Review – Howard the Duck

Treasure this moment. Rare indeed is the universally-reviled movie that’s actually as terrible as it’s supposed to be (if not more so). Lonely boy nerds will no doubt glom onto the pathetic, freakish protagonist, or at the very least derive snickering dateless wonder glee from watching lingerie-clad Lea Thompson come dangerously close to adding literal meaning to the nonsense phrase “fuck a duck.” Even though I’m a strident opponent of animal cruelty, I found myself genuinely hoping for the slow, painful death of this foul fowl. I’d rather watch two hours of AFLAC ads than sit through this stinker again. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The Night of the Generals

This movie reminded me of the line in Apocalypse Now about how trying to punish someone for a crime in the middle of a war is sort of like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500. Add the Nazis to the equation, and the story becomes still more bizarre. A German officer (Omar Sharif) investigating the murder of a prostitute in Warsaw in 1942 learns that a Wehrmacht general committed the crime. Suspicion falls on three individuals (Charles Gray, Donald Pleasance and Peter O’Toole), but investigating such high-ranking suspects proves difficult. Two years later a similar killing occurs in Paris, but this time the chase is further complicated by the extra layers of secrecy among commanding officers involved in the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler and depose the Nazi regime. I was disappointed by the lack of clever twists, about which I can say no more without giving the whole thing away. Mildly amusing

Review – Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country

This is the final entry from the aging crew from the original Star Trek series. From here on out, it’s the next generation. At least for the last gasp from the past they chose something a little more engaging than the previous couple of outings. The dreaded Klingon empire has suffered some setbacks, and the time for peace is at hand (a situation roughly analogous to US/Soviet relations around the time the film was made). Naturally complications arise when the crew of the Enterprise is sent to escort the Klingon ambassador to the peace talks. The action proceeds from there, with plenty of standard series intrigue and starship battles in the offing. Mildly amusing

Review – Star Trek 5: The Final Frontier

And so it ends. Actually despite the title they kept right on making them, one more with the original cast and then segueing into the Next Generation. But this is the only one that until now remained unreviewed on 8sails. And ugh, is it an awful mess. Most of the blame can be heaped on the head of writer / director / star / general a-hole William Shatner, whose monster ego permeates every corner of the picture. A Vulcan religious fanatic takes hostages in an ass-end-of-the-universe spot called Paradise City (insert your own joke about the grass not being green and the girls not being pretty) and blackmails and/or hypnotizes the skeleton crew of a rickety new Enterprise into dragging him to the center of the galaxy so he can meet God. But the real point of the picture is to demonstrate over and over again what great friends we all are, particularly the “big three.” Shatner must not have learned one of the most important lessons of the grade school playground: constantly insisting that everyone like you is a sure-fire way to make sure that nobody will. See if desperate

Review – The Proposal

Just about every grade school class has that one kid who can’t stop himself from eating the Elmer’s Glue. He knows it doesn’t taste good. He knows it’s bad for him. Most of the time he can control it, but every once in awhile the urge overcomes his better judgment. I think I’m that way with romantic comedies. Despite their omnipresence, on most occasions I can deftly avoid them. But every once in awhile – especially at the end of a long week or after watching something particularly heinous that I’m trying to forget – I’ll give in and let one run. So that’s my excuse for watching this. The boss from hell (Sandra Bullock) is in danger of being deported to Canada, so she bullies her hapless assistant (Ryan Reynolds) into marrying her. To get an officious bureaucrat off their backs, they’re forced to fly to Alaska to spend the weekend with his family. Predictability ensues. Indeed, this follows the standard formula so closely that you can pretty much see the whole rest of the movie in your head without spending any time actually watching it. Mildly amusing

