Review – The Station Agent

I think this was the sort of movie my grandfather was expecting when he went to see Trainspotting. This is the blissfully understated story of Fin, a little person who moves into an abandoned train station in the wilds of New Jersey. The move appears to be prompted half by necessity – he has no job after his employer dies – and half from a desire to get away from a city full of people who stare at him and/or mock him. However, his quest for solitude is soon disrupted by a cast of quirky characters thrust by circumstance into his life. This isn’t exactly Local Hero, but the production has more than a little of the same feel to it. Toward the end it gets a little plot-heavy as the characters become emotionally involved with one another. But that aside, this is an excellent example of quiet yet compelling moviemaking. Worth seeing

Review – Dawn of the Mummy

This might have been a better movie if it had been made 20 years later. Well okay, it probably still would have been cheap horror exploitation garbage, but at least the folks who made it would have had more liberty to include the sex and gore they seem so desperately to want but were probably prohibited by 1981 mores from including in their production. The story starts off as a standard mummy tale, with fashion models added into the cadre of crass English-speakers disturbing the mummy’s tomb. But by the end this has disintegrated into a cheap rip of the zombie movies implied by the syntax of the title. See if desperate

Review – Hellboy

This was actually a little better than I thought it was going to be. I liked the Lovecraftian stuff, even though it was a side element rather than a key part of the plot. Beyond that this is a pleasant mix of comic book action, horror and comedy. Our hero is a demon raised to be a quirky champion of good and slayer of monsters. He doesn’t play by the rules. He has trouble with a woman he really likes. He cares for stray cats. And so on. Despite the vague feeling that this movie was trying to be too many things at once, I thought it flowed reasonably well, staying interesting throughout with an even mix of character development and effects-intensive action movies. However, those who harbor a prejudice against the whole comic book thing might well have a lower opinion of this outing, which is a shame because otherwise this is a fine production. Mildly amusing

Review – Keeper of Souls

Okay, now it’s official. For the record I hereby swear off horror movies with the word “keeper” in the title. Of all the pictures in this accidental sub-genre this was the worst, and that’s saying something. It isn’t just sloppy and amateurish. At points it was actually like scenes were actually missing. I know sometimes Hollywood Videos rents stuff that’s been butchered for the suburban market, but this was missing basic transitional material rather than just the gory and/or racy bits. The opening titles – probably the most expensive part of the whole movie – explain that the story has something to do with a “dark man” who vanished from Salem after the witch trials and resurfaced in the South sometime later. Not a bad premise, but the movie that follows this brief intro is just too poorly crafted to take advantage of the push it started with. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – The Bourne Supremacy

They must have heard me griping last time that the plot was too much of a cookie-cutter spy yarn. Now the pendulum swings to the other extreme, and the second one barely has a plot at all. Needless to say, that’s even more fatal to an espionage thriller than the formulaic route. Matt Damon returns as Jason Bourne, dragged out of amnesiac retirement when the j-random forces of darkness kill his significant other and frame him for a hit on a couple of CIA agents. While this might seem like the set-up for an old-fashioned, linear revenge tale, instead it becomes a meandering game of cat-and-mouse in which Bourne and his former taskmasters swap the feline and rodent roles back and forth. A good revenge flick should leave audiences with the word “dude!” on their lips, but this one merely left me with a “huh? so that’s the end?” Oh, and this thing has a car chase that went on so long that the audience was actually laughing by the end of it. See if desperate

Review – The Gold Rush

There are three Chaplin movies that nobody should die without seeing. Though this one lacks the technical sophistication of Modern Times and most of the emotional content of City Lights, Chaplin’s comic genius is nonetheless at its height here. The roll dance scene alone makes the whole thing worthwhile (even if it was “borrowed” from Fatty Arbuckle), and the rest of the movie is just about on par. One of the versions of this classic includes running commentary by the man himself, but his ham-handed monologue damages the production far more than it helps. Buy the tape

Review – The Day of the Jackal

Ah, whatever happened to the days when they made international thrillers like this? The production isn’t especially slick by later standards; indeed, the extensive use of hand-held cameras give it an almost documentary feel in places. But the plot is tight and the story keeps moving. The most striking thing about the story is that – particularly by the end – it’s hard to know whom to cheer for: the assassin whose exploits we’ve been following for a couple of hours or the police official who’s trying to prevent him from killing Charles de Gaulle. Though this isn’t precisely a Cold War drama, it still has that intriguing 70’s era look and feel to it. Genre fans shouldn’t miss this one. Worth seeing