Review – The Man Who Wasn’t There

Late last night while I did sit / I saw a film that wouldn’t quit. / I think it’s running even yet. / If only it would leave my set. This movie suffers from the same big problem as most productions that take the “right man” approach: when the protagonist is a criminal scumbag, it’s hard to care enough about him to get involved in his story. Billy Bob Thornton in the stiffest, most rock-headed role of his stiff, rock-headed career doesn’t exactly help. He plays a barber whose scheme to blackmail his wife’s lover backfires, setting an endless stream of complications into motion. Though the picture includes a few cute Coen brothers touches, the endless parade of ways a creep can end up not getting arrested proves to be too much. See if desperate

Review – Stir of Echoes: The Homecoming

I barely remember seeing the original, so I suspect that in a few years I won’t remember much about this one either. An Iraq War veteran (Rob Lowe) suffers from post-traumatic stress, so when ghosts start visiting him at first everyone thinks it’s just a symptom of his disorder. But then it turns out they’re trying to tell him something. The movie would have been shortened considerably if they’d just come out with it. As it was, we’re treated a lot of nerve-grating everyone’s-embarrassed-by-the-crazy-guy stuff and not a lot of anything else. See if desperate

Review – Bordertown

This might have been a better movie with fewer big stars in it. Jennifer Lopez in particular is distracting in the lead, doing a better job as herself than as her character. And that’s a shame, because this movie has an important story to tell. The movie’s thesis is somewhat complicated: NAFTA made cheap manufacture of consumer goods for the U.S. market a particularly lucrative business in Mexican border towns such as Juarez. Women who flock to the factories in search of work are easy prey for serial rapist/murderers who waylay the workers when they’re trying to get home after a late shift. And of course the police and evil capitalist overlords want it all hushed up so as not to interfere with business operations. Enter a crusading journalist (Lopez) who finds a woman who miraculously survived an attack but must now be protected from her assailants and the authorities seeking to silence her before the story gets out. The picture develops third act problems as the filmmakers try to plot a course between an ending that’s too happy and an ending that isn’t happy enough. Mildly amusing

Review – Premonition (2005)

Okay, I admit it. A big rainstorm blocked the satellite signal for the final ten minutes or so of this movie. So if it suddenly turned into a work of earth-shattering brilliance right after the 75-minute mark, this review will do it an injustice. However, if as I suspect it continued the sucking trend it eagerly pursued throughout the part I actually saw, then losing the end was actually a stroke of good fortune. The one curiosity I actually did have was a byproduct of several elements of the production, specifically the bad script, mediocre production values and Casper Van Dien in the starring role. Often such a mix turns out to be an all Left-Behind-y fundamentalist message piece, though the part I saw didn’t appear to be. Van Dien plays a cop who suffers a near death experience and starts having precognitive visions of disasters. See if desperate

Review – Creepies

Thank goodness someone’s still willing to hire Ron Jeremy, even if it’s just for apropos-of-nothing walk-on roles in the middle of low-budget horror movies. I wouldn’t want to live in a nation that would abandon its superannuated porn stars (or worse, make them get actual jobs). Jeremy aside, the most expensive things in the whole production are the mutant spiders who will take over Los Angeles if the Army and/or a group of assholes at a recording studio can’t come up with a way to thwart them. In the first five minutes we learn that jeans have become part of standard military uniforms. With attention to detail like that, this picture didn’t hold my attention for long. See if desperate

Review – Disturbing Behavior

“Annoying behavior” is a lot more like it. Yet again we’re treated to a hefty dose of the teen paranoid fantasy that all the popular kids in high school are actually evil robots. And of course they’re out to make everyone into letter-jacket-wearing jerks just like themselves. Maybe if you’re actually in high school and taking it a bit too seriously you’ll find some entertaining relief here. Otherwise the high point is the Vonnegut-reading spaz janitor with a severe Pied Piper complex. Mildly amusing

Review – Igor

This is one of those kids’ movies that’s nowhere near as clever as it seems to think it is. The story takes place in the land of mad scientists, where a humble hunchback dreams of making a name for himself by winning the annual evil invention competition. So after his master blows himself up, our hero creates an invincible monster. Unfortunately for him, the creature wants to be an actor, not a force of unmitigated evil. Plot, characters and humor are strictly for the pre-teen crowd, which is a shame because with voice talent such as John Cusack, John Cleese and Eddie Izzard a better movie might have been made. See if desperate