Review – The Meaning of Life

Though it has a funny moment or two, this is far from Monty Python’s finest hour. It gets off on the wrong foot by leading with an intensely boring featurette directed by Terry Gilliam, and from there it’s nothing but a string of loosely-connected skits. Some of them are okay, such as the parade ground piece or the Grim Reaper sequence toward the end. Others not so much, such as the long stretch of shots from a moving camera following Eric Idle around the streets and countryside. Sadly, the majority of the picture is simply mediocre. Even the brief glimmers of humor – such as the liver donor gag – peter out or get run into the ground. And the Mr. Creosote bit still makes me shudder; I was sick as a dog (and in a movie theater as well) the first time I saw this, and the endless barfing was sheer agony to watch. Fans will want to give this a look, but all others should consider Holy Grail or Life of Brian instead. Mildly amusing

Review - Female Trouble

Though it has some close competition, this is my favorite John Waters movie. It’s a terrific balance of shock and plot, so while he makes great use of his hallmark gross-outs he also tells a good story. This is also one of his more personal pieces, sneaking in elements from his own obsessions. Ditto for Divine, who seems quite at home as the outrageous Dawn Davenport. Waters’s early-career ensemble unites here for the last time in a hilarious send-up of pop culture’s obsession with crime, a theme that remains eerily relevant even decades later. Buy the disc

Review – Ghost Month

Once again I find myself wading in the endless stream of low budget horror movies that don’t leave much of an impression on me one way or another. A young woman takes a job as a housekeeper for an eccentric Chinese woman and her mother who live in a large house in the middle of nowhere. Turns out the place is infested by the spirits of the dead who can only come out once a year for the time specified in the title. Some of the ghost effects were cool, or at least they might have been if they hadn’t looked like cheap knock-offs of shocks from actual Asian productions. Mildly amusing

Review – The Expendables

Is there really no way to prevent Sylvester Stallone from writing screenplays? The characters don’t speak to each other as much as they just stumble from one scene to the next mouthing tough-sounding nonsense. The plot is sheer ridiculousness, some clap-trap about a band of ultra-macho mercenaries hired by the CIA to kill a Caribbean dictator when the actual target is a drug-dealing former operative. And if that strikes you as absurd, rest assured they’re just getting started. Some of the explosions are entertaining in a blowed-up-real-good kinda way, but even the action sequences are messy, jump-cut assemblages of awkward angles. The main draw here is the casting of just about every action movie star this side of Chuck Norris, and if that’s all it takes to keep you happy then you’ll get your money’s worth. But be prepared to take the bad with the good. For example, if I never have to look at another ECU of Mickey Rourke it’ll be a day too soon (though respect to whomever persuaded him to play a character named Tool without a drop of irony). And maybe it’s just the credulous kid in me, but I didn’t buy Dolph Lundgren beating Jet Li in a hand-to-hand fight. Everyone in this has done better work elsewhere, so merely having them all in one place isn’t all that big a boon. See if desperate

Review – Cry Freedom

This is the quintessential example of white African racism viewed strictly from a white African liberal perspective. I mean, the casting director understands the real situation. Why else cast talented Denzel Washington as “supporting” character Stephen Biko and usually-conscious Kevin Kline as protagonist Donald Woods? The parts that are about Biko aren’t too bad. Sadly, the vast majority of the picture is devoted to Woods and how hard he has it when he decides to stand up to the South African government. In particular the last half of the picture is devoted to the exceptionally dull story of how he and his family managed to flee the country. And of course the trouble with making a movie about Apartheid – especially back when the roaches were still in power – is that even the truth is such a cartoonish case of good versus evil that the story loses impact. Mildly amusing

Review – The Sting

Scott Joplin’s music absolutely makes this movie, however anachronistic it might be. The rest is an amusing little caper movie. A young con artist (Robert Redford) seeks help from a seasoned pro (Paul Newman) to get revenge on a crooked banker (Robert Shaw) who killed his partner. As is often true of “big con” pictures, the action wavers between interesting and annoying. But the picture doesn’t seem to care much, relying largely on star power to keep itself going. Mildly amusing

Review – The Big Red One

This movie should appeal more to World War Two buffs than to war movie fans. The story features several clever nods to actual events, such as Lee Marvin’s character getting shot in North Africa in a manner that mirrors the actor’s actual bullet wound received in combat in the Pacific. On the other hand, it has a few groaners as well, such as the use of Israeli-American tanks to play German Tigers. The plot is a relentless parade of WWII clichés. Still, at least it has a sense of fun largely absent from larger, more self-important productions such as Saving Private Ryan. Mildly amusing

