Review – The Land That Time Forgot

I remember taking these movies ever so seriously when I first saw them. Of course I was a pre-teen at the time. All these years later I still find them fun in a crappy sort of way, though perhaps those with no associated sense of childhood nostalgia will react as positively. This is a sequel to The People That Time Forgot, and it completely lives up (or down) to the standards of the original. Mildly amusing

Review – At the Earth’s Core

To this day I wonder what Peter Cushing might have accomplished if he’d gotten a crack at better roles. He was talented. He had good screen presence. And yet more often than not he ended up in crap like this. Edgar Rice Burroughs gets blamed for this silly story about a giant drilling machine that accidentally bores a hole to a subterranean realm in which primitive people are ruled by huge, telekinetic rubber birds. Mildly amusing

Review – Jungle Cruise

Once again a Disney theme park ride gets turned into a lackluster movie. I guess it’s been long enough since the Brendan Fraser version of The Mummy came out that the filmmakers figured they could boost the plot and characters without anyone noticing. Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson have both done better work elsewhere, but for the most part this is an entertaining little action adventure picture. Mildly amusing

Review – The King’s Man

Imagine watching a game of Pong. Half the screen is a reasonably entertaining pastiche of pulp adventure yarns. The other half is a father and son arguing about whether or not the boy can enlist in the army. Even the half that didn’t suck nonetheless had problems. The fight scenes were sometimes poorly paced. In particular, Rasputin took longer to die in this movie than he did in real life, which is saying something. And when the supervillain finally emerges from the shadows at the end … suffice it to say that the folks who made this should have spent some time watching RuPaul’s Drag Race so they could find out what happens to queens who do a reveal that doesn’t amount to much. Mildly amusing

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 – The Adventures of Tintin

Like The Spirit, Tintin entered and exited my life when I wasn’t yet old enough to appreciate its distinctive nuances. Fortunately for people like me, though there seemed to be a thing or two here that only a devotee of the comics would truly appreciate, for the most part this was a what-you-see-is-what-you-get bit of brainless action cinema. This is also director Steven Spielberg’s first foray into computer animation. His work reminded me of the heady days of the 1990s when amateur speakers first discovered the fancy transitions in Powerpoint. Suddenly everything is about what the technology will do rather than what makes for a good production. The result is video-gamey, which is a shame to see from a veteran director working with plot- and character-intensive source material. Mildly amusing

Review – Treasure Island (2012)

Short of moving the show to outer space, this production does just about everything possible to make Robert Louis Stevenson’s story interesting. And still it comes up short. Long John Silver (Eddie Izzard) is recast as the anti-hero of a class warfare tale, set against a greedy, arrogant Squire Trelawney. The fun parts of the tale are still fun, and if this had been cut down to 90 minutes or so it might have been a good picture. Unfortunately the time demands of a two-part miniseries pack the plot with far too much filler. Mildly amusing

Review – Tarzan the Ape Man (1981)

If you like seeing Bo Derek naked as much as husband/director John Derek does, then this is the movie for you. If you have any interest in a coherent retelling of the classic Edgar Rice Burroughs tale, seek elsewhere. This is one of those soft-side-of-softcore pictures where the nudity is so frequent that it becomes tedious. For example, after Jane is taken captive by the savage bad guys, the scene in which they give her a bath beggars the meaning of the word “thorough.” The picture borders on interesting only when it’s being somewhat disgusting, such as when a chimp decides to take a quick slurp on one of the heroine’s boobs. See if desperate

Review – Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life

Once again the title ought properly to begin with “Lara Croft,” but as I did the first one wrong and I’m too lazy to change it, I’m doing this one wrong as well just to be consistent. I don’t know why after sitting through all the Indiana Jones movies and other productions of similar ilk (not least of which the first Croft movie) that now all of a sudden the destruction of priceless archeological sites and artifacts bothers me, but it does. Fortunately, trashing the past is a relatively small portion of this picture. Unfortunately, the bulk of the production is given over to videogame-esque gunfights and supernatural nonsense so ridiculous that the first one looks like a documentary in comparison. The result is a soulless waste of an action movie. See if desperate

