Review – The Omega Man

Here’s one of the more expensive entries in the what-if-the-world-ended-and-you-were-the-only-one-left genre. Charlton Heston stars as the ultra-square survivor of a plague that turns the rest of humanity into corpses or albino counter-culture vampires in Black Sabbath robes. The establishment-versus-monster-hippies theme is as dated as most of the hairdos sported by the African-American characters, and the plot is full of gaps big enough to drive a semi through (such as the nagging question about our hero’s motive for living in an urban town-home when he’s being besieged on a nightly basis by Manson-family-esque children of the night who seem like they’d probably be less trouble to a country estate with a nice, wide kill zone and a good perimeter fence). All that notwithstanding, this remains a decent piece of post-apocalyptic fantasy. Mildly amusing

Review – The Lost Boys

Wow, teenagers and vampires all in the same movie? Where do I sign? Oddly enough, this does turn out to be a slightly better picture than it sounds like it would be. The plot is an odd rework of J.M. Barrie’s famous children’s tale, with Peter Pan replaced by vampires who offer the gift of eternal youth to a disaffected teen. Sadly, it falls into one of the classic vampire movie traps: centering way too much of the action on the Vampire Rules, or what will and won’t kill or at least reveal the presence of a member of the undead. That aside, goth teens ought to get a real kick out of this movie, and even those who aren’t quite so devoted to the whole vampire thing may get at least a small bit of fun from this outing. Mildly amusing

Review – Stigmata

The Catholic Church hasn’t taken it this hard from a horror movie since The Exorcist. Actually, this one may be even worse, inasmuch as the plot revolves around a Vatican conspiracy to suppress the secret writings of Jesus. Caught up in the drama is a woman (Patricia Arquette, in her first horror movie in awhile) who has ecstatic visions and suffers from the title phenomena. In the end this film’s a little hard to pigeon-hole, falling somewhere between conspiracy thriller and theology-intensive horror flick. Whatever it is, it offers up a few interesting visuals (including some minor-league gore) and just enough plot to keep it moving until the end. Mildly amusing

Review – Eye of the Beholder

One thing you can say for most thrillers is that they’re a fairly straightforward lot. Sure, they’ll include all kinds of nonsensical plot twists and obscure character motivations in a usually lame attempt to keep the audience guessing. But at least they decide where they’re going and almost always get there eventually. This thriller, on the other hand, never quite seems to make up its mind. Is it an erotic murder mystery? Is it a stalker movie? Heck, by the end it almost seems to be turning into a relationship picture with a hearty dose of caper thrown in for good measure. Even the motives of the monomaniacal-man-obsessed-with-beautiful-woman are at best a little hazy and at worst downright obscure. Maybe it could have passed itself off as a dark comedy if it had contained even the slightest hint of a sense of humor. As it was, the characters were too ill-defined and the plot not sufficiently interesting to keep the movie moving. See if desperate

Review – Total Recall

“I want to be somebody. I want to go to Mars.” Who would ever have thought that an old Phillip K. Dick story could be turned into a goofy action flick starring Arnold Schwarzenegger? Well, here it is. Some of the effects are sort of interesting (though a lot of it is pretty cheap stuff), but otherwise this is strictly a matter of get-what-you-pay-for: bewildering multiple realities courtesy of the late Mr. Dick, and wooden one-liners and massive slaughter courtesy of Arnold. Mildly amusing

Review – American Psycho

Stay away from me. Here’s a faithfully empty-headed cinematic retelling of Bret Easton Ellis’ tale of a yuppie driven to ultra-violence by 80s excess and ennui. Snore. I guess this is supposed to be Rand-ism taken to its unseemly nth degree. But if most irony falls flat because it requires viewers to be able to hold two ideas in their heads at once, then this feeble offering flops because it requires the audience to hold no ideas in their heads for the 90-some-minute running time. References to cultural background material ranging from Dostoevsky to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre likewise fail to impress. The production is slick, but the acting is wooden (though I concede this approach is at least appropriate to the plot). And though I think women should get more jobs directing mainstream Hollywood movies, this time around it just reeked of see-it-isn’t-anti-feminist-backlash-because-a-woman-directed-it, or at the very least couldn’t-get-anyone-else-to-touch-this-leper-of-a-movie-with-a-ten-foot-pole. See if desperate

Review – Dark Carnival

Dork Carnival is more like it. I hope this was somebody’s film school project, and furthermore I hope they flunked. Everything about this production is stupid. The haunted-house-that’s-really-haunted plot is as trite as it is uninteresting, the script is wretched, the acting is amateurish at best, but the terrible production values really take the cake. It’s like the filmmakers deliberately sought the most awkward cuts and uninspiring camera angles. My favorite actor was the kid who plays a haunted house character who sacrifices a victim to “mighty Isis,” only she has such a thick accent that she chants “mawty awsis.” Sometimes movies this bad make it all the way to the so-bad-they’re-good category, but this flop can’t even pull off that dubious distinction. Wish I’d skipped it