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442,366 | 819,382 | 124,102 | 1 | Why don't they button their lips ? | It may be that enjoying this movie requires a couple of conditions be met . One is that you really ought to be young . So young that " hip hop " means a lot to you . Enough so that you're willing to sit through excerpts of it . You must be young enough too so that torture and death are things that only happen in the movies . It probably helps a lot if , despite your age , you're jaded , having passed straight from innocence into decadence without spending much time in maturity . I don't mean that as a particular insult . Probably a lot of sharp young viewers will get a kick out of seeing this - - this - - THING . But I do mean " jaded , " in the sense that they've already sat through so many slasher movies filled with axes through skulls and severed limbs and whatnot that satiation has driven them into what the movie refers to as " body art " . Plus the bloodying and suffering of teenage girls with too much trust . Actually , a study has been done on older people making advances towards kids under the age of 17 on the internet and found it practically nonexistent . ( Most of the advances were made by women , probably professionals , towards teenage boys . There's a shocker for you . ) Statistically , there isn't much to worry about , Moms and Dads . After seeing one or two other movies about " internet predators " and reading reviews claiming there were " thousands of them out there , " I began to get curious . The typical scenario has some middle-aged creep posing as just another youth in a teen chat room . I had some doubts that any middle-aged man could sit through more than ten minutes of what I expected to be going on in teen chats . So I logged into a couple of teen chat rooms to see what it was like . It really wasn't that bad . I was prepared to have to deal with stichomythic exchanges along the lines of , " chris farrel ROCKS but JLO sux . " " no she don't shes got great azz . " " drink koolaid N stfu . " But it was all fairly straightforward , I thought . I was mainly impressed by the imaginative use of fonts of varying colors , sizes , and designs . Lots of emoticons too . Other than that , and the fact that nothing of substance was brought up , it didn't look that different from an adult chat room on , say , biology . I wanted to try posing as just another high schooler , just to see if anybody could get away with it for very long . ( I have to mention I've taught sociology and these sorts of things interest me . ) I couldn't bring myself to do it , though . So I revealed my true persona and purpose and asked if anyone had had any unwelcome advances from older men or had exposed imposters using a false cyber identity . Most of the chatters ignored me but there were a couple of polite " No " s , before the chatters turned back to the task at hand , which was beyond my ability to discern . Let's call it " phatic communication , " not much more than assurance that the channels of communication are still open . Where was I ? Yes , that's right . Thank you . The movie sux . |
442,224 | 819,382 | 858,437 | 1 | Ugly Movie . | The title tells it all - - Ed Gein , the butcher of Plainfield . It's not a zappy action-filled slasher movie made for teens high on energy drinks . That would fit it into a well-established genre , the kind that some people find entertaining , something along the lines of " Halloween " or " The Texas Chain Saw Massacre " . This is dark , slow , filled with chopped-up corpses , and quietly evil . There are few shock cuts , no monster's point-of-view shots , no loud electronic score . I don't know who it's aimed at - - ghouls , maybe . Beneath the credits we already see still photos of skulls , carcasses hung up , skins draped across the backs of chairs , that sort of thing . And they're sufficiently revolting that I couldn't help thinking this movie had better be pretty good to make up for this Grand Guignol opening . Alas , it's not . The acting is uniformly terrible , as in a high school play . The script does its best to sink below vulgarity . Ed Gein , who killed only two middle-aged women and maybe his brother , chases a screaming , bloody young woman through the Woodland of Weir , and she's wearing only a modern bra and bikini , rather than period underwear . Gein also decapitates a night watchman , which he never did in any historical sense . The direction ? You could do a better job . In the first few minutes , law officers discover an abandoned car with blood spattered all over the windshield . There is no body . The handsome young deputy sheriff turns to his boss and suggests they search for the victim , who may still be in the vicinity and living . The sheriff , lacking any motivation , shouts at him , " Now you just FORGET that ! I don't want you going off HALF COCKED on anything ! " It should be no more than a business-like exchange of views . Why does the director have the sheriff so angry ? Characters of diverse sorts listen to radio programs or records that play old jazzy pop songs - - Louis Armstrong's " Ain't Misbehaving , " for instance . This is - - what - - rural WISCONSIN in the 1950s ? And the characters insist on music that would appeal to customers of the Cotton Club in Harlem in the 30s , or New York intellectuals like Woody Allen . Nope . The radio would be playing Kitty Kallen's " Wheel of Fortune " or Theresa Brewer or , equally likely , Lefty Frizell . Not that the dysfunction between the music and the events adds anything to our understanding of what's going on beneath the images . Someone involved in the production just liked old jazzy pop songs , that's all . Of course there's only so much you can do with a low budget , but it can be light years ahead of this butchery . See " Ed Gein , " with Steven Railsback for an example of a much more sophisticated way of dealing with this lunatic and his penchant for dead bodies , and on a budget that couldn't have exceeded this one by much . These comments are all based on the first twenty minutes of the movie . That's about as far as I could get . If anyone finds this tale to be well-executed and fascinating in any way , he should try to find some insight into his tastes . It's beneath mine - - and I consider myself pretty warped . |
442,285 | 819,382 | 58,606 | 1 | Pathetic , utterly . | It would take a ton and a half of psychedelic mushrooms to get past this thing . I frankly admire - - no , I mean it ! - - anyone who can get through it . It takes will power and self discipline of an almost supernal quality . Boy , does this stink . By this time in his life poor Lon Chaney was a hopeless lush . Mantan Moreland , an icon of 40s cinema , has about five minutes before he's turned into mincemeat . The rest of the cast are , let's say , best forgotten . Except maybe for the teenager who plays Virginia , the worst of the Merry Cuisineart family , who has a certain je ne sais quois . Look . I wouldn't even be reviewing this except that my brother , a viewer whose tastes run even below my own , had recorded it and we were both looking forward to seeing a movie so bad that it was enjoyable . He switched it off . Q . E . D . Meaning quod erat demonstrandum , that which was to be demonstrated . It was too low even for his taste . Boy , is it sad . |
442,206 | 819,382 | 439,709 | 1 | Who Is The Intended Audience ? | I couldn't get past the first twenty minutes of this blurry , black-and-white , overdone spoof of wartime matinée thrillers . The Nazis , having captured an American flier , put him through experiments involving bee venom . It backfires and he escapes to become " Yellowjacket , " scourge of Nazi spies , saboteurs , slobs , and pederasts back in the good old U . S . of A . Everything about the movie is shoddy and cheap . I know it's supposed to be like that because this is a " spoof " , right ? But it wasn't funny . It was impossible to get caught up in the comic-book story . I cared for none of the characters played by deliberately incompetent actors . A painful thing to watch , though not , I suppose , as bad as being an experimental subject in a study of bee venom . It looks as if it might have been a lot of fun to make , but the fun ended for me when the production wrapped . If you find this sort of thing amusing , then rent it or buy it . But whatever virtues the film might have , got past me entirely . Think twice . |
442,892 | 819,382 | 369,360 | 1 | Ego trip . | Sometimes TV movies seem to do a first-rate job of dealing with social problems . " And the Band Played On " comes to mind , along with others . But this isn't a very good example . AIDS is undeniably there , as is child abuse , while internet predators are problematic . The movie is not badly done . Potts has a winsome hapless face , with over-sized semi-frightened eyes , like a deer caught in the headlights . She's by no means Hollywood gorgeous . I enjoyed her performance . It's the only one that stands out . I'm not sure I believed the script in its entirety . Some of the incidents read too much like submissions to Screenplays 101 . Ms . Posey is wandering through a fairground and putting herself in danger for the sake of justice , wired for sound , with cops listening all over the place as she is drawn into the shadows by an internet predator . A pedestrian bumps into her and jars the microphone loose so it falls to the ground . She then walks out of the fairground not realizing she's trailing a loose wire and is talking to herself . Maybe it happened . Maybe it ALL happened or maybe just some of it happened . It's not a badly done TV movie but it's irritating because the movie seems so determined to whip us into a rage and justify it by such cheap means . One of the problems with using internet predators as villains in the movies - - and there have been several like this - - is that there is so little scientific evidence that they exist . No amount of evidence , or the lack of it , is likely to change the minds of people who are convinced that they are a major social problem . Too bad . The paucity of internet predators ought to ease our anxiety , but somehow we can't seem to do without them . |
442,072 | 819,382 | 404,456 | 1 | Beyond Description | There is a fine movie about the serial murderer Charlie Starkweather and his hostage / girl friend Karil Ann Fugate out there . Its title is " Badlands . " There is also a very good TV movie on the subject , starring Tim Roth . This thing is so bad that no words can describe it . Everything about it is less than poor . It's not just the low budget . With imagination and talent that kind of obstacle can be overcome - - " Mean Streets " , " The Honeymoon Killers , " " The Littlest Fugitive , " " The Savage Eye , " " Detour . " But this abortion lacks not just money but everything . The acting , or rather its absence . Not only isn't there a decent performance from anyone in the cast . Some are so bad that I've seen better in high school productions of " Our Town . " The sheriff is probably the worst , but they're all bad . The editing . Continuing with the sheriff's disarticulation , please note what happens on the screen when he has a line . ( " A line " because he reads them as if they didn't come in packages . ) The camera shows us the sheriff's grim and uninteresting face . Seconds pass . Finally he speaks . " If they want to go out in a blaze o ' glory , this is their chance . " The camera lingers for a few seconds more on his face although he has nothing more to say and the muscles of his face remain marmoreal . After a few scenes like this the effect on the viewer is that of a hypnotic drug - - and not even a good HIGH first , but a precipitate drop in consciousness of the sort you get from chloral hydrate . The direction . Abominable . Nobody can hold a gun still . It must be jerked around or waved from side to side , or jabbed as if shoveling dirt . Even when a lawman takes a bead on a window he waves his rifle as if it were a magician's wand . Location : Not Nebraska farmland but clearly the Mojave Desert in California . I can't go on with this , really . I hate to dump on people and this is no fun . It's more embarrassing than anything else . Reminds me of a professor who once told us that when we wrote our term papers we should do our very best . Then he paused for a moment and mused out loud , " What if you did your very best and it turned out pedestrian ? " Okay . Fair and balanced , right ? There are two valuable things in this movie . There are some nice shots of vintage 1940s and 1950s cars , though sometimes mislabeled . And this film would serve as a very good bad example in any film school . |
441,745 | 819,382 | 104,236 | 1 | Poor Me | Shelley Long is a delight to watch , with that oddly appealing Midwestern freshness , and Helen Shaver is reliable , as always . Neither of them can salvage this movie . It's just plain awful . It's based on a true story , also available in a fat true-crime paperback , " Once Upon a Memory , " mainly dealing with the " recovered memory " of Eileen Franklin after 20 years of amnesia , of witnessing her father , a thorough-going no good drunken bum , rape and murder Eileen's 8-year-old friend on a road near Foster City , California . He'd been abusing his two daughters for years . The case raises a host of interesting questions . Eileen's " memory " comes to her as a shock in her late 20s , two decades after the murder . At the urging of her husband , who could probably foresee the TV movie , she contacts the police . They track down her father , now living in humble circumstances in Sacramento , and arrest him , convict him , and send him to the slams with a life sentence . The movie never touches on the questions it raises in the viewer's mind . It presents the story through the eyes of poor Eileen who , throughout , is shown as victimized and filled with anguish and conflict . How can she bring herself to testify to this horrible incident in open court ? Can she send her father away for life , and alienate her siblings ? It never asks questions like " when is a memory not a memory " ? It doesn't bring up the fact that Eileen's story changed to accommodate itself to the facts as she became aware of them from talking to others and generally researching her case . The errors in her original memory were gradually corrected . ( Initially she " remembered " the sun behind her father's head as he lifted the rock to smash little Suzie's head . When it was pointed out to her that at that time of day , the sun couldn't have been positioned as she claimed , the sun simply changed position . Initially she described her father's silhouette as having rainbow-like bars radiating from it . When a classic psychedelic poster of Bob Dylan with bars around his head was discovered tacked to her bedroom wall , the rainbow disappeared from her " memory . " ) I don't doubt the real Eileen Franklin's sincerity . In interviews she has seemed as puzzled as anyone else and responds to doubtful queries with a by-now well-practiced stock answer : " If these things didn't happen , then where do these memories come from " ? Of course , no one knows , any more than they did in Salem in 1693 . The movie doesn't mention that part of her " memory " was recovered while she was in a hypnotic trance , which always helps . As a psychologist I once hypnotized a client who described in the minutest detail how he heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor . He was only a few years old and coming downstairs to breakfast in his Pennsylvania home that morning . Only the " memory " revealed itself as a fabrication to please the therapist , beginning with the fact that it was early afternoon Pennsylvania-time . This is a genuinely bad film . Eileen ruins her father , who is described as a " pervert " because a search of his room turns up some pornography , and embarrasses everyone , while her friends pet her and cosset her . Poor me . Her early career in prostitution is brushed over as a cliched attempt to exercise some control over her hapless life . This movie was shot in 1991 . It was probably the last gasp of the recovered memory hysteria . I wonder how many other innocent lives were ruined , how many perverts like Mr . Franklin wound up with 30-year-sentences , how many preschools raided and closed , how many Satanists finally put away , and all because we don't want to be " a culture that doesn't trust our children . " Well , I for one wouldn't stake my life on their telling the truth all the time . Or adults either , for that matter . The main problem with the film is that it isn't Eileen Franklin who should be pitied . It's just about anyone who came in contact with her . |
442,423 | 819,382 | 163,983 | 1 | Meretritious Garbage . | Unbearable schlock . Kim Basinger adopts her sister's child , a little girl who turns out to be the Second Coming or something . Jimmy Smits is the FBI investigator called in on the case when the girl is kidnapped by Rufus Sewell and his gang of thugs . They run an outfit called The New Dawn . It poses as a self-help program but is really a Satanist church . It's all mechanically slapped together with multiple borrowings from " The Exorcist " and " Omen " and their devolved descendants . Everything is predictable except that which is completely arbitrary . Hordes of skinless rats come and go without explanation . Angels appear as fuzzy balls of white light . Gargoyles sometimes fill the sky . Sometimes not . The performances by some of the talent are okay . Basinger doesn't do badly , for instance . But nothing could save this piece of unspeakable crap . Rufus Sewell , as the Satanist-in-Chief , has these goggle eyes . He's so exopthalmic that the whites completely surround the irises . And if he blinks even once during the entire film , I must have missed it because I was blinking at the same time . It's not worth going on about . How do the kids put it ? Oh , yes . " It sux . " |
441,895 | 819,382 | 118,571 | 2 | Breathtaking compendium of clichés | The plane is damaged , one of his engines is out , and he's leaking fuel . How can he make it ? Something like that anyway . The clichés came so thick and fast I couldn't remember them all . I couldn't even GRASP them all quickly enough , piled as they were , one atop the other , like a pile of Leggos . I don't really think it's necessary to bother with the script except to say a rogue group of Russians hijacks Air Force One , is overcome by the President of the United States , and most of the good guys are saved and all of the bad guys perish , usually in some colorful fashion . Wolfgang Petersen made a gripping movie with " Das Boot . " It was a long flick of mostly quiet moments , a leisurely examination of life aboard a U-Boat , punctuated with shocking moments of action . In " Air Force One " Petersen's talents have been - - dare I say " hijacked " by Hollywood ? There is no leisurely examination of anything . There is neither leisure nor examination . All the parts that might bore a twelve-year-old weaned on Call of Duty have been cut out of the script and nothing is left but one recycled action scene after another , some of them already parodied in " Airplane " , backed up by a booming score . Here's an indication of how the movie was assembled , the kind of thought that went into it . When it was released there appeared an article in the NY Times written by an actor ( whose name I now forget ) playing one of the characters ( whose name I don't know ) in innocent conversation with Harrison Ford as the President , when shots are heard from elsewhere in Air Force One as the takeover starts . As the actor described the first run-through , at the sound of the gunshots , he rose to his feet and sauntered over to the window to find out what was up . He was told he'd have to jump to his feet and run to the door . " Why ? " he asked . " The Secret Service is aboard , there are security agents all over . Nobody could possibly be expecting an armed attack . A normal reaction would be to try to find out what the noise was . " He was told by the director that everyone in the scene would immediately recognize the gunshots for exactly what they were . Ford , a seasoned veteran of such attacks , told the actor tiredly , " They're gunshots , period . " Why waste three or four flaccid seconds having the actor stroll to the door ? That kind of dedication and efficiency is in evidence throughout " Air Force One . " Bang , bang , whoosh , zap . The President , by the way , is practically superhuman . He speaks Russian albeit with a gloopi American accent . He cuts his bound wrists free and immediately disarms and kills two or three of his captors . I lost count . Well , okay , he was a CMH winner . But then how did he learn to fly a jumbo jet ? Never mind . A more interesting question is how did they pick the villains ? Kazakhistan rebels ? A rogue group of Russians ? This is rather retro stuff because absolutely nobody watching the movie knows or cares about Kazakhistan or its internal affairs . The simple fact is that viewers will see and hear the heavies speaking Russian and that will be enough for them . ( I forget when " Crimson Tide " was released , using the same ploy . It's the Russkies again alright , only a splinter group . ) The faces of American fighter pilots are illuminated by a comforting pale off-white light , while their opposite numbers are as green as algae . To top it off , the Russian Premier looks like Jonathan Winters coming down from battery acid while our President looks exactly like Harrison Ford . And if you STILL don't get the point , the Kazakhhomaniac rebels sing a rousing version of " Die Internazionale . " Nowadays , of course , nine years later , they'd all be speaking Arabic . The movie offers some fascinating tidbits in addition to its knuckle-whitening suspense . The set representing the interior of Air Force One , for instance . It's full of nooks and crannies and it seems about the size of the Dixie Hotel . Functional furniture , but comfortable and expensive . Soundproof , bulletproof , insulated against an atomic blast . A staff of well-trained servants who know when to leave the master alone to ponder weighty questions about the world's future . ( In all these respects it rather resembles my place . ) It also has a steam pipe , which the list of clichés calls for , just as in those factories or warehouses in which the final shootout takes place in other action movies . The steam pipe is shot up and people in pursuit of each other wisp their way through the mist . What is that steam pipe doing there ? Have we been mistaken all these years about how jet engines work ? Are modern airplanes really powered by the same plants that made the Stanley Steamer roll on its merry way ? What makes it finally so preposterous is the notion that this or any other country could organize itself with such alacrity and efficiency in the face of an unexpected emergency of these proportions . When the president finally contacts the situation room and asks who has taken over Air Force One , the reply is , " A group of Russian ultra-nationalists . " This is nothing more than cashing in on ancient hatreds for a buck . And we pay for that self satisfaction on the world stage , by damaging the image of America abroad . How about a Russian movie in which a group of murdering thugs tries to kidnap Vladimir Putin and they are called " American ultra-nationalists " ? How would we respond ? |
442,117 | 819,382 | 50,622 | 2 | Slightly Revolting | A helicopter with three Navy officers , led by Jock Mahoney , and the requisite woman reporter aboard , Shawn Smith , gets caught in bad weather over Antarctica and must land through a heavy cloud layer to find they are at the bottom of a volcanic valley . But wait a minute . This is not just ANY hot , steamy tropical jungle in Antarctica . This one is really old , inhabited by plants beasts that disappeared millions of years ago . It is also inhabited by the sole survivor of an earlier expedition , Henry Brandon . The half loco Brandon has the part necessary to repair the Navy's damaged helo - - a " push-pull rod " - - but he's hoarding his equipment because he wants to trade what they want for what he wants , namely the shapely Shawn Smith . And who can blame him ? I mean , ten years ? ( The fact that Henry Brandon is reputed to have been gay adds a shiver of irony to the plot . ) Well , everyone is attacked at one time or another by prehistoric dinosaurs but they allsurvive and escape , including Brandon who has come to his senses at the last moment and discovered his humanity . Brandon isn't much of an actor . He's probably best known for his role as Scar in John Ford's " The Searchers . " ( " You speak good Comanche . Someone teach you ? " ) But his modest talent doesn't make him conspicuous in the context of this film . The other performers are no better . The most interesting cast member is Jock ( nee Jacques ) Mahoney , a stunt man raised in Iowa , and one of the best in the business . Among other memorable acts caught on film , he did the spectacular leap down the staircase onto Robert Douglas's villain in Errol Flynn's " The Adventures of Don Juan . " His name ranks up there with Canutt , Eason , Perry , and Dar Robinson . Not that Mahoney is muscle bound . You don't need to be a body builder to be a stunt man . You need to be lithe , professional , competitive , intelligent , and you to be completely lacking a sympathetic nervous system . The men and women who do stunts don't have to be good actors , as Mahoney proves here . They're a proudgroup - - can I generalize like this ? - - but not snooty . They don't feel they're humbling themselves if they hang around with the extras , as I know from experience . Mahoney was a parent to Sally Field . I don't like going on like this about stunt people but there's so little to say about the movie . The monsters are gaggingly cheap . The first shot we get of them is two ordinary monitor lizards , blown up to dinosaur size by photographic legerdemain , and they're tearing each other to pieces , literally . These are big animals and here they are throwing themselves around and chewing on limbs and heads . We can see the ripped skin . Nobody can claim that no animals were harmed in making this movie . I found it a little disgusting . The other minatory dinosaur is a T . rex - - and it's a hoot : a man dressed in a flabby plastic suit dragging a tail behind him . Another monster never lived - - a kind of gigantic pumpkin with tentacles . It eats a cute little mammal . I don't think it's a tarsier , though Mahoney the expert calls it such . Still , they got the time and the animal reference right . At least , I think the Eocene tarsoids lived about 60 million years ago . I was certainly happy to see the five humans get out of there at the climax . It meant the end of the movie . |
442,866 | 819,382 | 439,815 | 2 | Conquering Worms . | In this one , poor Michael Rooker , the perennial heavy , wears a pair of square eyeglasses , has his head shaved , and is apparently sprayed with WD40 to make him look greasy . One might hope at first that this revolting figure is compensated for , at least a little , by the fact that all the principal women in the film resemble the best-looking gals in the 1975 high school yearbook from Yazoo City - - but nope . There's not enough gratuitous nudity to turn this into anything watchable . There is enough sex in disguise , though , to keep one's interest . What I mean is that , see , Michael Rooker , just before his face begins its slow disintegration into something like a giant Swedish meatball , has these ugly worms inside his upper abdomen . They crave meat . He buys them same from the supermarket but worms , like children , never being satisfied , Rooker finally yields to the craving for human meat . The whole movie - - at least the part I saw before shutting it off - - turns into a sexual metaphor . Rooker's manages to control his desire to let the worms eat his wife while she's taking a shower but he allows them to feed on a good-looking young woman of easy virtue . They're always the first to go in slasher movies . ( Girls , nota bene . ) Here's how he feeds his worms , these three or four phallic organisms that slip out of his stomach . He strips off his shirt . The girl strips off her hampering outer garments . He pushes her down on the bed and lies on top of her while down below the worms are drilling their way into her ivory belly with a squishy sound of the sort you might hear while stirring a giant pot of almost-ready Bechamel sauce . Her torso pumps up and down beneath him while her eyes bulge and roll and she tries to scream . If you're going to pull that at all , can't we just stick to Dracula and blood sucking ? In a later scene , a girl having stuffed herself with raw meat and the worms having irrupted inside her , has swollen to the size of a small blimp , literally , with her tiny head on top , and she's still cursing her would-be rescuers for not feeding her , until she explodes and spews a new population of hungry worms all over the room and the people in it . It struck me as pretty disgusting . It isn't that horror and humor can't be fitted together . " Q " did a pretty good job . But who wants to see ordinary people slaughtered in the most explicit way for no particular reason . Whatever is funny about it seems just a mask provided for the use of the audience , behind which there's nothing much more complicated than a desire to see someone else suffer and be torn apart . A rubber crutch is funny too . And I don't care how many in-jokes there are . If this is your cup of tea , if you find this captivating or amusing , okay . Did you ever see the candid photos of traffic accidents hanging on the walls outside the traffic court ? |
442,299 | 819,382 | 78,087 | 2 | Horrifying and Horrible . | Jaws came out in 1975 and was a blockbuster . This rip-off came out three years later and is , in part , a deliberate and self-conscious copy . Viewers are supposed to recognize it for what it is and enjoy it on that level . Okay . I get it . Even the cover is a rip-off . What I don't get is why someone would want to watch this . If you want something horrifying , go back and watch Jaws again . A parody is one thing ; it has comedy . But this isn't funny . The acting is nothing , the budget is low , the story dull except for when people are being ( implausibly ) eaten alive , and the special effects are infra dig . When a horde ( or a gaggle or a pod or a school , whatever ) of piranhas are hurrying towards a victim , they dart past the camera in a blur , not even waving their fins , like cardboard cutouts . A parody takes a certain amount of talent to write . The allusions must be there , but they must be twisted , or exaggerated just enough to become ridiculous . But " Piranha " has none of that kind of wit . It looks like exactly what it is - - an attempt to cash in on the success of Jaws . Otherwise , it's a straight monster movie . Except - - I may have missed something . Maybe it IS more funny than I'd thought . Maybe there is a certain amusement quotient to be found in scenes in which an over-the-hill actor like Keenan Wynn or Kevin McCarthy are nibbled to death from the feet up . That still leaves me with an unanswered question though . What kind of people would find such a scene funny ? |
443,608 | 819,382 | 89,907 | 2 | Avoid it | Every human being faces eventual dissolution . Our most monumental curse is that we know it in a way , that say , a dog does not . The funerary practices of our own civilization can be seen as attempts to build a cocoon around the dead to shield them from the living . Even when we get to see the corpses they are coyly painted , drained , and stuffed . They bear as much resemblance to the living person we knew as one of those " serving suggestions " on the carton of a prepared dinner bears to the actual contents . The corpse lies there , quietly , soberly , as if deep in thought . It does not sweat . It does not have dandruff or bad breath . And maybe that's the way we should remember the living . Some commentors have found the scenes near the beginning of this film , in which the dead and buried , claw their rotting way out of the ground , to be haunting and beautiful . I can't imagine why . This Romero clone is even more loathesome than the originals . Zombies stagger about , banging on doors , falling to pieces , contaminating spaces with foul odors , offending the sight . The supposedly amusing lines - - " It HURTS to be dead ! " , " This isn't just a punk outfit , it's a way of life ! " , and the German-accented embalmer listening to Wagner while he plies his trade - - are not in fact amusing . You know who would find movies like this enjoyable ? Those with perhaps the bodies and certainly the minds of twelve-year-olds . It's difficult to imagine an audience of mature people who have had any contact with dead bodies before they were prettied up finding anything to hoot and clap about . Films about ghosts can be funny if embroidered with anything like elegant wit . Films about rotting corpses doing their best to devour the living are kind of depressing , despite the wisecracks . The final gag is the best . The military , not knowing how to deal with this irruption of zombies in the small town , drop an atomic bomb and destroy the entire community . There's a real knee slapper for you . |
