Review – Major League 3: Back to the Minors

Minors, indeed. This third picture in the Major League series is loosely connected to the first two inasmuch as they’re all about baseball. Oh, and a couple of the characters from the original (and one from the first sequel) return for roles that don’t amount to much more than cameos. Otherwise this is a tiresome little piece about a minor league manager (who starts the movie as a pitcher who throws with his foot at least a yard in front of the rubber) in a rivalry with the manager of the Twins over whose team is the least dreadful. With wit and affection for the game replaced by silliness and sappiness, even die-hard baseball fans will have trouble taking this one. See if desperate

Review – Major League

This is a bit of a rarity in the genre of the baseball film: a movie with a sarcastic sense of humor, a flick that doesn’t spend a lot of time wallowing in cheap sentiment. I suppose it might have been improved somewhat if the romance between struggling old-timer Tom Berenger and love interest Rene Russo had been omitted. That aside, however, you get more than enough funny stuff to make this a rewarding experience, especially for baseball fans. Worth seeing

Review – The Day After

Normally I don’t review made-for-TV movies, but I’ll make an exception for anything that shows Kansas City being destroyed by a nuclear attack (furthermore, it was on HBO, so at least there weren’t any commercial interruptions). In our post-détente world, the preachy anti-nuke sentiment we get here seems almost quaint, though it does on occasion get a little too thick for comfort. This remains a somewhat interesting drama about human reaction to the destruction of society, even if the given means of destruction seems less plausible now than it did when this film was first televised back in the mid-80s. Mildly amusing

Review – Magnum Force

Capitalizing on the popularity of the ultra-violent Dirty Harry, this first sequel once again gives us Clint Eastwood as Inspector Harry Calahan, still shooting his way through one problem after another. In many ways this is pure formula, the street-wise cop with his own brand of justice trying to ... well, you get the picture. Here the additional twist is that prominent members of the underworld are being assassinated by rogue members of San Francisco’s finest. The result is a fine tightrope balance between law with a certain lack of respect for due process, a la Eastwood, and outright vigilante justice. Some elements are somewhat dated (particularly costumes and soundtrack), but as a whole the brutal drama holds up pretty well. Mildly amusing

Review – The Thirteenth Floor

The tag line in the ads for this barker was “Question Reality,” so right away we’re off to a bad start. Unfortunately the movie itself lives up to the promo, giving us yet another tedious tour of multiple, elaborate, computer-generated realities. Honestly folks, Phillip K. Dick came through here with this act back in the ’70s (though of course back then the culprits were drugs and plain old fashioned paranoia rather than computers). Terry Gilliam lampooned this nonsense in Brazil back in the ’80s. Aren’t we past the point in film history when Hollywood is willing to green-light anything with the word “cyber” in the treatment? Apparently not. This is also one of those films that relies on its ability to stay one step ahead of the audience to keep from being dull, a task at which it fails miserably. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Southern Comfort

Any film that features a bunch of city boys running afoul of back-woods misfits is inevitably going to invite comparisons to Deliverance. But this one isn’t quite as vicious (or at the very least not quite so sexually graphic), and it’s a little easier to understand that motivations of the Cajun antagonists. After all, the group of Louisiana National Guardsmen (who we’re supposed to be rooting for) stole their boats and then blew up one of their shacks. The disintegration of the unit due to external duress and internal strife is ultimately more macho than clever, and things start to really get convoluted in the end.  See if desperate

Review – The Godfather Part 2

In my opinion, this is the best of the three, slightly edging out the first one. But that’s probably just a personal preference, inasmuch as I like the big-time conspiracy stuff (particularly touches like the subtle allusions to the Kennedy assassination) better than the hoodlum-intensive action of the original. I also like the see-sawing back and forth between the 1950s travails of Michael Corleone with his disintegrating family and the early 20th century stuff showing Vito Corleone struggling up from the streets. This is one of the few films where that kind of flashback nonsense actually seems to work. The subplot with Diane Keaton and the failed marriage doesn’t work as well, mostly because by this point in the overall drama Michael is too deep into it to struggle convincingly with the forces of good and evil at war within him. Other than those relatively brief moments, however, this film is a solid piece of entertainment. Worth seeing