Review – Battle Los Angeles

I admit to walking away from Independence Day with the feeling that the experience would have been more enjoyable with less yakkity-yak and more alien battles. So perhaps I have no right to gripe about this highly similar picture, as this certainly serves up plenty of action. However, the pauses between firefights are downright excruciating. After a brief flash-forward, the picture gets underway with a maggot-gagging dose of grabastic buddy bullshit. The crap takes a back seat and the story turns good after the aliens begin their attack, and as long as things keep moving the movie is reasonably entertaining. But anytime the shooting stops the jarheadery returns in full force. Of particular note is the sorry-your-dad-died-Marines-never-quit speech, one of the least inspirational moments in the long, sorry history of combat speeches. Maybe some nice person will digitize this picture, edit it down to the fighting and post it on YouTube. Until then, if you decide to take this on, keep your finger on the fast forward button. Mildly amusing

Review – Fright Night (2011)

Try as I might, I couldn’t stop comparing this to the original version. To be fair, the remake does a better job in some areas. Special effects are more sophisticated now than they were in 1985, and they’re better at not overusing them. Imogen Poots is a bit better as the love interest than awkward-as-a-heterosexual Amanda Bierce. And on several points the two productions break even. But casting Colin Farrel as the bad guy was a colossal error. Chris Sarandon was suave and creepy as Jerry Dandrige, while Farrel is just a soccer hooligan with equal appetites for blood and beer. The “blue collar” approach fit better with the basement-full-of-victims approach, but then that was the problem. Mildly amusing

Review – Pickman’s Model

For nearly three decades now I’ve been convinced that this short story by H.P. Lovecraft could be made into an outstanding, genuinely frightening horror movie. None of the shorts on this disc supply me with any evidence to back my theory. The main feature is a nearly unintelligible entry from Chile, and before the disc comes to a halt three more amateurs have taken a stab at it. All four pictures are done in by weak filmmaking. The closest any of them come to entertaining is a Texas interpretation with a slight Carnival of Souls flavor. Beyond that, fans of the story aren’t likely to walk away fans of these movies. See if desperate

Satan, you can’t have my child-molesting husband

Mental Floss recently ran a quiz in which the object was to distinguish between Guns n’ Roses song titles and the titles of inspirational books available at CVS checkouts. At the risk of giving away one of the answers, one of the books was called Satan, You Can’t Have My Children. With such a tempting title, I just had to look it up on Amazon.

The book was pretty much what you’d expect (evangelist Iris Delgado shares fundamentalist family value hogwash). But one of the reviews was absolutely priceless. I reproduce it here in its entirety:

False advertising. Satan still got my kids. After buying this book, I put into practice all the recommended techniques. But the dark one still got my kids. He used their weakness, taffy, to lure them out into the back yard where they were escorted aboard his star-cruiser (which I've heard is roomier on the inside than it looks). For all I know, they're half-way to the Death Star by now! I've only received two calls from them, and it turns out Satan is treating them OK. But still, I want my kids back. Iris Delgado is a crook!

One of the other (actual serious) reviews of the Satan book pointed out that moms should make their daughters dress in demure, conservative outfits so that their fathers won't become aroused and molest them. Which makes me wonder how reliable an anti-Satan guide can possibly be if Satan himself actually wrote it.

Review – Time Limit

In the wake of the Korean War, Hollywood seemed greatly concerned with former POWs who suffered psychological torture at the hands of the North Koreans and Chinese. Before this one came out, Paul Newman turned in an early performance in The Rack. And of course a few years later The Manchurian Candidate carved a place for itself in movie history. However, this one isn’t too bad. I share Karl Malden’s self-assessment that he was a better actor than director (this was the only movie he ever helmed), but as talky courtroom dramas go it’s a competent production. Richard Widmark stars as a put-upon JAG colonel tasked with investigating allegations of treason against an officer who may have been tortured into collaborating. Mildly amusing

Review – Warlock: Armageddon

Oh Julian Sands, do you really need money this badly? Or did you screw up and sign a multi-picture deal for these Warlock movies? Though the first one was reasonably entertaining, this acorn fell a considerable distance from the tree. The plot is some ridiculous squish about modern-day Druids trying to prevent the Warlock from assembling six stones in order to ... wait, you pretty much stopped paying attention at “modern-day Druids,” didn’t you? I know I did. See if desperate

Review – Bag of Bones

Stephen King does a reasonably good job with novels. Mick Garris is okay at the hour-long horror TV series episode. This, however, is neither. One of King’s lesser novels gets turned into a two-part miniseries that suffers from a lot of the faults of the source material, particularly the bad pacing and general dullness. Pierce Brosnan stars as an author suffering from writer’s block in the wake of his wife’s death. His retreat to a lake house in the Maine backwoods brings him afoul of a small town with a sinister past. Almost all the actual plot points occur in the second half, though I suppose you’d miss a little important set-up if you skipped the first half entirely. In the alternate, you could just watch Ghost Story and get a similar story without a lot of the filler. Mildly amusing