442,924 | 819,382 | 460,435 | 2 | Spoiled rotten . | I don't know why they had to tap Henry James ' novel , " The Turn of the Screw " , to get this plot together . The writers could have knocked off a one - or two-sentence treatment : " Mad woman hires out as nanny and harasses her two young charges to death . " James ' story , and Jack Clayton's adaptation of it in 1963 , are full of ambiguity . This version isn't . Leelee Sobieski is okay , as are the other performers . Sobieksi has the advantage of not being a star in the Hollywood sense , but an actress instead . Her figure is a little shapeless and her eyes , with all that black liner , too close together , and in this wintry English setting , her pallor against the snow gives her face the appearance of a charcoal sketch . She's the kind of woman a discerning man might find himself staring idly at , while standing next to her in the supermarket checkout line , and slowly realizing - - " Gee , she ain't too homely . " Her beauty is insinuating , and she's quite good in the role . The problem isn't with her , it's with the script . Tara Fitzgerald as Mrs . Grose has a tough job - - projecting sensuality undercut by a touch of the sinister . The two kids are alright , but they are , after all , kids . But never mind all that . The screenplay and direction bungle the task . Where to begin . The direction has a lot of arty touches , none of them original . Three figures in black silhouette skip along the top of a snowbank against a washed-out winter sky . Lots of cross-cutting during critical scenes . Intrusive flashbacks to Sobieski's youth , incomprehensible much of the time . ( Okay , she's suddenly a little girl oscillating on a park swing and she looks back over her shoulder and smiles at the camera and - - wham - - we're back in the present . ) These arty effects - - done with accomplished camera work , though - - deteriorate quickly into every cliché from the horror movie script guide . Guttural , animal sounds in the middle of the night , coming from nowhere . An intense electrical storm in the midst of winter , straight out of a B horror movie . Shock cuts accompanied by stings on the sound track . Before the movie is half over , Sobieski is already creeping around holding a butcher knife . Child abuse is hinted at . Lesbianism is shown . Graphic but brief nudity . ( Too brief . A little gratuitous sex might have helped . ) The monster's POV shots , where there be no monster . My attitude may be warped because Clayton's " The Innocents " was superb . It stuck pretty close to Henry James . James ' Mrs . Grose was not the dominatrix she is here ; she was an unimaginative old housekeeper . There is absolutely nothing in this version to compare with the scene in the garden in Clayton's movie , in which Deborah Kerr and the child watch a repugnant black beetle crawl out of the mouth of a marble cherub . Out of the mouths of babes ! But not here . If Deborah Kerr as the governess may have been slightly delusional , perhaps prompted by her attraction to her dismissive employer , Leelee Sobieski is frankly loco . In the earlier movie Kerr first merely senses the two ghosts - - Quint and Miss Jessel - - and then glimpses them from afar . The closest Kerr comes is when she enters an elongated empty classroom and thinks she sees Miss Jessel weeping over the desk at the other end . Miss Jessel disappears as Kerr approaches , but Kerr finds a fresh teardrop on the desk . The " evil " that the ghosts represent is never made clear . Here , it's the sexual abuse of children . Ho hum . I don't know why they bother to remake films that were so good in their original form . I really don't . How about a remake of " Citizen Kane " with Tom Cruise ? No ? " Gone With the Wind " with Keanu Reeves and Brittany Spears ? I've got it - - " On the Waterfront " with Rob Lowe and Paris Hilton . |
443,365 | 819,382 | 462,338 | 2 | Big Joke | The received wisdom is that if you lie , you must stick as closely to the truth as practical , in order to make the lie believable . That , basically , is what Clifford Irving did with his fabricated " autobiography " of Howard Hughes , the secretive and eccentric billionaire . The problem is that everyone is already familiar with that dictum . If a man spends an evening with another woman , he's not likely to tell his wife that he was busy giving a speech at the Junior Chamber of Commerce . The alternative to the received wisdom is The Big Lie , the lie so huge , so outrageous , that others believe it because no one but a madman would make it up . That's what Hitler accused the Jews of doing , and Goebbels the English . Or , in the anonymous words of the Wikipedia essayist : " The Big Lie is a propaganda technique . It was defined by Adolf Hitler in his 1925 autobiography Mein Kampf as a lie so " colossal " that no one would believe that someone " could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously " . If Irving and his co-conspirators built a near-replicant of Hughes ' real life , they surrounded it with fantasies so rich that nobody could possibly doubt them . Would a fraud claim that Hughes was about to land his helicopter atop a New York building for a meeting with McGraw-Hill - - on the condition that the top two floors of the building be cleared , the floors scrubbed and waxed , and black non-dust-collecting material be draped across all the windows ? It must be common knowledge by now that Irving did a great deal of research on Howard Hughes - - right down to imitating his voice on tape in order to get Hughes ' grammatical errors and idiosyncratic expressions just right - - and tried to sell the result to McGraw-Hill for five million dollars or more . The hoax was exposed when a reluctant Hughes finally agreed to a public conference call in which he denied the whole business . Irving spent some time in the slams but nobody was very badly hurt . The movie is based on Clifford Irving's book , " The Hoax . " In other words , a quarter of a century later , Irving is still making money off his little adventure . Following Irving , the movie tells us that it all started off as a prank , a big joke that gradually got bigger . Poor Irving . He became a neural shambles trying to keep the enterprise together , what with betrayals by friends , threats from outside sources , traps set for him by Hughes and the President of the United States himself , the increased stress on his marriage . According to this fable , the wretched Irving is almost driven mad by his responsibility - - to others , that is . He never thinks of himself . He worries about his family . He worries about his friend's marriage . He receives a mysterious package full of secret data about Hughes , including a damning connection between Hughes and Nixon that could bring down Nixon's administration . Thereafter , Irving devotes himself to what he now sees as the pursuit of truth and justice . That is , he owes it to the American public that his fraudulent book be published because it may contain nuggets of truth . Does anyone believe this unspeakable crap anymore ? Irving was a smooth-talking , ambitious con man and self promoter who had a toothsome blond girl friend , who soaked up the publicity during appearances on TV talk shows , and who eagerly anticipated the millions of dollars that were to be bilked from a respectable publisher , a rich but private citizen , and the millions of ordinary readers who would have bought his fake book . He was undeterred by his exposure as a fraud . In later interviews he would immediately switch the topic of conversation to the tribulations that he and his family had been put through , especially his poor little kiddies with tears in their eyes while daddy was in jail . And he's STILL at it with his book now having been made into a movie starring Richard Gere . The screenplay treats the story with the shabbiness it deserves . Hand-held cameras wobble during scenes of activity . Impossible fantasies of Irving being kidnapped at night , beaten senseless , and thrown out of hotel windows by agents of Howard Hughes prompt our sympathy . ( It never happened , and the movie tries to explain it as a drunken fantasy so convincing that Irving believed it had happened . I ask you , the honest reader , the experienced drunk - - when is the last time you were so bombed that you woke up the next morning thinking you'd really been spirited away to Nassau , beaten by Howard Hughes , thrown into a pool , then flown back home ? ) Actually , one of Hughes ' agents shows up from time to time as a hallucinated figure with which Irving has extensive and informative exchanges . The hallucination isn't entirely without sympathy for Irving , but generally practical and suitably distant . I got a little tired of these realistic hallucinations during " A Brilliant Mind . " I didn't mind them too much when Willie Loman talked with them because , back in the late 1940s , they had a touch of originality . Here , they're just cheap expository tricks . The whole movie is like that - - cheap and self serving . The Big Joke conflated with The Big Lie . It stinks . |
442,104 | 819,382 | 268,586 | 2 | I think we've decompressed . | Maybe someone else can find something other than clichés in this movie but I couldn't . I generally enjoy airplanes-in-trouble movies . By their very nature they're pregnant with suspense and raise all sorts of questions , like , " What the hell are we doing up here at 37 , 000 feet ? ? ? " This is the kind of movie that " Airplane " parodied 25 years ago , except that I'm not sure " Airplane " did a better job of sending up the genre than " Rough Air " does . There's a scene in " Airplane , " for instance , in which a trembling flight attendant confesses to another her fear that the airplane and everyone on it is doomed . Then she adds , " And also I'm twenty-six years old and not married yet , " and breaks into sobs . In this movie a cargo door blows out , decompressing the fuselage and taking part of the tail assembly off . The airplane is a wreck . It shudders and lurches and will never make Keraktovic , Iceland , or whatever it is . ( It's not Reykyavik , and Shannon and Prestwick are portmanteaued into Shanwick . ) The airplane is falling apart piece by piece . And two flight attendance are whispering together aft . One of them has had an affair with the pilot and smiles as she describes the experience . " I had hoped for a family . All the usual things . Then one day he just left . And that was all . It's over now . Of course he was - - great ! " The other leans forward conspiratorially and asks , " Great ? " They are about to die and they're discussing how good Eric Roberts is in bed . Roberts is the co-pilot who has had to take over when the captain goes nuts , although Roberts himself is under a cloud for a previous pilot error . ( He was really innocent . ) Two of the braver passengers are in the luggage compartment trying to block the hole in the fuselage with heavy baggage . ( Why ? I don't know . ) It's a dangerous job . They could be sucked out at any time as they struggled with the crates and trunks . One of them is a murderer being taken to prison . ( All airplanes have handcuffed murderers aboard , accompanied by a cop who fails in his duty . ) In the midst of their exertions , the other passenger asks why the criminal did it . The two of them must shout over the howling slipstream and screaming jet engines . Still , the murder stops hustling the baggage and explains his motives . " He stole everything from me . My wife . My money . My life . I felt all empty inside . " He completes the dangerous task , which will help save the airplane , and is sucked out to answer to a higher authority . There's also one of those passengers who carries a lot of authority , some kind of high muckamuck in Global Circumcisional Airlines or something , and he makes a pain out of himself , bullying other , demanding to know what's going on , and generally getting in the way of things . I missed the kid , though . I mean the child that's always on these stricken aircraft . Sometimes they need a kidney transplant . Sometimes a rare type of blood transfusion . Sometimes they suffer from peanut allergies . But they're always sick . I missed the kid . Maybe that's why this movie is so unsatisfying . I burst into a torrent of tears when I heard the flight attendant say that it was all over between her and the pilot . ( This was just before she told the joke about the difference between a stewardess and a jet engine . ) I wept abjectly when the murderer poured out his tale of woe . But I could have flooded with tears this abandoned railway car that I live in - - if only that sick kid could have been aboard and have her life saved . I'm - - I'm sorry . I can't go on . I'm choked with an unidentifiable but overwhelming emotion the chief symptom of which is nausea . |
442,555 | 819,382 | 50,465 | 2 | Man finds himself with help of a good woman . | Don't watch this . Honest , you'll be bored . I saw it because the description of the plot on my guide grabbed me by the lapels and shook me awake . Something like , " A thief is shot by his partner who runs off with the loot . Saved by a Mexican girl , he sets out for revenge . " " Gun Battle in Monterey " ? It sounded like " One-Eyed Jacks . " But it's not . " One-Eyed Jacks " may have had its longeurs but they were nothing compared to this one , a standard-typical Western into which no one involved seems to have put the least effort . Yes , Sterling Hayden is betrayed and left for dead by his cowardly partner , Ted DeCorsia , and plots revenge but is saved by the moralistic preaching of his Mexican girlfriend . That's about where the similarity ends . Hayden must have done this for the money . He was an actor of limited range but no one ever asked him to deliver very much except Stanley Kubrick . Hayden brought a touch of real pathos to the role of the delusional General Jack D . Ripper in " Doctor Strangelove . " Here he doesn't give an inch . He was a much better writer and sailor than a Western hero . Ted DeCorsia is simply Ted DeCorsia , more of a coward than a sadist . The women are perfunctory . Possibly the best performance is given by Lee Van Cleef , a really shifty looking heavy with a strong baritone . The script also gives him one or two lines suggesting he's human a little as well as feral a lot . The supporting players , aside from Byron Fulger who should know better , are sadly unendowed with talent . Not a believable line from any of them . And the director adds absolutely nothing to the Grade-B shenanigans we see on the screen . This could have been a John Wayne western from Poverty Row in 1935 . One of those masterpieces where Wayne rides full tilt after the stagecoach along a dusty road lined with telephone poles , past parked trucks . The budget for this movie must have been nearly non-existent and the shooting schedule , I would guess , ran somewhere around 2 hours and 13 minutes . Pathetic . |
442,080 | 819,382 | 106,582 | 2 | Let it go . | Approached this in the mood for a good action movie but it was overall pretty disappointing . Good Lord . How much suspension of disbelief can you demand of one human being ? The story involves a handful of thieves and murderers taking four innocent Mountain Rescue Team hostages and forcing them to lead the way to three suitcases containing collectively some forty million dollars . Maybe it wasn't exactly forty million but , as you'll see , it makes no difference . You can mostly figure out what's going to happen from moment to moment and you don't have to work especially hard to do it . Sylvester Stallone escapes from captivity and acts alone against the hoodlums . Will he natter them in all sorts of unimaginable ways ? Will there be one or two times when he is forced to doff his shirt and show off his muscles ? If you really need to ponder issues like these you may find the flick more absorbing than I did . Think for a moment of a stereotypical action movie . The first red digital readout on a bomb that I remember seeing on film was in a James Bond movie , the one with Odd Job , from perhaps 1963 . The movie was made 43 years ago , as of this writing . I'm not at all sure that there has been a single action movie involving a time bomb since then that has not features a red digital readout clock , ticking down the second . This movie gives us THREE red digital readout clocks attached to bombs . Okay ? Getting the picture ? Let me note , though , to be fair , that the final stunt was very well choreographed , a failed helicopter on the side of a huge mountain , slipping away , held only be a wrought-iron ladder from which Stallone is swinging . Don't ask . It's not as finely tuned as Harold Loyd in " Safety Last . " But it's the equal of the stunt in " Die Hard " in which Bruce Willis leaps from the top of a skyscraper with a fire hose tied around his waist . Beyond that scene - - well . This takes place atop some giant snow-veined colossals , so we have multiple bodies falling through space , sometimes with parachutes , sometimes not . We have two avalanches , one of snow and one of rock , so you can thrill at the avalanche of your choice . The thieves are led by John Lithgow with a fake British accent . Often these otherwise mindless movies are redeemed by a good , smart heavy who has been given good wisecracks . Example : John Travolta in " Broken Arrow . " Earlier ( and classic example ) : Orson Welles as Harry Lime in " The Third Man . " Not here , though . The wisecracks mostly fall flat , as if they'd been toppled from some stony peak . " You'd like to kill me , wouldn't you . Well take a coupon and get in line . " There is one pretty good bit of dialog given to Lithgow though . See , this jet is damaged and wobbling around in the sky , and one of the gang has been wounded . " What are we going to do with him ? " asks another thief . Lithgow : " Get him to a hospital - - fast . " ( Throws him out the door . ) Otherwise the dialog is not only not innovative but redundant . A helicopter is chasing Stallone across a snowy field . Stallone is running like hell in slow motion , while Janine Turner watches . " RUN ! " , she screams . The hull of the helicopter with Lithgow trapped inside falls to the valley and explodes in a slow motion fireball . Stallone , his bare torso flexed , is trapped under a sheet of ice while a heavy stands over him and aims a machine gun at him . " So long , Pal , " says the heavy , or something like that . That's what he thinks . Stallone simply pulls out a pistol and shoots him several times - - THROUGH THE WATER . I wonder if I ought to revise my opinion when I reconsider incidents like that . Was the whole film supposed to be a comedy ? |
443,326 | 819,382 | 116,434 | 2 | Do You Know What Your Children Are Doing ? | A Chicago couple , Dillon and Dougherty , are falsely accused of killing their daughter . People begin to wonder if they did it . The police investigate and find suspicious evidence . The couple are maligned by the public and accused in the press . The cops speculate that they are Satanists and have ritually murdered their own daughter . They are charged and brought to trial . They are represented by publicity-seeking lawyers who give them bad advice and bill them for $100 , 000 . The evidence presented against them is twisted or hidden by the police . Fabricated intimations of sexual abuse are presented . Their other child is taken away from them and put in a foster home . Dougherty is pregnant and gives birth to find her baby removed . Verdict , she didn't do it but he did . He goes to the slams with a sentence of 45 years . In the last third of the movie , with Dillon in jail and Dougherty wondering what to do next , we see people who have been antagonistic now slowly coming to the couple's defense . Witnesses admit to having lied . Other facts are brought to light that , finally , result in Dillon's release . The killer is never found , though the movie gives us a thorough whacko as a plausible perp . This is a weeper from beginning to end . Nothing seems to go right for the couple . Oh , there are a few happy moment , maybe a party where everyone is glad to be together and tearing up with joy , or some point of evidence in their favor is discovered and people hug one another . But it's never long before someone rushes through the door with more bad news and all the faces are frozen in tragic disbelief . ( Usually a fade to block follows . ) There isn't necessarily anything wrong with moving tragedies , although I can't imagine what pleasure we get out of seeing people suffer . There's plenty of tragedy in Shakespeare too . I suppose whatever we find interesting about tragic stories lies in the way they're told . " Oh , but I am Fortune's fool ! " Romeo cries after killing Juliet's brother . Here we have Dougherty running in her robe through a hospital corridor , screaming , " Where's my baby ? ? ? " There isn't any ambiguity or irony in the story - - as I'm sure there must have been in the real life events on which it's based . People are either good or bad here . Or else they're bad , then they turn good . The film isn't aimed at exploring human quirkiness , or the way things work out . It's aimed at wrenching tears from the audience . The actors provide first-rate role models . I can't remember the last movie in which I saw so many tears . There are rivulets of tears . Showers of them . Cascades of them . A veritable Niagara of them . A Lake Lacrymose of them . Well , I'll give one example of the efficiency with which the movie is crafted . Dillon and Dougherty hire a Chicago cop who works on the side as a private investigator ( Ed Asner ) . Asner is sympathetic to them but he doesn't really accomplish much . He seems to be in the movie not because of his importance to the case but because he can provide the victimized couple with a kind of philosophy - - " Learn to live with it , " which is okay - - and because he suffers from colorectal cancer , so we can watch him take his medicine , double over with pain , and finally pass away . What's frustrating about the movie is that in focusing so intensely on the suffering of the couple , it sidesteps one of the more important issues that it raises - - the function of gossip in regulating private lives . Gossip is a strange thing really . If we call it " gossip " it's bad , but if we call it " public opinion " it sounds acceptable , at the very least . Of course we all have convictions about issues that may or may not be justified . ( As I write , Michael Jackson is once again being brought to court accused of molesting a young boy , and I wonder how many of us thrilled at the news and immediately assumed he was a pedophile . ) But gossip isn't all bad either . It's like water . When it's properly controlled it's a community asset . We need gossip to keep each other in line . It helps us to maintain public order . But , like water in a flood or a tsunami , it is ruinous to a village when it rages out of control . This is a movie that's okay if you're not looking for too much in the way of insight into human nature . It's done so cleverly that , given its goal , it's hard to argue with it . |
443,094 | 819,382 | 106,527 | 2 | Narcissists | A depressing tale of a middle-aged man and teen-aged girl who have an affair , presumably , after which the girl shoots the guy's wife in the head , so that the girl and the guy can get married , or at least live together , happily ever after . It's based on the real events surrounding Aimee Fisher and Joey Buttafuco . She's played my Alyssa Milano , in probably her most demanding role , and the car mechanic is Jack Scalia . What a tawdry tale . A narcissistic pedophile and a spoiled pretty nymphomaniac . Lots of sex , intrigue , conflict , some violence , all rather disgusting , which is probably why three independent TV made-for movies about the case hit the TV screens at the same time . This one is definitely from Butaffuco's point of view . The poor guy loves his wife and children ( sob ) and never touches this succulent nymphet . Fisher is plumply overdeveloped , more than simply enticing , bursting her seams , and she's the aggressor and the liar in the tale . Buttafuco is the innocent victim . Right . No ex coke addicted , pumped up , self-admiring Italian philanderer would dream of laying a paw on this fawning young creature . Man , is he put upon . Our eyes water at the narrative . Aimee lies to her family and tells them that Joey gave her herpes . Then tries to murder his wife . And all this time he's nothing more than a cheerful , loving , family man and upright citizen , aghast at all the terrible things he's accused of . Did he fund this movie ? The other two made-fors took quite different points of view , depending on who was backing the production and which particular participant in this disgusting tale was doing the endoresements . Utterly revolting garbage , which the public ate up . Alyssa Milano is a beautiful young woman . Anyone who wants to see her en deshabille should rent " Kiss of the Vampire " or whatever it was , far sexier , and less repugnant simply because it is more mindless . This movie actually has a point of view . It could have skipped the sleazy plot and just shown us Joey pumping iron in a gym and Aimee coupling in some stranger's back seat . An insult to the public viewer , who gobbled it down with relish . |
442,874 | 819,382 | 97,469 | 2 | Higher authority . . . | This movie is a longie and I must confess I nodded out from time to time . The fact that it is also surprisingly boring didn't help much . I watched it chiefly because I was curious to see what sort of spin it would put on Ollie North's political shenanigans . I really didn't expect a Jimmy-Stewart-type hero to emerge from a book written by somebody named Ben Bradlee , Jr . and I was right on that count . At the same time , I figured , movie makers being the capitalists they are , the story would be dumbed down in order to appeal to the lowest common intellectual and moral denominator . After all , there were plenty of pick up trucks driving around at the time bearing bumper stickers that said , " Oliver North for President , " and the drivers were serious . That's about how it turned out . North was actually someone who loved his country not wisely but too well . ( I'll never forget Fawn Hall of the bouffant do , being asked why she and Ollie subverted the Constitution of the United States , replying , " Sometimes you have to answer to a higher authority . " I suspect she picked up that phrase from a Hebrew National Frankfurter commercial on TV . ) We're given an Ollie who is much more rigid , authoritarian , and distant than the cracked-voiced heroic figure we were presented with on TV screens . I don't know how accurately the infield plays are portrayed , not having bothered to follow the actual events that closely . I suppose that how much this particular Ollie North appeals to you depends on the intensity of your chauvinism . North and the rest are people for whom the words " America " and " democracy " are synonymous . They are willing to sacrifice anything , including their careers , their families , and their lives if necessary , in the cause of freedom , except that like Humpty Dumpty they are at liberty to define freedom however they want while ignoring anybody else's definition . It's disturbingly like what some political figures are doing today in drawing up definitions of causus bellum . The movie itself ? David Keith doesn't have the marquee power of the original . The guy tries hard but manages to do not much more than alternate between a shouting hatred of weakness and communism and a fawning beaming obsequious ambition like Uriah Heep . Annette O'Toole with her pursed plummy lips should have had more screen time . Bernard Hughes , grown older and plumper , is quite good . The portrayal of Ronald Reagan is best of all and should have been seen on Saturday Night Live . Iran / Contra . The name is so " past " somehow , so far away . It seems almost unbelievable . Especially now , since we can order the war drums to start beating at our whim , alienate half our own population and ALL of the rest of the world , and prepare to launch an invasion of a country because of what we think that they may do sometime . And now , thank God , we can do it all out in the open - - and screw all that secrecy stuff . |
443,079 | 819,382 | 76,150 | 2 | Utter schlock , even by slasher standards . | It's a murder mystery cum slasher movie built around the goings-on at a Catholic church . The little girls are lined up backstage for their appearance at their first holy communion . Brooke Shields , the last in line , is strangled and her body stuffed into a window seat and set afire . That's the good part . The audience gets to see the killer too , but he or she is all dressed up in an oil slicker like the Gloucester Fisherman and wears a halloween mask of a smiling young girl . Suspicion is immediately cast on another young girl , Alice , and for good reason . She showed up late for the service , is seen coveting and hiding a veil that may have belonged to Shields , and owns an oil slicker , a mask , and a butcher knife . Also , boy , is she a waspy thing , insulting , shrieking angrily at everyone , especially her critical aunt , ridiculing a tenant in her apartment house who is morbidly obese . This obese guy is great . He can't act but he looks perfect , with his shaved head and goatee . He listens to scratchy opera records and mopey old torch songs , keeps a room full of kittens , and doesn't clean up his apartment . I suppose the opera and his effeminate tone are designed to suggest his sexual orientation , but then he puts moves on the eleven-year-old Alice , which simply confuses things . I guess he's polymorphously perverse . But , if the truth be told , you hardly notice the confusion because in fact the marginal utility of his sexual orientation is so low . The confusion is already so bountiful that , following Weber's law of just-noticeable-differences , the guy's homosexuality makes hardly a dent . During some of the killings , the violins shriek exactly like those in Hitchcock's superb " Psycho . " I won't go on too much longer . The murders multiply . Father Tom , at the church , is the only guy we can possibly identify with . He looks the part and sounds reasonable . There's blood all over the place after the initial strangling . Alice's aunt goes , Alice's estranged father goes ( I think ) , the fat guy goes , Father Tom goes - - all bathed in blood . I was sorry to see Brooke Shields get it so early , and in her first movie too . But I didn't believe she was eleven years old . I believe she's never been eleven years old , but that she's always been a middle-aged midget , parading her cuteness around like Shirley Temple did before her . Wild horses couldn't drag the identity of the murderer from me , but I will say that the reveal comes as a shock . It's rather like Thelma Ritter turning out to be the murderer in " Rear Window . " And there's just as much motivation , which is to say none at all . To cap it off , after the murderer is apprehended during mass , Sweet Alice leaves the church , stunned , and on the way she opens a bag she's been carrying and therein lies - - a butcher knife , which she partly withdraws in the most sinister fashion . What this is supposed to signify is , well , there are some things man was never meant to know , and this is one of them . As a minor carp , I didn't particularly like the way that Catholic liturgy is put on display as if this were all a freak show . The mass is in Latin ( gosh ! ) , the communicants are seen from Father Tom's point of view with their tongues hanging out , and there are other grotesqueries , such as religious icons made to look like the garish and spooky figures in Madame Tussaud's . What a meretricious kettle of fish . |
443,434 | 819,382 | 409,182 | 2 | Down Into the Sea in Ships . | In the original " Poseidon Aventure , " ( 1972 ) we saw something original - - a handful of survivors exploring an upside-down ship , searching for an exit through the exposed bottom . There was something eerie and unsettling about seeing familiar surroundings vertically reversed . The men's urinals and the toilets hung from the ceiling , the galley ranges still with their gas flames lighted and burning overhead . I didn't see the next remake or sequel or whatever it was ( 1979 ) but I did make it halfway through this one and it isn't even fun to look at . A view doesn't get a sense of being in a capsized ship but instead in a giant junkyard with mammoth objects strewn about . Disorder , yes , but not insanity . Whatever small poetry there was in the original is lost in this dumb remake which is no more , really , than a special effects extravaganza . We've come a long way in the 35 years since the original was made and nobody is more aware of that than the people who put this monstrosity together . If there were any gruesome reasons for death left out in 1972 , that's taken care of here . A huge generator plummets through the deck overhead and takes out Kevin Dillon , the wisecracking , drunken villain ( a figure absent from the first version ) . Dangling cables electrocute passengers spectacularly . Fried bodies float about in the water . The editing is lightning fast . The cuts that may ordinarily be measured in units per minute must here be measure per second . The target audience was weaned on computer games , MTV , and CocoaPuff commercials . No acting can be discerned among the cast of slightly past-their-prime professionals like Kurt Russel and Richard Dreyfuss , nor among the inexpensive younger cast members , but then none is called for . Any auditions must have called for not much more than an agonized scream . I kept waiting for something to happen , something human I mean , something besides gushing water and underwater people banging on stuck hatches . Why didn't the babes at least remove their hampering outer garments if they're going to swim through all that sharp , entangled garbage ? They had the good sense to do that in the original . And if Stella Stevens in the original had something on besides her underwear , at least there were Pamela Sue Martin and that blond in short shorts . Here ? Not a chance . If you're into untrammeled sea water , noise , quick cuts , screams , and heroic children you might want to watch this . Or - - and this might be more constructive - - take a shower . Actually , when they make the next remake , I hope the rogue wave catches the ship and tears it apart at once , drowning or disarticulating everyone aboard . The movie will then be five minutes long . |
443,584 | 819,382 | 120,619 | 2 | Okay if you're into S & M . | Bridget Fonda is the sexually satisfied wife of handsome Hart Bochner . One afternoon she comes home , calls him " honey " , and quietly fixes him a drink , only to find that he's sulking . Minutes go by while she compliantly puts up with his frowning silence . Suddenly , he bursts into a rage , accusing her of infidelity in the complete absence of any reason to do so , calls her the C word , slams her head against a cabinet , slaps her around , and winds up flinging her off the second-floor balcony , breaking her hand and a couple of ribs . She wakes up in the hospital where , it is revealed , she is deaf , although we notice that she reads lips perfectly . That avoids all the awkwardness associated with an ASL interpreter or having her squawk words in a simulacrum of language . All right . Let me just lay out the basic plot elements . This beautiful and devoted handicapped woman is beaten by her husband , misunderstood by her elderly mother , betrayed by her sister , has her bank account emptied by unknown hands , almost raped by a fat man who accosts her in a bar , is thought to have murdered her now missing husband , and is pursued by two cops ( Kiefer Sutherland and Steven Weber ) , one of whom is interested only in justice while the other seems to dislike all women and is embarrassed by their presence . The end finds her standing alone at a deserted bus stop with a hand full of cash - - alone , tearful , but brave . Now , a pop quiz . There is only one multiple-choice question . " This story was written by : ( a ) a man or ( b ) a woman . " Not to sound sexist . One could as easily pose a scenario about a decorated military hero and trained warrior who is captured by his enemies , betrayed by his organization , beaten and tortured , escapes to exact revenge , and winds up with the woman he loves , whom he thought he'd lost long ago . The direction is functional and conventional . When Fonda regains consciousness in a hospital bed , we see from her point of view the faces of the anxious doctors and nurses looking down at her - - that is , at the camera - - an echo of every scene in myriad second-rate movies in which the gurney is being hurriedly wheeled down the corridor and people in white coats hover over the camera . Hart Bochner has played a number of evil people in an interesting way - - some of the characters are stupid ( " Die Hard " ) and some are rather more than plain rude ( " And The Sea Will Tell " ) . His virile handsomeness has a kind of evil tint to it . It would be too easy to cast him as a hero . Nice , intentionally bland performance by Steven Weber as the dumb cop - - maybe the best in the film . Bridget Fonda is interesting too . Her acting range is limited but it's on full display here . What makes her an object of interest is her almost stereotypical beauty . She's like a high school prom queen . Very feminine . Of course she can't help it if she slithers around or moves her hands so gracefully . Neither can she do anything about her nose . For most of its length it's perfectly normal and attractive but at its very tip there is a bump outward that follows the natural flare of her nostrils . The tip of that nose is full of intrigue . As for the movie - - Pfui . |