Review – Tarzan the Ape Man

I loved these things when I was a kid. One of the local U’s showed Tarzan movies every Sunday morning. My favorite was the one where he fights the Nazis. But of course this is the one that started it all. Johnny Weissmuller puts in his first appearance in the title role that made him famous (at least among people who weren’t Olympic swimming fans), and Maureen O’Sullivan backs him up as Jane. Or to be more accurate he backs her up, as the first half of the movie is almost entirely about her. When I was younger I wondered why they no longer made Tarzan movies, but by the end of this one I had a pretty good understanding of what happened. Though one expects a certain amount of animal cruelty and racial insensitivity in pictures like this, in this one the treatment of wildlife and indigenous peoples is excessive beyond any excuse. I tried my best of accept the picture on its own terms and take the mores of the 1930s into account, but by the time they got to the tribe of short actors in blackface I had to knock the rating down a notch. See if desperate

Review – Sahara (2005)

This action adventure picture sinks swiftly under the weight of its own ridiculousness. Matthew McConaughey stars as a former SEAL turned underwater treasure hunter in search of a Confederate ironclad that somehow managed to show up in western Africa. Before we even hit the midway point, our heroes end up entangled with a WHO doctor (Penelope Cruz) hunting for the source of a mysterious illness, local warlords, creepy billionaires, and no end of other nonsense. I don’t mind a little silliness in an action movie, but this seriously abuses the privilege. Mildly amusing

Review – Australia

After Luhrmann-izing Shakespeare and the musical, the erstwhile director takes on epic drama. Nicole Kidman stars as an English aristocrat who journeys to the Outback to save her late husband’s ranch. With the help of a man known only as The Drover (Hugh Jackman), she manages to save the operation from rival ranchers while rescuing indigenous people from cruel racists. The story plays like The African Queen if you took it out, got it drunk, and then took it around back and beat it with a brick for awhile. And nearly three hours later the picture decides that it actually isn’t going to go anywhere. Mildly amusing

Review – National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets

For the most part this is another batch of the same recipe they used to make the first one. Nicolas Cage resumes the lead of a coterie of treasure-hunting history nerds, this time in pursuit of the lost gold city of Cibola (and the opportunity to clear his family’s name from a recently-unearthed connection to the Lincoln assassination). Some of the twists and turns are entertaining, particularly the notion that buried somewhere in the Library of Congress is a President’s-eyes-only notebook with the answers to every conspiracy riddle from the Kennedy assassination to Area 51. On the other hand, most of the thrills are more video game than movie, frequently failing the “why would anyone set it up that way?” plausibility test. Overall this follows the formula but not much else. Mildly amusing

Review – Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

With a title like that, the movie’s likely to suck. And unfortunately it lives up – or should that be down – to expectations. This picture is so deeply dependent on mindless exploitation of its own series conventions that it’s like watching an especially dumb predator trying to eat itself. Before the end credits roll, our hero has discovered that he has a son (sorry if that’s a spoiler, but the presences of Shia LeBoeuf and Karen Allen in the cast list should have been a dead giveaway anyway), survived a nuclear blast by hiding in a refrigerator, reunited a space alien with its head, and been saved from Commie evildoers by an attacking wave of monkeys (the most sickening, implausible rescue operation since the Ewoks). Harrison Ford may be too old for this sort of thing, but he’s a spring chicken compared to the clichés that drive this picture from beginning to end. It isn’t even technically a good picture. The pacing is uneven. The effects are lackluster. And if I notice continuity errors on first viewing, that’s a strong indication that the filmmakers aren’t even trying (and I’ve gotten bored enough to notice where the ketchup bottles are placed on the table). See if desperate