Review – Morituri

Yul Brynner and Marlon Brando are largely squandered on a disorganized mess of a movie. Is this a story about an expatriate trying to steal a German cargo ship for the British? (and why waste a good agent on such a comparatively piddly task?) Is it the story of a captain with a shady past who doesn’t like playing by the government’s rules? Is it the story of a Jewish woman trying to escape the Nazis only to fall back into their clutches? Is it … well, you get the picture. Conrad Hall’s cinematography is impressive in spots, but otherwise the experience is fairly missable. Mildly amusing

Review – Ninja Assassin

Finally a movie combines good martial arts action with the range of effects work possible with CGI. The plot is standard stuff: rebel ninja with a heart of gold goes up against his former clan while protecting a whistle-blowing CIA operative from assassination. However, the combination of effects and choreography put the fight scenes a cut above the usual low-budget kung fu crap. Mildly amusing

Review – Foreign Correspondent

Though a propaganda movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock isn’t automatically radically better than any other propaganda movie, this is still a reasonably entertaining production. Sent to Amsterdam by his employer, a wise-cracking Chicago street reporter (Joel McCrea) finds himself caught up in a kidnapping plot by a “peace organization” that’s actually a front for German intelligence. And of course it doesn’t help that he falls in love with a woman (Laraine Day) whose father may be at the heart of the whole mess. The story features several of Hitchcock’s famous twists, particularly the innocent man who can’t get anyone to believe him (though the tale goes to a few unbelievable extremes to keep up the shtick). But the real appeal isn’t the Europe-centered drama but the thinly-veiled insult directed at Nazi sympathizing organizations in the United States (this was 1940, after all). Worth seeing

Review – The Deer Hunter

Wow, what a disappointing movie. In its original release it must have helped America come to grips with the toll taken by the Vietnam War on the men sent to fight it. Director Michael Cimino consciously surfs the Altman-mumbly-actor-realism wave, which was more important then than it is now. This approach proves to be the primary failing of the picture. The story doesn’t move to Vietnam – and the legendary Russian roulette scenes – until an hour in, so everyone has at least 60 minutes to establish sympathetic or at least coherent characters. We get the bare bones of these steel-town Pennsylvania mooks (one guy’s getting married, another has a crush on a buddy’s girlfriend, and so on), but the attempt to make them “real real” rather than “movie real” succeeds only in making them stiff, distant and difficult to care about. The production is also plagued by preachiness, with plot developments so ham-handed that Cimino might as well have flashed a “look, I’m making a point” card onscreen just to make extra sure nobody missed it. Though I didn’t care for the director’s truly legendary flop, I thought it was superior to this critically-acclaimed dog. See if desperate

Eight “what were they thinking?” movies

With many bad movies it’s easy to tell why they failed. A bad actor can mangle even the best of scripts. A hack director can cause no end of trouble. The sci fi genre in particular is legendary for taking solid premises and squandering them on weak productions.

But some pictures are so legendarily awful that one wonders why anyone ever thought they’d be worth making. Someone somewhere – producer, director, writer, actors, even casting agents – really should have spoken up with a simple “this is never going to work.” The following eight entries are just such productions. However, in an effort to be charitable to Hollywood, we’ll at least speculate about why these colossal flops might have seemed like a good idea.

 

The Last Action Hero

What they were probably thinking: Arnold fans will go see an Arnold movie no matter what. And we can add new audience members by making this a clever satire of the action genre.

Where it went wrong: The satire elements weren’t all that clever, and they failed to draw folks who weren’t action movie buffs. Further, the send-up of their beloved genre alienated the fans who might otherwise have flocked in droves. The comedy / action blend was uneven and confusing, and I think it left a lot of people with the vague suspicion that it was making fun of them.

 

The Godfather Part Three

What they were probably thinking: This worked twice before.