442,686 | 819,382 | 100,934 | 2 | That's it ! Engorge the feijoada ! | The first time Carrie Otis appears on screen , she is a newly minted international lawyer at a job interview . She's breathless , anxious , and sounds fake . I thought she was doing the character , but in reality that was it . That's all she has for the entire movie . And Mickey Rourke ? Did someone whisper to him that he was the sexiest man alive , or what ? He does his best with Feminine Fantasy Number One , the mysterious , masculine , empathic self-made man who is filthy rich , but he simply can't pull it off without a French accent . Jacqueline Bisset's character should carry a sign around her neck - - " Bitch . " There's not much point in going on about the plot , something out of a shoebox , which provides at least some material for a travelogue , though there have been better attempts to capture Rio ( " Black Orpheus , " eg . ) . The story gives Rourke a hang up . He can't stand to be touched - - let alone the other thing . But , no fear , Otis overcomes his inhibitions by the power of her pulchritude so we can end with a nearly explicit coupling . He turns out to be robustly masculine after all . Is that what " wild orchid " means ? I mean , is it some kind of terribly mangled PUN ? Here are some examples of the dialog . " Sometimes we all have to lose ourselves a little in order to find ourselves . " And Otis : " I'm sorry , " to which Rourke replies , " It's not you - - it's me . " A sex scene dissolves into shots of the morning surf rolling in . Otis does in fact have one thing going for her , a slight lisp , in addition to her strong and attractive face and her robust figure . Rourke , though some sort of cryptohypnotism , has talked a bickering German couple into coupling in the back of a stretch limo while he and Otis watch . " Tell me what you see ? " Rourke asks her . " I thee two people having thexth . " There isn't anything much except thexth behind this excuse to cash in on the profits of Rourke's previous soft-core movie with Kim Basinger , and maybe take along some of the nut from " Emanuelle , " another story about a rich man introducing a sexy but deprived young woman into the glories of debauchery . It's fun watching someone penetrate the mystique , but as the sociologist Erving Goffman once observed , often the real secret behind the mystery is that there is no secret at all . Maybe that's why masks are so commonly seen in this film . But this is a feminine fantasy , co-written by a woman , and so instead of bikini-clad young blond girl leaping in slow motion to bat the volleyball , we have Speedo-clad young men leaping in slow motion to bat the volleyball . I prefer the girls but both images are pretty banal . |
442,539 | 819,382 | 369,441 | 2 | Corrupt at Every Level . | No need to go on at any length about this frenetic remake of what was originally an only mildly diverting situation comedy in the first place . Guilding the lily ? Maybe - - but guilding the Queen Anne's Lace ? The action here is ratcheted up to almost unbearable levels as is everything else about the movie . The original had some physical comedy but this is virtually nothing but action . It's exhausting to look at and listen to . The number of times someone falls on the floor is uncountable . People punch each other in the face and tackle one another on the run and smash into each other's cars , none of which was present in the 1977 original . The editing is rushed . Each shot lasts just long enough to register on a tachistoscope at its higher setting . Jim Carrey , unlike George Segal , never stops moving . He's manic . When he's not imitating a puppet while standing on a table ( for no reason ) his eyeballs roll around like the ball on a roulette wheel . Robin Williams is hyper too , but Robin Williams provides parodic laugh after laugh while Carrey is just silly . The score is all junk rock and thrown at us with the tempo of an Uzi . Even under the credits , somebody is shouting a fast version of " The Best Things In Life Are Free " - - and he's imitating Louis Prima . There's not an original idea in the movie . Certainly , " squeezing another buck out of a remake " is not an original idea . Not anymore . About half of what appears on screens these days is a remake or a sequel . There seems to be a hole in the noosphere - - right over Hollywood . Oh , well , I guess there is one good joke . Alec Baldwin plays the corrupt head of the corporation that has just gone bust , fired its employees , and bankrupted its shareholders . He's being interviewed by a TV reporter while striding through a field in hunting gear , along with his associate . Asked how he feels about the pickle his former employees find themselves in , he stops and produces some boilerplate . " I'm heartbroken for these good folks , " he says . " I'm all het up over it . " Then he whirls around , lifts his shotgun , and shouts , " Now WATCH THIS SHOT . " ( I take this to be a parody of George W . Bush being interviewed on the golf course in a Michael Moore movie . ) There . I've gone and given away the good part . |
443,302 | 819,382 | 175,526 | 2 | Virgins , Look Out . | This piece of meretricious trash is hardly worth reviewing but having sat through half of it , the voices that have just taken over my mind compel me to say a few words so here goes . A mysterious slasher in a small town is killing all the virgin high school students - - boys and girls alike , but mostly girls - - by dismembering them with a knife that manages to make metal-on-metal sounds even when it's being waved around threateningly in empty air . I'd like to know more about that knife . Word gets around the school and the girl decide to remove themselves from the endangered species list by throwing a group orgy in which they all get deflowered by guys with spiked hair and a taste for hash . I never realized that any modern high school had so many virgins . They come in droves . The , umm , heroine , the not-beautiful but still cherubic Brittany Murphy is chased through the darkened hallways and classrooms of an unnecessarily unlighted school in which a big meeting of the PTA is being held in the gymnasium . The mad slasher captures her , flings her to the floor , and flips up her skirt ( not too high ) to begin carving the word " virgin " on her thigh , but he or she is interrupted by the timely arrival of the police . Why is this girl named Brittany ? I mean , that's evidently the real name of the actress , or at least her nom de theatre . Nobody became a Brittany until about five years ago . The other names aren't much of an improvement : Amanda Anka , Bre Blair , Beatrice Bush , Terry Ballance , Mark Joy , Margaret Moister . What the hell is this , Andy Warhol's Factory ? Brittany Murphy , eschewing the group grope , decides to seduce her fave squeeze in his bedroom . She strips off her top and sits on top of him , kissing him and whispering " harder . " He comes up with something like , " I wanted it to be different . " She spurns him , dresses , and leaves the room with an insult hanging in the air . Make no mistake . ( I love that phrase . ) Make no mistake . This is played out in all seriousness . Oh - - a few wisecracks and sex scenes but the chief theme here , the leaking substance that links the episodes , is blood . There are gallons of it . Scenes of torture too , for aficionados . It isn't that I object to movies about high school students . Some of them are cute ( " Clueless " ) and others are occasionally perceptive ( " Pretty Persuasion " ) . But this is nothing more than prime schlock . There is a scene in which Murphy and her high school English teacher quote T . S . Eliot together . Sure . |
442,815 | 819,382 | 963,794 | 2 | Ruins is right . | I don't know . What happens when a film like this is produced ? Do they start OUT to make another meretricious horror flick , making sure they hit all the necessary marks - - innocent kids partying , high hinks in isolated location , mysterious threat , resentful autochthones , exploding head , half-naked woman , something crawling under the skin ? Only this time , somebody suggested they might as well do it while on an Australian vacation since nobody was going to put any effort into it anyway ? If you find this appealing , then you've probably seen it in other , better configurations . The beginning is okay . A group of college kids have a drunken party on the beach of a Mexican resort . The next day they team up with a young German tourist to visit some ruins that his brother is digging up . A pick up truck drives them to the bushy and desolate wasteland . Native Mayans show up shouting unintelligible orders and warnings and finally start shooting arrows at the terrified youngsters and wind up blowing off half the head of one of them . The kids retreat to the top of a Mayan ziggurat where things only get worse . The German kid falls down a hole and breaks his spine . The vines turn out to be sentient and malignant . And then - - well - - so it goes . Nothing wrong with the direction , which is at least functional if not in any way innovative . And nothing wrong with the performances either . All the kids do a reasonably professional job . Laura Ramsey as Stacey ( are they still hanging that albatross of a name around the necks of helpless baby girls ? ) is beautiful and sexy . Joe Anderson as Mathias , the German visitor , has a slyly crabwise control of his German accent . Queensland does an equally good impression of Mexico . And Jena Malone as Amy is really quite good , much better than this material . What are they doing in this by-the-numbers goose-pimple-raising junk that overflows with blood and horror . Who enjoys watching a handful of nice white rich kids get slaughtered ? I wouldn't go so far as to press for a moral , but can't the film at least have a REASON for being ? |
442,537 | 819,382 | 272,575 | 2 | For specialized tastes . Very specialized . | Nastassja Kinsky is easy to look at , and the performances aren't bad , and that's about it . Now , if you're going to make a science fiction movie about some weird stuff going on in town , some conspiracy or secret , there are a couple of ways of approaching it . You always begin with a normal person , as this movie does with Kinsky . And there should be someone else around who behaves normally , so that the hero or heroine can have someone to talk things over with . Katherine Ross , in " The Stepford Wives " , has the bosomy , candid Paula Prentice to talk to , until Prentice became part of the problem instead of the solution . Alternatively you can have the entire town act normal until its residents one by one become creepy , or a group become , let's say , unusual . See " Invasion of the Body Snatchers " for an example of the first kind , and " Village of the Damned " for the second . In this remake , the entire town resents Kinsky from the moment she first drives into it , even before they can possibly know who she is . Actually , she's the school's resident psychological counselor , which puts her in the position of being nosy and turning the town's resentments into full-blown hatred . We know she's resented from the first few minutes of the movie when the director has carelessly positioned the extras so that they all stand with their hands on their hips , glaring at her . Does she get help from the school's nurse ? How about the school's principal ? Are you kidding ? This raises an interesting question right off the bat . If no one in the town wants a snoopy school psychologist , then why did they hire one ? I have it on now in the other room . Somehow it was mistakenly included in a box of DVDs someone sent me . I won't watch it until the end because I don't care what the town's secret is . I imagine , though , that , since this is a remake of a cheap science fiction film from the 50s , and because the cover tells me so , that a monster appears courtesy of special effects . The appearance of a modern CGI monster is , I take it , the chief reason for the appearance of the movie . I can't think of any other reason . Who would enjoy it ? I think lots of kids around 10 or 12 would get a kick out of this undemanding and commercial pap . And , meaning no disrespect , I imagine some adults with a taste for cheaply done science fiction movies with slobbering creatures killing off characters would also enjoy it . Not my cup of tea though . Not a soupcon of originality . Can't speak for everyone . |
443,037 | 819,382 | 74,329 | 2 | All at Sea . | The milieu here is the family and friends of the Commodore ( John Dehner ) , very rich folks . The Commodore is murdered and just as we think Columbo has the killer ( Robert Vaughan ) cornered , he's murdered too . Columbo assembles all the possible suspects in a room at the end and goes through a Charlie Chan or Hercule Poirot routine to expose the real killer , whose motive turns out to be greed . This is thin stuff although the director ( Patrick McGoohan , a talented actor ) tries to lay it on with a trowel . I would guess the script started off as an hour-long show for " Mannix " or " Dan August " or something . There are many attempts to pad it out with humor and none of them are funny . ( See Lieutenant Columbo try to wrestle himself into a FULL LOTUS POSITION ! That'll be ten cents . ) Characters get rather elaborate introductions and then play no more than the usual minor roles . Worse , this is a somewhat different Columbo than the character his fans have come to know . He's bumbling , of course , and has to cope with the difference between a mainmast and a mizzenmast , but on top of that he's CUTE . He winks . He smiles . His comments are coy . And what does it all boil down to ? A two-minute experiment at the end in which the killer reveals his guilt . The rest were all red herrings . There would be worse episodes after the series was revived and wrung out , but this is certainly one of the weakest of the original series , despite the talent in front of , and behind , the camera . |
443,090 | 819,382 | 454,841 | 2 | Nice idea . Movie : One long execution . | Great location shooting - - a windswept old model town , right out of a Twilight Zone episode , that was used as an atomic testing site . I love it when naive characters wander around in a deserted little settlement , discovering the mannequins and other left-overs from the era of atomic testing . There's a certain thrill in it all , which might be called " the last people on earth " arousal jag . The New Mexico desert is tinted a delicate yellow and is thoroughly windswept , inviting exploration . As a kid I spent a summer along with a handful of Coast Guardsmen at the closed Fort Hancock on Sandy Hook , New Jersey . The entire fort had been closed down and left exactly as it was except no locks on anything , like an empty movie set - - the mile long lines of barracks , the administration buildings , the hospital ( with stained slides still lined up neatly on the shelves ) . It made your hair stand on end to wander at will through a community that was completely silent and empty . ( Of course , now , anybody can do it by walking through downtown Los Angeles on a weekend . ) I stumbled across a heap of discarded , live 20 millimeter cannon shells and , not realizing that live ammo of such age might be unstable , began juggling the things like a circus performer . That's kind of the story of this movie except the ammo assumes explosive human form . Five or six people in their trailer-towing van have a flat tire and wind up looking through the phony community they've discovered . It's an involving experience until the mutated zombies show up and then it turns into an unusually gory and revolting slash fest . What a wasted opportunity . What could have been a great Twilight Zone story becomes just another movie with angry , made-up , el freakos , trapping and killing half the visitors in the most repugnant fashion and the survivors retaliating in kind . The camera lingers with relish on one of the deformed creeps ( they all look different except for their bad teeth ) who has just had a wooden stake thrust into his belly . To the accompaniment of a sound like a glue pot , the creature looks down at the protruding handle , says , " Huh ? " , and then pulls it out with what I think was intended to be an evil smile . You see , in order to really KILL the things , you have to do some REAL damage - - whack them through the head with an ax , jump off a cliff with them , blow them to smithereens in an explosion . The killings are not only an insult to the human body but to the human intelligence as well . ( The escapees are literally drenched in blood by the end . ) And yet that's what the movie is ABOUT . There's no attempt to reach the audience above the abdominal level . It has nothing to say about atomic bombs or the wonder of the exotic . It might as well be taking place with half a dozen kids trapped in a mausoleum full of ghouls , a variation on a theme that was old a long time ago , only this time around the special effects are excruciating . Of course it's always nice to see Kathleen Quinlan , but the acting here consists almost entirely of screams . And the young men , who ought to be able to take care of themselves , are incredibly stupid . One of them is being chased through the desert by a mutant who is equally light of foot . The kid is armed with an automatic . As he sprints and stumbles along he points the pistol behind him and fires wildly without looking until he empties his weapon . The viewer's heart races alarmingly . Maybe you'll enjoy seeing zombies / ghouls / rotting corpses / mutants slaughtering innocent people in the bloodiest way imaginable . It wasn't my kind of film . I thought it sucked . But - - if I can end on a constructive note - - for anyone who wants to see an ax murderer at work , almost equally bloody but amounting to far more than an upper-torso exercise , they might try " The Weight of Water . " If you don't like challenges , of course , then skip it . |
442,473 | 819,382 | 804,461 | 2 | There is Nothing New Under the Gun . | I guess someone reckoned it was time to resuscitate the " Death Wish " movies that began in 1974 , but the similarly title " Death Sentence " had to be updated , and for good reason . This is not the late 60s or early 70s when urban crime rates were triple what they'd been just a few years earlier . The dangers of urban life were very real . Statistics don't begin to tell the story . In the neighborhood I lived in , adjacent to the University of Pennsylvania , every Mom and Pop store , every shop , had been held up at least once , with the owners " looking down the barrel of a shotgun , " as one tough old lady put it . The deli owner kept a loaded gun under the counter . The liquor store would periodically acquire one or two bullet holes through its plate glass window . I knew girls who had been raped twice on campus . I was burglarized three times . Every building was decorated with graffiti . Now THAT is a crime wave that Charles Bronson could fight . The muggers and vandals and robbers were anonymous . The threat lay over the city air like an acrid odor . But the young men responsible for that disorganization were baby boomers in their prime . They're now in their 50s and 60s , so things have quieted down . Donc , the writers must now make the story personal . The son of an executive , Kevin Bacon , is killed in a gas station robbery by one of those integrated gangs one so seldom finds in real life . Pursuing a lead he sniffs out , Bacon confronts one of the gang , who is accidentally killed . Seeking revenge , the half dozen other goons ( all Goth skinheads dressed in black and sporting tattoos of barbed wire on their faces ) make several attempts on Bacon's life and finally wound him , kill his wife and shoot their other son . Bacon stumbles out of the hospital and buys four guns from an illegal dealer . There is a final shoot out between Bacon and the gang in an abandoned hospital or something . Guess who is the lone survivor . Kevin Bacon is a far more versatile actor than Charles Bronson was but it doesn't make any difference here . I couldn't identify all the ripoffs that made up this thing of shreds and patches . In addition to " Death Wish " , there's " Dirty Harry , " of course . Bacon buys a huge , stone-heavy magnum . " Guaranteed head remover , " comments the dealer . The climax is almost , but not quite , a shot-for-shot remake of " Taxi Driver " . Bacon is even wounded in the neck from behind . The gun-buying episode is ripped off from the same source - - Bacon fondles the guns and practices with them like Robert DeNiro - - but without the style or the wit . Implausibilities abound . The white-collar executive deliberately attacks and takes out an armed and brawny skinhead , beating the crap out of him and finally killing him . One of the gang marches into Bacon's office and thrusts a package into his hands , snarling , " This is to let you know that you won't die alone . " Bacon stares at the rudely wrapped box for a moment , then sets it on his desk and proceeds to open it . Would you do that ? It's a brutal movie and its ugliness is enhanced by the photography , which uses techniques I don't have the vocabulary to describe . All the images are tinted , mostly a ghoulish green , like a garter snake's belly . Some are blood red . The images are sharply defined so that we can easily make out every whisker stippling a man's chin , every bead of sweat during tense moments . A wide angle lends is used for some close ups , turning the face into that of a malign dolphin . Gun freaks should love it , and so should kids of about , oh , say fourteen , plagued by high testosterone levels . Maybe there are a lot of them around because the user rating is pretty high . If there is a market demand , we should prepare ourselves for " Death Sentence II " and all the rest of the crap that degrades our screens these days . |
442,421 | 819,382 | 140,352 | 2 | Warning : Movie May Cause Boredom | Whether the defendant is a squealer or a whistle blower depends on which side of the social border the judge sits on . If the informant betrays secrets about an organization we support , then he's a squealer or a spy . If we hate the organization , then he's a civic-minded whistle blower . It's kind of like being a " terrorist " or a " freedom fighter . " In this case , there's no doubt that Jeffrey Wigand was a flawed but full-blown whistler . He tattled on " Big Tobacco , " as it's consistently called , a conspiratorial corporate entity everyone hates . What did he have to gain ? Not much . He admits to having a bad temper and feels he was fired " for no good reason , " but for most of us that would be a weak motive for risking your bountiful severance package and your family . ( Of course , who knows what's in a man's heart ? ) There are death threats that show up on his PC and a bullet appears in his mailbox , or so we are told . People may be " surveilling " him at places like a golf driving range . If so , the surveillers are pretty obvious about it . Writers , and viewers as well , need to be careful with this kind of material . After he was sent to jail , G . Gordon Liddy , a paranoid if there ever was one , describes in his book , " Will , " how he made killer enemies in prison and concluded that on a given night they were going to make an attempt on his life . He chose bravely to sleep out in the open with a blunt object for defense nearby . Nobody showed up that night . He believes his audacity frightened the killers off , whereas most reasonable readers would suspect that his enemies , like Son of Sam's social life , was all in his head . As it turns out , Wigand loses just about everything dear to him . Another brave whistle blower is Lowell Bergman the CBS producer who brings the whole tawdry story to light by blowing the whistle on CBS to the New York Times . He quits his job . ( The movie makes it appear that he quits immediately after his victory , whereas in fact he didn't quit until two years later . ) The question is : aside from making us feel good because , by means of all this sacrifice , Big Tobacco gets it in the chin , what other purpose is served ? What startling exposition is there in Wigand's suppressed interview ? Certainly not that cigarettes are bad for you . The Surgeon General's report demonstrated that in 1964 . And even that report was a redundancy since just about everyone , from scientists to morons , knew that cigarettes make you ill . The first use of the term " coffin nail " or " nail in your coffin " used in reference to cigarettes appears in 1888 , when cigarettes were just beginning to be used in addition to cigars and pipes . Here's a headline from the Chicago Daily Tribune , 15 July 1897 , " Unconscious From Cigaret Smoke : George Decker of Jersey City Succumbs to an Excessive Use of ' Coffin Tacks . ' " ( That's from Dictionary of American Regional English . ) In Chinese , the character representing " tobacco " is the same as that for " opium , " a stylized picture of a man imprisoned by four walls . There is an interesting datum on how ammonia compounds are added to tobacco to facilitate the impact of nicotine - - but that's the whole point of smoking . No one ever claimed that cigarettes TASTED good . Enhancing the impact of nicotine is an example of good old American know-how . At least from what we can see , the two main contributions of the controversial interview are ( 1 ) a demonstration that the CEOs lied when they testified that they did not believe tobacco was an addictive drug , and ( 2 ) sound bites - - " Cigarettes are nothing more than a delivery system for a drug . " ( We hear that last bite quoted 3 times . ) Well , Big Tobacco ( and little tobacco for that matter , if that term can be applied to users ) had already been demonized . The whole affair , in all its complexity , seems to have cemented even more firmly in place those prejudices most viewers will already hold . The film was careful not to indict smokers because , after all , these addicts go to the movies . And who wound up paying for all this ? Big Tobacco came under a great deal of expensive litigation , and remains there today . Penalties were levied on the corporations . The corporations passed these additional costs on to the users by tripling and quadrupling the cost of cigarettes . Most of the people who are addicted to cigarettes ( we're not talking about the conspicuous consumption of expensive cigars ) are middle and lower class . The result is a regressive tax , in which the chief burden falls on those least able to pay . Forty years ago , a carton of Camels could be had for 90 cents . Today , in New York , you pay between five and six dollars a pack . That's an increase of roughly 6 , 111 percent . ( I think . If that figure's wrong , it's my calculator's fault . ) One might think that , having finally brought the addictive properties of nicotine out into the open , the public and its representatives would feel some sympathy , or even pity , for its victims , but no such sentiment has surfaced . The hatred we feel towards smokers seems boundless and almost gleeful . Here's a poster on the door of a professor of social science in an Eastern university : " Cancer Cures Smoking , " in huge blood-red letters . The last time there was such widespread and righteous wrath must have been during the anti-communist fervor of the early 1950s . In return we have the satisfaction of feeling that we nailed Big and little Tobacco , and that we rooted for the right side in this really rather simple and exploitative movie . |
442,014 | 819,382 | 140,447 | 2 | Gloomy Soap Opera . | The movie begins with the success of " The Fountainhead " by Ayn Rand ( Helen Mirrin ) and covers the next fifteen or so years of her rise to the top of a collective movement known as " objectivism , " which became a kind of cult with Rand as the golden-gowned Inca empress . What a dull movie . Let's see . Mirrin is married to Frank ( Peter Fonda ) , an alcholic wimp who paints and cultivates flowers . The couple take under their wing an admiring young married couple , Eric Stoltz and Julie Delpy . ( I'm going to skip the characters ' names because they're unimportant historically and dramatically . ) Mirrin develops a maternal affection for Stoltz that soon enough blossoms into something more physical . Julie Delpy twigs to this . We know so because she confronts Stoltz : " She loves you ! And you love HER ! " Mirren and Stoltz meet together with their spouses and tell the truth . They want an open marriage , meaning Mirren and Stoltz get to hump each others ' brains out without the same privilege being extended to Fonda and Delpy . The spouses grant Mirren and Stoltz one afternoon a week alone , but the pair have so much fun they begin bootlegging more hours into the arrangement . Delpy , meanwhile , is having anxiety attacks , which are nerve wracking , as I can testify . In despair she calls Mirren from a café , begging to come to her for advice and succor , and Mirren comes back with a blistering accusation of selfishness . I'm not sure the screenplay recognizes the irony here , because Ayn Rand's " objectivist philosophy " is nothing if it is not a glorification of selfishness . Anyway , a kindly passer-by notices Delpy collapsing in the phone booth and he's a sensitive , caring type , a musician , and escorts her home . The relationship grows warmer but Delpy refuses to break her marriage vows and - - yawn - - excuse me - - she asks Stoltz for the same open-marriage arrangement that he's got . He balks . He's got nothing to balk about . He's a practicing clinical psychologist and one of his patients , a beautiful young woman , Sybil Temtchine , develops a severe case of what we practicing clinical psychologists call " transference , " not uncommon in neurotics . Rather less common is the way Stoltz exhibits what we practicing psychologists call " counter-transference . " He humps her brains out too . To such an extent that Mirren begins musing aloud , " When was the last time we made love ? " Are you confused yet ? I only ask because I'm a little gemischt myself . At any rate , Stoltz develops a case of conscious or something - - I may have had a period of microsleep at this point - - and resigns from the Institute . Mirren slaps him around , accuses him of treachery , and does her level best to destroy him . But the stalwart Delpy sticks with her husband and resigns in sympathy . In the end , objectivism has become a terrific success after the publication of Rand's last book , " Atlas Shrugged , " although the critics bombed it , and she makes lots of dough on the lecture circuit - - bold , unashamed before challenging questions from the crowd , full of wisecracks , reveling in her celebrity and money . It must be wonderful to have no doubts about one's self . No viewer will learn very much about objectivism . It's not the central topic of the movie . The title tells it all - - " The Passion of Ayn Rand . " That passion extended far beyond any desire to educate or convert the public . It encompassed power , possessions , and wealth . What more is there to say about this dreary story . There's so much strenuous and lubricious sex in it that it could have shown up late at night on Cinemax except that the girls would all need bigger bosoms , something along the lines of watermelons . The musical score is mostly slow , sad , muted trumpet , straight out of " Miles Davis Plays Music for Lovers . " The dialog sucks . " Did you talk to her about our problems ? " " OUR problems ? You mean that you don't like sex anymore ? " There's an interesting story that was waiting to be built around the rise ( and subsequent decline ) of objectivism . How - - exactly - - does a cult begin ? You need a charismatic figure , of course , and Ayn Rand provided it . Then you typically get proprietary sexual relationships and the concomitant jealousies or self abnegation . The difference between objectivism and most cults is that Rand's had a political , even a metaphysical flavor , whereas most are built around some variant of religious salvation . But cults , like Christianity was when it began , need an organizer and solidifier to follow the charismatic founder when he shuffles off this mortal coil . Christianity at least had St . Paul , but who was there to follow Ayn Rand , to organize the objectivists ? Her husband Frank ? The elderly and reclusive Frank , who lived off Rand's leavings ? Frank , the mediocre painter ? The wimp who loved Los Angeles because you could grow a greater variety of flowers there ? I once spoke to an architect about " The Fountainhead . " It's hero's architectural genius creates a gas station that one fictional critic calls , " An insolent ' No ' flung in the face of history . " " It's all very well , " my architect friend admitted , " if you're a genius . But what about the rest of us , who are no more than good at what we do ? " Yes . An interesting story is hidden in the shadows of this abject production , but it remains to be told . |
