Review – Blade Runner

I can’t review this movie. It’s one of my all-time favorites, and the emotional ties run too deep for me to give you anything even vaguely resembling an objective opinion about it. So suffice it to say that this is one of the greatest triumphs the art direction department ever had in the world of cinema. Some of the acting’s a little stiff, but if you seek out the director’s cut you can at least avoid the hackneyed, pseudo-noir voice-overs. Though you may have an entirely different experience from mine when you watch this one, I still highly recommend that you at least give it a try. Buy the disc

Review – The Lost Weekend

The scene toward the end where Ray Milland gets the DTs really freaked me out the first time I saw this (of course I was something like ten at the time). Watching it again as an adult, the whole thing sort of strikes me as an overworked version of an anti-marijuana cautionary tale, only booze rather than dope plays the villain here. Certainly it was well-regarded when it first came out, but in retrospect it seems more than a little melodramatic. Still, some of the camerawork and editing are great, and the actors do a fine job with the script they have to work with. As a preachy paean on the evils of demon rum (or rye, which seems to be the drink of choice), I guess I’ve seen worse. Mildly amusing

Review – Hairspray

Here we have John Waters’ first foray into the world of big-budget movie-making. And who else could possibly produce a race-conscious farce about 50s-era dance show stage mothers? Even that doesn’t adequately describe the treat in store for viewers here. Sure, it’s silly. And sure, it launched the career of Ricki Lake and marked the final screen appearance of Divine. But I can’t hold that against it. It’s just too silly and charming, almost enough to make me wish I’d actually seen the old Baltimore dance program that inspired it all. Almost. Worth seeing

Review – The Attic Expeditions

Unless you’re a big fan of nothing-is-real-everything-is-insane crap spectacles (or you find Satanic ritual nudity especially amusing), you’re unlikely to take much pleasure from this particular expedition. The most entertainment I managed to derive from this muddled mess was the challenge of remembering where I’d seen the actors before; the ensemble was mostly veterans of other horror flicks ranging from The Re-Animator to Nightmare on Elm Street Part 4 to Helter Skelter. Other than that this is a lot of boring nonsense about a lunatic who may or may not possess the secrets of evil magic sought by the mad psychiatrist who is torturing him. See if desperate

Review – Dagon

In many ways this is as close as anyone’s ever come to producing a feature-length movie that’s really, genuinely based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft. Of course the story in question is “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” rather than “Dagon,” and there are still a fair number of liberties taken with the tale. As usual with Stuart Gordon productions, the plot’s pretty hard on the female characters. That notwithstanding, it does my heart good to see someone (even Gordon) make a serious attempt to adapt Lovecraft for the screen. Some of it even manages to border on genuinely unsettling (particularly the noises made by the zombie-fish-esque townspeople, not to mention the skinning-alive sequence). Worth seeing

Review – Dark Descent

This isn’t a low-budget, empty-headed, underwater rip-off of Outland. Nah. This is a low-budget, empty-headed, underwater homage to Outland. And the “homage” is close, really close. Federal marshal. Mining operation. Illegal, work-stimulating drugs that produce psychotic behavior. Killers coming on the next ship to kill our intrepid hero. The closest this movie ever comes to actual entertainment value is if one chooses to follow it closely enough to note when it manages to “borrow” even more closely from High Noon than its sci fi predecessor did. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – American Psycho 2

Wow. Who would ever have thought that it would be physically possible to make a movie even dumber than American Psycho? There’s a minor touch of novelty here in that the serial killer is a teenage girl rather than a slayer of teenage girls. Otherwise this is just another witless slasher flick, lacking even the pseudo-intellectual stamp of connection to Bret Easton Ellis (unless you count the weak tie to Patrick Bateman’s crimes from the original; our cute little killer is supposedly the only person who ever survived a Bateman attack). I confess this movie lost most of my good will early on when psycho-babe put a cat in a microwave, and it didn’t do much past then to worm its way back into my good graces. Extra added bonus: William Shatner. Wish I’d skipped it