Review – The Stranger

Though actor/director Orson Welles is rumored to have hated this picture, it isn’t all that bad. A Nazi war criminal (Welles) hiding in the United States tries to keep an investigator (Edward G. Robinson) from ruining his idyllic new life, particularly his marriage to a Supreme Court justice’s daughter (Loretta Young). To be sure, the production has problems. For starters, 1946 is a little early for one of the architects of the Final Solution to have decided to flee, fled, made his way to America, assumed a new identity and gotten close to the family of a prominent politician. And technically the picture is occasionally too “Welles-y,” with all the high key lighting, low angle shots and moving camera takes that sometimes throw off the focus. But the story is solid, particularly for a thriller from the era. If you share my natural distrust of ladders then the clock tower sequences will probably make you itch. What more can you ask of a movie? Mildly amusing

Review – Robot Monster

Even Ed Wood never made anything this laughably terrible. Ro-Man, a guy in a saggy gorilla suit with a space helmet for a head, destroys all of humanity except for six people. That’s no simple task, particularly given his apparent slow wit and reliance on a bubble-blowing machine for communication, mass destruction and/or general décor. We had a great time making up our own dialogue and hurling invective at the screen. Indeed, if you can’t MST3K-ize this hunk of junk, you might be better off buying yourself a pack of clove cigarettes and sticking to art movies. On the other hand, the picture features some unnecessary animal violence (though it’s hard to define “unnecessary” in a movie where everything seems unnecessary), and whenever Ro-Man turns on his communication screen it emits an ear-splitting tone that often goes on for quite awhile. See if desperate

Review – Long Time Gone

Oh physically-attractive-yet-not-too-bright young people, when are you going to learn to stay out of abandoned buildings with your Ouija boards? This time around they manage to conjure up a genie – or djinn if you prefer a spelling less evocative of childhood tales of magic lamps. Sadly, after centuries of imprisonment in the outer darkness the only thing the evil spirit manages to come up with is the ability to hop into people’s bodies and go on a killing spree. Oh, and it can make its hosts’ eyes all spooky. The cast includes Lukas “The big-eared kid from Mars Attacks” Haas, which is about as big budget as it gets. I had to re-record this because a thunderstorm cut it off halfway through the first time. Perhaps I should have taken the helpful hint from the weather gods and left well enough alone. See if desperate

Review – Star Trek 3: The Search for Spock

Of all the Star Trek movies – at least the ones featuring the original cast – this is the worst. It sits on a fulcrum point between the first two, which remain reasonably faithful to the spirit and quality level of the original series, and the next two, which are so laughably bad that their ineptitude makes them entertaining. Part of the problem is that this is a lengthy apology for the finale of number two. Test audiences for The Wrath of Khan preferred the ending in which Spock died, but the overall fan base was less enthusiastic. So this turns into an hour and 40 minutes worth of “no, it’s okay, he isn’t really dead.” Even the Klingons are a cup of soda that’s mostly ice. If you’re trying for the complete set then sooner or later you’re going to have to sit through this one (especially if number four left you wondering why our heroes were cruising around in a Klingon ship), but otherwise don’t feel obliged to endure it. See if desperate

Review – The Living Ghost

The DirecTV listings didn’t identify this picture from 1942 as a comedy, perhaps because it isn’t particularly funny. But you can tell it’s supposed to be, with an endless barrage of snappy quips delivered by James Dunn with an irksome ain’t-I-cute smirk on his face the whole time. He plays an eccentric detective summoned to the mansion of a wealthy man who appears to be suffering from a bad case of zombification. The only part that caught my attention at all was a brief passage exploring a possible medical explanation for the victim’s condition. It’s some mumbo jumbo about paralyzing part of the brain, but at least they made an effort. The rest of the movie is witless, cheaply produced and completely missable. See if desperate

Review – The Last Temptation of Christ

Though it’s been years since I last saw this movie, I’ve listened to Peter Gabriel’s soundtrack album many times. So a lot of the experience was “Oh, I didn’t know that music went with that scene.” It also taxed my memory about why it was so controversial when it first hit theaters. The film (and the novel upon which it’s based) explores Christ’s human side. In particular it speculates about Satan tempting Jesus with visions of what his life might have been like if he hadn’t been the Messiah. Otherwise it’s a fairly straightforward adaptation of the Gospels. Certainly nothing here approaches the level of “blasphemy” of The Da Vinci Code. Robbed of its scandalous nature, there isn’t much to it. Willem Dafoe’s overacting is epic, and Harvey Keitel plays Judas as a stereotypical Jewish mother. And Martin Scorsese seems at sea so far removed in time and place from the cityscapes of the Eastern Seaboard. Nonetheless, he manages to conjure an interesting moment here and there, especially when the Prince of Darkness puts in an appearance. Mildly amusing

Review – Wanted: Dead or Alive

This production sets the pace early on when the bad guy (KISS bassist Gene Simmons) blows up a movie theater showing Rambo. And his come-uppance in the end is one of the best uses to which a hand grenade has ever been put in a movie. Unfortunately the rest of the movie is pure crud. The CIA hires a bounty hunter (Rutger Hauer) to track down the villain and halt his string of bombings. The result is a parade of action movie clichés whipped together with a hearty dose of Reagan era racist paranoia. Mildly amusing