443,450 | 819,382 | 47,559 | 2 | Magnificently lousy . | Four people ( Denning , Crowley , Grey , and Reeves ) meet by accident on the streets of a city that has been emptied overnight of people , except for a few dead bodies . They learn from a newspaper that the city has been invaded and evacuated by everyone else . The cars have been disabled , so the four refugees hole up in the suite of a hotel , making do with candles , beer , and canned food . There WAS a fifth member of the group , a witless little character , but he ran out into the street and was rayed to death by a wandering robot . The invading army , as it turns out , consists entirely of these robots with their death rays . They're impervious to bullets and can destroy airplanes , presumably with the same rays . A gun-toting evil murderer invades the hotel sanctuary of the survivors and puts moves on Crowley ( who has fallen in love with Denning after knowing him for only a few hours ) . The resulting fight sees Grey killed and Denning wounded before the burly Reeves manages to strangle the killer . The scenes of the survivors are inter cut with scenes of the requisite military and scientists trying just as hard as they can to devise a means of disabling these robots . They finally succeed - - surprise ! When the robot army is exposed to sound waves of a certain frequency , it " cracks their cathode ray tubes . " ( Your television set is a cathode ray tube . ) The army comes to the rescue at the last moment , too late , alas , to save Reeves but soon enough to whisk off Denning and Crowley . A cheap and boring movie , I found it almost impossible to watch . Well , sometimes the cheapness can't be helped . A budget will stretch only so far , as we all must know . But this thing could have been written and acted by members of the robot army , who look like they're made of Lego's or like unusually angular Gorts , although we only see one of them at a time . The dialog sucks . The plot is unoriginal . The special effects might better have been suggested than put on display . The logic of the plot is terribly flawed and the direction careless . ( Carefully pruned , it might have been a decent episode of The Outer Limits . ) I'll give just one example of a jarring lapse of common sense . The vicious murderer is holding the others at gunpoint and Grey suddenly remembers where she saw him before . He's the guy that murdered that hooker on Skid Row ! That's right , admits the evildoer . His picture was all over the papers . They'll be looking for him on every street corner , Denning observes . Not if I slip out through the sewers and get out behind the enemy lines , the murderer sneers . The entire city has been evacuated and is now occupied by indestructible robots who kill people and repulse the military with unknown rays - - yet they'll be watching every street corner for some nobody who killed a hooker ! Santa Clause could waltz past the army without interference under these conditions ! Well , another example . At the very beginning , Crowley wakes up to find the city empty and she wanders the streets . She stumbles across a dead body and Richard Denning at roughly the same time . They introduce themselves and explain where they spent the previous night . Minutes of frippery go by while neither asks the question : WHAT HAPPENED ? It could have been good , even with the inexpensive sets and the second-tier ( but seasoned ) actors . As it is , it's rather a painful experience except for those who really enjoy cheesy SF movies , and there seem to be legions of those . The producer , the late Herbert Cohen , provides an audio commentary on the DVD and he seems like a good-natured guy . He's generous with his credits and he didn't mind if people laughed at the crummy effects when the picture was released and he still doesn't mind . |
442,859 | 819,382 | 880,578 | 2 | Interesting Idea Rendered Into Horror Fest . | Somebody - - some techie wizard out there - - is able to shuffle his electronic impulses around the world , making it impossible to trace his personal address . He takes to executing kidnap victims in ingenious ways . And he has things rigged so that the deaths appear live on his web site . What exterminations they are ! Death by hot lamp . Death by a slow infusion of nitric acid into a bath tub . AND the demonic death machines work faster , depending on how many hits the site gets . If nobody watches , nobody dies . But the problem is that so many people like to watch . And the number of hits increases with every execution . Diane Lane is an FBI agent who's trying to track the maniac down . She asks the NSA for assistance , since they're the experts , but they refuse to help because they aren't permitted to monitor or trace the communications of American citizens . ( The audience is permitted an arid chuckle here . ) So she and her partner must do it on their own , and it turns personal . Intriguing topic , no ? Freedom of speech and all that ? But those kinds of issues are brought up only near the start of the film , and they're treated perfunctorily . Not that there isn't a lot of expository dialog , especially near the beginning , and constant tension . ( Much of the tech talk was over my head . ) But it's as if the people behind the story decided to throw out the baby and keep the bath water . There's another problem with the movie and although it , too , is technical , it impinges on the aesthetic experience . My God , the photography is drained of all the low-frequency colors of the spectrum . Everything seems bluish or ghoulish green . And the high contrast makes every single blemish on every single face stand out like spats at an Iowa convention . Diane Lane is a beautiful woman . ( " Woman " ! I remember when she was a delightful teen ! ) But the emulsion doesn't let her purse her lips without turning her face into the Martian surface . And , as for the GUYS . Forget it . Every stipple of their recently shaven cheeks leaps out of the screen . The bags under their eyes have bags under them . A neonate would look like an octogenarian . An octogenarian would look like a freeze-dried Peruvian mummy . I'm just playing with words here but you get the general idea . Sometimes this kind of chemical legerdemain works - - as it did during , say , " Band of Brothers . " But not here . It makes objects look sleazy when they're no more than functional . If it's blue , it must be a bright neon blue . Ugh . I'll be happy when this particular fad becomes history . Well , I guess that - - bad photography or not - - the film is execrable . It's the usual paradox , the kind we find in so many " anti-war " movies . The producers pretend to be lecturing the audience about the horrors and dangers inherent in some human activity - - then show that activity in detail so that we can relish every moment of it . The people who bring you this garbage are extremely good at tricking us into believing we know why we're watching it . |
441,673 | 819,382 | 452,702 | 2 | Low-level thrills . | A bickering couple ( Luke Wilson , Kate Beckinsale ) are forced to register at an isolated motel when their car breaks down . They shortly discover a pile of VHS tapes in their room . They play the tapes and find that they are snuff films ( for want of a better word ) that were shot by secreted cameras in the very room they now occupy . The motel manager with the creepy , over-sized eyes is running some kind of private show . His two or three goons wear generic horror-movie masks . The goons begin trying to force their way into the motel room . The husband tries to hold the unlocked door half shut while the maniac on the other side has thrust his arm through , waving a butcher knife around wildly . The wife shrieks and hides . The husband is knifed in the gut defending her and collapses with a shudder into a pool of blood . Now on her own , the wife emerges from her hiding place , outwits and kills the two goons , and finally plugs the motel manager . It's done by the numbers and it sucks . The first fifteen minutes are a set up for what might have been an interesting thriller , but the prologue is quickly passed and what we have on our hands is two innocent folks being pursued by murderous baboons . Oh , a lone , state cop stops to poke around a bit . He's old and wheezing , and the minute we see him we know he's toast . There are murders by strangling , stabbing , shooting , being crushed against a wall by a speeding car , and by generic trauma . That's not counting the two screaming naked girls we see being manhandled and finally terminated on the videotapes . A dead body comes back to life , but it's not the maniac , it's the supposedly dead husband . It uses every cheap shock trick in The Handbook of Cheap Shots . You can't count the number of times those masked faces pop up in unexpected places , out of the shadows . If you reach your Biblically allotted life span of 70 years , your heart will have beaten 2 , 358 , 720 , 000 ( that's billion , with a B ) . That's how many times a hand or a body darts in from out of the frame to attack one of the victims . If you like seeing innocent people terrified , chased and slaughtered - - especially naked young women - - this is your film . What a piece of meretricious crap . If you want to see a very good movie about a spooky motel run by a maniac , watch Alfred Hitchcock's " Psycho . " |
443,040 | 819,382 | 429,573 | 2 | Made for Thrill Junkies . | This inexpensive and unimaginative imitation of " The Exorcist " is going to enthrall anyone who doesn't care about where their thrills come from . It begins as the story of Donald Sutherland as a 1820s Tennessee patriarch who has charged too much interest on the lease of some of his land . He's chastised in court but is found justified . The unsavory victim of his greed " puts a curse " on him . Enter what is called " the entity . " It takes out its rage on Sutherland's daughter , the lovely Rachel Hurd-Wood , pulling her around by the hair , taking off the covers while she's asleep , slapping her around , slamming doors shut , blowing out candles , and - - well , if you've seen " The Exorcist " or any of its other incarnations you know what goes on . Her handsome young teacher takes an interest in the case , but his is the part played by the doctors and shrinks in " The Exorcist . " He insists at first that it's the slaves of Sutherland's courtroom victim , sent over to cause mischief . If four people have seen Rachel being held up by the hair , suspended two feet off the floor , it was because the room was a little dark and they couldn't tell who was holding her . If , at the same time , her face is being slapped back and forth as if by an invisible being , well - - those were probably people playing tricks with pea shooters . ( I swear I'm not making this up . ) A preacher is brought in . And while they watch the young girl being thrown around from wall to wall like a ping pong ball , he leads the family in a scene straight out of " The Exorcist . " " In the name of Jesus , leave this room ! " Now , this is the kind of prayer that is known in science as " theory dependent . " I kept thinking , suppose they've got it wrong and the real God who might straighten out all this michigas is some other Divinity . Maybe they should be asking Mazda or Zeus or Sedna or somebody , because Jesus was just another guy . I don't mean to be sacrilegious but the movie is stupid enough to prompt blasphemous thoughts . The acting is okay . That's not the problem . The problem lies in the ridiculous script which absolutely refuses to tell us what the problem is . ( There is a frisson of incest at the end , left hanging somewhere between memory and fantasy , which does nothing to explain why the entity beats hell out of poor Hurd-Wood instead of the old man . ) The entity is so poorly conceived that its powers can't be visualized . It can hear , and it can apparently read , but it can't communicate except in unholy growls . It can't read minds ( or can it ? ) but when it discovers Hurd-Wood isn't in her bed it zips overland because it knows exactly where she is . Another problem , the major one , lies in the direction . It's all over the place in a disjointed fashion . The images may be in color or in black and white . It doesn't seem to matter when or why . The camera sometimes takes the point of view of the entity , but we don't know if it is or not at any given moment . At one point , the entity seems to walk over to the girl's mother ( Sissy Spacek ) , sit down on the porch swing next to her , and zoom through her pupil into her aqueous humor , and there follows four or five minutes of incomprehensible , lightning-fast editing , showing us either real acts or fantasied ones or hallucinated ones or maybe only whatever images a director bereft of imagination and originality can come up with . The movie aims for the lowest common denominator and doesn't clear the bar . The score should be taught as a bad example in film schools - - every cliché in the book , from screeching violins , through pounding tympani , to LOUD electronic whomps and clangs . Under the final credit the score finally goes completely berserk , no longer caring , thumbing its nose in contempt at however many viewers may be left . It's too bad , too , because there are one or two features in the film that are quite good , given a low budget . I could be convinced that , in a small way , this was a pretty good evocation of life in pre-Civil-War Tennessee . The set designer , wardrobe , and make up did rather well in suggesting the period - - except for Rachel Hurd-Wood's hair , which falls in a luxurious umber cascade around her shoulders . Well , it must , if it's to rouse the pedophiles in the audience . She may be only a teen ager but she's radiantly beautiful . Let's remember , though , that in the Upland South in the 1820s , girls of fourteen were marriageable . How old was Loretta Lynne ? I'll give a brief example of what I mean by attention to period detail . The playthings , toys , and amusements of the kids look just right . They kick a kind of soggy soccer ball . The seesaw sits atop an empty keg . At a Christmas party , mistletoe isn't hung from the ceiling as it is now . It's held at the end of a pole by children who slowly swing it over the heads of couples while everyone laughs . Someone seems to have done some research . It would have been nice if a similar effort had been put into the script and the director had had more taste . |
443,289 | 819,382 | 330,099 | 2 | Male narcissism . | Why bother ? Vincent Gallo , a motorcycle racer , is so magnetic that waitresses throw off their jobs and leave farewell notes at a hint . ( He produced the movie . ) He's not particularly good looking but he's sympathetic because he acts depressed all the time and women want to cuddle him . Montgomery Clift could pull this off very well . He could make us believe it . Gallo can't . The movie amounts to a porno film with only a few seconds of celebrity paparazzi shots of Chloe Sevigny . ( What is she doing in this piece of garbage ? ) If you want to see a male narcissist suffer for no particular reason while women fall all over him this is your kind of movie . As for me , I think the motives may be no more than those behind Sylvester Stallone's skin flick , an opportunity to seal on film how sturdy your erections are . |
442,558 | 819,382 | 155,975 | 2 | A Crime of Profit , Not Passion . | This is , per se , an above average film but why in the name of Bog was it made ? It's impossible to treat it as a thing unto itself because it is an almost shot-for-shot remake of an Alfred Hitchcock classic of 1960 . You can't watch it without the 1960 film nudging into your consciousness . What does the word " credit " mean ? How can we credit Van Sandt and his associates with anything except deciding to use different actors , slightly different sets , and color ? Anne Heche is attractive but lacks Janet Leigh's stolid determination to become a respectable middle-class woman . And Heche is younger than Leigh , who brought to her fruitless attempt to marry and settle down , the desperation of a woman facing forty . And Heche doesn't project anxiety the way Leigh did . The scene with the CHP officer looking in her car window illustrates the weakness in the role . In the original , the officer asks , " Is there something wrong ? " Leigh : " Of course not . Am I acting as if something were wrong ? " The officer hesitates before replying : " Well , frankly , yes . " That exchange is omitted from the remake for the simple reason that Heche isn't nervous enough . The worst change , without a doubt , is the substitution of Vince Vaughn for Anthony Perkins . It may not be Vaughn's fault . Who could match Perkins in the role ? Perkins is twitchy , bird-like , long-necked , cloaked in an externally charming exterior that masks an inner vacuum . His every move ( eating candy corn , with his adam's apple bobbing ) and every utterance , the faint laugh , the arid chuckle , is spot on . He just can't be improved upon . Vaughn brings to the role the presence of a short-haired beefy guy who was just discharged as a Lance Corporal from the U . S . Army . To suggest his psychosis all he can do is superimpose a maniacal giggle on top of what appears otherwise a perfectly normal Norman in speech and manner . ( Unlike the original Norman , Vaughn doesn't even stumble over the word " fallacy " because it resembles " phallus " . ) He could be just hanging around the motel waiting to hear about his application for a football scholarship to UCLA . The direction deserves a few comments . I don't see what it adds to the story when we see Norman masturbating while peeping in on Anne Heche . I don't OBJECT to it . I wonder why it's there , just as I wonder why the rest of the movie is there . And , I suppose in order to impress us with how much color adds to the visual experience , Van Sant seems to have missed a bit of Hitchcock's more subtle stuff . Heche is given underwear of all different colors - - green , pink , orange , and - - mango ? Is that a color ? If so , what the hell color is it ? Never mind . The point is that in the original , when the traveling camera first peeks through the window of the Phoenix hotel it captures Janet Leigh in bed wearing a pure white half slip and a white bra . Later , after she has stolen the money , we see her in her underwear again - - this time both her slip and bra are black . Tis a small thing , but Hitch's own . At that , the idea of shooting in color might not have been bad except that the black-and-white shooting of the original was superb . The color and odd lighting effects in this version turn the ordinary , dull , and subliminally ominous motel into something that looks like it belongs in the seedier part of Las Vegas . Most of all , the 1960 film was shocking in more ways than one . I can remember seeing it in a drive-in in San Diego and staring aghast at the screen when it became clear that the central character was actually DEAD - - half-way through the movie ! Nothing like it had ever been done before . That murder in the shower , in both movies , was a big improvement over Robert Bloch's original novel , by the way , in which the author writes something like , " The murderer then entered the bathroom and cut off her head with a knife . " I'm not making that up . Well , not entirely . Even here , Van Sant's movie gives us excess . There is more blood and more bare flesh . And where Hitchcock closed in first on the blood circling the bathtub drain and dissolved to Marian's blankly open eye , then pulled the camera back slowly to reveal her face , he rotated his camera from a slight tilt to the proper vertical , giving the viewer a sense of not just disbelief at the murder , but a dizzying disbelief . Van Sant doesn't tilt his camera a delicate 10 or 20 degrees as Hitchcock did . He practically twirls it on its axis . It won't do to call this a bow to Hitchcock because it's not . It's a pecuniary plundering of Hitchcock's material ( already ripped off in " Psycho " I , II , III , IV , and " Psycho : The Beginning Years " , and " Come Into My Parlor : Mrs . Bates ' Revenge , " and " Hand Me That Knife , Would You ? : The TRUE story of Norman Bates . " ) A rehashing of and grinding away at truly original stuff , a crumenal act if not a criminal one . And that's not to mention the many homages in other films , especially the French , such as the notorious " ocean of boredom " scenes between Marcel Brulee and Jeanne Gateau in the much-admired " La Mere de la Nuit . " ( Maybe I'd better add that that last sentence is a terrible attempt at a parody of academic critics . And when a chicken's guts grind corn , it's a " crumenal " act . I won't go on except to say these gags , shabby as they are , are more fun than the movie . ) So who was it made for ? I'd have to guess . Kids who are too young to know about the original and who don't like movies in black and white ? Kids who are hoping to see another ordinary slasher movie ? Chimpanzees ? |
442,401 | 819,382 | 424,136 | 2 | First fifteen minutes , yeah ! Then a nosedive into torture . | Patrick Wilson plays a 32-year-old professional photographer who we first see flirting with a 14-year-old girl , Ellen Page , on the internet . They meet at a cafe and , after he takes her on a little shopping trip , she more or less eagerly agrees to go to his apartment . So far , so good . The movie could easily have been procrustianized into another movie-of-the-week about a depraved Humbert Humbert salivating over an innocent , weeping , victimized young virgin . But it doesn't seem that way at all . It heads in a more adult direction . Wilson doesn't have long , greasy hair and jailhouse tattoos . He doesn't brag or try to con her in any way . He seems like a nice guy , with his professorial specs and his bland handsomeness and his apparently genuine reticence about taking a pubescent girl to his flat . And Ellen Page is like , wow , a bit dazzled by the attentions of this grown-up boy but , wow , she's like pretty forthcoming in every respect . " Don't peek now , " she says upon entering the dressing room to try on his gift . " You're not mature enough , " he says , grinning , not trying to peek . And then she opens the door and appears topless except for her bustier , her rock-hard abs rippling , and asks , " Is this mature enough for you ? " In his apartment this same banter goes on . She makes jokes about the photos of young girls that adorn his walls and his explanation is both serious and understandable . If his photos are good it's because the models are good . The photographer is just the vehicle . At least one of them has gone on to the Ford agency . He's slept with none of them but has been in love with one , when he himself was younger . He has a closet full of pictures of nature for the World Wildlife Federation or something too . By this time it's clear that this isn't likely to turn into a depraved monster flick . The guy may be suffering from Lewis Carroll syndrome but he's fundamentally okay . The girl is quick-witted and perceptive , attracted and perhaps flattered but not discomfited by Wilson . So - - is something good in the offing ? Will we learn something about why normal young men are attracted to teen-aged girls ? Will we get some feeling for why adolescent girls develop crushes on mature men ? No . We will not . Page mixes some screwdrivers and knocks Wilson out with one of those " drugs " that only exist in the movies , the effects of which are almost immediate and which last only long enough for the victim to be tied up helplessly . The young girl taunts him , pierces his ploys with ease , accuses him of being , oh , just about everything in the book , including a murderer , though he's guilty of nothing more than bad judgment . Not hideous judgment . Just bad judgment . Then she does to him what I once helped a group of Samoan villagers do to some male pigs . The movie shows this surgical procedure as simple , and it must be if it can be performed with a razor blade by a heavy handed farmer clad in a loincloth , although I must say the pigs objected like nobody's business , much more than Wilson does . The plot , such as it is , isn't worth describing in any more detail . Torture is torture . I was as disgusted by what happens to Wilson as I am by what happens to innocent young women in slasher movies . Who gets a kick out of such ineffable trash ? Towards the end there is some mumbled business about Wilson having been involved in the murder of a young girl . Are we then supposed to be rooting for Ellen Page as an avenger ? It's a bit hard to do that because until the end she had no more than a crazy suspicion that Wilson might have committed such a heinous act . I don't think we're supposed to feel sorry for Wilson either because the first time we meet him he's trading innuendos with some girl-child . What's more , he's got a stash of some unspecified photos of naked girls that Page discovers while rifling his apartment . Even without the evidence , we suspect him of harboring indecent thoughts about teen-aged girls . Is THAT enough reason to emasculate and kill him ? If so , a lot of men are in trouble . And so are women . Being punished for thinking bad thoughts is the business of the Thought Police . I suspect the audience this is intended for is the same audience that claps and cheers as slaughters , each grislier than the last , follow one another in climactic order in a typical slasher movie . What a strange and pitiless people , who can applaud when an innocent is dismembered and yet wants to kill a man who has had offensive sexual impulses that he manages to control . |
442,480 | 819,382 | 440,963 | 2 | The Dregs . | Great cast - - Matt Damon , Scott Glenn , Joan Allen , David Strathairn - - wasted in this commercial piece of egregious offal . The original in this franchise , " The Bourne Identity " , was a fascinating and brutal action movie with a genuine engine behind the plot . Just who IS Jason Bourne ? Well , as it turns out , Bourne ( Damon ) is a failed CIA assassin who , having failed in an illegal enterprise and having become an amnesic , is a loose cannon that the CIA must destroy . ( It's not the CIA , of course . It's some internal cabal . It's the INS or the IRS or the ABC or CNN or STD . ) Lots of high-tech stuff and a good deal of splendidly realized action . Damon not only escapes from the agents of his former employer , he solves the question that has driven him . The sequel , " The Bourne Supremacy " , was a partial-birth abortion not only written to cash in on the commercial success of the original but directed in an unspeakably ill-conceived manner . This one is , if possible , worse than the previous installment . The MGM is still trying to kill Matt Damon but for no good reason . " As far as I'm concerned , he's still a risk , " intones Scott Glenn , bad guy . There have been a hundred movies in the past two decades in which an entire regiment of evildoers pursues one action superhero who outwits and out-muscles them at every turn . Everybody has seen one or another version of " Rambo " . This is an insult to the presumed intelligence of the American people . Near the beginning , there is a wide-angled aerial shot of the Arch of Triumph in the center of Paris , one of the city's three or four immediately recognizable landmarks . Then a caption inform us of the location - - " Paris . " Not only that , but " Paris , France . " Just so you don't get confused and think it's a postcard of Paris , New Jersey , or Las Vegas ( NEVADA ) . There is a superabundance of action . People beat the crap out of one another . If that's what you're looking for , you'll find it here , pointless though it is . The score , however , is a copy of the effective original . I can't for the life of me understand why the director decided to follow the model set by the sequel , instead of that of the original , which was better in all respects . Every shot in " The Bourne Ultimatum " seems to use a hand-held camera . And the camera wobbles all over the place as if held by a man suffering from a volcanic hangover . When Bourne first meets a possible friend in a café , near the opening , the shots are done in reverse angle , meaning when Damon speaks we watch him over the other guy's shoulder , and when the other guy speaks we look over Damon's shoulder . But here the camera roves and meanders . I've seen more professional camera work in home videos by high school kids . At one point the image of the other speakers blocks out all of Damon's face but his nose and mouth . In a later shot , the camera sinks so low and moves so excessively laterally that , instead of an over-the-shoulder shot , the image we see is a behind-the-neck shot because Damon's face is entirely obscured . Let me repeat that . A conversation is taking place between two men and the screen is filled with the shivering image of the back of one of their heads . I mean that literally . I couldn't finish watching this . I was in fear for the well-being of my visual cortex , not to mention my frontal lobes . But the user ratings are high enough to suggest that this is satisfying somebody's appetite for something . I won't try to guess what appetite that is , but can I ask one question ? Guys , did you see the original ? You know , " The Bourne Identity " ? |
443,242 | 819,382 | 115,611 | 2 | The Weaker Sex | This is really written by the numbers . A single mother ( Michelle Greene ) takes a job as a deputy sheriff in a Northwestern town . Her boss is Harry Hamlin . He seems like a nice enough guy , but then , married though he is , he makes some rather brusque moves on her . She finds this offensive . She also finds it offensive that he's been carrying on a long affair with his secretary ( Linda Doucette , a beautiful , sweet name ) , and that he clobbers prisoners and mere suspects who may or may not be guilty . Then there's some dope that disappeared from a bag that was supposed to be put in evidence . Hamlin is really a guileful miscreant in a dapper uniform . With his bristling star and Mussolini jaw , he exudes power and confidence . " Get me some coffee , " he tells his trembling secretary , and , when she hesitates , asks , " Did I say LATER ? " He beats her up too , adding injury to insult . Greene confides to a polite , slender , balding male friend ( that is to say , a wimp ) that she has doubts about her boss . The friend is sympathetic . But one night the two are car-jacked and made to crawl on their hands and knees along a dirt road at night . End of well-meaning wimp's attraction to her . Just about everybody seems to lie to Greene or betray her . When Linda Doucette shows up one morning with a black eye , Greene talks her into seeing a lawyer who calls herself the champion of " lost causes . " Hamlin gets wind of this - - he gets wind of everything , like a hyena - - and Doucette soon chickens out too . Enter some faceless FBI agents who tell her that Sheriff Hamlin is guilty of running all the dope in the greater metropolitan area , as well as child pornography rings , sex slavery , mopery in the first degree , malfeasance of whatever , exhibiting lewd photographs of Oprah Winfrey , and that he practices Satanism and smokes cigarettes in his basement when no one is looking . A quick fix and Harry Hamlin visits Greene to shut her up once and for all , as he's done to other squealers . The FBI robots rush in at the last moment to save her but they're not needed . She's already outwitted Hamlin , recorded his confessions and threats on tape , and plugged him in the shoulder . If there is an original shot , scene , or utterance in this movie , I missed it . You know precisely what's coming next . All men are brutes and a good woman can trust no one but herself . If the heroine and heavies had been gender-reversed - - if it had been a hero surrounded by brutal , cruel , hopeless , selfish women - - this would be condemned as the sexist trash that it is . As it is , the thing makes you want to put a stop to the goings-on and say , " Now , boys and girls , I'd like you to apologize to each other , shake hands , and make friends . " It's straight out of a third-grade schoolroom , I admit , but that's the level at which this would-be morality tale operates . Besides , what else can we boys and girls do ? We can't very well INVADE each other or blow up the other's buildings . |
442,779 | 819,382 | 87,022 | 2 | Washout | I watched this because I had a hunch it might be pretty good . Sometimes TV movies have a certain zinginess to them , a sort of " what the hell " quality that's generated , I've always suspected , by the unusually low budgets , That is , if your investment is small enough , you don't have to worry so much about producing a blockbuster . Add to it that this cast was interesting . Tom Skerrit may or may not have much acting range , but he's reliable in the way that Cary Grant and Michael Caine have been reliable . They don't always give first-rate performances but they never torpedo a production they appear in , and Skerrit has that same quality . Then there is Sharon Stone , youthful and full of fresh open-faced beauty , and not so evidently full of herself as she later became . And Robert Morse ! I was curious to see his gap-toothed person in a dramatic role . The story , involving the sequential knocking off of " Playmates of the Month " or whatever they call them here . The film unfortunately did not live up to its promise . I suppose I'd forgotten that there must be a script . It's awful . There's no suspense to speak of . The dialogue is dull . Conflict , either intra - or interpersonal , is minimal . We don't know about the murdered models , so we don't care about them . ( Except the momentary thought - - " What a waste . " ) At least the movie is not laden with cliches - - one or two car chases , a vehicular fireball - - but not much of that , perhaps because the writers didn't bother to put much effort into cranking up the action . Watch it if you want . I doubt that you'll get much out of it . |
442,587 | 819,382 | 178,781 | 2 | Bubble Bathos . | Plot : Dennis Cromwell ( Sam Bottoms ) is a prosperous banker with a wife and new baby girl in Marin County . He's friends with his roofer , Enrique ( Marco Rodrigues ) whose teen-aged daughter is Bottoms ' baby sitter . The perky daughter ( Yeniffer Behrens ) develops a crush on Bottoms and they begin an affair . She's also being stalked by a hook-nosed guy but forget that . The affair is discovered . Bottoms ' wife leaves him , taking the infant and the house with her . He's fired from the bank . He's charged with statutory rape and shunned by the community . Behrens is taken away from him , sobbing . He hasn't a friend left in the world . At the end he's involved in a homicide and Lord only knows what sort of moral terpitude he'll be charged with now . And all this time you thought Cromwell was a Puritan ? It's really difficult to describe this movie . The plot is done and redone , young girl has affair with older married man . " The Crush " is typical . Usually they stink although , as " Lolita " demonstrates , the story , if not the films , can be sublimely told . I don't know exactly whose fantasy this film is aimed at - - the middle-aged man lusting after the tan gymnasticized thighs of a 16-year-old baby sitter or the overpowering love of a naive but nubile girl for a powerful but understanding father figure . Probably both . The roots of these motives lie buried in evolutionary psychology . One of the theories advanced for the incest taboo , though , is well illustrated here . It mixes up the roles in the division of labor . The confusion manifests itself in jealousy or in some African societies in accusations of witchcraft . Nobody knows quite who belongs to whom or who's dominant . You cannot have two wimmin in the same house . Reckon that's a law of life . Signed : Prof . John Wayne , Director of Gender Studies . What is there to say about the movie ? The performances are somewhat below those found in TV commercials ? ( With the possible exception of Marco Rodriguez ' ? Rodriguez has a good scene in which he stands over the body of a recently murdered heavy and crosses himself . Then he spits on the body . ) The direction is flat and uninteresting ? The photography is ambitious but blurry ? The editing confusing ? ( See the scene in which Bottoms and Behrens run to each other and kiss hotly while the gym coach stands by aghast . Next shot , he's missing . ) The script ? People say things like : " We have to talk . " Twice . And once it's a man . Bottoms and Behrens walking along a beach having an earnest discussion about what to do with their lives . Behrens : " You know , in some countries we could be married . " Bottoms : " Yeah , but this isn't one of them . " Behrens : " I know . What a bummer . " It's too bad this is so little other than a minor soap opera because it was shot partly in Millbrae , one of the prettiest little towns on the San Francisco peninsula . |