Where it went wrong: The third time was not the charm. Though specific changes such as replacing Robert Duvall with George Hamilton or casting the director’s daughter as an important character didn’t exactly help, the real problem here is that the whole Corleone thing (especially Al Pacino as Michael) has simply worn thin.

 

Waterworld

What they were probably thinking: Big star. Big budget. Popular genre. What could go wrong?

Where it went wrong: Kevin Costner builds a giant floating set. It sinks. He builds another. It sinks. Repeat another two or three times. When one receives such a clear warning from the Movie Gods, one must listen.

 

The Postman

What they were probably thinking: The last time we gave Kevin Costner millions of dollars to make an overinflated epic about a lone wolf making his way through a post-apocalyptic world, it made a ton of money and received universal critical acclaim.

Where it went wrong: Oh, wait.

 

Ishtar

What they were probably thinking: Audiences used to love all those Hope and Crosby road pictures. Maybe we could get that franchise going again with Hoffman and Beatty.

Where it went wrong: When talentless moron characters are played by talentless moron actors, it’s neither ironic nor funny. And speaking of Warren Beatty …

 

Bulworth

What they were probably thinking: This will be a clever send-up of racism in the United States.

Where it went wrong: This is a crass exploitation of racism in the United States. Once again Beatty counts on his sheer Beatty-ness to carry the picture. If only he really was as wonderful as he thinks he is, it might have worked.

 

Gigli

What they were probably thinking: Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez are a real-life couple, so perhaps their romance will translate to the silver screen.

Where it went wrong: Nope. No chemistry at all. In their defense – not that either of them deserves it – Hepburn and Tracy couldn’t have rescued a script this bad.

 

Havana

What they were probably thinking: Everybody loves Casablanca. Let’s remake it, only set it in Cuba during the collapse of the Batista regime. And Robert Redford would be perfect for Bogart’s role.

Where it went wrong: Did you ever have a meal in a restaurant that was totally delicious but you didn’t have quite enough appetite to finish it all so you took some home only to discover that when you reheated it later it tasted exactly like wet cardboard?

Review – Scorpio

This spy movie is so generic I almost expected the poster to say “Always Save” at the top. The CIA hires a French assassin (Alain Delon) to kill one of his former associates (Burt Lancaster), a rogue operative who may or may not be trying to defect. At first Lancaster’s character tries to play nice with his ex-employers, but the nastier the Company gets the nastier he gets in return. The picture has a few good sequences, but for the most part following the plot requires more attention than it merits. Mildly amusing

Review – The Delta Force

Generic Muslim terrorists beware! Chuck Norris is on your case. This relic from the Reagan 80s is almost quaint by 21st century standards; if nothing else, it’s weird to watch two guys hijack an airplane and not be immediately mobbed by passengers fearful of being plowed into a skyscraper. My favorite part was Norris’s commando motorcycle complete with rear-aimed rocket launchers that make him look like he’s farting his enemies to death. Most of the rest of the movie is on par with that. Lee Marvin could most likely have found a better movie for his last appearance onscreen. See if desperate

Review – The Company

This three-part miniseries gets off to a slow start and comes to a slow halt, but some of the stuff in the middle is reasonably entertaining. Chris O’Donnell plays a CIA operative with an extraordinary résumé: in the streets of Budapest in 1956, on the beach at the Bay of Pigs, right up to Moscow just in time for the fall of Communism. The reenactments of the big moments are the real draw of this set, though most of the screen time is devoted to dreary romances and the endless search for a mole nicknamed Sasha. The whole thing runs nearly five hours, which could easily have been trimmed down to two that would actually have been worth watching. Mildly amusing

Review – Paul Blart, Mall Cop

In the immortal words of Dean Wormer, “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.” Sitcom veteran Kevin James plays – surprise surprise – an overweight loser working as a security guard in a shopping mall. When robbers on skateboards and those annoying too-small bikes besiege the place, poor lovelorn Blart is the only one who can foil their evil scheme. At first I thought (hoped) that this might turn out to be a snarky satire of the Die Hard idea that an untrained, talentless slob could be an action hero. But I kept a close eye on my irony detector the whole time, and the needle never so much as twitched. This movie grossed more than $100 million in initial release and topped the box office charts for weeks, which should tell you a lot about the state of popular culture in America. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Gamer