Review – Suspiria

I knew going into this that I’m not a big fan of Dario Argento’s work, so I’m at least partially responsible for my own bad experience here. And in fairness I was pleasantly surprised by some elements of the production. For example, a lot of the sets and shot composition are quite good, surreal in a manner vaguely evocative of the design work Dali did for Hitchcock’s Spellbound or even Poe’s thematically-colored rooms in “The Masque of the Red Death.” Unfortunately the good visuals are more than offset by the awfulness of most of the rest of the production. In particular, the score Argento composes and liberally employs sent me diving for the mute button in fairly short order. He also has a tin ear for dialogue, perhaps the result of being deafened by his own dreadful music. The plot is rudimentary: a ballet student (Jessica Harper) is admitted to an Italian dance academy beset by a coven of murderous Satanists. And of course the characters – especially the women – are murder mannequins rather than real people. And therein lies the failing of this picture from a 21st century perspective. It relies heavily on slasher sequences so over-arty that by current standards they seem quaint. Thus the movie may have some value as a historical artifact, but it no longer stands on its own two feet. See if desperate

Review – Starman

This is the best of John Carpenter’s non-Carpenter-y movies. He has the budget, the cast and the script to do a rare, fine job of something besides horror. An alien (Jeff Bridges) summoned to Earth by the record in one of the Voyager probes gets shot down. Assuming the form of the dead husband of a grieving woman (Karen Allen), he kidnaps her and forces her to drive him to Arizona. Along the way the pair draw closer as he gradually learns to be more human. Though the basic plot is ET for grownups, the production includes enough small touches to keep things interesting. Mildly amusing

Review – Beverly Hills Chihuahua

The title alone tells you most of what you need to know about this: a wealthy woman’s pampered pet (voiced by Drew Barrymore) gets kidnapped and dragged off to Mexico, where she has various adventures with lower class dogs while trying to make her way home. Bad comedy and creepy talking animal effects aside, this is an unintentionally interesting exploration of racism. Though the picture tries to say something about American class structures and anti-Hispanic discrimination, it exploits so many uncomfortable stereotypes that it seems to miss the very point it’s trying to make. Multiculturalism doesn’t have to be all serious business, but it should at least be less empty headed than this. Still, at least its wee doggie heart was in the right place. Mildly amusing

Review – Elvis

Though neither Kurt Russell nor John Carpenter is a name one would automatically associate with Elvis Presley, they actually do a reasonably good job with the singer’s biography. This is also the first movie the pair worked on together, and they went on to make several more successful collaborations such as The Thing and Escape from New York. The picture follows Elvis from his days as a youth in rural Mississippi through his early career and up to his Las Vegas shows in the 1970s. We get a fan’s perspective, acknowledging his problems without dwelling on them. Indeed, aside from obsessive rumination about his dead brother and a couple of odd gay innuendoes, this is as straightforward and upbeat a bio as any celebrity could ever expect. Mildly amusing

Review – The Man with the Golden Gun

This came out when I was eight – just about the perfect age to appreciate James Bond – which is probably part of why it’s still my favorite Bond picture. Casting Christopher Lee as the villain didn’t exactly hurt, either. I mean, this guy has it made. He gets paid a million bucks a pop to kill people (which was more money in 1974 than it is now). He has his own private island. He even has a vertically-differently-abled servant who attends to the place and cooks Cordon Bleu meals. What more could a guy possibly want? Of course the first time I saw it I wasn’t old enough to get the gross gun-related sexual fetishism. This entry and the next one also mark the starting point of the series’ slide into cartoonish self-parody. On the other hand, it’s the closest the Bond movies ever came to striking a perfect balance between too prosaic and too far-fetched. Even three decades later, it’s still a lot of fun to watch. Worth seeing

Review – Corky Romano

I hated this more than I should have because it led off with a “joke” about euthanizing a cat. This might have been a “too soon” problem for me, though I’m not convinced any amount of distance from the passing of a beloved pet would transform this into something humorous. So this stupid comedy got off on the wrong foot and stayed there. Chris Kattan plays the manically-cheerful dork outcast brother of a Mafia family bedeviled by the FBI. Though technically this isn’t a Lorne-Michaels-produced flop attempt to cash in on an old SNL skit, the humor is on par with productions such as The Ladies Man and The Coneheads. The result is one of those movies where everyone involved looks ready to murder their agents. I’ll give it one point, but that’s based entirely on the concern that the cat thing might have skewed my perception. See if desperate

Review – Five Graves to Cairo

Unlike director Billy Wilder’s other World War Two drama, this one was actually made during the war. Indeed, fighting in North Africa was still going on while these filmmakers were busy adapting an old stage play to the new conflict. A British soldier (Franchot Tone) is stranded behind enemy lines and disguises himself as a busboy at a small hotel in Bufu Egypt. He soon finds himself working closely with Wehrmacht occupation forces who mistake him for a German spy. Erich von Stroheim does a classic turn as Erwin Rommel, playing the famous field marshal as a Prussian tightass (quite a contrast to the gentler treatment he received after the war). The story is silly in spots – most notably the resolution of the “five graves” mystery toward the end – but for the most part this is a reasonably good piece of propaganda. Mildly amusing

