Review – All Through the Night

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the Weekend Update sketch on Saturday Night Live featured a joke about members of organized crime stealing scrap metal from the World Trade Center site. “Hey,” Tina Fey delivered the line in her best Mafia mook voice, “the mayor told everyone to go back to work.” This movie reminded me a lot of that gag. Humphrey Bogart stars as the leader of a gang of wise-cracking mobsters joining the war effort by taking on a cabal of Nazi agents in New York City. Bogart is great as usual, but overall the movie’s subject is too serious to work well as fodder for screwball comedy, yet it’s too silly to work as a spy story. Mildly amusing

Review – Havana

Imagine Casablanca attacked by two muggers – one with a stupid stick and the other with a boring stick – and you’ve got some idea what’s in store for you here. An aging gambler (Robert Redford) looking for one final big score finds himself caught up in the chaos of Cuba in the waning days of 1958. He falls in love with a woman (Lena Olen) who’s married to a rebel leader (Raul Julia, appearing relatively briefly in the picture) who isn’t as dead as she thought he was. The studio clearly had a lot of money to spend on the production, making it a double shame that nobody paid any attention to what happened when they tried a disturbingly similar trick with Sean Connery years earlier. See if desperate

Review – The Pirates of Penzance

This movie’s original release was a landmark in the history of snakebit roll-outs. Another studio took advantage of the source material’s public domain status to get out a knock-off before this “official” Broadway adaptation. Then the studio elected to release this to theaters and a limited number of TV stations at the same time, causing theater owners to boycott the picture and cutting its opening to less than 100 venues nationwide. And of course it was an effort to interest 20th century audiences in 19th century operetta, so it would have faced an uphill battle even under the best of circumstances. Gilbert and Sullivan provide singing actors with a chance to show off their talents, but it also makes shortcomings glaringly obvious (Linda Ronstadt, you’re a great singer but not so much with the acting). All that notwithstanding, this should be a pleasant experience for anyone who can stand this sort of thing. Mildly amusing

Review – Pandorum

I had to restart this movie three times because I had the hardest time paying attention to it. In my defense, it isn’t the sort of picture that rewards careful attention. Indeed, the experience is less like being told a story and more like watching someone else play a video game. Two space travelers awaken from suspended animation to discover that their memories have been partially erased and their ship has become a house of horrors. While one hangs around the control room, the other embarks on a quest to jump-start the ship’s reactor, teaming up with other survivors and battling humanoid cannibal monsters along the way. The filmmakers spent enough money to ensure decent production values, but they should have saved back a few bucks for a more coherent script. Mildly amusing

Review – Child's Play 3

Chucky goes to military school. His hapless pal Andy (Justin Whalin, replacing Alex Vincent from one and two) is a teenager at this point, and his troubled past gets him sent to an academy for a more disciplined life. Unfortunately, the heartless corporation that makes the Good Guy dolls restarts the line. Somehow this allows the blown up and melted Chucky to return to life. He mails himself to Andy’s school, and things go from there. By this point in the series the original shtick has worn out, and this production doesn’t add anything new or interesting to the mix. See if desperate

Review – Haunted

At this point I’ve seen so many movies that go this way that I’m starting to wonder if it’s even possible to make a haunted house movie set in England without giving it a strong dose of Henry James. At least this time the ghosts are grown-ups, allowing them to put at least one good screw in the turn. Though she appears to use a body double for nude scenes, Kate Beckinsale used the role to break out of ingénue typecasting. Otherwise the production was highly unremarkable. Mildly amusing

Review – His Name Was Jason

He lived on the second floor. He chopped up Luca. Then they made this stupid documentary about him. Honestly, why do I watch these things? They suck even as background noise while I’m trying to practice soldering. This is the usual endless set of clips interspersed with talking heads with little to say. Even if I’d been interested in the Friday the 13th series – which as a general principle I’m not – I wouldn’t have walked away from this experience much the wiser. Most of the interviews are either with former participants seeking to justify their existences or fanboys who just want to share how awesome they think Jason is. Snore. The highlight of the production – to the extent that it can be said to have one at all – is the appearance of Tom Savini as sort of a half-baked excuse for a Crypt Keeper. See if desperate