Review – The Fear of Darkness

Anytime horror and psychiatry mix, there’s a good chance that a big part of the plot will turn out to be pure hallucination. Throw in a hearty dose of DMT, and there’s almost no chance that anything we see will be anything but imaginary. This production has a few interesting visual twists, so it’s a shame they were wasted on a largely non-functioning story. See if desperate

Review – The Long Walk

Can it be? Has the Curse of Terrible Movies Based on Stephen King Novels finally been lifted for good? I was genuinely concerned about the wisdom of attempting to make a movie out of a novella that’s a fairly even mix of introspective thought and children being murdered for failing to walk in a psychotic cross-country death march. But the personal interactions stay interesting for the most part, and the sudden violence is graphic enough to underscore the cruelty of the whole exercise. I also found the framing of the drama intriguing, particularly the art direction. This tale appears to be set in some alternate America that went bad sometime in the 1960s, which relieves the storytellers from the obligation to deal with a lot of 21st century media tropes that would have complicated the story considerably. And if nothing else, I hope this wins the Oscar for Best Sound, as this is the first time I think I’ve ever seen a movie with gunfire that actually sounds like gunfire. Worth seeing

Review – Hide and Seek (2021)

If you’re going to tell a story that pits wealthy people against the poorest of the poor, maybe don’t make the rich folks the heroes. Or at least don’t cast Jonathan Rhys Meyers as the hero, leaving him to struggle against his American accent and his past performances as literal or figurative monsters in positions of power. Any chance that this might have recovered from its own premise is crushed when the plot pushes itself into that most terrible of thriller conundrums: is the villain exactly who we’ve suspected from the start, or is it someone completely out of left field? As there’s no good answer to that question, I won’t spoil things by ruining the reveal. But it really wasn’t worth it. See if desperate

Review – Flu

The really amazing thing is that this predates the COVID-19 pandemic. Though I was mostly here for the spread-of-a-deadly-disease stuff, for the most part I didn’t mind the sappy character development (though I felt that they went to the pre-teen-in-peril well a little too often). But the production values were good, and it was charming to see a scene in which a South Korean official actually stood up to a government bully from the US. Mildly amusing

Review – Airport

I’ve seen the parody version of this several times, but this was my first experience with the actual movie. As terrible as it is, I’m surprised anyone aspired to top its own sense of self-parody. Some good actors (and some wretchedly bad ones) are squandered on an awful script with entirely too many subplots and a crisis precipitated by a ludicrous combination of circumstances. See if desperate

Review – Unthinkable

This “thriller” has two basic plot elements: arguing and mutilation. And after awhile both become extremely tedious. The set-up is a typical contrivance of scenarios in which torture might possibly be justified, which adds an extra layer of artificiality to the story. See if desperate

Review – The Show

Giancarlo Esposito directs and acts in this heavy-handed condemnation of reality show excesses. After Bachelor-esque contest ends with an unexpected on-air homicide, the show’s star and producer find themselves enthralled by the ratings potential of a snuff series featuring live broadcasts of increasingly elaborate suicides. Before the show reaches its final episode, it’s plumbing the depths of pathos and gore. Mildly amusing

Review – Us

Jordan Peele serves up a delightfully creepy tale of a family that finds itself face to face with doppelgängers seeking to replace them. It isn’t easy to pack intelligent, stylish and violent into a single movie, but this one does the trick. Worth seeing

Review – Warning Sign

A deadly bacteria gets released in a lab that’s secretly manufacturing deadly bacteria. Can the lab workers’ friends and family – led by the local sheriff (Sam Waterston) – cut through government bureaucracy and disinformation in order to rescue their loved ones from the ensuing lockdown before it’s too late? And in so doing, will they release the plague into the wider world? This production does a reasonably entertaining job of making the audience wait for the answer. Mildly amusing

Review – The Island (1980)

It’s interesting to go nearly 40 years between viewings of a movie. When I was a kid watching this on HBO, it really freaked me out. Peter Benchley’s source novel spins the tale of a writer and his son exploring the Caribbean and ending up in the hands of an atavistic colony of pirates who’ve lived in isolation from the outside world for centuries. Watching the movie again decades later, it seemed less scary and more silly. The basic concept is interesting, but too many of the plot twist rely on dumb luck rather than careful planning. Mildly amusing

