picture didn’t hold my attention for long. See if desperate

Review – Disturbing Behavior

“Annoying behavior” is a lot more like it. Yet again we’re treated to a hefty dose of the teen paranoid fantasy that all the popular kids in high school are actually evil robots. And of course they’re out to make everyone into letter-jacket-wearing jerks just like themselves. Maybe if you’re actually in high school and taking it a bit too seriously you’ll find some entertaining relief here. Otherwise the high point is the Vonnegut-reading spaz janitor with a severe Pied Piper complex. Mildly amusing

Review – Igor

This is one of those kids’ movies that’s nowhere near as clever as it seems to think it is. The story takes place in the land of mad scientists, where a humble hunchback dreams of making a name for himself by winning the annual evil invention competition. So after his master blows himself up, our hero creates an invincible monster. Unfortunately for him, the creature wants to be an actor, not a force of unmitigated evil. Plot, characters and humor are strictly for the pre-teen crowd, which is a shame because with voice talent such as John Cusack, John Cleese and Eddie Izzard a better movie might have been made. See if desperate