Review – Troll 2

This has a reputation for being one of the worst movies ever made. Considering that the director was a talentless, self-absorbed “artist,” the screenwriter barely spoke English and a good-sized percentage of the cast weren’t actors in any meaningful sense of the word, this was as good a movie as it was likely to be. I was particularly impressed by the writer’s animosity toward vegetarians manifesting in the monsters’ practice of turning people into plants before eating them. Oh, and apparently they’re goblins rather than trolls, making the title the only actual connection to the first Troll. See if desperate

Review – Best Worst Movie

The thesis of this production is that Troll 2 is the worst movie ever made. Of course the folks who made this documentary – particularly the former child star who directed it and the dentist who gets the bulk of the screen time – have an emotional and/or financial interest in promoting the Troll 2 cult thing. In the process we get a large dose of pseudo-adoring movie geeks, several embarrassed actors, a director who seems genuinely convinced that his movie didn’t suck, and at least a couple of genuinely mentally ill individuals who probably didn’t need to be made fun of. So a movie that seems laughably terrible to start just turns out kinda sad. Mildly amusing

Review – Contaminated Man

If 24 was a movie rather than a TV show and was even more implausible than usual, this is what it would be. William Hurt is far too old for this role as a HazMat specialist on the trail of a disgruntled employee (Peter Weller) potentially spreading a terrible plague (I was never quite clear whether it was chemical or biological) throughout Eastern Europe. But here’s the deal: Patient Zero can’t die from whatever-it-is, but anyone he touches is doomed. However, his victims aren’t communicable, so as long as our heroes can track down and isolate this one guy the whole problem will be solved. Seriously, they should have named this infection Ridiculitis. Further, the picture sustains its excessive running time via a host of plot twists just as absurd as the general premise. See if desperate

Abandoned – Abelar: Tales of an Ancient Empire

If you went out to the Renaissance Festival, rounded up all the vampire-obsessed dumbasses you could find and physically forced them to make a movie, this is what you’d get. I was actually in the mood for a stupid sword and sorcery picture, and this was still more than I could take. 35 minutes

Review – Universal Soldier: The Return

Jean Claude Van Damme is so cute when he tries to act. It’s like watching a kitten that just pushed a toy under something where he can’t reach it. He’s never going to pull it off, but it’s fun to watch him work at it. And at least he’s making a genuine effort. Most of the rest of the cast of this completely unnecessary sequel either phones it in or doesn’t have enough to phone in to begin with. See if desperate

Review – Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss

The parts of this documentary that are actually abut Veit Harlan are fascinating. He directed the notorious Nazi propaganda movie Jüd Süss, raising crucial questions about the relationship between art and conduct and the culpability of artists for genocide. Sadly, most of the picture is devoted to his relatives (kids, grandkids, nephews and nieces, one of the latter married to Stanley Kubrick). Predictably enough, they had a variety of reactions to their genetic connection to the controversial filmmaker. It isn’t that their stories were completely dull. They just weren’t as interesting as the director himself. Mildly amusing

P’Nope

Pizza Hut thinks I’m going to eat this:

Actually, Pizza Hut seems to think that I’m willing to eat anything with a P and an apostrophe in front of it. What’s next, guys? P’Garbage? P’Shit? Oh, wait ...

Further down, the copy describes this thing as “heroic.” That’s either an insinuation that a P’Zolo is distant kin to a hero sandwich or just the latest lost battle in the war to assure that the word “hero” means anything at all.

Review – Serenity

I strongly suspect (because I actually tried it awhile back) that this won’t make a lot of sense to you unless you’ve already watched Firefly, Joss Whedon’s single-season, western-style sci fi series. If you like this sort of light space opera, you should enjoy the series as well as this movie. If not, you should consider avoiding both. For Firefly fans, I expect this picture is a must-see, as it ties up some threads that were left hanging at the end of the short-lived TV show. Mildly amusing

Review – The People vs. George Lucas

Going into it, I wouldn’t have guessed that there would have been that big a difference between Star Trek fans and Star Wars fans. Yet if this documentary is any proof one way or another, the difference between 1966 and 1977 is a giant load of extra assholism. While the Trekkies in Trekkies and Trekkies 2 were for the most part gentle, harmless souls, the Star Wars nuts here come across as a pack of vicious jerks consumed with rage at series creator George Lucas for just about every creative decision the man made after 1980 or so. The sense of entitlement to someone else’s work is genuinely astounding. Mildly amusing

Review – Smile

Not until the end credits rolled. Ever so slowly, a group of young people distinguishable from one another only by gender and hair color are done in by a Polaroid camera with a curse on it. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Salvage

Suckered in once again by the Netflix description, which made this sound like a monster movie. I guess there’s a monster in here somewhere (like maybe briefly two thirds of the way through), but for the most part this is another inept, indie “people in peril” picture. An escaped science experiment disrupts dysfunctional life in a suburban neighborhood, killing a few people and drawing the overbearing hand of a special forces unit. Once again, if any of the characters had been the least bit likable it would have been a lot easier to care whether or not they ended up as monster meals. See if desperate