Review – The Manster

Like “black,” there’s something about “man” mashed awkwardly into another word that tells you everything you need to know about a movie before you even see it. A journalist (Peter Dyneley, better known for doing one of the voices in the Thunderbirds series) visits a remote country house to interview a mad scientist and ends up with an injection of Manster juice for his trouble. I’m not sure what the stuff was supposed to do, but it makes him cranky, then it makes him horny, then it makes him homicidal, then it grows a gorilla head on his right shoulder. Hopes of continuing to conceal his condition thus dashed, he goes on a killing spree with police hot on his trail. Though this is a half a step above genuinely abysmally dreadful movies, it still manages a hefty load of stink. See if desperate

Review – Paperhouse

This is an awkward combination of really spooky horror movie and really boring coming-of-age picture. After falling ill, a girl (Charlotte Burke in her only screen appearance) discovers that she has a Simon-like ability to enter her own drawings. In her fantasy world she encounters a paraplegic boy (Elliott Spiers, who did only one movie after this) and comes to grips with her anxieties, particularly those surrounding her absentee father (Ben Cross). Some of the darker corners of this production are well crafted, but overall it’s dull stuff. Mildly amusing

Abandoned – Room 33

Though I'll sometimes sit through a stupid slasher movie, this one featured roller derby trend characters that rendered it unwatchable.

Review – The Green Slime

This Kinji Fukasaku production deserves its reputation as laughably bad. But a lot of the plot elements turn up in much better productions later – including The Thing and Alien – as well as less worthwhile productions such as Armageddon. The kiss of death here is the cheapness of the production. The spaceship effects are cool-terrible in a wouldn’t-it-be-fun-to-blow-up-some-models way, and the monsters are likewise as scary as schoolchildren in thick rubber suits can possibly be. All that could have been forgiven given the time and place of the production (the Japanese made a lot of movies of this caliber back in the 1960s). But the script is so awful it almost defies belief. The set-up is solid, but that’s only the first third of the movie. The rest is a relentless parade of guys with lasers versus the monsters. The “Green Slime” theme song is the final icing on the cake. Mildly amusing

Review – The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

I think I’m starting to suffer from fantasy fatigue, because I’m having a hard time remembering what rules apply in which movies. Vampires, Hogwarts, and now this. I just can’t keep them straight anymore. Fortunately the real draw here is the noisy special effects rather than the plot or characters. One of Merlin’s immortal sidekicks (Nicolas Cage) trains a new, reluctant apprentice (Jay Baruchel) while struggling to prevent a former colleague (Alfred Molina) from reviving the evil spirit of Morgana (Alice Krige). Though most adults may find this a bit on the dumb side, I expect it will do a reasonably good job of appealing to the target audience. Mildly amusing

Review – Kentucky Fried Movie

The “Fistful of Yen” sequence in this collection of parody skits remains one of my all-time favorite comedy moments (though of course it helps to see Enter the Dragon first so you’ll get the jokes). The rest is largely hit and miss. Some of the routines are funny on the level of the later Abrahams, Zucker and Zucker hit Airplane! Other skits are too dated to work outside the magical days of the 1970s. And a few weren’t funny to begin with. Still, I have a soft spot in my heart – or perhaps my head – for this movie. I’d give it a slightly higher rating if I wouldn’t be embarrassed to do so. Mildly amusing

Review – Someone’s Watching Me!

The title must be a surprised exclamation from the disc itself. Lauren Hutton plays a woman being stalked by a nut with a telescope, a bug in her apartment and no end of tricks for tracking her every move. For all I know this might have been radical stuff back in 1978, but by now the crazed stalker thing can be found aplenty on Lifetime Movie Network any day of the week. Those seeking to watch every movie John Carpenter ever directed will have to sit through this one eventually, but otherwise it can be safely missed. See if desperate

Review – Moon

I don’t have much to say about this movie that doesn’t involve spoilers, so if that’s a problem then please read no further. The plot is simple enough: the sole occupant (Sam Rockwell) of an ore-gathering station on the Moon is rescued from a wreck by what appears to be his double. As he’s been hallucinating, it’s hard at first to tell exactly what this new twist means. However, the moment the word “clone” comes up, the rest of the script pretty much writes itself. Kevin Spacey turns in a good voice performance as GERTY, an anti-HAL computer that does its best to help the Sams work out their problems. Movie nerds must have really hated this one, judging by the number of continuity gripes on IMDb. However, I noted one that didn’t appear on the list: what appears to be Sam Rockwell’s arm tattoo appears in one shot. Where would a clone that spent its entire life in isolation end up with a decorative tattoo? Mildly amusing

Review – This Land Is Mine

I wonder if this was a more effective movie back in 1943. Because more than six decades after the end of World War Two, the propaganda seems both thick and stiff. In an unspecified, Nazi-occupied country, local reaction to the cruel German overlords varies from collaboration to active resistance, with most of the population mustering ill-tempered tolerance. A cowardly schoolteacher (Charles Laughton) becomes an unwilling player in the drama when he’s taken hostage by stormtroopers in retaliation for a bombing by the underground. Things keep moving fairly well until our hero is placed on trial for a crime he didn’t commit. In the courtroom the picture suddenly turns into a relentless parade of anti-fascist speeches, a trend that continues to the end. The pacing might have seemed natural to director Jean Renoir, but it’s awkward by any other standard. This is a must-see for anyone studying movies designed to bolster the war effort, but for anyone else it’s a see-or-don’t. Mildly amusing

