Review – The Eternal

I’ll bet in Hell this movie really is eternal. I’ll bet it loops over and over and over again and all the souls in torment have to watch it forever and ever. At least that must add a welcome taste of ennui to what otherwise would merely be a flavorless diet of red hot coals, pokers and oil. On our earthly plane of existence, this is little more than a boring bit of crap that has something to do with a Druid priestess resurrected by the proximity of a relative, a recovering alcoholic who’s brought her family to the auld country for a visit. Christopher Walken shows up just long enough to drop off his performance; I guess he must have been in the neighborhood and figured stopping by would just as fast as phoning it in. I can’t say that I blame him. The script is terrible, the production values nearly valueless, and the acting scarcely redeeming. Mummy fans be further warned: the box said something about a mummy in this movie, but aside from a desiccated peat bog corpse this sucker’s pretty much mummy-free. See if desperate

Review – The Virgin Suicides

Francis Ford Coppola’s daughter takes the helm of this odd little movie about the fragility and inscrutability of adolescent girls. To her credit, Sofia Coppola is at least a little better as a writer/director than she was as an actor. After the youngest daughter of five in a family with unusually strict codes of behavior commits suicide, the remaining four girls (headed by Kirsten Dunst) try to achieve some sense of normalcy. Torn between their strict parents, social pressure and their own desires, all four eventually follow their sister’s lead. Though this isn’t a bad film, a lot of the plot twists and character developments that must have been intended to be “enigmatic” turn out neither clever nor amusing enough to merit the title. Perhaps current and former female teens will have a different take on this than I did, but I found it somewhat diverting but little more. Mildly amusing

Review – Graveyard Shift

Hollywood serves up a low-budget version of Stephen King’s working-class reheat of H.P. Lovecraft’s “Rats in the Walls.” The basic premise (old factory infested by rats and their giant, mutant relatives) has potential, but here the execution leaves a bit to be desired. For openers, the production’s a bit light in the talent department. The biggest name in the whole thing is Brad Dourif, who plays a supporting role as a psychotic exterminator. Our protagonist is played by David Andrews, an actor whose emotional range seems to be limited to a glower of consternation. Or is it constipation? It’s hard to tell. And I guess it probably goes without saying that the tale is a little hard on the rodents, bumping off everything from the cute little pet store critters that are supposed to pass for vermin right up to the giant, fakey-looking rubber rat-bat thing. See if desperate

Review – Grass

Here’s another documentary along Atomic Cafe lines, only this time around the subject is pot rather than bombs. The history is less show and more tell than Cafe, particularly during the narration supplied by Woody Harrelson. Further, there’s no question at all about the position being advocated by the film-makers, though the strongly pro-hemp stance of the narration is for the most part comfortable counterpart to the rabidly anti-hemp archival footage. The result is both entertaining and informative, even if it isn’t groundbreaking cinema. Worth seeing

Review – Children of the Living Dead

This starts out as something along the lines of the Dead trilogy, though the closest George Romero gets to this one is the brief before-and-behind-the-camera appearance of Tom Savini. However, once the prologue plays itself out, the plot takes a turn for the worse. By the time the film-makers have crammed a walking dead, serial-killing religious fanatic in with a group of teens who become some sort of flesh-eating, zombie Manson cult, the whole thing starts to seem like a horror movie Manhattan Project striving to reach critical cliché mass. Further, the technical quality (especially the editing) reek of recent film school grad. So if these guys can get money to make crap like this, whatever happened to Romero himself. Come back, George! The next generation is depending on you to save it from schlock like this. See if desperate

Review – Summer Catch

The promo copy on the box insisted that this outing would prove reminiscent of Bull Durham. But honestly, the only two movies brought to mind by this cliché-fest are Dirty Dancing and Porky’s. There’s some minor league baseball stuff in here someplace (a stale tale of a poor boy shooting for a spot in the majors while falling in love with a rich girl), but for the most part the sports angle is just frosting on a cake made mostly of bad teen movie conventions. Perhaps this might have been a better work in the hands of a better screenwriter or at least some competent actors. As things turned out, however, the occasional jokes that work are too few and way too far between to justify sitting through the production as a whole. See if desperate

Review – Primal Rage

It came from the ’80s! And I mean the deep, deep ’80s. Mall hair. Mopeds. Flashdance-esque music. Characters named Debbie. Buried somewhere under all this is a mad scientist plot involving crusading student journalists, animal research, and the accidental release of some kind of infection or whatnot that turns placid college students into rampaging lunatics. So when the already-unstable frat boys get a good dose of it, look out! The concept’s interesting enough, but the script is so bad and production values so low that it ends up playing out as just another crappy slasher movie. Mildly amusing