Review – Rampage

William Friedkin serves up a highly unpleasant meditation on crime, mental illness and the courts. The whole thing is set up to make us loathe the villain and long to see him sent to the gas chamber. His crimes are shown – or at least described – in bloody detail. Alex McArthur does a solid job of playing the psychotic killer as an unredeemable monster. Michael Biehn is his usual workmanlike self as the anti-death-penalty prosecutor slowly won over to the notion of seeking execution and fighting hard against the defendant’s attempt to plead not guilty by reason of insanity. Even the defense psychiatrists are shown as unscrupulous. And yet the actual story upon which this is based – the crimes of Richard “The Vampire of Sacramento” Chase – had a much happier ending. Mildly amusing

Review – The American President

Imagine a lovelorn, widowed President getting the hots for an environmental lobbyist. Imagine Michael Douglas as the President. Imagine Annette Benning as the lobbyist. Imagine Rob Reiner directing. There, now you don’t have to see the movie. See if desperate

Review – Killer Elite

So let me make sure I understand this correctly. A mercenary gets blackmailed into taking a job for a Omani potentate. The mission: assassinate members of a British cabal who killed the potentate’s sons. The targets are all former SAS commandos. Each has to confess his guilt before he dies. And their deaths have to look like accidents. That’s so ridiculous that it must be based on a true story. Either that or the filmmakers are banking on the notion that they can cast Jason Statham and Clive Owen, throw in a hearty dose of jump-cut fight scenes and send action movie fans away happy without bothering so much with dialogue or plot. The 1975 movie with a similar title was a much better picture. Mildly amusing

Review – The Wicker Tree

I would never have thought The Wicker Man would prove so thoroughly un-killable. The original was spooky in a rough, amateurish sort of way (or perhaps it was just that the first time I saw it I was young enough that sex was automatically kinda spooky). Then the 2006 remake proved to be thoroughly wretched. And yet somehow Robin Hardy – the director of the original – managed to scrape together the money to shoot a semi-sequel even more ridiculous than the first outing. In this round a couple of evangelicals from Texas run afoul of deadly pagans. See if desperate

Review – Ike: Countdown to D-Day

Though obviously made for television, this isn’t a half bad job of storytelling. Tom Selleck seems somewhat miscast as Eisenhower, but if you can get past that you should be able to enjoy this Tora-Tora-Tora-style exploration of the events leading up to the title battle. Mildly amusing

Review – Saint Nick

Apparently the US embassy in the Netherlands needs to add a new office: Cultural Attache for Helping Filmmakers Create Pictures That Can Be Marketed in America. Because if such a person existed, she might have offered the following advice: “I’ve looked over your script, Mr. Maas, and I have a suggestion or two. Your idea of portraying Santa Claus as a murderous evil spirit has been done a few times already, so you’re probably not treading on thin ice there. You should also be okay with using the original St. Nicholas rather than the American version, though you may ruffle a few Roman Catholic feathers in the process. But then the guy is backed up by an army of zombie Black Petes? Well ...” See if desperate

Review – Premature Burial

What a shame they didn’t get Vincent Price for the lead in this picture. It isn’t that Ray Milland does a bad job. It’s just that I’m so used to seeing Price in Roger Corman’s adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories. The title pretty much sets up the whole picture: a wealthy painter is obsessed with a fear of being buried alive, a phobia that consumes his art, his marriage and his life. The high point of the production is the nightmare sequence in which all the guy’s precautions fail one by one. Sadly, much of the rest of the movie seems contrived to limp the plot along to feature length. Mildly amusing

Review – J. Edgar

So J. Edgar Hoover’s résumé consists of two items: “hates communists” and “is secretly gay”? This is yet another movie with no apparent audience. The treatment of the subject is too loving for anyone who remembers what he did – and tried to do – to this country. And for those who still recall the monster with some sense of fondness, this picture spends far too much time dwelling on the “idiosyncrasies” of his personal life. Further, Leonardo DiCaprio does a genuinely wretched job as a hero he doesn’t look like, sound like or act like. And though this is a matter of misdirected civic pride on my part, I thought the role of the Kansas City Massacre in the fortunes of the FBI was significantly underplayed. See if desperate

Review – Shark Night

Of late I find my quest for good horror movies is turning into an ever-less-successful effort to simply avoid the latest variation on the Saw torture porn theme. So I figured I’d be safe with a movie about sharks, who are of course better known for eating people than for tormenting them for pleasure. It never occurred to me that rubes might create their own shark-filled swamp and videotape while their pets devoured hapless twentysomethings, thus turning the story into the very thing I was hoping to avoid. See if desperate

Review – Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

At least it isn’t quite as bad as the last one. Tom Cruise once again plays Ethan Hunt in yet another relentless parade of expensive action sequences. Mildly amusing

Review – Into the Abyss

Werner Herzog could make a movie out of Sesame Street and still have it turn out to be a talky discourse on the dark pits of existential despair. So with a title like “Into the Abyss,” this was bound to be grim stuff. Herzog tells the tale of a couple of dipshits in Texas who murdered three people just so they could steal a car. Oddly, nobody comes off looking good, neither the killers nor their families nor the victims’ families. For a guy who claims to oppose the death penalty, Herzog sure doesn’t make much of a case for anybody here continuing to abuse the planet’s air supply. See if desperate