Review – The Ripper

Of all the Jack the Ripper movies I’ve seen, this is the most recent. Honestly, it really left little impression on me one way or another. The plot is the usual bit about a detective (Patrick Bergin) under pressure from Sir Charles Warren (Michael York) to catch England’s most notorious serial killer before he strikes again. And of course he falls in love with a hooker with a heart of gold (Gabrielle Anwar) who’s naturally one of the Ripper’s targets. The picture follows the theory that syph-infected Prince Albert Victor Edward (Samuel West) was the perp, and if that’s a spoiler then it isn’t much of one, as the killer’s identity is revealed early on. The screen time that isn’t squandered on dull romance is mostly devoted to the awkwardness of trying to investigate and arrest a member of the royal family. Mildly amusing

Review – Berserk

Given the allegations about her family life, perhaps Joan Crawford deserved to end her career making movies like this. Here she plays the owner of a circus plagued by a series of deadly accidents. Most of the screen time is devoted to soap-opera-worthy shenanigans, many involving an awkward romance between our heroine and a substantially younger performer. The scheming occasionally takes a time out and we get some footage of a circus act here and there. The production also serves up one of the worst musical numbers I’ve ever seen. For the most part, however, this is just melodramatic and dull. See if desperate

Review – The Thaw

Every time this movie started to worm its way into my good graces, it found a way to worm its way right back out again. Prehistoric insects released from frozen captivity by global warming beset a group of scientists. So I liked the environmental message. But then we had to have a dead polar bear as well. The tiny monsters burrow under people’s skin, which led to some delightfully icky effects shots. But we also got a lot of more standard, cheap gore. They did a reasonably good job of borrowing the we-have-to-stay-isolated-to-keep-this-from-spreading theme from The Thing. But then the twist at the end depended on Val Kilmer to pull it off. At least he wasn’t quite as bloated as he was in Conspiracy. E for effort. Mildly amusing

Review – Ruby

This came out a year after Oliver Stone’s JFK, and in many ways it’s a more worthwhile telling of a related story. Danny Aiello does a solid job as the assassin’s assassin, making the character sympathetic but not too sappy. The picture doesn’t devote a lot of time to explaining itself, so you’ll need to go in at least recognizing the pieces if you want to have any hope of understanding how they’re moving around the board. But for all its strangeness, it’s still one of the most coherent explorations of Kennedy assassination conspiracy ever committed to film. Worth seeing

Review – Black Legion

Humphrey Bogart takes on the Klan. Or to be more precise, his character joins a Klan-like organization in this ahead-of-its-time anti-racism piece from 1937. Bogart plays a machine shop worker who gets passed over for a promotion, which sends him into a hate spiral directed at the ethnically-different guy who got the job. The hate mongering is cartoonish, not quite Reefer Madness bad but in the same ballpark. Still, it’s fun to see such a pedantic cautionary tale told about the loathsome likes of pointy-headed bigots. Mildly amusing

Review – White Heat

This movie is primarily famous for the scene in which James Cagney yells “Top of the world, Ma!” from the top of a burning chemical factory. Most of the rest of it is disappointing. It starts out as a standard crime-never-pays portrait of a ruthless gangster whose only distinguishing characteristics are occasional seizures and excessive fondness for his partner-in-crime mother. But after he gets himself sent to the slammer as part of a scheme to avoid a death penalty trial, the cops decide to sneak one of their own into his cell to see if they can get the goods on him. Most of the rest of the picture from that point forward is an unimaginative parade of will-the-plant-get-caught-or-will-justice-prevail clichés. Mildly amusing

Review – Unforgiven

After a lengthy and lucrative career making westerns about remorseless gunslingers who kill for little reason and never miss their targets, Clint Eastwood makes an abrupt departure with this production. His character, William Munny, is a single father with no desire to return to his former profession as a gunfighter. But then an aspiring youth (Jaimz Woolvett) talks him into one last easy score, and with his old pal Ned (Morgan Freeman) in tow he returns to the fray. He swiftly runs afoul of vicious boss Little Bill (Gene Hackman), and thing proceed from there. The plot outline doesn’t make it sound like much of a story, but the nuances more than make up for it. Killings have consequences. Killers feel remorse. Revenge never turns out to be a simple business. The addition of human morality to the Western transforms this from a standard genre piece to a genuinely worthwhile film. Worth seeing

Review – We Were Strangergs

Terrorism must have been a much different thing back in the middle of the 20th century. The protagonists in this John Huston production from 1949 are revolutionaries plotting to end the Machado regime in Cuba by blowing up the President and most of his cabinet. Figuring all the most important dignitaries will show up for a funeral of a prominent politician, they plant a bomb in the cemetery where an important legislator will probably be buried if oh say he just happened to die. Inspired by an agitator from the United States (John Garfield), a small cadre with no previous connections to one another labor to tunnel under the grave site from the basement of a house across the street owned by a woman with a vendetta against the government (Jennifer Jones). Political weirdness aside, this is a run-of-the-mill thriller. Mildly amusing