443,193 | 819,382 | 255,233 | 2 | Biotech in spades . | I know what the story is supposed to be because I've read about it . But although I knew the frame , I couldn't identify any part of the contents . I gather that this was intended as a serious attempt at art . For those of you who associate Japanese art with articulated paper cranes , polished lacquer bowls , finely made swords , and paintings of fractal ocean waves - - forget it . Nature got lost somewhere along the way . If this film were a state of human consciousness , it would be thoroughly deranged due to the blossoming of some genetic time bomb or the imprudent use of a substance made entirely of indole rings . I couldn't follow it and neither could you . But you have to admire its inventiveness . For decades now , film has struggled with some way of presenting sexual contact between human beings that is suggestive rather than explicit . You know , a cut to a fireplace or pounding surf . When that became a too-recognizable cliché , the movies gave us unidentifiable body parts in motion , the anonymous fingertips caressing the anonymous spine . A horizontal kiss more feverish than most . Here , every technique of indicating sexual contact that you ever saw is thrown together , along with a couple that must be brand new - - even during the same encounter . New techniques ( new to me anyway ) include the upside-down camera , the rotating camera , the fiber optic photograph of a condomized fist entering a body cavity ( seen from the inside ) . And instead of the usual moans and gasps signifying an unspeakable pleasure , we have electronic beeps and boops on the sound track , accompanying what sounds like a doll's voice saying , " Center , prease " , and " me . " The movie's linguistic messages are half in English and half in Japanese . The visual message is in tongues . I can't remember a second in which the images on the screen were still . Usually , both the figures and the camera move at the same time . And the camera makes extensive use of fish-eye lenses , so when the figures bow to the lens they seem to fall in our laps . This is the most hyped-up soft-core porn imaginable , all lurid colors and zip lines and printed sentences clacking out across the screen and addressed to the viewer - - " You are special visitor . Come backstage . " ( Right . ) Most special visitors will zoom from dazzlement to boredom in roughly twenty minutes , depending on age , confusion threshold , and exactly how deeply they've delved into the mushroom omelet . |
442,332 | 819,382 | 141,926 | 2 | Silly Fictional Submarine Fare . | There really isn't much to be said about this hokey story of an event that never happened during World War II . The movie involves ratty German U-boat sailors , scared but brave and religious American sailors , the capture of a German coding device called Enigma that we already had , impossible triple somersaults in the incidents - - and every submarine cliché in the cinematic code book . The main plot has an American crew trying to maneuver a damaged U-boat into an Allied port while simultaneously keeping it afloat , causing it to move , avoiding the Germans who are searching frantically for it , and meanwhile being attacked by another German submarine and a German destroyer . I had a bit of trouble keeping that all-American crew straight . They're all blandly even featured , except for Harvey Keitel who definitely is in the wrong movie . The B story is about the Lieutenant in charge , about his character , about the crew's doubts , about whether or not he has the guts to command and order men to their deaths . ( Guess whether he does or not . ) The writers , producers , and director have absorbed lessons from other submarine movies , from " Destination Tokyo " to " Das Boot . " At one point , the captain has to dive beyond the depth the U-boat was designed for and we can watch the arrow on the familiar Tiefenmesser mope its way into the red part of the dial - - and then beyond - - while the hull creaks from the increasing pressure . The men hold onto fittings and gawk at the bulkheads and one of them mutters , " Man , them Krauts sure know how to build ' em . " ( Cf : KaEl Curt Jurgens ' line in " The Enemy Below " under identical circumstances , " They build them good in Germany , huh ? " ) So the hull is creaking and the men are scared to death and the minatory destroyer circles overhead and the only lights are from feeble portable lamps and flashlights and I'm thinking , " Wait a minute ! Where are the popping bolts ? Where's the squirting water and the shattered glass instruments ? " Didn't have long to wait . To trick the destroyer into believing that the U-boat has sunk , the captain has fuel released from the tanks and shoots some debris from one of the torpedo tubes . The debris includes a dead conveniently body , as in - - which one was it ? - - " Run Silent , Run Deep " ? You know , the one with Clark Gable ? Not that the sleight-of-hand works . If it did , we would be deprived of the thrill of watching the pursuing destroyer blown out of the water with the wounded submarine's lone remaining torpedo . The clichés never seem to end , and they're not drawn entirely from the submarine genre either . Two men - - one good guy and one bad guy - - are struggling face to face with a pistol between them . A shot is heard . The struggle stops . The good guy wears a shocked expression and backs slowly away . The bad guy smiles slightly - - and then slumps dead to the deck . I'm fairly sure the first time such a scene was presented to the public was in a comedy by Aristophanes . Where was I ? Think I had a period of microsleep there . Anyway , there are thrills galore during the action sequences that seem to comprise half the movie . The cuts are instantaneous . Depth charge patterns yield a dozen explosions in speedy sequence . The camera jiggles . The men dash about , shouting . Lights flash on and off . Sparks fly like the Fourth of July . The chuckling director darts for a second in front of the camera lens and gives the audience the finger . BANG ! BOOM ! " She's coming apart ! " Want to see a submarine movie you can believe ? Rent " Das Boot . " Of course " Das Boot " is long , precisely observed , contains some leisure moments that tell us things about individuals , and it has subtitles , so if " U 571 " is your kind of movie , " Das Boot " probably is not . |
443,313 | 819,382 | 404,032 | 2 | Read a book instead . | Laura Linney has the even features usually sought in Hollywood actresses , in her case adorned with sexily plump cheeks . She cool , tall , blonde , blue eyed . She is a competent and professional performer who does particularly well as a semi-elegant urban type . But what is she doing in a piece of junk like this ? I could only get through the first hour but didn't really care how it ended . Its bifurcated themes involve a courtroom drama and another Exorcist rip-off . Both are done poorly . No imagination has gone into the script , the direction , or any other aspect of the production . The score , for instance , is generic . It might have been written by a computer programmed to crank out " horror " music . Violins shriek , there are dissonant chords galore , lots of percussion , and occasionally a noise as of wood being irregularly sawed , a sound that belongs in the living room instead of on the sound track . Everything is dark . The inside of a church is dark . It's always nighttime . The courtroom is dark , even when the trial begins at nine in the morning . No matter . Linney wakes up in her apartment to find that the power is out , although her electric clock is able to tell her the time . She slides out of bed to ominous music ( which by this time has become ground instead of figure ) and wanders around without trying to turn the lights on . This sequence lasts for about four or five minutes , during which nothing happens except that she looks scared , drops a glass on the floor , and hears a voice telling her to keep a weather eye on demons . The scenes of the possessed victim are badly done . We see things through her eyes , people's faces turning into ghouls and screaming at her . It's no good running into the church either . The few worshipers sitting there turn into ghouls too . And the lights aren't on - - only candles provide the spooky light . What the hell kind of a church is this , anyway ? And then the demons or demon gets inside her again and bends her over backwards until she resembles Ginger Rogers ' exit posture in " Let's Face the Music and Dance . " Do something else . I beg you . Want to watch a spooky movie ? Rent something like " Carnival of Souls " instead . |
443,231 | 819,382 | 185,371 | 2 | Malevolent Spirits . | What is this , after all ? A remake in color of a schlock 45-year-old Vincent Price horror movie ( not very good to begin with ) featuring a cavalcade of special effects . A rich amusement park owner ( Geoffrey Rush ) and his cynical - - and very tall - - wife ( Famke Jannsen ) invite half a dozen friends to spend the night in a deserted mansion . The survivors will get a millions bucks apiece . It's particularly spooky because the building is an ex psychiatric hospital in which the owner years ago went mad and slaughtered staff and patients alike . " He out-Mansoned Manson , " Peter Graves gravely intones on television . At first it all seems like a kind of practical joke perpetrated by Rush , who is given to scary stunts . But then the house evidently locks itself up and nobody can get out or communicate with the outside , not even Rush . Most of the lights go out and the guests are stuck with the task of poking around with flashlights in the crumbling rooms filled with electronic torture devices . It all gets pretty routine . One of the guests is a black guy and I figured him for an early victim . It's that kind of movie . There is a vat of what looks like boiling blood and someone gets pulled into it . There is a fake death . Falling skylights . Two pistols are produced , one supposedly loaded with blanks . And all kinds of mysterious goings on , go on . And - - and - - zzzzzzz . I can see where someone might enjoy this . It's all formulaic , and it's a remake to begin with . But it's creepy , scary , and bloody enough to satisfy the kinds of desires generated in a mind whose cinematic faculty is as empty as a ping pong ball . Want some spooky movies that embody some originality ? If you haven't seen any of Val Lewton's tiny masterpieces - - " The Cat People " or " I Walked With a Zombie " - - or , say , " The Haunting " or " Carnival of Souls , " try them instead . |
443,577 | 819,382 | 49,516 | 2 | The Bottom of the Pits | This is one shoddy piece of work . Not hateful , because it doesn't actively promote antisocial behavior , and not bad enough to be unintentionally amusing either . It's a straightforward attempt to cobble together a cheap movie , while putting no time or effort into it , and drawing in enough patrons to make a profit . A handful of archaeologists , led by John Agar , are digging up and decoding plaques with " cuneiform " writing on them , though what we see bears no resemblance to any cuneiform that a Sumerian might have seen . The other scientists look over John Agar's shoulder while he reads a particularly puzzling plaque and rattles off allusions to The Gilgamesh Epic . This prompts them to climb a mountain that looks like K-2 in order to search for more clues . Near the peak , an avalanche almost buries them , but it also exposes a ruined Sumerian city . So far , so typical of Warner Brothers ' 1950s SF / fantasy flicks , and not without interest . But then the ice breaks under the feet of one of the scientists and he plunges into a hole so deep that Agar , peering in behind his flashlight , can't see the bottom . I ask you - - the experienced mountain climber - - what would you do under these circumstances ? A member of your team has fallen into what appears to be a bottomless pit . Here's what THEY do . With no more than a flashlight and a bit of climbing equipment , one by one , they lower themselves " hundreds of feet " into the black pit with no way of getting back up except by hoisting themselves hand over hand . How John Agar expects to do that is left unexplained - - never mind chunky Nestor Paiva . The handful of middle-aged men find their colleague's dead body . Nobody bothers to mourn or comment on the loss . They don't have much time anyway because , before you know it , they discover a lost civilization of pale Sumerians who live on mushrooms , except for one beautiful babe ( Cynthia Patrick , the best actor in the bunch ) who looks reasonably human and has something resembling a tan . The Sumerian king assigns her to be Agar's consort . When Agar retires , she goes with him and he must gently fend her off because , after all , he's a man of principle . It turns out that the Sumerians decide all their visitors must die - - BUT - - they are afraid of " the fire of Ishtar , " meaning the flashlight . But why go on ? It deteriorates into one of Edgar Rice Burroughs ' half-schizophrenic novels . " Tarzan Goes to Mars , " or something . Lots of scenes of beastly half-hominids laboring among the lava pits and being whipped by their Sumerian masters . Sumerian soldiers chasing the archaeologists waving swords but being held back by the fire of Ishtar . I don't know how it ends . I own the DVD and I can't bring myself to finish watching it . I really tried to find it ridiculous enough to raise a smile but I couldn't generate any feeling except a fierce boredom . It's hard to imagine that this was intended to be seen by anyone over the age of nine or ten . |
441,664 | 819,382 | 119,395 | 2 | Hyena | It's hard to believe this thing received so many positive comments from viewers . The performances struck me as adequate , but that was the only decent thing about it . The story sports more lacunae than a round of Emmenthaler cheese and has so many pointless asides that the narrative is almost impossible to follow and , when that's possible , it's impossible to believe it . I won't duplicate the comments that have already been made about this problem except to mention one that particularly grated on me . This secret assasin , the man of a thousand faces , the guy who's identity is so obscure that the FBI isn't even sure he exists , answers a ringing phone and says , " Jackal . " Zinneman's " The Day of the Jackal " was a finely tooled and highly logical piece of craftsmanship , as was Forsythe's novel before it . That earlier jackal carried only three identities and didn't change his hair style or color as often as he changed his socks , the way Willis does . " The Jackal " makes the earlier film look like a masterpiece of subtlety . Frederick Fox in the original lifts a man's passport at a ticket counter but you must watch closely to see it because it's done in an instant and with self-possessed skill . Here , Willis sits at an aiport for God knows how long until a man sitting nearby finally gets up and leaves his seat , leaving his open bag behind , as Willis must intuitively have known he would , which happens to have his passport sticking conveniently out so Willis can saunter over and pick it up . The tiny , easily broken-down , concealable , small caliber rifle with special bullets , in the original , here becomes gargantuized - - Gorgonized - - into a huge , complicated cannon firing ( what was it ? ) 1 , 000 rounds a minute ? ( Light machine guns fire about 500 rpm . ) Enough armament to stop a Banzai attack , and all for one little Hillary Clinton clone . ( Footnote : those especially lethal bullets in the original , which shattered the pumpkin's head , weren't infallible ; they were used in the attempted assasination of President Regan in 1982 . ) But even where the original was subtle , it was at least clear . When Fox sights his rifle in , we can watch him do it and easily understand how it's being done . Here , we see gears and knurled knobs clicking and whirring while Willis twirls a kind of wand and have no idea what's going on . We see a man blasted to bits by the cannon , but we do not see a demonstration after it has been properly sighted in . Instead of a long-distance duel between the bureaucracy and a clever murderer , we get two macho guys who wind up in a shoot out . I won't go on about this . The fact that it's a remake is symptomatic . Remakes have become endemic , like chicken pox in the middle ages . Why do they do it ? Why take something that is well done and simply redo it , either shot-by-shot or dumbed down ? Psycho , High Noon , The Thing - - all of them inferior copies of the originals . And the copies of TV series keep coming as well . The committees full of MBAs go on and on , driven ravenous by greed , snarling and grasping , hyenas fighting over carcasses . I keep waiting for " Gone With the Wind , Part II . " It seems only a matter of time - - and desperation . You want to see a nicely tooled machine ? Rent the original . If you want a better actioner than this , rerent " The Terminator " or any one of a hundred other flicks filled with big cannons and vehicular fireballs and shootouts in subways . |
442,920 | 819,382 | 84,777 | 2 | Schlagfest | Dario Argento has been described as the new Hitchcock . God help us . Never mind the plot for the moment . Let's just address the technique . The only shot that remotely resembled something Hitchcock might have done was a long and involved movement of the camera up one side of a roof and down the other , lingering over interim unidentifiable architectural features like struts , seeming to turn upside down as it maunders along , spending so much time on the roof that we wind up on a first-name basis with every shingle , and all the while we must listen to the harsh clanging of drums and electronic instruments . The point of this elaborate and infinitely extended movement ? None . It's as if you'd handed an 8 mm . camera to a couple of high school freshman and told them , " Go out and rent a Hitchcock movie - - he's a movie director , see - - and then do a shot that imitates him . " Argento makes Brian DePalma look like Michelangelo . The photography is garish and unpleasant . There is gore galore , with the brachial artery of somebody's amputated arm spraying a kind of abstract expressionist pattern over an otherwise blank wall . The plot ? How to begin . Contrived . A maniacal Doberman chases a very nice girl with admittedly toothsome legs down an empty street in Rome and , just by chance , she escapes the dog by running inside a house chosen at random , except that , also by chance , it is currently occupied by the murderer . Contrived - - and illogical too . The first killing apparently takes place while the real murderer is not yet in Rome . The only scene I thought had the least merit involved John Saxon sitting on a cement bench and viewing the events , the minor dramas , taking place on the sidewalks around him . The scene doesn't last long . Unfortunately , the movie does . |
443,351 | 819,382 | 56,417 | 3 | Sad Finale . | Same writer , producer , and director . Same two leads and a cameo by the third . Same whimsy and ipsative jokes . It no longer works . The first impression a viewer gets is that the photography is too GOOD . It's in nice , crisp black and white , whereas it ought to be in fuzzy 1940s gray . And the boys now ride around in boxy 1960s cars and fly on 707s and walk through modern airport lobbies . They should be sitting on onagers and polar bears . Everybody knows that . The story should put the fellows in some exotic locale . Hong Kong would do nicely . But the sets should be cheap and ludicrously shoddy , not at all realistic , as they are here . This story is all wrong . It puts them in space suits and sends them to a distant planet after escaping the clutches of a James-Bondian gang called The Third Echelon . It looks to the future instead of looking to the colonial past as their previous Road pictures did . Too much time is spent with the queerly costumed villains and too little with Hope and Crosby . And the gags are worn out ; they come more slowly and they're sillier . One of the gags , an automatic feeding machine gone berserk , is lifted from Charlie Chaplin's " Modern Times . " When the most amusing scene is handed over to Peter Sellers as an Indian neurologist , you know there's trouble somewhere . Sellers toots randomly on a wooden flute and a cobra rises out of a basket . Hope shrinks back . Sellers tells him not to worry . If he gives you a nip , you just cut an X on the bite , suck out the poison , and spit it out . " But what if he bites me someplace I can't reach ? " Sellers takes a step forward , pauses , and says earnestly , " That's when you find out who your true friends are . " This kind of nihilistic nonsense is a young person's game , or middle-aged anyway . Hope and Crosby are past their 1940s prime and it shows in their appearance and their pacing . Not to blame them . It is God's will that we change with age . But there are times that almost rival those in Laurel and Hardy's last team effort , " Utopia , " when pathos trumps amusement . Several cameos - - not just Sellers , but David Niven , Sinatra and Martin , and Jerry Colonna . They don't save the picture . Everyone seems to be working too hard and , overall , it shouldn't have happened . |
442,054 | 819,382 | 73,802 | 3 | Paranoia , the psychiatric kind | I cannot get past the message of this movie . It's laid out much too clearly to ignore , and it is obscene because it has lost its sense of what it's about . I haven't read the novel , but Pollack's film opens with a scene at a CIA-front organization in New York , which is broken into by two professional assassins , headed by Max von Sydow , who proceed to brutally slaughter the half dozen quirky staff members we've come to know and understand . The staff include an elderly female receptionist , a fussy elderly professorial guy who's toupee falls off when he is machine-gunned ( is that a joke ? ) , and , last , the beautiful Tina Chen who looks up from the copier , realizes she is about to be murdered , and says , pitifully brave , " I won't scream . " Von Sydow replies sympathetically , " I know . " These murders are completely unexpected , savage , unmotivated by anything that we are aware of , and graphic . It is a brutal scene . There is absolutely no way in which von Sydow and his henchman can be redeemed . And yet that is exactly what Pollack tries to do towards the end . After having killed these innocent good guys , von Sydow switches sides ( because the other side is willing to pay him ) and assassinates the evil mastermind behind a complicated intramural CIA plot . The script then turns him into a perfectly reasonable , sensitive human being . " It is better to live in Europe . Things are not so rushed . " Or whatever . I swear I'm not making this up . Pollack wants us to believe that it is better to be an honest mass murderer than a crooked bureaucrat . That's the message . You should write it down in case you forget . Just exactly what kind of psychiatric shambles do you have to be in order to turn ordinary values , not to mention common sense , upside-down like that ? I understand that there are thoughtful adults who dislike the government of the United States , even hate it , and who see conspiracies just about everywhere , providing a knee-jerk explanation for otherwise unexplainable events . I know that people who think this way exist because I number some of them among my closer friends . Nevertheless , at some point this dislike , this hatred , if it increases in intensity , must pass beyond politics or ethics and into the realm of the psychiatric . I don't for a moment believe that a man who murders people for money is better than a sinister government official . I don't care how suave and cultured the murderer is or whether he knows how to reach the Louvre on the Metro . Whoever is purveying that message needs either medication or meditation . I'd like to be able to argue that the production is as thoroughly rotten as its message , but I can't . It's quite well done . ( In some ways that's worse , because it makes the film less dismissable . ) Even New York City looks photogenic on the screen . And it's been a long time since I've thought of New York as photogenic . Robert Redford does an admirable job of projecting his character's initial shock and confusion , but then turns into a telecommunicational semi-genius . And , man , he looks just fine ! His wardrobe is just right . Even his rimless glasses are becoming . And his peacoat . It's not everyone who can make a navy pea jacket look glamorous . He seems extremely handsome too , the swine . I want to look like that . I want to wear a denim shirt and a tie with such panache . Faye Dunaway is alright in her role but it's not too believable a role . Would anybody eagerly sleep with a guy who has just kidnapped her and is holding her at gunpoint ? Even if he did look like Redford ? Would anyone be emotionally wounded if , when this ambivalent relationship is about to end , Redford asked her not to tell anybody about what happened ? Cliff Robertson is surprisingly good . He does one or two extremely good double-takes . The mailman is superb . The fight between him and Redford in a crowded apartment is exquisitely choreographed and , for once , we really don't know for sure how it will turn out , because Redford ( a book reader after all ) seems mismatched against the brute cunning of this hired assassin . This is one of John Housemann's final roles . A shame . He's a magnet on screen . And what an end to his life : a friend finds him lost , wandering the streets of New York , in a neighborhood he'd been familiar with for most of his life . Yes , the movie is very well executed , but I can't ignore that vicious , paranoid message . I have the same problem with Leni Riefenstahl's " Triumph of the Will . " Or her Olympic documentary in which the announcer is watching a foot race in which Jesse Owens is pulling into the lead and says ominously , " This Negro is dangerous . " |
442,598 | 819,382 | 52,587 | 3 | Take her down . | There's not much to be said about " Atomic Submarine . " It's an inexpensive SF thriller about a nuclear-powered submarine that's sent to the North Pole to find out why ships have been disappearing so often in northern latitudes . The Tiger Shark , with Dick Foran as the commanding officer and Arthur Franz as his exec , finds out . It's a giant undersea UFO . They ram it and are locked with it . A party is sent out in a kind of diving bell to free the sub . The men enter the beastly thing and find it contains a rather large and repellent monster who intends to kidnap them and the colonize Earth - - and so on . The monster is dispatched . I remember seeing this years ago on TV but I could only remember one scene . Arthur Franz is standing in the doorway of the UFO , staring goggle-eyed at the monster within , which resembles a hairy octopus with one huge Cyclops-like eyeball . " At last we meet , face to face , " says the monster . " That's a face ? " replies Franz . The plot's all over the place . It's festooned with icons of the genre . There's atomic power . An undersea mystery . A UFO . A repugnant monster . A plan to colonize earth . A sea-to-air missile . An argument between Lieutenant Commander Franz and the civilian Peacenik aboard . The Peacenik argues that peace is better than war or something like that . A couple of the men give their lives bravely . It's hard to imagine that this entire film cost more than would be spent on a TV episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea . The special effects are perfunctory . I would have to see proof that there was more than one take of each shot before I believed it . The Tiger Shark seems to have a crew of about three men . One of the men is Bob Steele , who had a successful matinée series in the movies during the 1940s . He has one expression - - a scowl . When he cracks jokes with the other two crew members , he scowls . Dick Foran floats through his part weightlessly . It's hard to believe that he was a cowboy in an Abbott and Costello movie who introduced a pretty and tuneful pop song , " I'll Remember April . " Arthur Franz , another New Jersey kid , probably does the best acting job . He's at least identifiable as a seasoned professional . ( He wasn't bad in the original " The Sniper . " ) Many of the others , notably Brett Halsey as the Peacenik , give performances that you or I could beat . Halsey , blandly handsome , does nothing but pout . Throughout . Oh , there's Tom Conway as a British scientist on the sub , too . He looks pretty good , considering that booze had made a considerable inroad into his life space by this time . He was soon to become so abjectly alcoholic that his brother , George Sanders , cut off communications with him , the cad . And there's still another scientist , a Russian guy . The best thing about him is his accent . When he tries to pronounce " wonderful " , it comes out " VON-dair-fool . " I guess they didn't have enough of a budget to hire a technical adviser because their naval protocol is sometimes off base in the most elementary of ways . The captain , Foran , gives an order to his subordinate , the executive officer , Franz . And Franz says , " Very well . " He's not supposed to say that . A subordinate , when addressed by a superior officer , says , " Aye aye . " It's only when a subordinate reports information to a superior , that the superior replies , " Very well . " None of that is important in the context of this sublimely shoddy production . I kind of enjoyed it for its tattiness . But , even with a minuscule budget , a good director can do better . I doubt that " The Thing From Another World " had much of a budget either , but it's light years ahead of this . |
442,591 | 819,382 | 152,015 | 3 | Writer's Block . | I wish Depardieu had been able to finish his book and see it become a dazzling success . At least he'd have wound up with something . The film struck me as pointless , rambling , and very stylish , like some other recent French films . Not to knock it . Most recent American films are pointless and rambling and have no style whatever . We should be grateful , I suppose , for photography that evokes a European city in the midst of a wind-blown Continental winter , and for elliptical conversations that challenge our ability to understand what's up . But there can be too much of a good thing . Golubeva is found stumbling around near the sea in the middle of the freezing night , carrying on in a bad accent about dreams and such . ( There are a few sequences of dreams that include things like swimming in a river of blood . You'll love it if you're Vlad the Impaler . ) Lots of people die . Catherine Deneuve dies in a suicide by motorcycle . I don't know why . Golubeva's young girl dies too , and I don't know why she dies either . She gets slapped in the face , falls to the pavement , and dies . There is supposedly an explicit sex scene too . I'll have to take their word for it because , although it is stylishly photographed , it is stylishly photographed in almost complete darkness . Don't worry about the kiddies being shocked . They'll probably be asleep by this time anyway . Depardieu isn't a bad actor . As we see him deteriorate from a carefully groomed handsome young man - - well , handsome except that his nose can't seem to get out of his way - - to a limping , murderous , hairy physical wreck , we feel sorry for the guy . Golubeva has a wan pretty face , with enormous half-lidded eyes and wide cheeks , like a doll . Her next movie should be a remake of Lewton's " I Walked With a Zombie . " Then there is this mysterious guy who leads a band . I guess it's a band . As far as I could make out , the band is made up of about a dozen drummers and a dozen musicians playing electric guitars . Every viewer will find the resultant sound interesting but uncultivated listeners fond of " easy listening " might not enjoy it . If you don't like the music , there's a payoff involved because the sinister composer and leader gets whacked over the head with Depardieu's walking stick . I must say , I found it barely worth sitting through . ( And it's a longie , too . ) At times it was like waiting in your car at a railroad crossing while a long long freight train rumbles slowly by , sometimes stopping entirely . I wish it had had a few jokes . |