Review – The Amityville Haunting

The Amityville thing gets the Paranormal Activity treatment, swiftly turning into a worst-of-both-worlds production. Other than being set in the notorious DeFeo/Lutz house, it has only the most marginal connections to the Amityville thread. Nor does it take advantage of low-budget benefits such as the freedom to include chills that an expensive production wouldn’t have the guts to try. Everything here is mediocre booga-booga crap. Indeed, the story can’t even stay true to its supposed “real footage” format, frequently including shots and edits that would have been unlikely if not completely impossible for a teenager with a camcorder to have captured. The result is one of those pictures that in no way rewards the amount of attention you have to pay to it to even see the spooky stuff. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Bad Teacher

It’s entirely possible that if you’ve never worked as an educator that you won’t appreciate this silly sitcom as much as I did. But I reluctantly admit that I got a real chuckle out of Cameron Diaz’s turn as a middle school teacher who goes from simply irresponsible to downright awful when she learns that if her students get top marks on the state’s standardized tests that she can win a bonus big enough to get a boob job. Mildly amusing

Review – Quarantine 2: Terminal

At least they figured out early on that they weren’t going to be able to keep the zombie-plague-infected action confined to an airplane. Sadly, the move from the plane to the baggage area of a terminal wasn’t a vast improvement. Like the Blair Witch sequel, this one abandons the camcorder-verité approach of the original. Unfortunately it failed to abandon the pointless violence, cruelty to animals and other unwelcome garbage from number one. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Skyline

According to the IMDb notes on this movie, they spent $500,000 making the movie and $10 million adding visual effects in post-production. And it shows on both counts. The story is warmed-up leftovers from big-budget mediocrities such as War of the Worlds and Independence Day. But the filmmakers seem to be hoping that they can drop some fancy CGI monsters into a low-budget Cloverfield project and get away with it. In their partial defense, some of the alien stuff is sorta fun. Sadly, it’s impossible to care enough about the empty-headed band of alien attack survivors to really get into the story at all (even to the extent that it has a story to begin with). See if desperate

Review – Kill Katie Malone

Remake The Ring is more like it. Though I can’t swear this was actually designed for SyFy, the presence of Dean Cain – brief though it is – suggests that it’s at least of appropriate caliber. For no obvious reason a trio of college buddies buys a ghost box on eBay only to find it actually inhabited by a vengeful spirit that helpfully kills anyone that messes with them. Which doesn’t turn out to be as good a thing as one might imagine. See if desperate

Review – The Double

Thrillers of this ilk seriously rub me the wrong way. I flat out don’t see the merit in revealing the culprit in the first act. That essentially leaves the writers stuck with a tedious pursuit with only two conclusions: the predictable end or the ridiculous surprise twist. Or in this case both of the above. Richard Gere must have needed money for something. See if desperate

Review – Mars Needs Moms!

Though this is plenty bad, I’m a little surprised it turned out to be the biggest box office flop in Hollywood history. The story – some nonsense about a boy who travels to the title planet to save his title parent – never held a lot of promise, and the dreadful script and “uncanny valley” animation don’t help much. Still, worst movie ever? I can think of more deserving candidates. See if desperate

Review – The Devil’s Double

Every once in awhile this tale of Uday Hussein’s body double manages to serve up an interesting moment, usually when it’s presenting an unflinching look at the evils of absolute power without any sense of moral restraint. Unfortunately, a lot of of the running time is devoted to anti-decadence moralizing, anti-Hussein propaganda a few years too late and a lot of simple melodrama. Mildly amusing

Review – An Unlikely Weapon

Once again an artist proves nowhere near as interesting as his art. Eddie Adams is best known for his iconic 1968 photo of South Vietnamese police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting Vietcong officer Nguyen Van Lem in the head. So naturally a fair amount of screen time goes to the photographer’s Vietnam experience. And that’s fine, as much of the rest of his career was devoted to less interesting subjects. In fairness, he did a fair amount of solid, non-war-related photojournalism. However, he also did a fair amount of celebrity portraiture, not bad stuff but not as impressive as his legendary shots. Likewise, the interviews with Adams and footage of his seminars at his rural New York retreat weren’t all that inspirational. Perhaps that’s why he’s known as a photographer and not a memoir writer. Mildly amusing

Review – Tales from the Script

As I’ve asserted any number of times in these reviews, a good combination of directing, acting and writing can overcome just about any challenge a movie faces. Of the folks responsible for these three key elements, writers tend to receive the least attention and often the lowest pay (which perhaps explains why scripts are frequently the weak link in the chain). This interview-intensive documentary sheds some light on the lives of professional screenwriters. It comes as no surprise that a lot of the discussion is about Hollywood deal-making, a less than fascinating topic. Still, it provides some insight into the role writers play in the film-making process. Mildly amusing