Review – Flesh and Blood: The Hammer Heritage of Horror

If you’ve an interest in the subject matter, this is a reasonably good return on your time and rental fee. It’s the usual parade of old clips and talking heads, but at least this time they have something useful to say about the subject at hand. Participants include several of the key players in Hammer Studios’ famed horror movie production career, ranging from owners to directors to writers to actors (of course giving Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing plenty of screen time). Some of it is the usual “dude, that was so awesome” nonsense, but on the other hand a lot of it is more interesting. Worth seeing

Review – Power

Ugh, Hollywood. How can you make a movie about politics, money and sex and have it turn out this dull? An immensely successful campaign strategist (Richard Gere) hops across the country dishing out cynical-yet-priceless advice to his various clients. Along the way he runs afoul of his old boss (Gene Hackman), his ex (Julie Christie) and a sinister government type (Denzel Washington), none of which makes the story any more interesting. If this movie had been made ten years earlier, it might have been an interesting reaction to Watergate. But by the mid 80s political corruption wasn’t exactly a fresh topic. Final crime: Gere’s manic fidget-drumming to “Sing, Sing, Sing” during downtime on long flights makes Benny Goodman’s classic more than a little annoying. See if desperate

Review – Star 80

I’ve seen this before, and even before seeing it the first time I already knew how Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten’s short, tragic life turned out. Even so, I found myself hoping against hope that somehow it wouldn’t end up the way I knew it was going to. No such luck. Mariel Hemingway does a reasonably good job as the nudie ingénue caught in a fatal tug of war between the glitzy Playboy lifestyle – and an affair with director Peter Bogdanovich, fictionalized as Aram Nicholas (Roger Rees in his feature film debut) – and her sleazy, psychotic husband, Paul Snider (a rare good performance from Eric Roberts). Cliff Robertson is solid as Hugh Hefner, so I was surprised to learn that the man himself hated the portrayal so much that he sued over it. This is also director Bob Fosse’s last movie, a surprising departure from the choreography-intensive musicals that made him famous. Though it’s a sad and ultimately brutal story, it gets a good telling. Mildly amusing

Review – The Shuttered Room

The awfulness of this production stands out even in the crowded field of bad adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction (though fans can at least take comfort that this time around the source story is a “collaboration” written by August Derleth based on some notes from Lovecraft). A May-September married couple (Gig Young and Carol Lynley) pay a visit to the village she left when she was a tot, where they encounter a gaggle of her bumpkin relatives (headed by Oliver Reed) up to no end of skullduggery. The story itself is nowhere near as good as the production’s attention-diverting technical flaws. In particular, the rear windows of the couple’s Thunderbird convertible appear to constantly roll themselves up and down, often appearing in several different states in the course of a single scene (just roll them down and be done with it, for crying out loud). Watching the car weave back and forth with Young behind the wheel is also a treat (though at least he seems sober for most of his acted scenes). The soundtrack music sounds like Miles Davis’s “Bitch’s Brew” performed by Keyboard Cat. And as if that wasn’t distraction enough, if you get bored you can try counting the number of times you’re called upon to watch a character go up or down the stairs. This picture was also released under the more sensational title Blood Island. See if desperate

Review – Predators

This could have been a cool Predator riff on The Most Dangerous Game. Unfortunately it turns into a muddled mess. The Predators kidnap eight of the Earth’s most vicious killers and drop them on a distant planet set up as a giant game preserve. As Adrian Brody is the only big-name star in the lot, his character swiftly takes command as the band tries to figure out what’s going on. The Predators begin their assault, displaying the usual movie monster aplomb for killing Hispanic and black characters first. So far standard stuff. But then the unnecessary plot complications start to rain down. I’m not sure if the filmmakers had an affection for useless twists or if the running time needed beefing up or what, but the monkeying around seriously screwed with the story. And the “surprise” character development toward the end was so well telegraphed and so poorly masked that it was almost a disappointment when they finally got around to it. Overall the Predator thing has taken worse turns, but this was nowhere near as good as it could have been. Mildly amusing

Review – Sherlock Holmes and the Woman in Green

Somehow I managed to miss this one when I watched the Rathbone/Bruce Holmes marathon on TCM at the end of last year. Well, at least this completes the set. It also came along in 1945, after the studio got over the need to pit the famous detective against Nazi spies. This still lacks the Victorian thrills of the original stories, but at least the bad guy is the dreaded Professor Moriarty, backed by a woman who blackmails wealthy men by hypnotizing them into thinking they’ve committed heinous crimes. Mildly amusing

Review – The Painted Veil (1934)

Not even Greta Garbo can do much to save this strangely-paced production of W. Somerset Maugham’s novel about infidelity and cholera. The first half of the movie is squandered on the lead-up to the unfaithful wife’s transgression, leaving a lot of plot to be packed into the last 40 minutes or so. The production values are also largely lavished on the beginning, with elaborate set work in the Shanghai sequences giving way to mediocre recreations of the Chinese countryside. Both the 1957 and the 2006 versions of the tale are superior to this telling. Mildly amusing