Review – Inferno

Unlike The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, this time around I hadn’t read the source novel before seeing the movie. It didn’t seem to make much of a difference. “Harvard Symbologist” Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks again) has lost his memory. Can a beautiful European woman (Felicity Jones) help him recover it in time to thwart a maniac intent on releasing a deadly virus? Mildly amusing

Review – Jack Reacher

Despite the Tom-Cruise-iness of the this picture, I actually enjoyed it. The story is a typical blend of lone-wolf-ex-military-cop-hero and complex-conspiracy-murder-mystery. But they spent some money making it, and the cash went to good use for production values, cast, script and muscle cars. Mildly amusing

Review – Taken 2

They should have called this “Retaken.” Of course that would have implied a sense of humor and fun completely absent from the movie itself. Relatives of the sex slavers from the first one kidnap our hero and his wife, and it’s up to their daughter to help them escape. So sort of the opposite of the previous entry. See if desperate

Review – Twilight’s Last Gleaming

Up until the Oval Office yakkity yack gets started, this is actually a fairly awesome action movie. A team led by a rogue ex-general (Burt Lancaster) seizes a nuclear missile complex and threatens to launch the weapons unless their demands are met. They want money. They want a clean getaway. I get that. But then they demand public disclosure of a document that will expose the government’s real motives behind the Vietnam War. Judging by the amount of screen time devoted to it, the Daniel Ellsberg crap is intended to be the main focus of the picture. But even back in 1977 this was fairly well trampled ground, certainly nowhere near as interesting a premise as blackmailers with warheads. And the two make an awkward graft. Why would a guy be so obsessed with the American people learning the truth that he’d be willing to kill everyone in America (and Russia as well) just to prove his point? Mildly amusing

Review – Assassin’s Bullet

A State Department factotum falls in love with a belly dancer who is actually an English teacher slash Manchurian Candidate who kills terrorists and ... okay, I admit it. I lost interest in this thing early on and just let it run for background noise. So at least it was fairly noisy. See if desperate

Review – Airborne

The last flight out before a hurricane closes the airport. A mysterious package. A gun merchant and his thug bodyguards. War criminals. Art thieves. Sinister government agents. An ancient curse. A skyjacking. Demonic possession. Mark Hamill. And really that’s just a quick start on a list of all the junk packed into this movie. To the surprise of no one (other than perhaps the folks who made this mess), the result is a chaotic crowd of subplots that never fully develop because they keep stepping on each others’ toes. And that’s a shame, because with a little more breathing space some of the twists and turns might have made for a decent story in a general Twilight Zone groove. Mildly amusing

Review – Coma (2012)

I’m not sure a reboot or remake or bootmake of the original movie was strictly necessary, but here it is anyway. As not exactly unusual with miniseries plots, this story seems to have a lot of unnecessary filler (not to mention fading big-name stars in supporting roles). Still, the basic story is the same: a doctor discovers that a center for coma patients is secretly using them as an organ donation bank (among other things). The new version packs a lot more “thrilling” chase crap, and it lacks the simple creepiness of bodies suspended in midair by thin wires. In other words, this isn’t terrible but the first one was better. Mildly amusing

Review – Red Lights

They got the budget. They got the cast (Cillian Murphy, Sigourney Weaver and Robert De Niro). They even had a good premise: fraud-debunking scientists run up against a legendary psychic known for using telekinesis to harm his enemies. Yet somewhere around an hour in, this production began to annoy the hell out of me. Perhaps I was just in a crabby mood, but every little thing – from screeching feedback to ringing phones – turned the experience into a matter of endurance rather than entertainment. It didn’t help that the filmmakers opted to bet the farm on the final surprise twist, a decision that left them farm-free. Mildly amusing

Review – Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Oddly enough, I liked this one a little better than the first one. I still think Sherlock Holmes, Robert Downey Jr. and martial-arts-intensive action form a Venn diagram of three circles that don’t touch. But just because they don’t work together doesn’t mean they don’t have their moments separately. In this go-around Holmes squares off more directly against arch foe Professor Moriarty, trying to foil a plot to corner the armaments market and start a war in Europe to drive up demand. Mildly amusing

Review – Basic

Imagine somebody took Rashomon, drove the hell out of it and dinged it up so badly that it was barely recognizable, and then sold it to the Army. A DEA investigator (John Travolta) tries to get to the heart of the deaths and/or disappearances of Rangers on a training mission. We get version after version of the “facts,” each less interesting than the last. The bad storytelling wasn’t exactly helped by an unusually high dose of whispered dialogue intercut with ear-splitting gun battles. See if desperate