443,032 | 819,382 | 75,921 | 3 | Women Can Be As Sloppy As Men ! | A text prologue warns us that we should not allow evil to enter our house , but I think the more apt word is " entropy . " Good grief , what slobs these two babes are ! George ( Seymour Cassell ) is alone in his San Francisco office and his monstrously expensive home in Tiburon while his wife and child are away in San Diego . Two girls ( Sondra Locke as Jackson and Colleen Camp as Donna ) knock on his door , asking directions . Well , it's raining , and they're shivering like two drenched pitiful kittens , and they're not sure of the address they're looking for , and , what with one thing and another , George invites them to come in and partake of his pizza by the fire . All three of them wind up in George's bath tub and there follows about five minutes of mostly undifferentiated nudity in double exposure , triple exposure , quadruple exposure , and dodekakuple exposure . They spend the night in a threesome and the next morning the girls fix him breakfast . But something has gotten slightly cockeyed because Georgie's guests gobble everything down with their fingers and pour ketchup and syrup all over the linen and - - " You eat like ANIMALS ! " , George exclaims and tells them to get out . In his dreams . Now , don't get me wrong . Sondra Locke is an extraordinary looking young blond with cobalt-blue eyes and Colleen Camp bounces around like a superball . You gotta say , they breed ' em mighty cute down there in Shelbyville , Tennessee , where Locke comes from , and they breed ' em with bodacious tushes too , as we can't help but note after the first five or ten minutes . But when the girls go berserk , so does the movie . The film is thereafter bathed in a garish green light . The pair put on ghoulish makeup and make gargoyle faces at themselves in the mirrors . They brain a delivery boy and then drown him to make sure . They cuss up a storm and smash windows and furniture . They have one of those scenes in which two people sit across the table from one another , licking food and then jumping each other's bones . And Georgie ? They first render Georgie unconscious with mace ( which contains nothing that you can't find in that little red bottle of McIlheny's Tabasco sauce in your kitchen cabinet ) , tie him up , pour flour and milk all over him , subject him to a psychotic trial , put him through one of those Tolstoy-type semi-executions , slap him around , dress up in outlandish costumes , then prance out on him and his virtually destroyed upper-middle-class home , and are dispatched by a delivery van ex machina . As for the acting , it's as if someone had told Georgie , " First act polite to these girls , then act panicked after you're tied up . " And to the girls : " First act shy , unwilling to impose on anyone , then act crazy . " And that's it . The photography and location work are straight out of a 1970s porn movie . I'm not sure that suggests a total lack of skill . It takes effort and talent to turn San Francisco ugly . The score gives us two Leitmotivs . Georgie's is some pop tune with lyrics about " being free " and " giving in . " Jackson and Donna's is a catchy rinky-tink thing called " My Good Old Dad . " I approve of the moral lesson behind the story , though . There are some things you should simply not give in to , even though they might look like a lot of fun at first . All very educational . |
442,484 | 819,382 | 444,682 | 3 | Confused and Confusing . | Hilary Swank is a professor at Louisiana State University and she and her former teaching assistant are called away to a remote town in the swamp to investigate what seems to be a recurrence of the ten Biblical plagues of Egypt . The minute I saw that her assistant was a good-natured black guy , I worried for his health . That's the kind of movie this is . Swank's performance is okay , that of a seasoned professional , but she's no longer young enough to be the misguided , vulnerable cross-dresser of " Boys Don't Cry . " She looks like a professor here , though a spectacularly nubile one . Her slightly husky voice and predatory canines could easily have been put to use in a better movie than this . It's not worth describing the plot in detail . I couldn't do it if I wanted to . It's a ripoff of a handful of other religious / horror movies , involving devil worship , murder , flashbacks with loud ZAPS and WHOOMS on the sound track , God in the form of a pillar of fire , an extravaganza of computer-generated special effects , and very little in the way of tension . It's not challenging in any way . You have to sit back and let it wash over you like a river of blood or a flight of locusts or a stampeding herd of cows suffering from glanders . Speaking of glanders , a little gratuitous nudity on the part of Swank wouldn't have hurt this movie a bit . Maybe a few shots of her biting somebody with those fabulous teeth . I'm not sorry I watched it because I only kept one eye on the screen . The other eye was busy reading Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus . The second eye was dealing with easier material than the first . |
441,783 | 819,382 | 45,607 | 3 | Weak Script Sinks Golden Fleece | This really should have been better . In 1953 British studios were pounding out comic hits one after another , but , alas , this wasn't one of them . I saw it years ago and remember being vaguely disappointed . Seeing it again hasn't changed my opinion . There's nothing wrong with the acting , except perhaps that Yvonne DeCarlo ( nee Peggy Middleton of Vancouver ) isn't very convincing as a hot blooded Latina , especially when she speaks Spanish . The direction isn't bad either . The problem lies with the script . It's just not funny enough . The captain , Alec Guiness , of a ferry that crosses the Straits of Gibralter regularly , from British Gibralter to fictional Kalika , has a wife on each end of the run , ignorant of one another's existence . The wife in Kalika , DeCarlo , loves to stay up all night , dance , and presumably do other wicked things . The British wife in Gibralter ( Cecilia Johnson ) is straight laced , domestic , content , and the couple retire at 10 o'clock every night . Some gags , not especially amusing , are worked in around getting presents for each of the wives mixed up . The big surprise is that DeCarlo really wants to settle down with a family on a less tempestuous schedule , while the rather boring Johnson reveals a wild side to her nature . Both run off with other men . The authorities at Kalika blame Guiness when DeCarlo is shot by her boyfriend . They go through the ritual of an execution by firing squad , except that the shooters plug the officer in charge of the execution , not Guiness . Guiness pays them off with lots of money , thanks them , and goes on his way . The end . What it reminded me of , more than anything else , were the cheap black-and-white domestic comedies that Hollywood was producing at the time , most of them now deservedly forgotten . The Dagwood and Bondie series . " The Life of Riley . " " Bed Time for Bonzo . " Hordes of other pre-television examples whose titles I don't want to bother looking up . If you don't expect too much , you won't be disappointed , but God forbid you should compare this to the Ealing comedies of the period , like " The Ladykillers . " |
443,237 | 819,382 | 50,610 | 3 | Inexpensive tale of energy wars . | Jeff Morrow is Leslie Gaskell , Barbara Laurence is Vera Hunter , and John Emory is Hubbel Eliot . Along with some ancillary Air Force personnel and a comic geek , they are in charge of a super-secret underground laboratory on the West Coast . Morrow is thrilled when he discovers a meteor passing through the atmosphere but nonplussed when the meteor decides to take a dip in the Pacific Ocean and emerge as a fantastic machine on the Mexican coast . Nobody knows what this colossal , blocky structure is . Obviously it's some kind of carpentered artifact because it's all made up of right angles with a kind of bald sphere half visible on top . It turns out that the machine , dubbed Kronos , is from some far-away planet and has been sent here to rob the earth of energy . You see , here on earth , we have learned how to convert matter into energy , but on Kronos ' planet they have figured out the other half of the equation - - how to convert energy into matter . And now they're running out of energy on the other planet . Are you taking notes on this ? Good . Maybe you'll be able to fill me in on some of the scientific questions raised by Kronos ' mission . For instance , if Kronos ' builders can convert energy into matter and vice versa , why don't they just convert a little of their own spare matter into energy instead of sending elaborate machines to earth to extinguish LA's lights ? But it's doubtful the writers could explain it either . Reversing the polarities of two antenna is described as an " anthropic conversion , " which means a " towards-human change " , which doesn't make sense . But it doesn't seem that any of the science makes sense for that matter . The diagram that Morrow draws on the board has the current going in the wrong direction , from positive to negative . There's a problem with Kronos ' locomotion too . It marches along the coast , threatening " populated areas " ( read Southern California ) , but it has no joints in its two or three legs . These stumps just thump slowly up and down , squashing some people . The film doesn't make much of these squashed people . They're shown as Mexican peasants , so maybe they don't count for too much . The USAF also drops a hydrogen bomb on Kronos - - while it's in Mexico , mind you . Nobody raises an eyebrow . Not much acting is called for and not much is given . Jeff Morrow has a distinct and resonant voice , great for radio or for TV voice overs . His face is less expressive . He has only one expression , no matter what the situation is - - a tight smile , as if he's having his picture taken at the Universal Studios Tour . Barbara Laurence had a fine , golden quality when she made " Street With No Name " a few years earlier . She was a slender seventeen-year-old as Richard Widmark's wife . Here , her grooming and demeanor reduce her to the level of B-movie actress , though she's still beautiful . It's always good to see Morris Ankrum in one of these movies . He's made so many , I get them mixed up . On the whole , the film comes across as flat , I'm afraid . ( There are some nice shots of a B-47 in flight , though . ) The sets reveal a low-budget enterprise . That's not necessarily bad in itself , but there's nothing to make up for the barren settings . Little tension in the script , no directorial display , and little effort put into the performances . You might get a kick out of it - - a relaxed high - - because this is distinctly unchallenging . It's just that there are so many better films of the genre out there . |
442,626 | 819,382 | 160,652 | 3 | COD : Terminal Stupidity . | As these things go , it's not too bad - - about average maybe . It's a revenge story in which an evil and psychotic man , Caulfield , insinuates himself into a normal household . He is the perfect tenant , occupying the guest house in the rear . Like most tenants , or rather like most people , he isn't everything he seems . There are twists and turns in the plot as the tenant first murders Linda Purl's dad , leaving only Purl and her teenage daughter alone in the house - - two helpless women . Oh , and Caulfield has a kind of dumb-witted accomplice , the ex-psychiatric patient played by Traci Nelson . For my part , she takes the acting palm . She looks heftier - - more succulent and less virginal than she did as the nun in that TV series , whatever it was . It helps that hers is the most colorful and least stereotyped role . She's in love with Caulfield and has tracked him down in his new identity . The fact that he doesn't give a hoot about her , that he only took all of her money because that's all he wanted , means nothing to her . The conventionalism of the script ( by Castaldo and Bonin , who I hope isn't trying to be amusing ) doesn't give her any more of a break than Caulfield does . She enters an empty house where he has agreed to meet with her . Just after she's walked through the front door he springs up behind her and begins strangling her . She disables him momentarily , knocking him to the floor , but instead of running back outside she scurries up the stairs , allowing him to follow . He clips her on the jaw and pins her on the bed . " Gulp . I love you , " she manages to gasp , just before he bashes her brains out with a phone . The stupidity continues . The teenage boyfriend of Purl's daughter has agreed to follow Caulfield around to find out who he is . Okay . Caulfield goes into an empty house . A few minutes later , Traci Nelson goes into the house . Pause . The sound of a gun shot . The boy looks puzzled and annoyed . " Now what was that ? " he asks aloud . Shortly Caulfield exits the premises lugging along a stone-heavy crate functional to the extent that it can contain a human dead body . Caulfield heaves the crate up into his trunk and drives to a remote place . One of those " densely wooded areas " where all dead bodies are found , regardless of whether they've been subject to " an execution-style murder " or a " ritual murder . " Anyway - - I hope you're following this - - anyway , Caulfield is spied upon by the teenager while he unloads the crate . It flops open and an arm falls out . So what does the kid do ? Well , precisely the same thing you would do . He goggles , takes out his camera , starts sneaking closer for a better look or a better picture , steps on a twig and cracks it , and is chased through the woods by a murderer armed with a pistol . But - - wait for it - - the kid is a clever boots . He steps from behind a tree and whomps the murderer in the chest with a log , knocking the guy to the ground . The kid picks up the pistol . Caulfield runs away . The kid , instead of beating it back to his car and zipping off into the cerulean horizon , CHASES the killer , shooting wildly at him . He misses with every shot , and it's no wonder . He's holding the pistol in the faddish sideways position he picked up from watching too many action movies . When he empties the pistol , he stands there in a state of tonic immobility , while Caulfield emerges from cover , regains the pistol , puts a new clip in , and - - well , I don't want to spoil it for you . It's not worth going on about . The movie doesn't require a suspension of disbelief . It practically demands the smothering of consciousness itself . Don't miss it if you can . |
441,780 | 819,382 | 56,331 | 3 | A Slapdash Doomsday . | Good premise , the temporary suspension of civilized values after a nuclear attack , an idea around which a good and gripping film might have been built . Instead we have a poor script and below-par acting in a meandering and disjointed tale . The Baldwin family load their car and trailer at four in the morning ( broad daylight ) for a vacation in the mountains . A few hours later , on the road , they see a flash over Los Angeles , followed by a vast mushroom-shaped cloud . " We'd better turn around and go back , " opines the family patriarch , Ray Milland . That's mistake number one , five minutes into the movie . Headed back towards LA they face a constant stream of cars speeding away from the city , driving crazily , blowing their horns , passing illegally . " What's the MATTER with everybody ? " screams the pretty teen-aged girl that all such threatened families must have with them . There follow a series of encounters with people of various backgrounds and characters . A grocery store owner who hasn't heard the news yet . ( New York , LA , San Francisco , San Diego , Chicago , and , I think , maybe Baltimore and Keokuk , Iowa , have been nuked out of existence , as have Rome , Paris , and , by our retaliatory response , targets in " Europe and Asia " . ) The grocery store owner is happy to unload his entire store of goods in one hour . But a wised-up gas station owner charges them - - get this , now - - THREE DOLLARS A GALLON , which shocks everyone into silence and prompts Ray Milland to bop the guy in the chops and knock him out . No need to go on too long about this . Three hoodlums seem to track the Baldwins wherever they go , even unto the alien corn , until finally , one by one , they are knocked off by Ray Milland or his son , the multi-talented Frankie Avalon . The function of the two women - - Jean Hagen is Mrs . Baldwin and Mary Mitchell the daughter - - seems to be to nag the men as they go about the business of preserving the family . " You pointed a gun at that man ! I've never seen you like this before ! " says Hagen after her husband has confiscated some stores . " Let's go back . I want to see grandmother , " says the daughter . It ends abruptly , with the Baldwins and girl captive they've rescued from the three goons stopped by the Army , quizzed , and allowed to proceed because Frankie Avalon is dying from loss of blood in the back seat . The sergeant says , " That's five more that made it without radiation poisoning , " as the two soldiers gaze at the departing car . That's the end . That's really it . The end . It's as if the crew had suddenly run out of film and had time to shoot only the last few sentences . What a waste , except for Joan Freeman as the captive rape victim the Baldwin's have picked up . She can't act any more than the rest of the cast but she's cute as a calico kitten . AIP should have thrown ambition to the wind and made a movie called , " Panic in the Year Zero at Bikini Beach . " |
442,678 | 819,382 | 43,882 | 3 | Kaye Impersonates Celebrity Aviator . | I'm afraid I couldn't get with the program here . Danny Kaye is responsible for some of the funnier movies ever made , but this plot is a weak comedy of manners . It has Kaye as Jack Martin , a nightclub impersonator , being called on to pretend he's a celebrated , aristocratic French aviator . There is a mix up with the aviator's wife , Gene Tierney , and Kay's girl friend , Corinne Calvet , gets jealous . It's in glorious Technicolor but it's all been done elsewhere , often better , as in " The Prisoner of Zenda . " Sometimes worse , as in " The Front . " There's little in the way of physical comedy . Kaye doesn't take any pratfalls . He rarely seems as rattled as he does in his usual screen persona - - more embarrassed than neurotic and cowardly . He doesn't sing a gibberish song . The location needn't have been the French Riviera . Kaye's part could easily have been given to anyone else . It's as much a musical as it is a comedy . Kaye plays a showman and does his musical numbers straight . None are memorable ( " Ballin ' the Jack " ) and Kaye wears a tuxedo . Kaye is energetic enough , on stage and off stage , and his voice is pleasant , but that's about it . One of his songs ' best features is that it used ( unless I'm mistaken ) Gwen Verdon for one of the lead dancers . She should have had more screen time . If this was an attempt to broaden the style of Kaye's performances , it really doesn't work . As a comedian , with a good script , he's superb . As a singer and dancer , he's mediocre . |
442,914 | 819,382 | 103,074 | 3 | All Men Are Brutes | Susan Sarandon is a delight as always , with her exopthalmia and perky nose . Geena Davis , in her first big role since her appearance in " The Accidental Tourist " is also good , and yummy in a toothy sort of way . The movie is fun to watch but it's silly in a desperate kind of way , slapping each other's palms and going " Wheee ! " as they sail off together into the Grand Canyon . ( The photography is sunny and splendid . ) More important than the performances , more important than the photography , more important than anything else about the film is that it is a perfect illustration of a sociological point - - It is impossible to have bonding without an enemy . People not only bond WITH one another but AGAINST others . ( Anyone into social psychology should check out Muzafer Sherrif's classic " Robber's Cave " experiment before seeing this flick . ) That's why the president's hooper rating always soars after a national crisis such as a terrorist attack . Suddenly our bonds with each other as " Americans " become more important than internal differences in regional or political viewpoints . This principle goes unspoken in the film . How could it possibly be articulated ? We would find ourselves sleeping with the enemy . But the message is there , covert as it is . There isn't a truly sympathetic male in the movie . Harvey Keitel is a relatively benign authority figure , but he is distant and powerless to do do anything other than his duty , which is evidently to put them in a position where they feel they need to turn into part of the scenery . Michael Madsen tries to be understanding and helpful but - - MICHAEL MADSEN ? ( How about Timothy Carey ? ) His looks , his demeanor , lightly rasping voice , his smoking , belie his dialogue . We recognize the face of the beast when we see it . That's why Costa-Gavras was nailed by critics for casting the sympathetic looking Yves Montand as a CIA-sponsored torture instructor in " State of Siege " . The husband is a stereotypical idiotic patriarchal male . A hitch-hiker , smooth and apologetic and cute , turns out to be a thieving moral idiot when his glands are satisfied . A would-be rapist is a greasy gargoyle . A truck driver is something out of the barroom scene in " Star Wars . " The flaw lies not so much in the movie , which is filled with breezy chatter and is exhilarating , and not in the script either . The deeply disturbing aspect of this motion-picture event is the audience's and the critic's response to it . What - - ultimately - - is there to applaud about a movie that tells us that the two genders are by nature or by fate enemies of one another . That one is oppressed and exploited by the other ? And that the resolution of the conflict lies not in negotiation but suicide ? If that were true , there would be no audience around to clap when Thelma and Louise do their joint nosedive . Yes , it has brio and leaves you feeling amused and happy most of the time , but it leaves a sour taste afterward . In the end this is a tragedy , not the comedy it was meant to be . |
443,279 | 819,382 | 337,978 | 3 | The DNA is degraded . | The original " Die Hard " was a crudely entertaining action movie with comic villains and a couple of humorous exchanges in addition to the usual violent sequences that had Bruce Willis as Officer John McClane running barefoot through a sea of broken glass . The next episode in the franchise , " Die Harder , " switched the locale from the Nakatomi Building to Dulles and was essentially a repeat , duller than the first despite the enhanced special f / x . The third installment , " Die Hardest of All , " or was it , " Die , Whether You Like It Or not " ? , put Willis back in New York with Samuel Jackson as his unwilling sidekick and Jeremy Irons as the least believable German heavy imaginable . It wasn't up to the standard of the original - - so few copies are - - but it was more entertaining than the second installment . I know . I got the titles all mixed up but these sequels come thick and fast and seem to pile atop one another like cow flops . This one keeps nothing more than the character of John McLaine and the acing of Bruce Willin in the part . He has devolved into a routine action hero . He has no vices . He doesn't smoke . He doesn't say anything that is politically incorrect . He doesn't use cuss words . He doesn't suffer from a hangover . He has no humanity to speak off . It could be Arnold Schwarzenegger in the part , or Sylvester Stallone , back in the 80s , or Dolph Lundgren or Jacques van Damm a decade ago . Interchangeable . In the next installment , may we look forward to a silver-haired Willis , his hair grown back , who is a vegetarian and is serenely awaiting The Rapture , the satisfaction of his utter boredom tempered by the saddening realization that the Jews , Moslems , Zoroastrians , Coptic Christians , and Animists of all stripes will not ascend into heaven to sittith in Paradise ? Well , why not ? This fourth outing has drained the character and plot of any blood the original had . The thing's been almost completely eviscerated . Nothing is left but the gall . The story involves the takeover and the threatened demolishing of the entire computer system that now permits the United States to function . But if you think you're going to learn anything about how this might be done , or if there will be suspenseful scenes in which we follow some hacker through the system , you'd be wrong . It's action , period , . That's all it's really about . There's little time left for humor or character development . Instead of Officer McClane hanging on the edge of an endless elevator shaft in the Nakatomi Building , there's an entire SUV dangling at the end of a cable in an elevator shaft . Not enough ? Okay , there are two people having a vicious fight within the precariously suspended vehicle . Need still more ? There's a guy a few floors up with an automatic weapon , shooting the SUV full of holes . And there is , trust me , nothing funny about the villains . The only wisecracks come from Willis and a young computer geek he drags around by the hair , and they're not very funny . Would you like to see one car smash into another in the Holland Tunnel , leap up , and spin over and over eight or nine times in mid-air ? If so , this is the movie for you . If you're looking for anything in the way of comedy or human interest to balance the action , don't look here . |
442,375 | 819,382 | 422,720 | 3 | Boy , Did They Eat Cake . | The film has a fine cast and there are some original touches . The American actors speak unaccented English , without as much as a nod to any alien phones , for instance , despite the late 18th-century French setting . And there may be snatches of rococo music but most of the score is electronically amplified rock with , at one point , a singer belting out the old Frank Sinatra standard , " Fools Rush In . " There are multiple close ups of lavish plates of exquisitely prepared and presented food . And minute examination of clothing , wigs , fabrics , jewelry , and period shoes - - especially shoes . ( The hairdresser who dolls up Kirsten Dunst as Marie Antoinette is a fairy and is played for laughs . ) Miniature dogs . Lots of miniature dogs slurping up charlotte russes or other desserts . Okay - - decadence in abundance . It might have taken ten minutes . Instead , that's what the entire film seems to be about . You have to applaud the director's intent to do something different , something original . The problem is that it doesn't work . Rip Torn's speech doesn't sound too much out of place but most of the rest of the women sound like Valley Girls . And , boy , they gossip ! In extended scenes , they gossip ! They talk behind one another's back about hair styles and personalities - - " She's so political . " Stuff you could find on MySpace . It wouldn't take much in the way of rewriting to turn this story of self-indulgent aristos at Versailles into a handful of high school kids in El Cerrito . And it didn't need to be directed by Sophia Coppola . Martha Stewart could have phoned it in while under house arrest . I don't know which audience this was aimed at , but I can recommend it for selected groups anyway . Those youngsters who , in a recent poll , identified Toronto as a city in Italy , for example . Or the fourteen percent of us who believe Barack Obama is a Muslim . Or that majority of high school seniors unable to place the American Civil War in its correct half century . At least they'd gain some familiarity with the dress of the period French court . |
441,837 | 819,382 | 223,384 | 3 | Disappoints | People couldn't wait for Rizzo to be elected mayor of Philadelphia . He was a popular , inarticulate , authoritarian Chief of Police . ( He's the chief that Sidney Poitier talks to on the phone in " In The Heat of the Night . " ) The city had become positively dangerous by the early 1970s . I lived there at the time and was repeatedly burglarized , as some of my friends were repeatedly raped ( on campus at the University of Pennsylvania , and in their dorm rooms too ) . The liquor store I patronized had bullet holes in its windows . Most shop keepers in my neighborhood either carried pistols in their belts or kept them hidden under the counter . It was like Dodge City without Wyatt Earp . So Rizzo was elected . And , as promised , he reduced the crime rate , although the streets never really became safe again . He reduced the crime rate in two ways . One - - and I'm guessing at this - - is by bringing pressure on his police officers not to officially report crimes brought to their attention . I'm guessing that this is true because the process of recording or not recording index crimes according to political circumstances is universal . It can affect the number of crimes one way or another by forty percent or more . The second way , as shown in this film , is simply by permitting the already existing violence by the police force to increase unchecked . Clobber them . And yet the film disappoints . Rob Morrow is an interesting actor , and Paul Sorvino does fine as Frank Rizzo , one of whose first acts as mayor was to appoint his brother as head of the Fire Department . ( " It's a total surprise ! " said the delighted brother at the time . ) But that's about it as far as the film's virtues go . It's a rather low-budget " All the President's Men , " without any of that film's strong points . The script is done pretty much by the numbers . The direction is poor in many respects , including camera placement . A scene involving a conversation between Morrow and another character seems to have been shot from across the street , so there are constantly vehicles passing between us and them , which is unnecessary and annoying . The dialogue is mundane . There are hints of past evildoings that sound like made-up threats . If Lumet had got hold of this , things might have happened . As it is , well - - if there's nothing else on , and you don't expect too much . . . . |
443,435 | 819,382 | 66,407 | 3 | Pretty irritating , Miller or not . | I don't know about this one . The point , if there was one , seemed to get by me . Multiple references to the film's source , Henry Miller's eponymous novel , don't help much . Much of Miller's appeal comes not just from his go-to-hell attitude towards life and art but from the way he expresses his sentiments on the page . Maybe he just doesn't translate well to the screen , not that Miller himself would care one way or the other . The street words that Miller flung about so carelessly in his prose seem emphasized here , as if designed expressly to shock . Not just the F word either . Well the street words are old and established . Shakespeare worked a terrible pun on the C word into one of his comedies , I forget which . The F word goes back to the Angles and the Saxons or the Mooks and the Gripes or somebody . Wait a minute - - the C word was also worked into a pun in " Hamlet , " come to think of it . " I feel like going out and getting myself a fatal dose of clap . " Well , no kidding . Are we supposed to be shocked ? Maybe we were , back in 1970 , if we had blue hair and lived in Dogpatch , USA . If Henry Miller doesn't add much cachet , neither do Country Joe and the Fish , whose music whangs away on the sound track with lyrics that are as pointlessly vulgar as the horribly dubbed dialog . Ben Webster is okay , though . And the photography , though irritatingly grainy , is several steps removed from the billowing pastels of soft-core porn . It's honestly black and white , and the naked bodies , of which there are plenty , aren't painted , trimmed , or shaved . If the babe has a pimple anywhere , you see the pimple . And the guys are bald on top and hairy everywhere else . A for sincerity there . The story goes no place . There is no story . People run around half naked on the streets of Paris , flapping their arms and panting , supposedly having a great time . Half a dozen ordinary-looking people slosh around in a tub pouring wine over one another and laughing giddily because the director told them to act as if they were having the grandfather of all good times . ( The French do this joi de vivre stuff better . ) In the first scene of the film , the bespectacled hero , a pallid imitation of Miller , picks up a girl in a café and , after sex , gives her all his money , can't get any more credit at the restaurants , and is forced to raid his own garbage pail for leftover nuggets . Plenty of sex but not enough food . That's how a viewer feels after watching this . I wish this movie had been better . It was dumped on for obscenity , but the sexual and linguistic candor was at least an innovation in a mainstream movie . It deserves dismissal , true , but only because it lacks any substance . As it is , it stands as an historical curiosity . |
442,832 | 819,382 | 103,258 | 3 | Please , don't get up . Ah'm jess passin ' through . | Generally when somebody screws up , they go through three sets of filters in the course of attempts at correction . The first order of social control is usually the family . When Dad spots a roach clip on his son's dresser , well , they sit down and have a good talk about it . Mom may ground her daughter for not doing the chores . The second order of control is the social network the screw-up belongs to - - the friends , the peers , the community . Friends try to talk sense to the guy . The community gossips about him ( or her ) . Among the Old Order Amish , you get " shunned " if you don't straighten up and fly right . At West Point you get the treatment . In high school nobody wants to go to the prom with you . The third order of control involves secondary institutions - - the police , psychiatrists , or , quien sabe ? , the National Security Agency . In the case of Marie / Audrey / Robbie / etc . , all three systems failed for a long time , simply because it seemed so hard to believe that a woman would kill her husband and try to poison her own child for insurance that was no more than modest . And , after all , Mom HAD taken her ailing daughter to hospital after hospital . In light of all this , how could she have " done it " ? Well , she was able to do it precisely because she estimated just how extensive the parameters of normal behavior would be under these conditions . Of course the insurance policies weren't exactly grand . They couldn't be - - not if she were to escape suspicion . What would the control agents think if you took out a million dollar life insurance policy on your husband and he shortly blew up ? Likewise Audrey / Robbin / Holly / Mildred / Gladys / Candy HAD to take her ailing daughter to hospitals . You don't find arsenic poisoning if you're not looking for it , whereas everyone who watches Oprah knows that you can anorexize yourself to death . What makes this story more than ordinarily interesting is the fact that Mom was able to slip past all three levels of social control with such facility . She was finally identified as a no-goodnik by secondary institutions but seems to have done not much more than dye her hair and scoot away to Florida , where she was able , without a great deal of trouble , to seduce and marry an over-sized deadhead and finagle him into moving to Vermont . ( " I like snow . " ) THEN - - and this really bespeaks contempt for agents of social control - - she confides to friends and husband that she has an incurable blood disease and must go to Texas for treatment . She does . And " passes away " . It isn't long before hubby gets a phone call from Audrey's TWIN SISTER , and then a visit from her , and then a roll in the hay too . Can you believe the arrogance of this woman ? She actually believes that she can pass for her own sister ? And can you believe the community in Vermont ? They ACCEPT HER for what she claims to be . Even her widow / lover believes she's a twin sister , even after they begin living together ! " How stupid can you get ? " asks one doubting thomas who worked with Robbie , the original , one-and-only first wife . And that's what finally does Emily / Audrey / Mabel / Ginger / Xanthippe in - - the second level of social control , community gossip . Some residents of this town in Vermont ( Brattleboro , nice place in the Fall ) check into her story and find it full of holes . The police and FBI are notified , and that's that . Guilty as charged . The courtroom scene only last five or ten minutes . I wish it had been longer . I'd have liked to see the prosecution build its case , and the defense too . The justice system is a secondary institution too , and it would been nice to see a shift from lying and gossip and arguing between individuals to conflict mediated by officials representing us . The performances are okay and the direction is functional . No more than that . Judith Light , I'm afraid , isn't unattractive , or , as Randolph Scott once said about a knockout beauty in one of his Westerns , " She ain't ugly . " She is , though , endowed with facial features that are uniformly sinister : a firm , wide jaw ; a tall thin forehead ; and two glowering eyes that seem sunk deeply into their shadowy orbital sockets . ( Does she ever blink ? I don't know . ) She is a good enough actress to pull off some cool switcheroos , too . She's giving one of the doctors a couple of strokes , " Tulane ? Why that's a fine school ! " , all sweetness and pecan pies , and then suddenly a bear claw , " Are you telling me I can't take my own daughter home ? " A bit more law and a bit less gossip would have improved this " based on a true story " film , but it's so bizarre that it's interesting despite its weaknesses . |