Once again we get a sci fi movie that’s all premise. The wouldn’t-it-be-cool twist is that video games have become real. Players electronically mind-meld with actors and then live life through their surrogates in one of two environments: Society (a Sims-esque neighborhood that appears to be primarily devoted to kinky sex) and Slayer (a violent first person shooter in which the characters actually get shot). And as usual with such productions, it’s all wind-up and no pitch. The plot meanders all over the place. The action sequences – the heart of a picture like this – are too jittery to follow. Hero Gerard Butler and villain Michael C. Hall have both done better work elsewhere. Overall this is just one more case-in-point for the observation that “fast and loud” aren’t incompatible with “dull.” See if desperate

Review – Ishtar

Wow, this thing really is as terrible as it’s cracked up to be. And the amazing thing is that the parts that are supposed to be dreadful – musical performances by Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman – are actually some of the movie’s better moments. Two talentless songwriters somehow manage to snag a performance booking in Morocco but end up in Ishtar, a fictional country full of some of the stupidest spies and dumbest despots on the face of the earth. Both the drastically-overpaid stars ($5 mil each back when such a sum was even more exorbitant than it is now) wander around in a hit-in-the-head-with-a-brick daze, barely managing to deliver their lines on most occasions. Usually such performances would be unfair to the screenwriter, but here I think justice was done. The awfulness of the production makes the viewing experience something of a novelty. But beyond that, if rumors about David Puttnam trying to kill this thing are true then it’s a pity he didn’t meet with greater success. See if desperate

Review – Windwalker

After centuries of real-life abuse at the hands of the United States and decades of cruel libel in Hollywood movies, Native Americans finally get a movie that’s actually about them with no white characters at all. Though the actors do fine jobs in their roles, an all-indigenous cast would have made the experience complete. In any event, all the dialogue except for some voice-over narration is in either Cheyenne or Crow with subtitles. The story is a simple tale of an old man who returns from near death to help save his family from a band of marauders. As is often the case with the laconic westerns of the 70s and 80s, the scenery ends up playing a major role. So it stands on its own as a movie in addition to being an important step in the right direction racially. Worth seeing

Review – The Most Beautiful

This picture begins with a title card urging the audience to “Attack and destroy the enemy,” which one assumes is the Imperial Japanese equivalent of “Buy Bonds.” Unfortunately the exhortation is typical of the tone of the entire movie. The story follows several women who work in a lens grinding factory in Hiratsuka in 1944. When the men’s production quota is doubled but theirs not increased as much, they mope and complain until theirs is doubled as well. A woman fakes her thermometer readings so her fever won’t show and she can go back to work. Another woman remains at her post despite her mother’s imminent death at home. The whole picture is about how eerily cheerful – or at least dutiful – the protagonists are while enduring their many hardships. Thus this is an interesting piece of losing-side war propaganda but otherwise simply not one of director Akira Kurosawa’s finer moments. Mildly amusing

Review – The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail

This work from early in Kurosawa’s career is unique among his “samurai” productions for three reasons: it’s the first, at right around an hour it’s the shortest, and the casualty count is remarkably low. Fleeing his brother’s wrath, a feudal lord and a handful of his retainers attempt to escape across a well-guarded frontier by faking their way through a border checkpoint. The story is mostly a matter of subtle touches not easy to capture in a capsule summary. However, the real draw is the visual mastery the director shows here for the first time. Virtually every frame of the entire picture features a masterful use of line, shape and composition worthy of a Japanese print or ink drawing. Thank goodness it wasn’t completely destroyed by the American occupiers who prevented its release in 1945. Worth seeing

