Review – The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band

This is the best cornball musical ever made about how Democrat and Republican factions in a small town in the Dakotas react to the presidential race between Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland in 1888. Of course, as this is likely the only such movie ever made, by default it’s also the worst. This is one of those movies that’s so indescribably bad it becomes amusing in a surreal sort of way, much like The Apple Dumpling Gang and other live-action movies from the same era in Disney history. In this one we have the added bonus of seeing young Leslie Ann Warren and even younger Kurt Russell playing roles that even at the time they must have known would end up being humiliating. We even get a brief, one-line appearance from Goldie Hawn, credited as “Giggly Girl.” If I were as rich as Bill Gates, I’d fund a Broadway version of this movie. It has more than enough stupid kitsch value to make it a big success. Mildly amusing

Review – The Constant Gardener

Rare is the movie that fails to work on this many levels. It’s a mystery about an English bureaucrat in Africa whose liberal crusader wife is murdered under strange circumstances. The truth behind the killing becomes apparent to even the dimmest audience member almost immediately, but our hero flails on and on trying to reach the place we’ve all gotten to ages after we’ve gotten there. Like some other movies based on LeCarre novels, this show features some action movie elements. But there’s nowhere near enough action for it to qualify for that genre, either. Having an international drug company and its government stooges play the bad guys suggests that the production is also trying to be a message piece, but the message is so simple-minded (poisoning Africans to test drugs for Western markets is bad) that it isn’t any more interesting than the non-mysterious mystery. Finally, the picture seems to be going for stylish and in places erotic. Heroine Rachel Weitz sort of makes it work, but Ralph Fiennes plays his character’s tense and nerdy aspects far too well for him to appeal to viewers as a hero suited to a slick, sexy action movie. The result has lots of ambition but not much achievement. Mildly amusing

Review – Land of the Dead

In an interview a couple of decades ago, George Romero said that zombies were the working class of the monster world. Now at long last he makes a movie that exploits class struggle as a plot point. This episode in Romero’s “dead” series picks up somewhere around where the last one left off. The last remnants of non-zombie humanity are walled up in cities ruled by the wealthy. While the upper crust continues life as pre-catastrophe usual in their luxury high-rise, the dwindling middle class ekes out a living on the streets. And outside the barricades the walking dead are getting smarter, not to mention hungrier. Though the characters don’t amount to all that much, the premise, the story and the effects are enough to carry the production. This episode isn’t as ground-breaking as the first or as good as the second, but it’s still a suitable addition to the saga. Worth seeing

Review – The Corpse Bride

Tim Burton is slipping. He used to be known for his excellent use of art direction to create unusual movies. Early in his career – in particular the animated short “Vincent” – he was doing this sort of thing with animation. Trouble is, now the look-and-feel has been co-opted by so many other sources that it’s just not all that much fun anymore. Indeed, large sections of this picture play like an early level of the video game Voodoo Vince. When the innovative visuals aren’t innovative anymore, all that’s left are standard stuff such as plot and character. And in those departments all Burton can muster here is the equivalent of a Rankin-Bass holiday special with goth-grim death themes rather than Christmas cheer. Burton veterans – including Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Danny Elfman – lend their talents to the production. Not bad overall, but far from anyone’s finest moment. Mildly amusing

Review – Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

In some ways this is an interesting story. On the surface Ken Lay and his cronies appear to have pulled the biggest con job in history. These guys built a huge house of cards, painted over it with government connections, and then ran for the hills with their pockets well lined when the whole mess finally collapsed. And fortunately for the documentary-makers who would follow, they left a copious paper and videotape record in their wake. However, the farther I got into the movie the more I began to suspect that the crimes committed by Enron’s executives were neither as unique nor as scandalous as the audience was being led to believe. The use of creative accounting techniques to perpetrate a fraud on investors might not be all that widespread, but neither profit from corporation-created misery nor close relationships between wealth and government is at all uncommon in our society. I can’t very well fault the film-makers for not pursuing an indictment of all the corruption in American capitalism, but they nonetheless failed to sufficiently distinguish Enron from Haliburton or GE or any of the legion of huge bloodsuckers coddled by our economy and our legal system. Also, the off-the-rack music on the soundtrack is often more intrusive than it should be. Shortcomings notwithstanding, this was a better movie than at least a couple of other productions in the running for the Best Documentary Oscar, including the movie that won. [Supplemental note: they got convicted! Yay! Then Ken Lay croaked over, so now it’s between him and God.] Mildly amusing

Review – Salem’s Lot (2004)

Though this isn’t the worst vampire show I’ve ever seen, there isn’t much here to suggest why the miniseries from the 1970s needed to be remade. One of the best examples of the superfluity of the newer series is the casting of Rutger Hauer as Barlow, the chief vampire. He does an okay job in the role. The problem is that Barlow was considerably scarier in the first one, the voiceless nosferatu much more sinister than an old B-list actor could ever hope to be. And the whole production is sort of like that. It has some moments, such as the school bus full of vampire kids. But the brief scares don’t justify the overall effort. Mildly amusing

Review – The Invisible Man Returns

Has the invisible man ever been played by the same actor twice? I expect it’s hard to get a guy to repeat a role in which his face is hidden (or not there to begin with) throughout most if not all of the picture. And of course the studio has no particular need to keep the same actor in the role. Thus while Claude Rains made the original role famous, this time around it’s a young Vincent Price behind the bandages. Sadly, this movie doesn’t offer much that we didn’t already get in the first one. As a result, it’s a bit on the boring side. Mildly amusing