442,487 | 819,382 | 30,418 | 3 | Tumbrils Amid the Soap . | One hundred and fifty-seven minutes of lavish romance , intrigue , and politics , dished up by MGM's superb spectacle factory . There's an " entre act " and everything . The problem , for me anyway , is that the thing is so exquisitely dull . The first half - - before the entre act , that is - - is a kind of late 18th-century soap opera . Norma Shearer is the young Austrian bride of the future king of France , Louis XVI , played by Robert Morley as impotent and inept but not unkind . When Shearer learns of this arranged marriage , she positively kvells . " Oh , just think of it ! I'll be the Queen of France ! " Things don't turn out all that well for her , though . ( Do they ever , in these genre movies ? ) She's resented as a foreigner and barbarian at the French court , especially by the waspish Madame DuBarry , the consort of Morley's grandfather , the current king . Such gossip you never heard . And then there's Morley's apparent indifference to her . ( " I like to be alone . " ) What's a girl to do ? She drowns her sorrows in wine and flings with lovers in seriatim . This is nice work , if you can get it . You get to indulge yourself in every sensory modality known to man or beast - - AND you get the sympathy of the audience too , because they know you're just being flighty out of a desperate loneliness . The second half turns a little darker , but then , as they say , it's always darkest just before it turns completely black . By this time Morley has come around enough to give Shearer two children , from whom she is of course eventually separated , giving the audience a reason for still more tears . Let's see . I checked the spoiler box so I guess I can give away the ending : Marie Antoinette gets her head lopped off . Kids , I hope I didn't ruin it for you but , see , this is the French Revolution and revolutionaries tend not to be very kind . All through history , it seems that some merciless dictator , like a king , mistreats his subjects until they depose him . Then they show that , unlike him , they are full of New-Testatment-mercy by slaughtering the deposed ruler , his family , and anybody who was ever associated with him . ( Fidel Castro worked his way down to mailmen . ) At that , the peasants are treated in this movie with the contempt the writers think they deserve . What an uncouth bunch ! Shearer explains the unrest to her children this way : We didn't do anything , but they're ignorant and unhappy and must take it out on somebody . In this movie , nobody ever says " Let ' em eat cake . " Most of the cast overact , but this is understandable because it's common to the period . I don't know what " charisma " is supposed to mean these days . It was originally used to describe the quality of someone who was blessed by God and exuded a magnetism that was religious in its properties . Now , the word is slung around loosely to describe rock stars . Whatever it is , and however it's measured , I don't think Norma Shearer has any . Joseph Schildkraut , effete and painted like a mannequin , gives the best performance . Robert Morley seems to have only one note on his instrument . In a relatively minor role as Shearer's one true love , Tyrone Power has a part that is familiar to devotees of these kinds of movies . The woman is haunted by demons , surrounded by knaves , impostors , ninnies , and exploiters - - and this is the only man who will return from time to time to rescue her from some folly or to reassure her with his understanding and candor . ( Cf . , Paul Newman in " I'll Cry Tomorrow " or Sam Shepherd in " Frances " . ) This must have been an eye opener in 1938 . Today it seems stale and bound by conventions common to genre films . Anyone who wants a more balanced and adult point of view should see Ronald Coleman in " A Tale of Two Cities . " It would be a far , far better thing to do . It will jerk almost as many tears but it will challenge you too . |
442,231 | 819,382 | 65,377 | 3 | Everything you could want in an airplane spoof . | We can't call this " the grandfather of all airplane movies " because that honor belongs to " The High and the Mighty , " released around 1954 . But this one is obviously the source of all the sequels , television series , and spoofs that followed its release . Maybe " The High and the Mighty " was the most original and interesting , but the movement took sixteen years to get off the ground . Maybe because the genre was so pregnant with possibilities . A good many established performers appear in small roles as their careers continued their gentle glide downhill . Loyd Nolan appears as a custom's officer , for instance . His sister's name is " Judy Barton . " That was the real name of Kim Novak's character in " Vertigo . " Can't imagine how that happened unless one of the writers thought some of the mojo might rub off . Let's see . The married pilot ( Dean Martin ) has been having an affair with his flight attendant ( Jacqueline Bissett ) , as any normal pilot would , but she is now pregnant and , boy , is he in a pickle . Burt Lancaster is the airport manager at odds with his social-climbing wife and he's having an affair with his secretary , Jean Seberg , who is thinking of taking a job elsewhere because she can't see where her relationship with Burt Lancaster is headed because , though he's married too , just like Dean Martin , his real love is aviation and he refuses " to commit " . ( That means he won't divorce his wife and marry Seberg . ) And then there's Van Heflin , the mad bomber of Global Circumlobotomy Airlines , who wants to blow himself and the airplane up because he and his wife are impoverished and need the insurance money . There are a couple of nuns on the plane too , and a priest who asks earnestly , " Anything I can do to help ? " Now , there's usually a sick kid aboard , too , who needs a kidney transplant or an emergency vasectomy , but if such a kid were a passenger here I missed her . There were a few periods of microsleep . And - - I - - I can't go on . The suspense , the tragedy , the soap bubbles are overwhelming . My eyes are filled with tears , mostly because I managed to get soap in them . I can't even see what I'm typing any longer . And I can't hear either - - that sudden decompression , I suppose . ( Sob . ) Is this - - is this coming out right ? Give it to me straight . I can take it . |
443,463 | 819,382 | 99,005 | 3 | Right Up There in the First Rank of the Second Rate . | Skilled professionals live it up in an exotic and dangerous location . They get drunk every night . They smuggle opium . They drop pigs in parachutes . They fly under impossibly hazardous conditions . They dress weird and act weirder . They're iconoclastic , outrageous . They violate every rule of command and have contempt for their employers at the CIA . They're irreplaceable . Nope . It's not " Only Angels Have Wings " and it's not " MASH . " It's an uneasy mixture of the two that unfortunately comes across as more silly than funny . It aims at shock , amusement , and education , but doesn't really achieve its goals . As far as its shock value is concerned , well , we're inured by now , aren't we ? Does it really shock anyone that a bunch of hard-living pilots flew secret missions in Laos in the 1970s ? No , it's not shocking . It's not even educational now , under our current circumstances , when it would be interesting to learn that some paramilitary excursion was NOT buried in a file labeled National Interest , Defense de Toucher . That's okay . So we've been wised up a little and are no longer neither so shockable nor so dumb . The problem in this case is that the film depends on those very qualities for its power to amuse . Without that , the film implodes . A group of shaggy drunken CIA pilots are sitting around in a cat house , goosing the girls , shooting out the lights with a silenced pistol , killing lizards with same . Asks newbie pilot Robert Downey , Jr . , " When you guys act like this does it mean there's something to celebrate ? " Replies another , guffawing , " No , it means it's night time . " That might be funny if we expected renegade pilots to be as upright as the rest of us . If we don't , the gag , like the movie , falls flat . There are action scenes naturally . Everything that can possibly happen in or to an airplane in flight happens in or to an airplane in flight . People fall out of them , baggage is thrown haphazardly out of their hatches , engines fail , they sustain damage from AAA , the are torn apart during crash landings , but we've seen most of this elsewhere , often done better . Some might find this funnier than I did , and the acting is pretty good . Robert Downey Jr . is especially effective as the straight man . Check out the other comments and if they describe a film that you might find appealing , then by all means watch it . There might be some laughs in it that escaped me . |
442,743 | 819,382 | 390,521 | 3 | Super Sized Ego | The startling conclusion of this documentary is that if you stuff yourself with nothing but junk food and take no exercise for 30 days you'll get fat , and your body chemistry will be so banged up that on paper you'll look more like a flashlight battery than a human being . . Spurlock must be an interesting guy . The first time he tries to eat a super sized meal at McDonald's he pukes out of the car window . I thought the air remained tangy throughout the rest of the movie . He drives himself and his crew around the country , seeming to enjoy being on camera , winking and smirking at it as he eats . But soon enough the diet begins to get to him . He's just not the same energetic guy he used to be . He complains of headaches , of a gassy feeling , of depression . His girl friend tells us he no longer has the sexual energy he used to have . ( She has to get on top . ) It isn't that Spurlock can't have erections anymore . Oh , they're there alright - - and solid too . But , somehow , he's just not the same guy he used to be . By this time I was laughing so hard to was a little difficult to follow the on screen spiel . The PR people at McDonald's get a few minutes of screen time trying to explain that people should be free to make choices . They make asses of themselves , of course . Kids are shown as limp airheads who gobble down junk foods at school lunches and afterwards can recognize Ronald McDonald but not Jesus . Everything looks pretty bad for McDonald's . But the movie is a fraud , to an extent that only its makers can determine . What is a " calorie " he asks a dozen or more people . Nobody knows . A dozen people who are asked what a calorie is - - from prepubescents to mature adults - - do not have any idea what a calorie is . He must have asked two thousand people to identify a calorie before finding twelve who were dumb enough to have no idea . There was one talking head that I listened to with real interest , a man whose identity I now forget but who was on screen for a minute or two . He observes that smoking was once epidemic and that now smokers are being " hectored " constantly . How long , he wonders , before we begin to hector the large people among us ? It's a question with some point . It's corollary is : Why do we hate people whom we define as weaker than ourselves ? Why do some of us enjoy humiliating and punishing others who are defenseless ? Why do we buy supermarket tabloids and gloat over pictures of celebrities now grown old or fat ? I have a feeling the answer lies deep in human nature and if anyone ever looks into it , it will taste worse than prune yogurt . I also found the statistics kind of enlightening . God , we collectively put away a lot of sugar and salt ! But one of the nutritionists had me puzzled , saying the most of the sugar Spurlock had put away was refined , implying that this is the worst kind . I'm no nutritionist but I'd thought that all starches - - as complex as pasta or as simple as raw sugar - - were broken down into monosaccharides in the gut before being absorbed . What I mean is that the body can't tell organic Tupelo honey from a Moon Pie as far as its sugar content is concerned . I may be wrong on this point but it really doesn't matter in context because Spurlock's movie is rather obviously so wrong on so many others . I hope nobody is going to call this an " experiment . " Let's call it a " stunt , " which is what it is . An engaging one , but a trick nonetheless . So Spurlock feels depressed after so many days of McDonald's . You want me to feel depressed ? Tell me that I will be applauded by an audience of alfalfa sprout mavens at Sundance , make a million dollars , and become famous , if only I can truthfully say that I feel depressed . I guarantee you that at the end of a few days I'll be on the brink of tears . As insurance , I can even manage to dig up a girl friend who will testify that although I have erections with the dimensions of Sequoia trees and the tensile strength of titanium , they are somehow , I don't know , just not the same as they used to be . Sometimes I wish Michael Moore had never made any successful movies . The imitations are beginning to roll in . What next ? The TRUTH behind the Miss America Pageant ? For what it's worth , I've spent thirty years doing research in the behavioral sciences , and in my opinion this guy not only cooked the books but did a much clumsier job of it than I've ever done . Gives me a warm glow to be able to say that . Feel as if I'd just eaten a raw free-range organic broccoli spear . |
443,433 | 819,382 | 72,260 | 3 | Very hot stuff in 1974 . | Saw it in a drive-in in San Mateo , CA . Here's how it goes . There's this delicious teacher , Angel Tompkins who must have one of the most cartoonishly beautiful faces on film and a figure to match , is separated from her husband and develops a case of oestrus , the object of her intentions being a former student of hers who has just graduated . She seduces him all over the place , or tries to . As I say , nice torso . The lovemaking is simulated in unbelievable ways . Meanwhile there is this voyeuristic lunatic , Anthony James , who follows her around and spies on her . If she goes out on her boat to sunbathe topless , he dons his frogman suit and snorkels out to peep through the porthole . Every time something stimulating is about to happen involving the body of Angel Tompkins , the succulent blond mentioned earlier , James pops up and interrupts things . He does it so often that it is clear he has to die . The music is by Shorty Rogers , an iconic jazz trumpeter and arranger of the 1950s , who must have taken this score out of a back drawer , or maybe he wrote it in his sleep . Suggestion : rent the tape or the DVD and burn all five minutes of nudity onto your own DVD . Add inserts of Anthony James ' bony face if you are mentally unsound . Then return the original tape or the DVD , and destroy your own excerpts before watching them . Want to see sexy Angel Tompkins in a cult classic ? See if you can find " Little Cigars . " |
442,011 | 819,382 | 116,259 | 3 | The difference between God and a doctor . | SPOILERS . It's an old joke . What's the difference between God and a doctor ? God doesn't think he's a doctor . That's Dr . Gene Hackman's problem in this film - - he gets the two identities mixed up . He loses what sociologists call " role distance . " He begins to believe that because he can delay death , he can give life , and give the kind of life he'd like to give . Well , we won't get into that here . Please take my course in Philosophy of Medicine 101 . You'll find the fee surprisingly affordable . Hurry , offer ends at midnight . Actually , " Extreme Measures " illustrates just about everything that can go wrong with what might have been a decent medical thriller . The story itself is pretty plain . Promising young doc roots out unethical shenanigans at higher levels , rather as in Robin Cook's " Coma . " In " Coma " they just did it for the money . Here they do it because they want to practice what Hackman , Chief of the Shenanigans Department , calls " great medicine . " It involves harvesting homeless men , cutting their spinal cords , and more or less encouraging the fusion of the severed nerves . Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't . When young Dr . Hugh Grant begins to suspect something is up and noses around , he is framed for cocaine possession , employee theft , and having a funny hair style . Ruined , he continues his investigation anyway and it ends in violence . Michael Palmer , a doc himself , wrote the novel on which this is based . I haven't read it , but Palmer must be aware of just how closely the methods used by Gene Hackman resemble those of the docs who worked under Hitler . Germany was exterminating people who were identified as medically unfit - - for the most humanitarian of reasons , of course . State-sponsored propaganda films showed movies justifying the pruning of the herd . Well , just look at these poor schizophrenic dudes , a kindly doc explains . Aren't they better off dead ? Later , Jews were used in experiments to determine how long a human body could survive in near-freezing water , presumably to save the lives of sailors who lost their ships in the Baltic . Next to them , Hackman's doc seems only a trifle misguided . Did Palmer have anything to say about this script or did he just get paid and run ? The film goes in for the cheapest kind of shock effects while the plot meanders around . I mean " cheap , " as in hands reaching in from out of the frame and grabbing the hero by the shoulder . Unimaginative too . When Hugh Grant gets his nose bashed in , he suffers from nothing more than a colorful trickle from one nostril to his lip . Didn't the writers ever see a fist fight in a schoolyard ? Punched in the nose , the victim bleeds like Niagara and when he tries to wipe it off he smears it all over his lower face . ( Cf . , Ben Johnson in " Shane " for how it ought to be done . ) At one point , Grant is told that he has a break in the 8th vertebra . Later , he sobs to his girl friend that he has a fracture in C6 ( sixth cervical ) when it should be T1 ( first thoracic ) . Or is that wrong ? I was never good at numbers . Way deep down underground in New York City live " the mole people , " from whom Hackman gets his experimental subjects . They're so terrifying that even the normal homeless people who live above ground are afraid to go down there . But Grant does and he finds an angry and suspicious community that looks made up of extras who have been told to dress down . Raggedy clothes , yes , and maybe greasy hair and odd faces , but not TOO extraordinary . Most are freshly shaved , and they speak like high school graduates making a public speech - - being sure to add the " g " at the end of a word like " going " . This is directorial sloppiness . Most of the homeless are mentally ill , uneducated , and without material or social resources , bankrupt in every sense . They could not organize a cohesive group . They couldn't organize a trip to a hot dog stand . It's a minor shame in a way , because there may be a decent thriller lurking in this plot somewhere . Alas , nobody found it , presumably because nobody was looking for it . Everyone involved seems to have taken the easy way out and settled for cash . |
442,741 | 819,382 | 99,052 | 3 | By the numbers . | It follows the formula as if in a Marine boot camp . Strictly lockstep . A nice young doctor , his beautiful wife , and two lovely kiddies move out of the city and buy a ranch house in a small town . The house seems to have everything they want . It even has a large , well-stocked wine cellar . The cellar is always dark , cluttered , and musty . One after another , townspeople begin to die mysteriously . The young doctor , Jeff Daniels , an arachnophobe , thinks something is going on and asks for autopsies . The old doctor , Henry Jones , the one who refuses to retire , disagrees vehemently . Nobody believes Daniels . The people of the village scorn him and tease his children . The local infestation controller ( " exterminator " to you ) is matter-of-fact about the affair . Then the old doctor himself becomes a victim and Daniels finally gets his autopsies . Spiders did it . An forensic arachnologist , or whatever he is , Julian Sands , is called in on the case . He identifies the culprit as a deadly Venezuelan species that is organized like the social insects - - termites , bees , ants , and so forth . They have drones , workers , scullery maids , boot blacks , queens , and all that . Then , more or less suddenly , the little creatures are all over the place , dropping from the ceilings , crawling into the shower to spy on Daniel's teen aged daughter , proving that they're not entirely evil . A final confrontation involves the wine cellar , Daniels , and the queen of spiders , now grown to the size of an elephant seal . The direction isn't bad , given the idiocy of the plot . What can you do with a thousand spiders except have them crawl all over the place and leap at people from hidden places ? What else can you have them do ? A toe dance to the incidental music from " Rosamunde " ? Form a twenty-foot pyramid like tiny circus acrobats ? In case you're in any doubt about what you're supposed to be thinking and feeling , the musical score stuffs innumerable cues down your throat . Yes , when Daniels explores the wine cellar or the barn with a flashlight , it's a spooky scene . You can tell because the violins are going orgasmic with tremolo . Jeff Daniels , by the way , is the perfect actor for a role like this . His instrument only has one note . Not that that's necessarily bad , because Gary Cooper only had one and a half . That marmoreal aspect fits precisely . If he were more expressive he'd have become screaming mad by the movie's end . The film is bound to leave its mark on the history of cinematic mediocrity . |
443,275 | 819,382 | 43,545 | 3 | Come Fly With Me ! | It is said that there are some people out there who actually ADMIRE Monogram's movies . Well - - and why not ? Monogram Studios lived on a kind of Cost Plus basis ; cost , plus enough to pay the rent and buy a pizza and a bottle of robust muscatel every once in a while . Sure , they're cheap . But let's face it : they're coarse , fast , Philistine , vulgar , but exhilarating . They have no pretensions at all . They're designed to divert the audience for an hour or so at the bottom of a double bill . So what if John Wayne gallops through the Wild West along a road lined with telephone poles ? This isn't art , it's entertainment . Take this movie , " Flight to Mars . " At the beginning , when we're first meeting the characters , a man might introduce his female companion abruptly , avoiding any tedious subtlety : " Professor , this is my fiancée and assistant , who is a rocket scientist and a beautiful woman . She loves me but is growing impatient with me because I'm always wrapped up in my scientific work . Perhaps you could steal her from me , marry her , give her the babies and the picket-fenced home she yearns for . If necessary I will die on this journey to see her dreams realized . Also , she likes it a little rough . " It saves a lot of writing and shooting time , doesn't it ? That's what people mean when they say a narrative is " fast " . ( This one was shot in five days . ) Why should we have to hint about these things ? I mean , what the hell is this , a cheap sci fi movie or Henry James ? Actually this is a particularly well-funded example of a Monogram movie . It's in color , for one thing . " Cinecolor " to be exact . ( You can tell it's not any other " color " you'd recognize . ) And look at the cast . The female lead is dismissible , as is usual with Monogram , but the male leads are definitely up there on the B List . Cameron Mitchell as the reporter , yet to hit his stride as a male lead , which , come to think of it , he never really did . And Arthur Franz as the pipe-smoking head scientist , the pride of Perth Amboy , New Jersey . And - - for science fiction fans - - how about THIS pair of aces : both Morris Ankrum AND John Litel ! There's not really much point in describing the plot in detail . The five crew members crash land on Mars where they find an underground civilization inhabited by organisms whose evolution was isomorphic with ours , right down to their having five digits and willowy babes in short skirts . And they picked up English from listening to our broadcasts . American broadcasts , that is , judging from their speech . They're led by a sinister cabal who try to hijack the space ship , build many imitations of it , and colonize earth . They do not succeed . The special effects aren't very special . The men walk around a couple of spare sets , wearing black costumes with stylized lightning bolts emblazoned on their chests and scarlet capes billowing behind them . Their names consist exclusively of English phonemes - - Alzar , Terris , Ikron . The lissome Martian who falls for Arthur Franz is named Alita , with an Indo-European diminutive appendage , and she already knows what kissing is . Overall , I found it as snappy as it was intended to be , but dull too . The story is that of any Buck Rogers 1930s serial . Once the earthlings and the Martians meet and it's established that they have a common language , and that the Martians have a sinister agenda , that's it . In two hours , even an indifferent screenwriter could turn this into a story of Nazi spies in World War II . The plot is done by the numbers , the dialog has no sparkle , the acting is pedestrian . However , dedicated aficionados of Monogram productions should enjoy it . After all , Jean-Luc Goddard , the contrarian French egghead , dedicated " A Bout de Soufflé " to Monogram , so they can't have been all that bad . |
441,802 | 819,382 | 213,149 | 3 | Japs Interrupt Love Affair . | Well , it had a monstrous budget and professionally competent actors , but it's not worth much mention . I suppose it accomplished its goal , which was to use computer-generated effects and make money . Its chief utility may be to introduce kids to some elementary facts about World War II . It wasn't designed to do it , but kids may need all the help they can get . A recent poll showed an alarming percentage of high school students didn't know who fought whom . A goodly number thought we and the Germans fought the Russians . Does that constitute a red flag or what ? Basically this is a movie about a nurse who loves two men , only one of which manages to survive the Doolittle raid on Japan . If you're interested in love affairs and that sort of thing , this is your kind of movie . The CGIs are nice and exciting . That ought to hold the interest if nothing else does . Ka-BOOM . For the record , Admiral Yamamoto never said , " I fear all we have done is awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve . " That was invented for the film " Tora , Tora , Tora " . For that matter , the bombing of Tokyo , tacked on at the end with reckless calculation , since it had nothing to do with the basic story , was not done in formation as the movie shows it . The B-25s took off early and headed straight for their targets one by one , not having enough fuel to form up . They launched early because they were sighted by some Japanese fishing vessels and it was justifiably assumed that the fishing vessels had radioed the contact to authorities . The fishing vessels were fired upon and sunk by our cruisers . They were filled with men , women , and children , according to Rod Steiger , who was among the crew of one of the destroyers in the flotilla . There IS no really good movie about the attack on Pearl Harbor . A far better film of the period is " From Here to Eternity " or , better yet , read Jones ' novel . A vastly better but very corny movie about the Doolittle raid is " Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo . " In other words , almost anything but this . |
442,738 | 819,382 | 33,611 | 3 | Hasty and Dated . | Richard Arlen is a happy-go-lucky pilot who , fired from his job , begins his own airline . It's a line between Los Angeles and Las Vegas , mainly for people who want to get married in America's playground . Trips may also be made between Los Angeles and Reno , for those for whom Las Vegas didn't work out . Arlen's stewardess ( for that is what they were called ) is the pretty Jean Parker . His chief and only mechanic is Eddie Quillan whose wife is due to give birth during this trip . Among the passengers are two newly marrieds , the goofy Scoutmaster Grady Sutton , and his empty-headed but good-natured bride , Marie Wilson . Also aboard are two spies of undetermined origin smuggling a secret , new carburetor out of Los Angeles and into Las Vegas where they plan to place the device on the roulette table , hoping it will be mistaken for a pile of million-dollar plastic chips . Not really . I don't know why they're taking it to Las Vegas . Las Vegas was never known as a hotbed of espionage . Maybe they figure on wining and dining it and , with any luck , wind up spending the night with it in a water bed suite in a fancy hotel . The airplane is also transporting a heavy steel engine block . Arlen is at the controls in mid-air when he learns about the spies . A fight ensues . The engine block breaks loose from its trappings and slides around until it bashes Eddie Quillan against the bulkhead . The airplane crashes on a mountain top . Everybody survives . The stupid scoutmaster tries to light a signal fire but sets off a forest fire instead . The fight continues on the ground . The good guys win . One of the spies is killed and left behind to barbecue . The evildoer-in-charge is packed aboard the airplane . The airplane manages to take off amidst the holocaust . Arlen marries the stewardess . The schedule Quillan had drawn up for the birth of his child is wrong because he'd torn off two pages from his calendar instead of one . ( Joke . ) Nothing defines " B " status more than this movie . I bought the DVD as part of a " Heroes of War " collection , which included the far more enjoyable " Gung Ho . " I had to force myself to sit through it because I'd paid for it . The audio stinks and the images were appropriately in blurry black and white . The score , surprisingly , was by Dmitri Tiomkin . Tiomkin was to go on to more ambitious and better things . He must have been pretty young when he wrote this score , no more than fourteen or fifteen , I'd guess . Tiomkin was a curious guy who had no aspirations beyond doing film scores . It was his perfect métier . He never wanted to sit down and write the great American symphony . Someone asked him what he would like to do if he had his choice of all the professions in the world and he replied , " Write movie scores . " The movie isn't dull actually . It doesn't give itself time enough to be dull . It rockets along at a fast clip and if given scenes are dumb or inept or not as funny as they're supposed to be , who's to notice ? I know people who would , I think , enjoy this but he lives in a Godforsaken , radioactive place near Trinity Site . |
443,555 | 819,382 | 62,673 | 3 | Diluted and boring film a clef . | It's a not-entirely fictional story about the Ango-American landings at Anzio on Italy's west coast . It's diluted because the story behind those landings is far more interesting than what we see on the screen . Names , personalities , and motives are changed around so that hardly any echo of the real characters remains , although we get a lot of information about characters created in the screenplay . Basically , Robert Ryan plays General Mark Clark who was in charge of the operation and was in overall command of the Fifth Army . He was an interesting guy for a general - - tall , vain , brave , half-Jewish , a large-featured face like the mask of Tragedy , carrying around a sidearm as a prop . Arthur Kennedy plays General John P . Lewis ( modeled after Gen . Lucas ) , in charge of the landings themselves . Mitchum accuses him of being " timid " ( three times ) and in a way he was , although it wasn't entirely his fault . Arthur Franz has a small role as General Lucian K . Truscott , the junior general in command of the Third Division ( Audie Murphy's division ) . All the names have been changed to protect the guilty . Here , basically , is how it worked . The Allies of half a dozen nationalities were being slaughtered throwing themselves against the German Gustav line , which ran across the Italian boot from sea to sea , commanded by the unconquerable Monte Cassino . The Anzio landings were designed to catch the enemy by surprise from behind and relieve pressure at the Gustav line . Mark Clark ( who saw to it that any reference to the Fifth Army in the press appeared as a reference to " Mark Clark's Fifth Army " ) had supervised similar earlier landings at Salerno . They were successful , but just barely . The landings at Anzio were handed over to Lucas , whose orders included a drive inland , if possible , to the Alban Hills which commanded a perfect view of the beachhead and the main highway to Rome . Lucas had just troops enough to dig in and consolidate or to race pell mell to the Alban Hills , but not enough troops to do both . Lucas was advised by Clark , " Don't stick your neck out like I did at Salerno . " ( The line is directly quoted in the movie , but is given to Robert Ryan's fictional general . ) So Lucas didn't stick his neck out . He went inland seven miles , stopped short of the Alban Hills , and dug in . Clark , who was on the beach , agreed with the decision . And Lucas wasn't the cocksure but mistaken strategist played by Arthur Kennedy . The real General Lucas kept a diary and it's full of gloomy forebodings . The Germans , under Kesselring and Mackensen , were caught unprepared . Nothing stood between the allies and the Alban Hills , or Rome for that matter . But Lucas did nothing , and for good reasons . He didn't have the resources to take Rome and hold it . Except for the probe by Rangers , as shown on screen , and others by British troops , everyone dug in and waited for the German reinforcements to deploy , which happened apace . Kesselring was a very efficient tactician and had plenty of time to ring in troops in the stalled Allied beach head . Instead of Anzio rescuing the troops at the Gustav line , the situation was turned around . In the end , some 24 , 000 American and 9 , 000 British casualties were evacuated from the beachhead . Clark fired Lucas and gave command to Truscott . When the German resistance finally collapsed , General Clark had an opportunity to drive eastward across the Italian boot and cut off the German troops to the south . He chose instead to forget about capturing the German army and to zip his own troops north along the highway to Rome so that he could " conquer " the open city . You know - - like Julius Caesar ? The German army promptly withdrew north to their next massive defense line , where the Allied advance stalled again . I leave it to the viewer to decide which story is more engaging , the historical one or the plot we see on the screen , which is mostly the story of seven survivors of the Ranger patrol who try to make their way back to Anzio , a story we've seen many times before . I wish I could at least say that the story presented on screen is well done but the fact is that it's not . This is one of Mitchum's lazier performances . Sometimes he sounds positively drunk . No one else stands out , including Peter Falk , who overplays , as does Arther Kennedy as the smarmy General Whatever-his-name-is . And some other posters are absolutely right about the score . Whew ! A simple-minded would-be catchy love song doesn't turn into a martial theme just because you throw some snare drums behind it and play it as a march . What a missed opportunity . |