Review – Step Brothers

In exchange for early parole, I let evil prison psychologists pin my eyelids open and force me to watch this movie. Okay, what really happened was Jigsaw imprisoned me in his basement and let me choose between watching this movie and sawing my own foot off (in retrospect I should have gone with the foot option). Okay, what really happened was I started out too lazy to change the channel, and by the time I figured out just how bad this was going to be its awfulness completely paralyzed me. Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly reunite to play two adults still living at home. When one’s mom marries the other’s dad, the whole bunch moves in together. At first the pair inflicts repulsive boy-man high jinks on each other, but then they unite and turn on the rest of the world when their parents force them to get jobs and move out. A quick example of the typical humor level: Ferrell’s character rubs his testicles (a prop that allegedly cost $20,000 to produce) on Reilly’s cherished drum set to piss him off. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The House on 92nd Street

Having run out of war to promote, Hollywood’s propaganda mill turns its attention to the FBI. To be sure, it’s great that the bureau managed to thwart attempts by German spies to steal secrets from the Manhattan Project. However, the cartoonish G-men versus the Evil Nazis thing gets old after awhile. It’s also interesting to watch the movie trumpet the wisdom of investigation techniques that would later – when directed at less sinister targets – be considered civil rights violations. On the other hand, at least the picture spends some time on the workaday tasks of counterespionage operations. Mildly amusing

Review – Chariots of Fire

They’re athletes (track stars, no less). They’re establishment English (okay, Eric Liddell was Scottish, but the movie makes little of the distinction). I should hate this, but I don’t. The story follows two members of Britain’s 1924 Olympics team: Liddell (Ian Charleson) and Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross). While Liddell struggles with conflicts between his faith and the requirements of competition, Abrahams runs afoul of the athletics establishment when he bends strict amateurs-only rules by hiring a professional coach. But a simple plot summary doesn’t do justice to the character development and subtle touches that make this worth a look. Buy the disc

Review – Princess of Mars

Okay, so this is actually a planet in another solar system somewhere, and the natives call it Barsoom. So why in particular does anyone call it Mars? It must just be a weak connection to the source novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs. John Carter (Antonio Sabato Jr.) is whisked away from his duties fighting terrorists and catapulted across the galaxy to a strange new world where the weaker gravity gives him super powers. The place is run by warring factions, one led by the title character (Traci Lords) and the other composed of guys who look like a cross between warthogs and spoiled artichokes. A big processing plant manufactures the planet’s air supply, so once humans and wartichokes finish battling bad CGI monsters they turn on each other over control of the factory. For the most part this is standard SyFy bad, but Lords adds an extra layer of awful with her apparent inability to master any emotion other than a scowl of mild frustration (though the horrifying rictus she uses for “happy” is enough to make one grateful for her usual emotionlessness). I don’t know if this set of Burroughs novels could be made into anything as successful as the Tarzan franchise, but even if they have potential it sure isn’t realized here. See if desperate

Review – Corruption

Peter Cushing’s name in the credits gets me set for some creaky Victorian skullduggery from Hammer Studios, so I was a little disappointed to learn that this wasn’t a Hammer production and the setting was 1968 contemporary. That notwithstanding, we get a fair amount of creepy murder. Cushing plays a surgeon seeking a way to repair the burned face of his fashion model fiancé. Unfortunately the cure he comes up with involves glands from other women, the more recently dead the better. After the good doctor reluctantly commits a handful of murders, the crime spree is interrupted by a pack of hippie housebreakers who are less Manson Family scary and more acid-is-groovy-kill-the-pigs stupid. I was intrigued by the rare complicity of the love interest. Usually the mad scientist’s girlfriend/wife has a “he was doing what?” moment somewhere along the line, but here the woman knows what’s going on and even forces the hapless doctor to kill just to maintain her beauty. The poster proclaims “Corruption is not a woman’s picture! Therefore no woman will be admitted alone to see this super shock film!!” Their loss, I’m sure. Also released as Carnage. Mildly amusing

Review – Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla

They really need to start issuing score cards for these things. In the first go-around between these two, Godzilla was the hero defending Earth against greedy aliens and their mechanical monster. But now the roles are reversed. The King of Monsters is up to his old smashing-up-the-place tricks, and a team of human defenders must pilot the robot version in order to stop him. The monster suits are better (or at least more skillfully assembled) than the older iterations, but the story is commensurately less interesting. So by all means come for the usual model-smashing mayhem, but don’t feel like you have to pay a lot of attention to anything else. Mildly amusing

Abandoned – Dracula’s Curse

No more anti-vampire commando teams for me, kthxbai.

