Review – Jack Frost

Jack shit, a two-word description for the script, the acting, the effects and just about everything else to do with this dreadful ordeal of a movie. The title character is a psycho-killer who is on the way to his own execution when he’s exposed to some sort of nonsense chemical that turns him into a giant, homicidal snowman. Really. No kidding. Actually, kidding is just about all this movie seems to want to do. The characters are constantly spouting lines that would embarrass even the great Freddy Krueger himself. The plot also sports more false endings than Brazil, ultimately tending to suggest that this is nothing more than a cheap, stupid parody of cheap, stupid slasher movies. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Dracula 2000

Just about the nicest thing I can say about this one is that at the folks in marketing were kind enough to build the year into the title, thus saving me from the need to date it in parentheses. Otherwise this umpty-millionth Prince of Darkness reheat is silly and boring in approximately equal measure, with both qualities making for a predictable but not especially good horror movie. In fact, the only thing that wasn’t predictable was that the movie features only the bare minimum allotment of nudity and gore to earn an “R” rating. Usually if you’re going so light on the script and acting, you’ve gotta build some cheap thrills in. Oh, and it turns out Dracula is actually merely an alter-ego for another historical baddie, whose name I’ll omit just in case anyone’s actually foolish enough to rent this stinker. I wouldn’t want you to lose the only surprise twist in the whole 90-minute mess. See if desperate

Review – I, Zombie

“Fangoria presents” because probably nobody else would be willing to touch it. Though I’m usually a big fan of zombie movies – especially the low budget variety – this one is far too sentimental for my tastes. The plot revolves around an English guy who gets bitten by a zombie and ends up with an overpowering craving for human flesh. Needless to say, this forces a bit of a lifestyle change on him, compelling him to abandon his girlfriend and take to killing and eating whomever he can get his hands on. And to make matters worse, his dead-but-still-ambulatory body begins to rot away. Some of the gore is sort of fun, but the gross-outs are interrupted far too often by uninteresting, soul-searching monologues, dream sequences, extended convulsions and other unwelcome distractions. The result plays out like a Romero-ized retelling of The Metamorphosis. Final capper: decomposing zombie masturbation with sickly comic result. See if desperate

Review – Brokedown Palace

They should have called this one Midnight Express 2: The Women. Though it lacks most of the brutality and honesty of the original, the parallels between the two (young Americans accused of smuggling drugs and imprisoned by evil, oppressive foreign regimes) are inescapable. Though I have no particular yen to see torment inflicted on either Clare Daines or Kate Beckinsale, I wish this had been followed a bit more closely in its predecessor’s footsteps and more honestly portrayed conditions in Thai jails. Instead about the worst that can be said about the “inhuman conditions” are that the hairdos are bad and the food isn’t the tastiest. So the whole experience is more of a mild bummer than a genuine injustice. On the other hand, my hat’s off to the filmmakers for having the courage to leave the question of guilt (or even the exact nature of the crime) ambiguous throughout. Mildly amusing

Review – Dracula (1979)

The setting may be turn-of-the-century England, but the plot, characters, and even some of the costumes are pure disco. Frank Langella stars as a smarmy, big-haired version of the infamous count, hamming it up in a performance that ranges between campy and grating. The story is Stoker’s, only it seems to have been run through a blender so the original characters play different parts in this tale and the original settings provide backdrops for all the wrong scenes. And to cap it all off, the effects are genuinely wretched. For example, Drac’s seduction of Lucy is accompanied by disco lighting so awful even ABBA would have been embarrassed by it. Maybe big vampire fans might enjoy this more than I did, but just about everyone else can probably regard this as little more than a historical curiosity. See if desperate

Review – Bring It On

A cheerleader movie? Well, at least I didn’t go into this with real high expectations. Thus I can’t honestly say I was disappointed when it turned out to be an empty-headed, teenage exploration of issues ranging from artistic integrity to race relations. Kirsten Dunst stars as a newly-elected cheerleading squad leader who faces no end of problems with boyfriends, parents, rivals, the usual collection of adolescent woes. If you’re of an age appropriate for this kind of thing, then you may well enjoy it immensely. Otherwise it’s sort of hard to find any redeeming value among the clichés and melodrama. See if desperate

Review – Bridget Jones's Diary

As romcoms go, this one’s not half bad. Despite criticism largely from the British press (who apparently didn’t like the idea of an American woman playing an English character), Renee Zellweger does a superb job as the slightly-overweight heroine of this tale of a thirty-something woman’s search for happiness via a fulfilling relationship with a man. And yes, it should be noted for the record that the plot of the movie diverged from the story told by the popular source novel, giving it a less realistic and more man-centered (though presumably happier) ending. That aside, however, the script is well-written, the dialogue clever, the characters compelling, and the film-making polished. I’m not famous for liking movies of this particular ilk, so perhaps it was just that I was in the right mood in the right place at the right time. Whatever factors were to blame, I really did get a kick out of this. Worth seeing