Review – Jason and the Argonauts (2000)

The Harryhausen version was both considerably better and considerably shorter. This is yet another one of these cheap miniseries reworks of classical mythology packing a bunch of B-list celebrities in with unknowns, bad writers and video-game-worthy effects. I can maintain a measure of amusement with such pictures, but generally not four hours’ worth. Typical of the experience is the scene in which Jason must vanquish a robot bull in order to win the legendary Golden Fleece from Frank Langella. He defeats the thing by hopping on top of it and riding it until it runs out of juice. See if desperate

Review – Nightmare (2007)

Maybe it’s just that I recorded this off the Lifetime Movie Network, but it struck me as Freddy Krueger for Girls, a watered-down version of the done-to-death dream demon thing. Haylie Duff plays a college student with a long history of battling nightmares. She gets a job in a sleep clinic, but it rapidly becomes apparent that she should be a patient rather than an employee. By learning to suck her friends into her dreams, she arms up for a final conflict with an evil woman who’s been killing the female members of her family for several generations. Mildly amusing

Review – Incubus (2006)

What is it about the terms “incubus” and “succubus” that are so damn hard to keep straight? At least this time they aren’t using one term when they mean the other. Instead, the incubus here isn’t a demon of any kind. It’s some kind of experiment gone wrong, allowing a psychic psychopath trapped in a chair to astrally project himself into anyone who makes the mistake of falling asleep in his vicinity. So at least it’s a little incubus-like. Tara Reid stars at the nominal head of a group of slack-jawed 20-somethings who stumble upon the evil entity’s secret lab home. See if desperate

Review – Route 666

A team of federal agents headed by Lou Diamond Phillips and Lori Petty are transporting a guy in the witness protection program through the desert when suddenly they end up waylaid by ghost zombies of prisoners who were on a chain gang when blah blah blah. For the most part this is run-of-the-mill horror crap, distinguished only by the decision to shoot all the zombie attacks using hearty doses of jump cuts and a shaky camera trick that gets old in short order. Mildly amusing

Review – Lightning Strikes

As if lightning wasn’t dangerous enough by itself, imagine how much worse it would be if these random electrical discharges contained a sentient, malevolent creature. Fortunately for most of the world, the thing has chosen to attack a town in Kansas so small that it can barely raise a crowd for its own Pumpkin Festival. The effects are Syfy cheap and the script is Syfy stupid. Mildly amusing

Review – I Aim at the Stars

Gather ‘round while I sing you of Wernher Von Braun, the subject of this biopic from 1960. Given the date, I guess I can see why the main character’s Nazi past gets a whitewash. Besides, they couldn’t exactly release a movie called I Aim at the English. Curt Jurgens plays Von Braun, who comes across as a man obsessed with rockets, “apolitical” to quote Tom Lehrer’s ironic assessment. In the first half of the movie, he battles against the SS and his own conscience while working on the V2. Once the war ends and he ends up in American hands, Von Braun finds himself dogged by an officer/journalist who lost his family in a rocket raid on London. Though this was somewhat more morally ambiguous than I would have guessed before I actually saw it, the message – particularly at the conclusion – is clearly that the end justifies the means. Mildly amusing

Review – The Phantom Tollbooth

Imagine The Point done over by Chuck Jones (though I believe this movie came out first) and you’ve got some idea of what’s in store for you here. The animation is okay, though it suffers from that late 60s cheap feel that takes it down more than a couple of pegs from Jones’s classic shorts from a decade or two earlier. Other than a few “hey, I recognize that from a Bugs Bunny cartoon” moments, however, this picture doesn’t have a lot to offer. It’s one of those animated – well, animated plus a live action bracket featuring Butch “Eddie Munster” Patrick – productions that seems like it would be for kids but contains a ton of “clever” references clearly aimed at the grownups. It isn’t stealthily smutty like such productions tend to be in the 21st century, but it is overtly boring and cram-packed with ham-handed allegory and dreadful musical numbers. The animated art has a moment or two – I was fond of the demon of useless tasks – but otherwise this is mostly just the sad death of whatever chance Jones might have had to break into feature-length work (this is the only one he ever did). Mildly amusing