Abandoned – The 18th Angel

I started watching this awhile back, grew disenchanted with it and abandoned it, all of which I’d forgotten until I tried to watch it again and found it familiar.

Review – Rasputin and the Empress

This picture is better as a historical curiosity than it is as a movie. For starters, the opening credits specifically identify all the characters other than Rasputin and the Romanovs as “fictional.” Prince Felix Youssoupov – one of the actual plotters – successfully sued for libel (in England, so take it for what it’s worth) based not on the movie’s assertion that he was an assassin but the insinuation that he’d used his wife as bait to lure the target to his house. Film history buffs will also treasure this as the only movie to unite Ethyl, Lionel and John Barrymore. Lionel does a predictably over-the-top job as Rasputin, the power-hungry, child-molesting, bug-torturing con man single-handedly responsible for the collapse of Nicholas II’s otherwise benevolent reign (or at least that’s the thesis of this picture). Originally released in Europe as Rasputin the Mad Monk. Mildly amusing

Review – White Squall

I just don’t remember growing up male as being anything like this. Of course I didn’t come of age in the early 1960s, and I certainly never bonded with other misfits from wealthy families on a sailing ship turned floating school (at least in part because as a youth I failed to master the wealthy family trick). The lads join a stalwart captain (Jeff Bridges) and a small crew of teachers for a journey that’s supposed to turn them into men. But things start going wrong when a particularly maladjusted boy (Jeremy Sisto) shoots a dolphin for no reason. The big moment, however, occurs just a bit later on when the title weather phenomenon sinks the ship, killing six of the people aboard including the captain’s wife. Though the cast is full of familiar faces, the actors can’t make up for a weak script that never rises above the level of generic teenage boy movie. The dolphin killing is particularly protracted and brutal. The picture even lacks director Ridley Scott’s usual visual panache. See if desperate

Review – Double Impact

Jean Claude Van Damme plays twin brothers separated in infancy after their parents are murdered, which doubles the need for plot twists that explain his accent. Then as adults Hong Kong criminal Alex and California pretty boy Chad reunite to inflict kung fu revenge on their parents’ killers. The martial arts sequences are fairly good, but the rest of the movie is run-of-the-mill. Mildly amusing

Review – Hancock

If there’s one lesson we all should have learned from The Last Action Hero and its ilk, it’s the importance of making action movies as simple as possible. And yet here’s another demonstration of what happens when a movie violates the simple rule. Things start out okay. Will Smith plays a superhero on the skids who tends to do as much damage as he prevents during his half-baked attempts at do-gooding. A flack (Jason Bateman) takes on the task of improving his image, much to the chagrin of the Mrs. Flack (Charlize Theron). So far so good, at least long enough to get the hero out of prison and through a couple of high-profile rescues in his new super suit. But with considerable running time left to kill, the filmmakers start introducing ridiculous plot twists. By the end the story has become an illogical, maudlin mess. This was never going to be a candidate for movie of the year, but it could have been better than it was. Mildly amusing

Review – Someone to Watch Over Me

This has some of the visual style of director Ridley Scott’s earlier work, but unfortunately that’s about it. The story is an uninspiring bit about a mook detective (Tom Berenger) who gets stuck on bodyguard duty for a wealthy woman (Mimi Rogers) who witnessed a murder. Naturally the two fall in love, much to the chagrin of the guy’s wife (Lorraine Bracco). The contrast between the cop’s lower-class neighborhood and the socialite’s Art Deco towers makes for some fun visual work, but otherwise there just isn’t much to this. Mildly amusing

