Review – The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

I admit that I have a weak spot in my heart (or maybe in my head) for these old sixties-era Vincent Price and Roger Corman adaptations of the short stories of Edgar Allen Poe. So I hope you all will forgive me if I enjoyed this picture more than I really should have. It’s the usual dreadful American International Pictures-style flick full of cheap sets (ideal for consumption by the hammy leads), nubile no-name British actresses and dreadful dialogue. I suppose I should hate what they’ve done to my favorite Poe story (not to mention stirring in bits from “Hop-Frog,” another one of my favorites). But for some reason I just have a hard time raising much rancor for Price’s ever-so-gosh-darn-earnest outings, even when they sink to the level of absurdity found in the ending of this flick. Verdict: mildly amusing

Review – Krippendorf’s Tribe

This is the farthest anyone’s gone to make a situation comedy about academic misconduct since Animal House. This time, however, it’s the professor rather than the students who is breaking the rules. Richard Dreyfus plays an anthropologist who is compelled by circumstances beyond his control to invent a lost New Guinea tribe and then document its existence. The resulting high jinks are left to carry the bulk of the film without much support from either the acting or the script. It’s sort of cute, but not much more. If dinner theater has a celluloid equivalent, here it is. Mildly amusing

Review – Rushmore

At the outset I should admit that I ended up liking this film more than I thought I would. To be sure, many of the elements that I thought would put me off were in fact present, particularly the sexist competition between a misfit teenager and an odd millionaire for the attention of a school teacher. And it does seem to be working a little too hard to be clever. Excessive effort notwithstanding, for the most part the quirkiness works. It’s no Harold and Maude – to which it was compared by some critics no doubt thanks at least in part to the alienated youth theme and the Cat Stevens songs on the soundtrack – but it’s a cute bit of diversion. Mildly amusing

Review – Citizen Kane

How many films have I described as “not exactly Citizen Kane”? Well, this is the benchmark against which all those other unfortunate offerings have been judged and found wanting. Actually, this film is sort of like Shakespeare to me, in that I’ve been told how great it is so many times that I’m not sure how much of what I feel for it is my own opinion and how much is simple indoctrination. Of two things I am reasonably certain, however: this picture features some revolutionary cinematography and editing, work that has been copied over and over many times since, and Orson Welles had to have had an amazing amount of guts (or something) to take on the likes of William Randolph Hearst. I could rattle on and on about this one, but that would defeat the purpose of a capsule review. So I’ll just leave it at: buy the tape

Review – Pee-wee’s Big Adventure

Rare indeed is the combo that works as well as director Tim Burton and star/writer Paul Reubens. With the addition of writer Phil Hartman (who makes a cameo appearance late in the movie), they’ve got a lock on the ability to bring out the playful, fiendish nature of the inner child. Most of the jokes are best when served fresh (especially the Large Marge sequence), but even after repeated viewings the humor remains fairly infectious. Of course the constraints of theatrical release required the removal of some of the raunchier elements of the old Pee-wee Herman Show, though a few manage to creep in here and there. Overall, however, this is just good fun that will appeal to a variety of age groups. However, be warned: the DVD version has been edited to remove a couple of the technical “rough spots” from previous releases, rough spots that I think Burton would have preferred to have left in because they turned out to be funny. On the other hand, the disc includes commentary, out-takes and some other fun extras. Worth seeing

Review – Xtro: Watch the Skies

Someday I’ve got to learn to swallow my ambition and give up the goal of watching at least one movie for every letter of the alphabet within each calendar year. The challenge leads me to some real acts of desperation when it comes to Qs, Xs and Zs. And this particular offering is around the lowest I’ve ever stooped. Not to be confused with a 1982 picture with a similar name, this is a weak tale of some marines who encounter a space alien on a deserted island. During the course of the movie the script manages to steal from just about everything from Aliens, The Thing and Predator right down to the Tonya Harding skating scandal. There’s also some fuzzy bunny death (the things are constantly hanging around everywhere; it’s like watching some kind of extra-demented episode of the Teletubbies), but it’s so obviously fake that it’s hard to get real upset about it. Side note to Tom Hanks: you’ve gotta be a multi-gazillionaire at this point. Why don’t you pony up a little cash for your younger brother so he doesn’t have to appear in amateurish tripe like this? It’s just a thought. I don’t wanna get caught up in your family business. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Her Alibi

Here’s a situation comedy that runs out of both situation and comedy fairly early on. The basic plot involves a best-selling author who tries to cure his writer’s block by providing an attractive Romanian murder suspect with a false alibi. He then draws inspiration from his suspicion that she’s trying to kill him. Believe it or not, things go downhill from there. The result is hard to swallow, even as a Saturday-afternoon-it’s-on-cable-and-I’m-too-lazy-to-change-the-channel movie. See if desperate