Review – The House Where Evil Dwells

Okay, help me with a geometry problem. This story starts in 1870 in Japan, as a woman has sex with her lover. Suddenly her enraged husband interrupts them, kills them both and commits suicide. Because the woman is “romantically linked” to both men, we traditionally call this a “love triangle.” But if it’s a triangle, wouldn’t the two guys have to be doing it with each other too? Otherwise wouldn’t it just be a “love angle”? High school math problems aside, this is The Amityville Horror relocated to the Land of the Rising Sun. A couple and their kid move into the house haunted by the vengeful ghosts of the trio from the intro. The story isn’t bad to begin with, but the more it drags on the dumber it gets. At least the Lutzes moved out after they figured out they were sharing digs with evil spirits. This pair and the male friend who completes the geometry stay put until the bitter end. Mildly amusing

Review – The Missiles of October

The title – a twist on The Guns of August – clearly identifies this as a tale of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The production appears to be a shot-on-video recording of what was probably originally a stage production, so it’s nowhere near as slick as Thirteen Days. On the other hand, it’s fun to watch a parade of actors who went on to play creepy government types in other shows. William Devane plays JFK, with an accent-slipping Martin Sheen backing him up as Bobby. Though this doesn’t add anything particularly new or interesting to the world of Missile Crisis cinema, it’s a reasonably entertaining telling of the tale. Mildly amusing

Review – Pier 5, Havana

This movie has one interesting thing going: it was made in 1959, after Castro’s revolution succeeded but before the United States decided he had to go. As a result, the bad guys in this tale of intrigue are pro-Batista terrorists. But other than its status as a historical curiosity, there isn’t much to this. It’s a stale bit of hardboiled drama about a tough-as-nails guy trying to track down a missing friend. It has all the genre clichés, right down to the tough-as-nails love interest (and you’d have to be tough as nails to put up with having your boobs crammed into bras as ridiculous as the ones this poor actor had to wear). At least it was short. See if desperate

Review – Show Business

I’ll admit to a curiosity about what goes into a Broadway show, so perhaps I found this documentary more interesting than some viewers would. I also liked it because it covered a wide range of elements, starting with the beginning of an idea for a new musical and then going through the various steps required to turn a concept into a production. It has some rehearsal footage, sure, but it also shows planning meetings, schmooze sessions with critics, and many other details one wouldn’t think about when watching a show. The picture focuses on four productions – a predictable success (Wicked), an unpredicted success (Avenue Q), a play designed for critical acclaim (Caroline, or Change) and an almost instant flop (Taboo) – providing a range of perspectives on the experience. I would have liked this slightly better if they had included some non-musical shows as well. However, even just the musicals are interesting stuff. Mildly amusing

Review – Dead Man Walking

Sister Helen Prejean’s book about her experiences with death row inmates gets Hollywoodized reasonably successfully. Susan Sarandon plays Prejean, and Sean Penn sits on the other side of the metal screen from her, playing a combination of the two prisoners described in the book. I figured with all the California liberals involved in the production – particularly Tim Robbins in the director’s chair – that this would turn out to be an empty-headed attack on capital punishment. So I was pleasantly surprised to find the other side of the story – particularly the suffering of the victims’ families – given a reasonable amount of screen time. Indeed, the end – intercutting the execution by lethal injection with flashbacks to the original crime – was morally ambiguous, feeding the “see how wrong killing is in both circumstances” and the “see how just the punishment is for such a brutal crime” positions with equal fire. I don’t think I would have bestowed as many awards on this as it got, but I thought it was a reasonably good movie. Mildly amusing

Review – Undead or Alive

A zombie movie. A western. A comedy. Any two of those elements might have been successfully combined (zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead, western comedy Blazing Saddles, although the world may need to wait awhile longer for a good zombie western). But all three? This thing never stood a chance. Chris Kattan plays a dorky tenderfoot who joins up with a ne’er-do-well and a Native American woman to battle a plague of zombies produced by “Geronimo’s Curse.” The concept isn’t automatically doomed, but it needed a smarter script to pull it off. This plays like a mildly gory Halloween episode of F-Troop. See if desperate

Review – The Objective

Like The Last Winter, this is an indie horror picture that does a reasonably good job of taking itself seriously. Unlike Winter, however, this one lacks interesting characters as well as an overall raison d’être. A CIA operative leads a squad of mercenaries into the hills of Afghanistan in search of a dark, supernatural force. What they find – after considerable go-nowhere meandering – is a smidge too Close Encounter-y, but it does pack enough understated menace to keep things interesting. Mildly amusing