Review – The Devil's Curse

At around a half an hour in this movie suddenly turned interesting. But then I realized that Chiller had gone to an ad break and was showing an ad for another movie. Actually, in all fairness this isn’t the worst young-people-trapped-with-a-demon-in-an-abandoned-building movie I’ve ever seen. At least it managed to remain fairly logical and consistent, if not exactly inspiring. Mildly amusing

Review – Dracula 3: Legacy

The sins of number two are repeated here. This time our heroes have tracked the ol’ guy (Rutger Hauer) to Eastern Europe, where his minions conceal their crimes amid the chaos of social unrest. I expect the main attraction for most audience members of the appropriate sexual orientation and level of emotional maturity will be the big pit o’ nekkid vampire women that crops up toward the end. If that doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that would float your boat, feel free to give this one a miss. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Patty Hearst

Though director Paul Schrader is better known for movies such as Mishima and American Gigolo, this one’s actually not too bad. The heiress (Natasha Richardson) gets kidnapped by Cinque (Ving Rhames) and his band of merry killers. Based as it is on Hearst’s book, the production takes a largely pro-Patty stance. And though for the most part it’s a straightforward telling of the tale, Schrader does manage to stir in an interesting visual or two, particularly toward the beginning. Mildly amusing

Review – Deuce Bigalow, European Gigolo

I’m actually sort of in awe of this movie’s tenacious refusal to be entertaining in any way. As even someone who’d never heard of this sequel or its predecessor might guess just from the title, opportunities to include genuine wit are few and far between. Still, it manages to deftly avoid all of them. It doesn’t even feature much of the unattractive-women-have-feelings-too that served as a minor redeeming factor in the original. Instead, our long-suffering dimwit “hero” ends up in Amsterdam trying to thwart a plot by a serial killer to slay all the “man whores” in Europe. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Stonehenge Apocalypse

Turns out Stonehenge is a giant timing device, and as it ticks down it activates environmental disaster machines planted by ancient aliens under the world’s various prominent archaeological sites (mostly pyramids). A small cadre of scientists battles to find a key to shut Stonehenge down, while a cabal of creepy cultists who want the world to end strives to stop them. Suggestion: take some of the untold riches the filmmakers no doubt earned from this masterpiece and produce a sequel called Buttwipe Armageddon. Thanks to sinister alien technology our toilet paper turns against us, suddenly coming to life during our vulnerable moments and strangling us like CGI snakes. Hey, it’s no dumber than the first one. See if desperate

Review – Dragon Fighter

Usually a movie with a name like this would turn out to be a collection of aspiring actors led by an out-of-work veteran doing battle with bad effects monsters in Medieval Europe. However, this turns out to be a collection of aspiring actors led by an out-of-work veteran doing battle with bad effects monsters in a 21st century cloning lab. Thank goodness for thespians of Dean Cain’s ilk. Otherwise who would deliver dialogue this bad? See if desperate

Review – It!

As usual, the exclamation point in the title is a strong forewarning about the quality of the picture. The assistant curator (Roddy McDowall) of a museum has relatively simple problems: an unrequited crush on a co-worker and his mother’s corpse hanging out Psycho-like in his living room. But then his employer acquires a new statue, an ugly, Ronald-Reagan-looking piece that turns out to be the notorious Golem of Prague. Our anti-hero figures out how to pop the secret compartment in its foot that contains its activation scroll. Needless to say, he immediately starts using it to cater to his own selfish desires. At first his schemes make sense, such as when he has it kill the curator who tries to fire him. But then his golem-centered plots become more and more bizarre. Eventually he gets the thing to topple a bridge thinking that this will somehow impress the woman he loves. And as the golem’s crimes spiral out of control, so does the response from the authorities, including trying to destroy the thing with a nuclear bomb. Though this isn’t actually a Hammer Studios production, director Herbert J. Leder deliberately tried – with reasonable success – to give the movie a Hammer look and feel. Mildly amusing

Review – Star Trek: The Motion Picture

This movie bets heavily on the proposition that its audience is composed largely of Trek fans who’ve been pining for new entries in the saga since the series was cancelled more than a decade earlier. As such, it’s reasonably successful. It features the original cast playing familiar characters with their well-established strengths and weaknesses. It has long, loving shots of the new-yet-familiar Enterprise. It even sports a plot that seems eerily familiar. However, for anyone who isn’t jonesing for fresh Trek (and in the age of full series DVDs, why would anyone be desperate for a fix?) this picture wastes a lot of time on empty nostalgia. It also relies heavily on long effects shots, stuff that might have been impressive back in the days of models and mattes but now just serves to grind the story to a screeching halt. Fortunately after they got some of this out of their system they came back and made a better sequel. Mildly amusing

Review – Hell’s Angels

I watched this largely out of curiosity spawned by seeing The Aviator. And as Scorsese’s biopic implies, this is a technical mess. The picture combines silent, “talkie” and even brief color production techniques in ways that don’t work well together. Likewise as one might expect from Howard Hughes, the aerial combat scenes are impressive – or at the very least look good – while the personal dramas back on the ground are downright soap operatic. Not even Jean Harlow can make the romance work. So if you like watching World War One air battles, by all means rent this disc. Just keep your finger poised on the fast forward button of your remote. Mildly amusing