Review – Young Sherlock Holmes

I’m glad I didn’t see this movie when it first came out. More than 20 years after the fact, I’ve got the opportunity for some interesting compare-and-contrast between this Spielberg/Levinson production and the Harry Potter series. Both feature gifted English kids doing battle with the forces of darkness. To be sure, back in 1985 the story-telling wasn’t quite as sophisticated. Parts of this play like a kid-oriented remake of the Indiana Jones movie that came out a year earlier. And role-model-seeking girls accustomed to the wit and assertiveness of Hermione Granger aren’t likely to think much of the silent dishrag love interest in this show. On the other hand, I found it refreshing to see the protagonists prevail through intelligent and inventive problem solving rather than silly magic mumbo-jumbo. And if memory serves, this is the first big studio production to use computer-generated effects for something that wasn’t supposed to look like a computer-generated effect. It’s brief and rough, but in the stained-glass-knight sequence you can see the shape of things to come. Mildly amusing

Review – The Three Musketeers

Dumas gets the Young Guns treatment in this early-90s adaptation starring Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen, Oliver Platt and Chris O’Donnell. As terrible as the leads are, the supporting cast is at least as awkward. In particular, Tim Curry (despite his great talent) is impossible to buy as the wicked, womanizing Cardinal Richelieu. Even the small details are awkward and embarrassing, especially Platt’s bizarre, spangled do-rags. Overall this is an attempt to bake a chocolate chiffon pie using a recipe for walnut brownies. The young-hunks-in-a-western formula wasn’t all that great to begin with, and it certainly doesn’t work with a swashbuckling period piece. See if desperate

Review – The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

What if we took a gaggle of late-19th-century literary characters and packed them all into the same comic book? Actually, as concepts go I’ve seen worse. But as movies go, worse productions are relatively scarce. The studio must have spent a lot of money on this, particularly to get Sean Connery to play an aged Allan Quartermain, leader of the motley band. Before the end of the movie we’ve also enjoyed the company of Captain Nemo, the Invisible Man, Mina Harker, Dorian Gray, Dr. Jekyll and his alter-ego, Tom Sawyer, Professor Moriarty, and probably a bunch of other adventure yarn stock characters I’ve forgotten already. Some of the personality-specific gags are vaguely entertaining. It just never comes together as a story. See if desperate

Review – National Treasure

For a cheap (well okay, medium budget) knock-off of The DaVinci Code, this could have been a lot worse. Nicolas Cage was an odd pick for the role of treasure-hunting antiquities expert; he plays it a lot like his role in The Rock, and here it doesn’t work. I also think the writers could have worked a little harder to come up with some better twists or at least more obvious character motivations. But overall I had more fun with this than I did with the Dan Brown novel from which it’s pretty clearly stealing some thunder. Here some folks are making what everyone can clearly recognize as a silly caper movie about a vast trove of treasure, which for my taste is at least a step or two above doing the same thing with an important element of an important religion. Added surprise bonus: at least some elements are actually more historically accurate than Brown. Mildly amusing

Review – Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

Even by the relatively low standards set by previous movies based on video games, this one’s pretty stupid. The story is some mumbo jumbo about ancient relics, planetary convergence, long-lost fathers, the Illuminati, and so on. But of course none of that is the point here. There are also plenty of high-jumping, kung fu kicking, effects-intensive action sequences, though not quite as many as I expected (and a few more might have been a nice break from the thoroughly uninteresting plot exposition and what passes for character development). But the violence wasn’t really the point, either. The point, as near as I can tell, is to provide male adolescents with as hefty a dose as possible of Angelina Jolie as the physical embodiment of top-heavy battle hero Lara Croft, complete with a seemingly endless parade of tight-fitting combat fashions. So if that’s what you want, then you’re going to get your money’s worth. Otherwise it might be better spent elsewhere. See if desperate

Review – The African Queen

This movie’s worth it for the casting alone. Bogart is as perfect as the surly but good-hearted riverboat sailor as Hepburn is as the prim yet warm missionary; it’s difficult to imagine anyone else in either role. The story is simple on the surface: our heroes need to pilot a small boat down a dangerous river. But it isn’t the plot that makes this a classic as much as it’s the interactions between the characters as their relationship develops. Acting, script and direction really come together here. Buy the tape