Review – Man Hunt

This movie itself isn’t all that odd, except for its 1941 release date. An English hunter (Walter Pidgeon) prowling the woods of Germany happens across a clear view to a kill of Adolph Hitler, but he lingers over the moment long enough to end up thwarted by a stormtrooper. He’s captured and brutally interrogated by a Nazi officer (George Sanders, whose appearance with Pidgeon disproves my theory that they were actually the same guy). Somehow he manages to escape the Gestapo’s clutches and flee back to England with the help of a cabin boy played by a young Roddy McDowall. Director Fritz Lang had a gift for the sort of anti-fascist speechifying that dominates the picture, especially toward the end. However, I was surprised to note that 20th Century Fox made it. As the United States wasn’t at war with Germany when this came out, the insinuation that the assassination of a foreign leader would have been a good thing is at the very least a violation of the Hays Code. Thus I would have figured this for an English production. Mildly amusing

Review – Demon Seed

Ick. A computer – actually more of a giant artificial brain – develops a fascination with the estranged wife (Julie Christie) of its creator (Fritz Weaver). Fascination turns to obsession once the machine decides that he wants her to carry its baby. So the poor woman ends up imprisoned in her own gadget-controlled mansion, tormented by her husband’s insane creation until she agrees to submit to its will. This is a 1977’s-eye-view of the conflict between technology and humanity rendered unpalatable by relentless abuse – much of it sexual – of a female victim. On the other hand, the old computer stuff – such as the giant floppy discs – were amusing. VSee if desperate

Review – All That Jazz

This is the most self-indulgent movie I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying something. The protagonist Joe Gideon (ably played by Roy Scheider) is obviously more than loosely based on director Bob Fosse, and some of the supporting characters are actually played by the people upon whom they’re based. Nothing necessarily wrong with that. But the whole picture is about how wonderful he is and how terrible it will be when his hard living finally results in his death. Some of the art direction is interesting, but the choreography – Fosse’s raison d’etre – is stiff and unimaginative. It’s a shame, too. I remember loving this when it first came out. Must have been during my brief theatre phase in high school. Mildly amusing

Review – Zombieland

When this movie wasn’t busy trying self-consciously to be cute, it actually managed to be entertaining. In the wake of the usual Zombie Apocalypse, a neurotic nerd (Jesse Eisenberg) manages to survive by observing an obsessive set of rules. He ends up teamed up with a redneck (Woody Harrelson) and a pair of con artists (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin) on a cross-country trek in hope of greener – or at least less zombie-filled – pastures in California. Logic errors abound, but I suppose the “hey, it’s a goofy comedy” defense applies. It does a reasonable job of being what it is, which in some ways is a shame because if it had taken itself a little more seriously it might have been a better movie. Mildly amusing

Review – Surrogates

As is not exactly uncommon with big-budget sci fi movies, this one’s way more concept than anything else. In the future we’ll all lie around on the couch and live our lives via surrogates, robots that look better than us and do things we can’t. But when someone figures out how to kill people by attacking their robots, a homicide cop (Bruce Willis) tries to foil the scheme before it destroys everyone in the civilized world. Some of the effects were okay, but for the most part this was stale stuff, especially the ultimate flash mob ending. See if desperate

Review – Pom Poko

The full Japanese title of this Ghibli Studio animation – Heisei Tanuki Gassen Ponpoko – points out the problem with calling its protagonists “raccoons.” Tanukis look like raccoons, but they’re wild canids. They also feature prominently in Japanese folktales, where they’re sometimes-playful sometimes-malicious tricksters similar to Coyote in some American Indian legends. In this production a village of the creatures squares off against humans building a suburban development in their forest. As long as they occupy themselves with amusing pranks to frighten construction workers, this is a thoroughly delightful picture. Unfortunately around two thirds of the way through the environmentalist message turns into a serious bummer. It’s still a good point, but light and amusing did a better job than grim and depressing at getting the message across. Further, audiences unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the source legends may find some of the tanukis’ antics hard to fathom, particularly their tendency to perform tricks with their testicles. On the other hand, the cute parts are really good. I also enjoyed re-encountering some of the themes and creatures I first met in the “Japanese Ghosts and Demons” exhibit at the Spencer Museum of Art back in the 80s. Worth seeing