Review – O. Henry’s Full House

Five directors exploit the author’s gift for the clever twist of the tale to reasonably good effect. Though the final two stories – “The Ransom of Red Chief” (directed by Howard Hawks no less) and “The Gift of the Magi” – are the show stoppers, I was impressed by the lead-off adaptation of “The Cop and the Anthem.” Charles Laughton plays the lead, backed up by brief appearances by several recognizable faces including Marilyn Monroe. And in “Clarion Call” Richard Widmark gives the bad guy role a spin disturbingly similar to what Frank Gorshen would later do as The Riddler. They even got John Steinbeck to do the introductions. As film adaptations of literature go, this one’s not too bad. Mildly amusing

Review – Rebel Without a Cause

Ugh boomers, why do you love this movie as much as you do? It’s a standard 50s era JD picture only with an overpowering frosting of pop psychology smeared all over it. Seriously, this story spins out like a DSM training video. We get a protagonist (James Dean) with a substance abuse problem brought on by a dysfunctional relationship with his overbearing mother and emasculated – apron-wearing, no less – father. We get a love interest (Natalie Wood) with some really icky sexual tension going on with her dad. We get a troubled younger teen (Sal Mineo) who kills puppies because his absentee parents have abandoned him to be raised by the maid. Middle class America, wake up before your children are darned to heck. Good production values save this from turning into a cartoonish mess like Reefer Madness, but the overall message is no more intellectually or emotionally sophisticated. Mildly amusing

Review – All Through the Night

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the Weekend Update sketch on Saturday Night Live featured a joke about members of organized crime stealing scrap metal from the World Trade Center site. “Hey,” Tina Fey delivered the line in her best Mafia mook voice, “the mayor told everyone to go back to work.” This movie reminded me a lot of that gag. Humphrey Bogart stars as the leader of a gang of wise-cracking mobsters joining the war effort by taking on a cabal of Nazi agents in New York City. Bogart is great as usual, but overall the movie’s subject is too serious to work well as fodder for screwball comedy, yet it’s too silly to work as a spy story. Mildly amusing

Review – Havana

Imagine Casablanca attacked by two muggers – one with a stupid stick and the other with a boring stick – and you’ve got some idea what’s in store for you here. An aging gambler (Robert Redford) looking for one final big score finds himself caught up in the chaos of Cuba in the waning days of 1958. He falls in love with a woman (Lena Olen) who’s married to a rebel leader (Raul Julia, appearing relatively briefly in the picture) who isn’t as dead as she thought he was. The studio clearly had a lot of money to spend on the production, making it a double shame that nobody paid any attention to what happened when they tried a disturbingly similar trick with Sean Connery years earlier. See if desperate

Review – The Pirates of Penzance

This movie’s original release was a landmark in the history of snakebit roll-outs. Another studio took advantage of the source material’s public domain status to get out a knock-off before this “official” Broadway adaptation. Then the studio elected to release this to theaters and a limited number of TV stations at the same time, causing theater owners to boycott the picture and cutting its opening to less than 100 venues nationwide. And of course it was an effort to interest 20th century audiences in 19th century operetta, so it would have faced an uphill battle even under the best of circumstances. Gilbert and Sullivan provide singing actors with a chance to show off their talents, but it also makes shortcomings glaringly obvious (Linda Ronstadt, you’re a great singer but not so much with the acting). All that notwithstanding, this should be a pleasant experience for anyone who can stand this sort of thing. Mildly amusing

Review – Pandorum

I had to restart this movie three times because I had the hardest time paying attention to it. In my defense, it isn’t the sort of picture that rewards careful attention. Indeed, the experience is less like being told a story and more like watching someone else play a video game. Two space travelers awaken from suspended animation to discover that their memories have been partially erased and their ship has become a house of horrors. While one hangs around the control room, the other embarks on a quest to jump-start the ship’s reactor, teaming up with other survivors and battling humanoid cannibal monsters along the way. The filmmakers spent enough money to ensure decent production values, but they should have saved back a few bucks for a more coherent script. Mildly amusing

Review – Child's Play 3

Chucky goes to military school. His hapless pal Andy (Justin Whalin, replacing Alex Vincent from one and two) is a teenager at this point, and his troubled past gets him sent to an academy for a more disciplined life. Unfortunately, the heartless corporation that makes the Good Guy dolls restarts the line. Somehow this allows the blown up and melted Chucky to return to life. He mails himself to Andy’s school, and things go from there. By this point in the series the original shtick has worn out, and this production doesn’t add anything new or interesting to the mix. See if desperate

Review – Haunted

At this point I’ve seen so many movies that go this way that I’m starting to wonder if it’s even possible to make a haunted house movie set in England without giving it a strong dose of Henry James. At least this time the ghosts are grown-ups, allowing them to put at least one good screw in the turn. Though she appears to use a body double for nude scenes, Kate Beckinsale used the role to break out of ingénue typecasting. Otherwise the production was highly unremarkable. Mildly amusing

