Review – The Secret Village

I note that as camcorder technology improves, idiot-with-a-camcorder productions look a little more professional. Now if only a tech company somewhere could invent a box that could write scripts. This is a particularly tedious piece about a journalist dealing with hostile locals while on the trail of a centuries-old theory about mass hallucinations and witch trials. The twist at the end is so blatantly telegraphed that they could have replaced it with a card that said “insert obvious conclusion here.” See if desperate

Review – Twisted Tales

Screenwriter Tom Holland has a vaguely impressive list of credits, including the original Fright Night and the first Chucky movie. But if this mess is any indication, at some point he must have suffered some kind of Gary-Busey-esque brain injury. The IMDb notes are vague, but I’m guessing these vignettes were originally produced for web distribution and only later strung together into a DVD. I was somewhat taken with the acting, because it’s rare to see professional actors (including a few recognizable faces) so freely mixed with total amateurs who can barely deliver their lines. The scripts, on the other hand, are uniformly dreadful. The “Pizza Guy” segment was particularly excruciating, though that may just have been because it lasted longer than most of the others. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Storming Juno

This Canadian D-Day docudrama isn’t as slick as Saving Private Ryan, but at least it isn’t as long as The Longest Day. Still, it manages to compete handily in the “parade of Greatest Generation war movie clichés” department. It’s nice for our neighbors to the north to get some recognition for their contributions to one of World War Two’s pivotal battles. Beyond that, however, this is well-trampled ground. Mildly amusing

Review – The World’s End

I’ll paraphrase another reviewer writing about another Simon Pegg movie: if you like Simon Pegg movies, odds are you’ll like this. And why not? Every time he teams up with Nick Frost, they make the same picture. So if you know you like McNuggets, well, you know where to go and what to order. The only odd thing about this go-around is that it takes more than half an hour to even hint at transformation from a boring old-chums-trying-to-relive-their-carefree-drinking-days tale into a more typical blend of slapstick and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. When the actual story finally does get underway, it’s vaguely entertaining for a few minutes before the sci fi angle also becomes dull. See if desperate

Review – The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box

I’m trying to think of any vaguely Verne-y bit of Victorian sci fi that turned into a big financial success. I could at least respect the effort if they were doing it for the love of storytelling (though I admit whoever made this likes this kind of story better than I do). But the end is such an obvious sequel set-up that clearly expectations were higher for box office returns (or DVD rentals or instant views or however success of such ventures is measured now). Mildly amusing

Review – Apartment 1303

Tedious ghost story. The acting is okay and the production values are good (thank goodness no found footage crap). But the script is weak, exploiting the same shocks over and over, never really progressing much beyond the bare bones of a haunted apartment tale. See if desperate

Review – Pompeii

I was disappointed by this production, which is saying something because I wasn't expecting all that much from it. On the plus side, the Vesuvius effects were a ton of fun. Sadly, they were squandered on a movie made mostly of cheesy romance, plot points that came out of nowhere as if scenes had gone missing, big chunks shamelessly lifted from Gladiator, and Kieffer Sutherland doing what sounds vaguely like an English accent. This moment in history deserves a better re-enactment. Mildly amusing

Review – Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2

I’m always nervous at the start of the sequels to popular animated movies; often they prove to be low budget attempts to cash in on the “kids will watch anything” theory. So I was pleased to find that they put an appropriate effort into this production. I thought the environmentalism was spread a little thick (even though I certainly sympathize with the message). But otherwise this was goofy fun on par with the first movie. Mildly amusing

Review – The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

And here the weak spots in Jackson's expansion of Tolkein start to show. I'm not enough of a purist to automatically object to new characters and subplots. However, I didn't particularly enjoy the extended video-game-ization of the story. For example, the famous barrel escape scene becomes a drawn-out orc/dwarf/elf battle that looks and feels like the Playstation version of a water slide. On the other hand, when the production settles down and tells a story, it's as good as any other picture in the Hobbit/LOTR series. After watching the first two sets of Sherlock, I particularly enjoyed the dialogue between Martin Freeman (Bilbo Baggins) and Benedict Cumberbatch (Smaug). Mildly amusing

Review – Banshee Chapter

Y’know, just the other day I was wondering what might have happened if Hunter S. Thompson tuned a short wave radio to a numbers station and then took a massive dose of DMT created by the CIA back in the MK-ULTRA days using extractions from the pineal glands of corpses. And now here we have the answer: transdimensional monsters use everyone who takes the drug as a gateway to enter our world. This indie production mixes up an impressive batch of ingredients but then fails to bake it into a cake. A more coherent story would have been a real plus. Mildly amusing

Review – All Hallows’ Eve

The advantage to anthology pieces is that if you hate one of the segments, at least it will be over in less-than-feature-length time. But then if all three segments and the bracket are amateurish, grainy gorefests, the experience is pretty much the same as watching a single, feature-length piece of crap. If you’re scared of clowns, this should terrify you at least as much as an episode of Howdy Doody. Otherwise the only way you’ll get any joy out of the experience is if you’re excited by cheap gore and screaming women. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – You’re Next

Here’s the next entry in the family-in-an-isolated-house-beseiged-by-killers-in-masks thing. A couple of “clever” plot twists don’t magically transform this into anything other than a nerve-grating gore fest. See if desperate