Review – Over the Hedge

Eh, it’s cute. Bruce Willis is one of the few low points in this fuzzy little tale of a raccoon who has to replace a bear’s stash of junk food in less than a week, a task he can apparently only accomplish by duping a heterogeneous group of woodland creatures into helping him. And if you’ve got any experience at all with kids’ movies, you know exactly where the plot goes from there. The interaction between the animals and their new, suburban-sprawl environment provides plenty of physical comedy potential, and some of the supporting characters manage to be entertaining. Of course, any movie that takes a pro-environment, anti-homeowners’-association stance starts out on my good side. Mildly amusing

Review – Shock Treatment

I guess I can see why the studio thought this was going to work. It’s got a lot of the same ingredients of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Of course in hindsight it’s easy to see where it goes wrong, too. There’s nobody in this production who comes anywhere near the talent or screen presence of Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon or even Barry Bostwick. But more than that, the grim truth about the original is that – once all the audience-response cult appeal is stripped away – it isn’t really all that good a movie either. And with that in mind, what could possibly be worse than a cult movie with no cult appeal? Wish I’d skipped it

Review – James Elroy presents Bazaar Bizarre

I’ve long thought that the bizarre crimes of Kansas City serial killer Bob Berdella would make a good movie. Unfortunately, this ain’t it. Instead, this is a half-assed mélange of bad interviews, graphic re-creation of the crimes, and James Elroy opining that Berdella deserved to suffer for his misdeeds (which, however true, isn’t exactly the world’s most profound sentiment). As an extra added bonus, we get long interludes devoted to performances by an awful local band (friends of the producers, perhaps?) singing songs of no apparent direct relevance (except for the final song, which is actually about Bob). The re-enactments are sufficiently disgusting to provide a little shock value, but beyond that the most entertainment I got out of the whole thing was counting the fact errors in the Netflix description (three serious ones in a single paragraph). See if desperate

Review – How I Got into College

If you’re trying to make your way though every dumb teenage comedy from the 80s, eventually you’re going to have to take a deep breath and plunge into this one. To be fair, the experience isn’t entirely unrewarding. There are a lot of familiar faces drifting in and out, particularly Lara Flynn Boyle as the female lead. Overall, however, the only emotion stirred by this production is a vague resurgence of anxiety over SAT scores. Mildly amusing

Review – The Notorious Bettie Page

Anyone who’s ever seen Bettie Page’s old stills and shorts already knows that her work is tame to the point of boring, particularly compared to 21st century porn. However, it was disappointing to learn that the behind-the-scenes story wasn’t much more interesting than the photos themselves. Gretchen Mol does a solid job in the title role. The production is full of art house conceits (such as switching back and forth between black and white and color depending largely on location). Overall this is a so-so production, far from the worst movie I’ve ever seen on the subject of sex, but also not exactly the best. Mildly amusing

Review – A Place in the Sun

As I’m too lazy to read Dreiser’s novel, I expect this second movie version will probably have to do me. Montgomery Clift does a somewhat uninspiring job as George Eastman, a man stuck between the woman he loves (Elizabeth Taylor) and the woman he’s impregnated (Shelly Winters). Clift plays Eastman as a man overwhelmed by his own circumstances. That’s understandable when he’s trying to live the beautiful life with his true love while covering up his dreary little secret. Trouble is, the character seems befuddled right from the outset. It’s hard to share the character’s moral anguish when deciding whether or not to kill his ex-girlfriend, because he seems like he’d have the same sort of trouble trying to pick between paper and plastic. Clift aside, the supporting cast does a good job working with a good script. The courtroom drama toward the end struck me as unnecessary, but it effectively kept the suspense going. Mildly amusing

Review – When the Levees Broke

It’s Spike Lee versus Hurricane Katrina in this epic documentary produced for HBO. One suspects the combined clout of the director and his sponsor helped lure many of the politicians and other famous people who sit down for interviews. But the strongest interviews tend to be the ordinary people, the folks who have concrete slabs where houses used to be, the son of a woman who drowned after she wouldn’t leave her house, and so many other victims of the storm and its aftermath. Though it’s only half the length of Shoah – and fortunately nowhere near as boring – there’s a similar sense of epic tragedy here. Obviously there’s a time commitment involved in the viewing, but the expenditure is well rewarded. Worth seeing