Review – His Name Was Jason

He lived on the second floor. He chopped up Luca. Then they made this stupid documentary about him. Honestly, why do I watch these things? They suck even as background noise while I’m trying to practice soldering. This is the usual endless set of clips interspersed with talking heads with little to say. Even if I’d been interested in the Friday the 13th series – which as a general principle I’m not – I wouldn’t have walked away from this experience much the wiser. Most of the interviews are either with former participants seeking to justify their existences or fanboys who just want to share how awesome they think Jason is. Snore. The highlight of the production – to the extent that it can be said to have one at all – is the appearance of Tom Savini as sort of a half-baked excuse for a Crypt Keeper. See if desperate

Review – 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea

So this is supposed to be 1.5 times as good as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea? It actually turns out to be around 30,000 times worse. In this brain-dead modernization of Jules Verne’s classic tale, Captain Nemo (Sean Lawlor) is out to destroy all surface-dwelling life on earth and start everything over in Atlantis. To complete his evil scheme, he needs giant air bubble technology developed by a Navy officer (Lorenzo Lamas, who looks like he should switch to Just for Men Who Aren’t Fooling Anyone if he hasn’t already). Everyone ends up upstaged by bad CGI giant robot squid. Usually one must turn to SyFy for this kind of experience, but for some reason this showed on one of the Starz/Encores. See if desperate

Review – 1000 Journals

Portrait of a good idea gone wrong. Someguy (an artist in San Francisco) came up with the notion of purchasing 1000 blank journals and sending them out into the world with notes asking that people contribute something to them, update their status on a web site and then pass them along to someone else. Of course the whole thing quickly succumbs to human “foibles” as some of the journals get hoarded or vanish entirely, participants start defacing each other’s entries, and squabbling over turns commences. Of course that’s all part of the art. Still, I can’t help but wonder if it wouldn’t have been a better experience if everyone acted like they had some sense. The documentary features interviews with a number of people who’ve ended up with the journals, and it even shows a few moments where the journals move from one person to the next. Mildly amusing

Review – Pippi on the Run

This is my favorite Pippi Longstocking movie. Sure, it lacks the freshness of the original. It doesn’t have big adventures in pirate strongholds or anything like that. Indeed, she and her two sidekicks don’t even make it out of Sweden. Instead, Tommy and Annika decide to run away, and their parents grant permission as long as Pippi’s with them (Swedish child welfare enforcement must be different than what we’ve got in the States). But what it lacks in exotic locales it more than makes up for in dumb. I was particularly impressed with the scene in which, in order to obtain “money and blood,” the trio pretend to be “Turkish orphans” and do a ridiculous dance until people throw money at them. The whole picture is worth it just for that. Mildly amusing

Review – The Missouri Breaks

As of this writing I’m planning a trip to Montana, so I got this movie from Netflix so I could get a good look at the Hollywood picture of the landscapes. Though it made a pretty picture, it took an unfortunate back seat to some bizarre storytelling. A rustler (Jack Nicholson) and his band of hippie-goofy friends steal from the wrong land baron, and the old guy hires a weird-ass hit man (Marlon Brando) to hunt them down. Good thing the locations supply a lot of scenery, as the two big names chew ruthlessly through it while the rest of the cast stares helplessly on. This might have eked a slightly higher rating if not for the excessive ill treatment of horses and a rabbit. See if desperate

Review – Uzumaki

At least by the end of this you’ll have the Japanese word for “spiral” permanently cemented in your head. The box billed this as “from the land that brought you Ringu,” which is a little like selling a picture like Friday the 13th as “from the land that brought you The Exorcist.” Two teenagers try to cope as their village and their families are slowly consumed by a supernatural mania for things with spirals on them. The set-up is good even if it never goes much of anywhere. I also liked the effects, though some of them suggest that someone’s seen the video for Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” too many times. Mildly amusing

Review – Jigoku

The last 30 minutes of this movie take place in Hell, and the 60 minutes preceding them only seem like they do. For the first hour the characters engage in no end of evil deeds ranging from the hit-and-run death of a drunk to cheating on a dying spouse to feeding tainted fish to old folks in a rest home. Though faithful film students will sit through the extended set-up, I promise not to rat you out if you skip to the good part. Even Hell – or the Eight Hells or the 16 Hells or however many it is – is more strange than scary. For example, the hero’s girlfriend (who turns out to also be his sister) is pregnant when she dies, sending him on a quest through the nether regions for a crying baby floating on a lotus down a river of blood (a blend of Anne Geddes and H. G. Lewis that’ll linger with you for awhile). Director Nobuo Nakagawa has a reputation as one of Japan’s finest horror directors, but this picture didn’t exactly send me out in search of his other work. The movie has also been released in the United States as The Sinners of Hell. Mildly amusing

Review – Batman (1966)

This brought back some pleasant childhood memories of the kids in the neighborhood gathering around a TV set and watching the old Adam West / Burt Ward Batman series. Nostalgia aside, however, this is almost pure camp. If you’ve seen some of the recent Batman movies but not this outing, imagine the polar opposite of The Dark Knight and you’ve got a clear picture. This is goofy, corny, cute, harmless, completely safe for kids, basically everything 21st century Batman isn’t. I expect any adult who doesn’t remember this stuff fondly will lose patience with it fairly quickly, but I got a kick out of watching it again. Mildly amusing