Review – House of 1000 Corpses

I didn’t bother to count, but I’m willing to bet they didn’t make it all the way to 1000. Unless, of course, you count all the poor audience members who were bored to death sitting through this stinker. This is one of those movies where it’s hard to pick the worst part of the production. The lousy acting? The spastic, bad-music-video editing? The lame excuses for sex and gore? No, though it’s a close race, I think we have a clear winner in the script. The plot – to the extent that there is one – is largely borrowed from other movies that weren’t all that good to begin with, and the dialogue can really only have been generated by the mental and moral equivalent of Joe Eszterhas after someone hit him in the head with a hammer several times. Honestly, this sorry excuse for a slasher movie comes across as writer/director Rob Zombie deliberately making fun of anyone stupid enough to willingly sit through this dull nonsense. Unfortunately, judging by all the hype he’s got a good-sized number of willing dupes. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The Quiet American (2002)

Parts of this movie are really good, and parts are more than a little on the uninteresting side. That’s because roughly half the movie is devoted to early 50s political intrigue in Indochina, and the other half is squandered on a thoroughly boring love triangle between an aging English journalist, his Vietnamese mistress and a young American economic advisor who may be more than he seems. Sure, the romance is obviously supposed to be an allegory about the desires of colonialists old and new to possess the inscrutable East, but that doesn’t make the romantic comings and goings any more entertaining than the average soap opera. However, the espionage thriller aspects of the production are more than enough to make up for the sappy soap, especially if you’re like me and you start with at least a little interest in the subject matter. Mildly amusing

Review – Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines

Hooray once again for computer-generated special effects. The robots in this one look a lot less like puppets than they did the first two times around. The action’s also more than a little slicker. And the post-Sept. 11 ending’s sure a far cry from Cameron’s episodes. But somehow it’s as if the cinema gods demand that overall quality be a constant and that gains in one area must be counter-balanced by reductions in others. As a result, the characters are considerably less engaging, a matter that isn’t helped by the drop in acting quality. The script’s also a bit on the weak side. At least the movie itself wasn’t as bad as the ads; TV spots made this look like an action comedy, and as a result I very nearly didn’t bother to go see it. I guess I’m at least a little glad a lazy summer Friday gave me enough incentive to overcome my fears. Mildly amusing

Review – Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl

So now Disney’s making movies out of its theme park rides. What’s next, The Haunted Mansion? Or maybe Space Mountain? Well, count me out of the potential audience for the EPCOT movie. This one, on the other hand, wasn’t too bad. Johnny Depp does an entertaining job as the slightly mentally “off” anti-hero, matched by Geoffrey Rush as the villain. The romance is a little awkward, but the animated ghost pirates more than make up for it. Overall this was a pleasantly diverting piece of brain candy. (Oh, and just for what it’s worth, I wrote this review before I found out that Disney was indeed releasing a movie version of The Haunted Mansion. I suppose Space Mountain the Motion Picture is probably next.) Mildly amusing

Review – Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

If you liked the first one, well, here’s another dose of it. The formula’s pretty well set, right down to the de rigeur Quidditch match. So most of what I said about the last one applies here as well. I was interested to see Rowling attempt to address the elitism question by assigning racist motives to some of the evil characters. Other than that, however, it’s familiar characters in familiar situations with familiar results. Mildly amusing

Review – The Vault of Horror

This is a more-than-worthy follow-up to the 1972 version of Tales from the Crypt. True, there’s nothing quite as good as motorcycle-riding scary skeleton from the first one, but overall the technical and plot quality of this set is at least a little better. Two of the five vignettes depend at least in part on awful racist clichés about how “swarthy people” possess magical powers and thus should not be messed with. And one hinges on a level of sexism that’s downright laughable 30 years later. But if you can get past these dated drawbacks, there’s more than a little Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors-style amusement to be had. Mildly amusing

Review – The Day Reagan Was Shot

To this day the memory of the time when this nincompoop was in control of our country is still enough to send shivers up my spine. And I don’t count myself vastly comforted by this made-for-cable movie’s revelation that most of the people around Reagan were just as stupid as he was, at least when it came to dealing with the crises that arose after the President was shot by a Jodie-Foster-loving nutbar. This movie focuses on the problems in leadership that arose while Reagan underwent surgery, particularly Alexander Haig’s now-legendary “power grab.” The plot’s reliance on Haig as a character makes Richard Dreyfuss an especially odd choice for the role. He’s clearly cast against type, and if the producers were hoping that this would be one of those quirky-yet-effective choices then they hoped in vain. Oh, and while we’re talking about the producers, I note that Oliver Stone was among their ranks. The box copy banked on his presence to market this as a movie along the lines of JFK, but though there were several elements of Hinkley’s attempt on Reagan that might have suggested at least some sort of conspiracy, none of them appear here. Instead this is a bush league tragedy of errors, an unflattering portrait of an unpleasant moment in an unfortunate time in our nation’s history. Mildly amusing