443,251 | 819,382 | 70,046 | 3 | Perfunctory historical thriller . | This is an inexpensive , ill-written , carelessly directed spelling out of a highly improbable scenario resulting in the assassination of President John F . Kennedy in Dallas , Texas , in 1963 . Through the abundant exiguity we follow the machinations of some right-wing nuts who gather a team to shoot JFK and succeed , pinning the murder on the innocent patsy ( maybe a CIA agent ) Lee Harvey Oswald . Jack Ruby's subsequent assassination of Oswald is just icing on the cake for them . The acting is flat and the characters cardboard . None of the heavies ever smiles or makes a joke or shows any sign of humanity , just a grim determination to get the necessary job done . There is no motive behind the actions of the heavies except that they disagree with JFK's policies on both moral and economic grounds . One of them talks a little about the population explosion and the danger it poses to the world , but then goes on to conclude that the numbers are best reduced among the Negroes , Puerto Ricans , and Asians . There's hardly a phoneme in the screenplay that doesn't contribute directly and blatantly to the momentum of the story . Oh - - except that one of the heavies quotes from Shakespeare's Richard III : " For God's sake let us sit upon the ground and talk about the death of kings . " They have no trouble at all assembling the teams of hit men , counterfeit Secret Service agents , Oswald proxies , or anything else . At least we must assume they have no trouble , because if they had any trouble we don't learn about it . There's some considerable mystery behind this trashy movie . One of the mysteries is why actors of such power and talent as Burt Lancaster , Robert Ryan , and Will Geer - - and Dick Miller ! - - got involved in it . No one would deny them their progressive leanings , but why couldn't they have seen to it that some sort of poetry had been injected into this grade-school story ? Another of the mysteries is a little ( but not much ) outside the scope of the film itself . In one of the last newsreel clips , a spokesman for the Dallas Police Department states emphatically that Lee Harvey Oswald was guilty of the president's assassination . Now , how does he know that ? Oswald had protested his innocence , no ballistics tests were in , and hardly any evidence had been collected . Oswald had been picked up by the DPD - - armed - - in a movie theater , after an observer had seen him acting suspiciously in front of a store window and had called the police . How do you " act suspiciously " ? On the sidewalk in front of a shoe store window ? If YOU saw someone acting suspiciously in a public place , would YOU call the police ? Something was definitely fishy there , and the Warren Commission was no help at all when , promptly after their membership was constituted , Chief Justic Warren announced soothingly to an anxious public that he was certain they would discover only a lone gunmen had been involved . Maybe my background in science has warped my perspective , but how can you reach conclusions before you've examined the results of your study ? If that's a legitimate procedure , then why bother with the tedious collection of detailed evidence in the first place ? Speculation about what really happened on that morning in Dallas has been rife for 40 years , and it's no wonder . Maybe the truth lies somewhere in the narrative that the Warren Commission laid out , but that's only incrementally better than the wild-eyed nonsense we see in this movie . Pundits tell us that we dream up conjectural stories like this because " we cannot accept the fact that one disordered individual is responsible for such a disaster . " It's so satisfying that they have us all so well figured out . |
443,095 | 819,382 | 111,255 | 3 | Look , Ma - - I'm Inna Movies ! | When I was a teenager , a high-school freshman or sophomore , I recall having contests during gym classes with the other guys . We'd stand in front of the mirror with our arms folded across our chests in such a way that each hand was lodged under the biceps opposite , and then we'd nudge the muscles forward to see what we might look like with seventeen-inch-circumference upper arms instead of the pitiful fourteen-inchers were were cursed with . Some twenty years ago I was amazed to see a photo of Sylvester Stallone , a fully grown man , solemnly pulling the same stunt in some publication like " People Magazine . " " The Specialist " is an expanded version of that photo of Stallone's already expanded biceps . I can't think of many other movies in which we see more of the hero's nude and preposterously overblown bronzed body than we do of the heroine's . ( Too bad , Sharon Stone hasn't much more than that to offer . ) Stallone just can't seem to keep his clothes on . He's always taking showers , walking around with towels around his waist , doing exercises , lying back on a bed with some kind of purple kimono coyly draped over his groin while Stone kneels worshipfully at his feet and runs her hands up his oh-so-muscular legs . I wonder if Stone was jealous of all Stallone's nude scenes . The plot ? Oh , the plot . Well - - you've got me there . You see , Stone wants to knock off these bad guys who killed her parents . And Stallone has a history with James Woods ( the only performance in the movie worth watching ) . The whole business is engineered by old Rod Steiger who is , we can tell , Hispanic because he pronounces " you " as " chew " . Woods has something to do with the police , and with the bad guys as well . And Stone seems to have more than one motive . And - - well , I don't want to spoil it for you . In fact , I couldn't , even if I wanted to . Nice photography of Miami . Fireballs like the Fourth of July at Olympic Park in Irvington , New Jersey . The score is lifted wholesale out of " Body Heat . " Enjoy ! If you can . |
441,662 | 819,382 | 118,158 | 3 | Utter Hokum | The story , as I understand , is " based on real events . " That can be either good or bad , depending on what sort of license is taken with those real events and how they are rendered . In this case , the results are enough to gag a maggot . I wasn't expecting much going in - - anticipating a story of rich high-school kids taking an ocean cruise under a stern skipper . That is , what I figured was a coming-of-age movie along the lines of something about boot camp or basic training , the kind in which the drill sergeant says , " My duty is to snap you out of your winsome civilian ways . " Well , it IS that , in a way . The kids start out as kids and end up as an organic group . But this is far hokier than any boot-camp movie I've ever seen , outside of a deliberate comedy . Who WROTE this thing ? The air is filled with slogans that belong , not in high school , but in the third grade . The dialog offends the ear . Jeff Bridges usually does a better-than-average job but in this case his performance is mediocre . He brings nothing extra to the part , although given his lines , it's hard to know how he could do much with them . The rest of the cast is undistinguished and a few of the kids are painfully inadequate . There's a lot of tearing up , and considerable crying . The best scene involves a dolphin . The immature clichés continue to the very end . The Coast Guard is cast in the role of the hard-hearted court at the hearing that follows the disaster . The interrogator does nothing but hit Bridges over the head with his misinterpretations and misconstruction of events . " You let the crew drink alcohol , didn't you ? " ( A couple of harmless drinks . ) " And you didn't punish them , though you punished them for killing a fish . " ( The dolphin business . ) The technical details surrounding the sinking are left murky . What is a " white squall " anyway ? And if it's as dangerous as Bridges claims , why weren't the whole crew alerted and wearing life vests ? But why go on ? If " The Albatross " were a Dreadnaught , it would still be torpedoed and sunk by the ludicrous comic-book script . |
443,031 | 819,382 | 80,641 | 3 | God's in the details , but deeply asleep . | In this movie , the national airline in Zingaro has a great airplane , a two-engined Convair from the 1950s . They don't make ' em anymore . I mean the airplane , not the movie . They make movies like this all the time . A mega corporation wants the mineral rights in an African country ruled by a ruthless dictator . So the corporation organizes a private army to invade the nation , kill the dictator , and install a business-friendly dictator in his place . ( Is that far fetched , or what ? ) Christopher Walken is hired to organize the mercenary army . They do their job , except that , at the end , in an ironic coda , they substitute a more independent president who will now rule his country with compassion . The film could have been written by a committee of MBAs who have figured out what the bottom line is . Whatever the bottom line turned out to be it was surely preceded by a dollar sign . The plot goes kind of in this order : intrigue , a little teaser of violence , more intrigue , a little completely irrelevant sex , more intrigue , the introduction to a couple of particularly lethal and ugly guns , and a violent shoot out full of explosions . The climactic violence assumes the familiar form of a handful of courageous and supremely skilled military types attacking a garrison of disorganized native troops . ( Cf . , " Predator , " inter alia . ) One of the mercenaries is killed through an excess of pity . The number of dead garrison troops is uncountable . Walken himself cold-bloodedly and deliberately shoots two unarmed men . It's a happy ending though because the guy who finally sits on the throne is a doctor and an idealist , and we are compelled to hope he remains that way instead of discovering that , hey , it's good to be the king . I haven't read Frederick Forsyth's novel on which this movie is based but I can't believe it's the sloppy lash up job that the movie is . Forsyth's details are usually exquisite . When you finish one of his novels you're likely to know how to rig up a bomb that will explode only when the car hits a bump . That was the beauty of Fred Zinneman's " The Day of the Jackal . " How to commit identity theft , for instance . Here , all of that tedious business is skipped over . Walken is able to board a freighter posing as a seaman . Where did he get his credentials ? Who knows . The producers don't care and we're not supposed to care either . We never heard of forged passports . Just before the invasion , the mercenaries are together going over the attack plan one last time and when they are done , Walkin raises his fist and shouts the name of the dictator they are about to murder and the other soldiers echo his gesture . And , mind you , these are supposed to be heroes , and we are expected to identify with them . Why don't they raise their fists and cry , " Money ! " Not that pelf is the primary motive . What kind of person is willing to kill strangers and risk his own life for money ? How do you murder someone whom you don't know and against whom you have nothing ? And how do you think of yourself as a better man for having done it ? Are there many of them around ? I mean in the private sector ? There must be some . There is Executive Outcomes , and there is at least enough of an audience of fantasists to support a magazine designed for mercenaries , " Soldier of Fortune . " Of course we all seek self satisfaction through doing something that we know we can do well . The Germans called it Funktionslust . It may be innate in higher organisms . But this goes way past self satisfaction . Dignity elevated beyond pride into grandiosity . |
441,778 | 819,382 | 58,700 | 3 | Positively funereal . | I've never read Richard Matthieson's novel , I Am Legend , but know some of his short stories and his work on The Twilight Zone has been consistently admirable . This thing eludes me . The pace is slow , the exposition clotted , the acting below par , and the story depressing . It wasn't until the climax that I realized I'd seen it when it was first released . Not that it made enough of an impression for the film as a whole to be registered in my long-term memory , but I recognized it at once when Vincent Price is trying to escape the mutants and is pelting them with grenades . And I remembered thinking in the theater , " Santa Maria , he's not throwing them like baseballs , he's throwing them like DARTS ! " It's not so much that Vincent Price was effete . I mean , the man had fine taste in art and wrote a splendid book of recipes , even though his editor got the ingredients for eggplant parmigiana all fouled up . ( Take a second look at the amount of breadcrumbs called for . ) It's that Price's range as an actor was limited . I know . Everybody's range is limited . ( Woody Allen as Julius Caesar ? ) But this weak story calls for a dramatic actor of some magnitude as its central figure if the film is to be lifted out of the dismal . It doesn't have much else going for it . Or maybe it's that the story itself , despite its authorship , just doesn't translate well to the screen . The end of the world is one thing . Nice possibilities there , though most of them have already been explored . But must the dead turn into flesh-eating zombies too ? That's George Romero territory . And they are afraid of garlic , can't look into mirrors , will die only with a wooden stake through the heart , and only come out at night ? Clichés - - every single trait - - after Bram Stoker . Why didn't somebody throw in the crucifix business or a Mogen David ? Set the movie in Teheran and have Price spend the whole time searching for some object to turn into a Crescent . Who are these walking dead anyway ? They don't rot . They feel sensations because when Price slams a door on one of their arms they howl with pain . And why the wooden stake when thousands of them have just been tossed safely into a fire and meet their personal end ? And the mutants machine gun a few who seem to die in proper cinematic fashion . And what do they all have against Vincent Price anyway ? Did they run up against the typos in his cookbook ? I don't know . Many other viewers seem to think this is a cult film . I've never understood exactly what a " cult film " was . " The Rocky Horror Picture Show " certainly qualified because attending a showing dressed in outrageous gear was a rite of intensification - - at least it was at the Chestnut Theater in San Francisco when I saw it . And I suppose others might be " cult films " if they were minor and unrecognized masterpieces of the genre . " The Last Man on Earth , " though , seems to me to be only minor and unrecognized - - period . |
442,501 | 819,382 | 366,598 | 3 | Small Town Floozie Fights Injustice . | I hate to sound unappreciative of any artistic endeavor , or unreceptive to stories of the weak being mistreated by the strong , but I can't help wondering how much longer they'll be grinding out scenarios that fit this template : Helpless young woman is raped ( or otherwise abused ) by a man ( or men ) of greater social worth - - here a doctor , there a famous high-school jock - - and she complains to the authorities . The authorities try to shake her off , not take her seriously . Nobody believes her . The community ostracizes her . She persists bravely and in the end manages to bring her abuser down . You can get a variation of the scenario by substituting some giant corporation for the rapist . ( Cf . , " Erin Brokovitch " . ) I understand that this is " based on a true story " and that poetic license must be granted - - but , wow . The characters could have had numbers attached to them and the narrative lifted , still throbbing , from some handbook for genre movies . In this case , the victim is a single mother in a small Canadian town . The abuser is the snooty doctor with the English accent who gives her a general anesthetic to treat some minor injuries she received in a fight with her boyfriend . While Estella Warren , as Kimberley , is all doped up , the English doc takes advantage of her to rape her . Kimberley brings a civil suit against the doctor ( John Hannah ) , but docs have a full hand of Aesculapian authority . ( Not to mention lots of money and charisma . ) Who , other than a doctor , can tell the President to go to bed for a day and drink plenty of fluids ? Man , that's POWER . The story then follows the usual trajectory , so ostracism is next . The whole community seems to STARE sullenly at her , wherever she goes . The close-ups we see are of faces that are old and wizened and , if they're women , they wear harlequin glasses like unto a Roz Chast cartoon . Kimberley must finally pack up and leave town , while the doctor luxuriates in his own sham aura of victimhood . In the end , the Great Physician seems to contract a case of terminal stupidity . At about the time Kimberley is read to give up , he pulls the same stunt with another young woman . The case now - - finally - - goes to court , and during his testimony the doctor explains that he tampered with evidence , obstructed justice , and committed perjury in SELF DEFENSE - - because he couldn't allow his reputation to be ruined by a young slut . I needn't reveal the verdict . Estella Warren is pretty good as the victim . She's no tiny prey , but a tall , full-bodied , and abrasive young lady . She doesn't know the meaning of the word " simper . " She turns into a positive pest , and that's what the role calls for . John Hannah , as the doctor , comes across as not much more than another seasoned actor . He's not bad , but he doesn't bring anything extra to the role . The direction is competent too . There's no confusion about where we are or who's doing what , and no unnecessary displays of directorial razzle dazzle . The story is told without unmerited garnish . If I've been critical of the movie it's not because I think incidents like this don't happen , because they certainly do . Some examples have been caught on tape . It's just that we leap to the conviction that it happens SO OFTEN . My guess is that it's a pretty rare event , given everything that an established physician has to lose . So we can't claim there are thousands of sneaky doctor / rapists out there . Maybe there are , but we have no way of knowing . We need , I think , to also keep in mind that accusations are easy to make , and that they're difficult to refute because you can't prove a negative . ( Prove to me that you did NOT rape this girl is a little like saying prove to me that there is no God or that there are no such things as UFOs . It can't be done . ) And in judging cases like these , we need to bear in mind that it's enjoyable for some people to be a victim . ( Not to be victimized , but to be thought of by others as a victim . ) A certain moral weight attaches to the role . People sympathize with you and treat you with greater kindness , as with mothers in Munchhausen-by-proxy syndrome . There are two ways to get people to carry you around . One is to be powerful enough to order them to do it , and the other is to collapse . The role of victim involves a collapse in the face of irresistible social or physical forces . Given the weaknesses and the over-familiarity of the plot , though , this is a reasonably well-done movie , with Estella Warren particularly good . I don't see much point in recommending or not recommending it because , if you're fond of these kinds of films , you've seen it already in one form or another . They're kind of like the many action movies that star Schwarzenegger , Willis , Van Damme , Stallone , and the rest . If you like one , you're liable to like all . |
442,172 | 819,382 | 41,378 | 3 | Unimaginative | I wish I could recommend this because it has potential and there is some talent involved - - Richard Fleischer , Anthony Mann , Jeff Corey . And - - William Lundigan ? When it comes to B movies this comes pretty close to a Platonic ideal . The script is weak and full of holes , the actors unexciting , and the direction no more than routine . RKO was about on its last legs , I guess , and this was made on the cheap and it shows . Look at the production design . The city isn't identified , so there is no local color to speak of . Not that it would help much if a narrator told us grimly , " This is Los Angeles . The City of Angels , but a part of the city you'll never see . " Almost all the scenes ( except the climactic shootout ) take place indoors or on the lot . When a man walks past the window of a restaurant , the sign says simply " Restaurant . " The hero is blandly handsome . His sidekick looks funny and is given to wisecracks . The ambitious heroine is pretty and pure . The uninteresting serial killer - - here called " The Judge " - - is seen murking around in silhouette and pretending to be a dummy in the police department . ( I swear I'm not making that up . ) It isn't until the end that we see his hapless mug , a sad baggy eyed clown who is given no explanation for his deeds . It would seem to have something to do with his trying to wipe out evil in the world , although we don't know anything that the rather ordinary victims did that was so bad , and although that whole judgment business is thrown away at the end anyhow , when it's suggested to us that what's really wrong with him isn't that there is evil abroad in the land but that dripping water drives him nuts . Don't ask me . Maybe that's all being a little tough on an unpretentious little black and white B from a studio on the brink of bankruptcy , but after all you can do quite a lot of sprucing up if you give things a little thought . The street that the killer lives on is not only barren of pedestrians . That wouldn't be too surprising anyway in LA . But there isn't a parked car in sight . And the garbage cans are all neatly and equidistantly lined up at the curb . The gutter doesn't even contain a crumpled newspaper . It looks like , well , like the back lot of a minor movie studio that has gotten only minimal attention . Val Lewton worked at the same studio on miniscule budgets and see what he accomplished . It's not worth going on about . You won't lose anything if you skip it . |
443,278 | 819,382 | 360,486 | 3 | Purgatorio | There is a scene in this movie in which a detective with supernatural powers uses a cat as a portal into Hell . I turned to my cat , Josefina , usually keen on the heuristics of these things , and asked if she found this in any way offensive . " Absolutely , " she replied , turning her eyes from the screen in disgust . I gave it a good mulling-over that night , and the next day asked Josefina if she would have found it more acceptable if the portal to hell had been provided by another animal - - say , a dog - - but by that time the effects of my herbal psychotropics had worn off and , if Josefina answered , I didn't hear it . Rachel Weisz plays a nice Catholic girl who's sister has apparently committed suicide . Weisz wants her buried in sacred ground , though , and she knows her sister would never kill herself . So she turns to Ke'anu Reeves , who has a reputation for knowing stuff about the supernatural . It turns out he knows quite a lot . There are angels in Heaven and devils in Hell . The problem is they can't pass into the realm of the quotidian , so they send " half breeds , " half-angels or half-devils , whose powers are limited to " whispering in our ears . " Or so he says . Some of them resemble Harpies of Greek mythology or horrible deformed creatures out of " The Garden of Earthly Delights . " Considering that they're limited to merely whispering , they do a good job of throwing bodies around and filling the streets with flapping bat-like wings . I won't go on about it . The movie stinks . The dialog has lines like , " You're trying to buy your way into Heaven . " And , " God is a kid with an ant farm . " ( Actually , come to think of it , that last one is pretty funny but I don't think it was meant to be . ) The wind-up is that Reeves gives Weisz a crash course in the writer's version of how things work in this all-too-Christian cosmology and , expectably , it's all an excuse to hang a lot of computer-generated effects on . There are no surprises . The only thing that could have saved this trite piece of trash would have been the introduction of an Eskimo cosmology , with Hell consisting of seven levels of cold , and Sedna lording it over all . Reeves , in poor fettle , rarely departs from his imitation of a mahogany idol . Rachel Weisz is more animated , a better actress , and beautiful in a not-quite Hollywood way . My recommendation : Something is whispering in my ear . It's saying , " Don't bother . " |
443,074 | 819,382 | 454,970 | 3 | Treacherous swarthy foreigners chase rich white kids through jungle . | At least it can be said that this movie isn't as bad as the disease that is its namesake . For one thing , it's shot in the outback of Brazil , although it is no essay on the wilderness . For another , the chief villain is given a reason , however silly , for having his horde pursue these fun-loving kids through the jungle . He hasn't just escaped from a loony bin . He wasn't dissed by these kids in high school . And he didn't just wake up one morning to find himself a maniac . No . He's chasing and killing these kids because they are gringos , whose people have stolen his country's valuables for centuries , and he wants THEM to give a little back , in the form of all their bodily organs which he intends to harvest and contribute to the People's Memorial Hospital in Rio . It's ludicrous , I told you , but at least it's a motive . There is also a brief , disturbing moment early in the film after the kids have reached the beach and a fiesta is in progress . One of the guys runs into this curvaceous young Brazilian chick and they have a lot of fun while she tries to teach him how to pronounce her name properly , both of them laughing playfully . The next time we see them , it's morning and she's taking money from his wallet and getting into her swimsuit bottom while he watches groggily from the mattress . " Hey ! You're taking money . I thought this was all fun . " And she replies matter of factly , all business now , " No , it was not like that . " Ah , what illusions we create for ourselves . It's a good scene . For another thing , there are a couple of genuinely suspenseful moments , many of them underwater , woven into the fabric of this otherwise rather typical slasher flick . The photography is pretty good . The direction doesn't get in the way of the story . That's about it for the bonus points . The skeleton of the plot is one we've all seen before . A couple of kids on vacation want to have fun and visit a remote seashore village in Brazil , where the natives steal all their goods , and they are forced to try to walk back through the bush with this madman waving his scalpel following them . One of the kids is disarticulated on screen , a gorgeous babe who is only half unconscious from the anesthesia , so we can all share her pleasure as she is sliced and diced to death . The lunatic begins with her kidneys . He goes into the retroperitoneal sac through the front because her belly is so plump and ripe looking , and so that throughout the procedure we can get occasional , tasteful glimpses of the dying girl's naked breasts . There's a whole bath tub full of blood . The remaining kids manage to escape . There are face-smashings , shootings , drownings , impalements of feet , a gratuitous scalp-stitching , and I think some amputated fingers and a bottle of acid in the eyes . But I'm not sure about that last one . I was busy with something and the dialog was in Portugese . The concept of " continuity " is pretty much thrown out the window whenever it becomes inconvenient . Here are these kids being chased by maniacs , having witnessed brutal acts , and they discover an underground pool that just misses the splendor of the Blue Grotto on Capri . What do they do ? They forget all about the threats , the danger , and splash each other playfully and exclaim over the beauty of the cavern . Their lives are in danger , but , gee , this place is AWESOME . There's nothing new about a pursuit through exotic territory . That's why it's so familiar on screen and in literature . ( " The Most Dangerous Game , " etc . ) But this movie is obviously designed to appeal to the same audience as slasher movies , and that gets past me completely . What sort of appeal lies behind seeing an innocent person screaming and being slaughtered ? It can't be the shock value , not any longer . There must be some pleasure in witnessing the scene itself . But for whom ? And does it have any consequences in real life ? Surely , the neural pathways are altered in SOME way . If nothing else , it desensitizes viewers to the idea , so slaughter becomes less repulsive . ( The scientific evidence is that violence in the media is one of many factors that influence the level of violent crimes in the community . In many border cities , Americans and Canadians watch the same media in theaters and on TV , yet the American cities invariably have much higher murder rates . ) It seems strange that we can tear our hair out over certain scenes of explicit or simulated sex , yet allow movies like this to be seen by crowds of cheering and laughing kids . Well , it seems strange to me , anyway . As slasher movies go , this one is a cut above the rest , but it's not , by any measure , a particularly good movie . |
442,076 | 819,382 | 102,789 | 3 | The very definition of Routine Thriller . | Denzel Washington is a prosperous , respected , happily married DA . John Lithgow is a prisoner whom Washington sent up the river years ago . Lithgow and a friend escape , murdering everyone in their path . Lithgow fakes his own death . Everyone now believes him to be a harmless corpse , but ha ha , he moves around lithely in his ghostly world ( where does he get his money ? ) and devotes himself to making Washington's life miserable . Not KILLING Washington , but ruining his life forever , a la Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck in " Cape Fear , " only worse . His frame-up of Washington is really devilishly skillful . He conks the unsuspecting DA on the head , take him to an empty swimming pool at an empty club , drugs him into near insensibility , and videotapes him having sex with some bimbo who , as it later turns out , is also giving him the clap . Washington finally wakes up to find himself in rags amongst a community of homeless people . WELL ! Nobody believes his story of course . They keep telling him things like , " Denzel - - John Lithgow is dead . " Blood work reveals both cocaine and heroin in his system of course . The investigating authorities also find a collection of planted kiddie porn in his possession . And the video tape of his sitting on a bed while some white gal does a cowboy on him turns up in the hands of the authorities too , with dialog altered so that Washington , instead of being half dead from drugs , appears to be saying , " You're going to do exactly what I tell you , " and the babe answers , " Anything you say , dumpling , " or something like that . The tape turns his wife off . The dose of clap doesn't help either . You see , the problem is that no one believes him - - not his bosses , not his family , nobody except his closest friend at the office , a short and pasty white guy who incarnates the concept of " impotence . " Speaking of that , how did that hooker manage to give the sleeping drugged-out Washington a dose ? Well , never mind . When Washington takes the legal authorities to the club with the empty swimming pool , he finds himself in one of those scenes where things have been changed around so that they seem perfectly normal . His colleagues make snotty remarks . The scene might have been lifted from a dozen other movies , maybe most famously " North by Northwest . " Lithgow shoots the best friend and throws the pistol to Washington , who catches it in his bare hands so his fingerprints are all over it . All of this shows up in the most sensationalized fashion in the press . After the murder of his friend , Washington is suspended , though here , as elsewhere , the plot has a bit of a hole in it since nobody could possibly come up with a motive for Washington's killing the only friend he has . Washington , harassed and hated by the law , driven half nuts by Lithgow , turns to the homies in the neighborhood where he grew up . They take care of his family and help him lure Lithgow to the Watts Towers where the dramatic finale takes place with the expectable dramatic results . Here's another example of a stupid plot device . Just before the confrontation at the Towers , Washington has drawn all the media and the cops to a block where he is standing on the roof , doing nutty things like putting on makeup for the cameras , and threatening to blow himself up . All this appears on live TV and Lithgow , aghast at the prospect of losing the mouse he's been toying with , shows up at the scene . Someone taps him on the shoulder and tells him , " Mister Blake ? Phone call for you . " Lithgow seems puzzled at being recognized but goes to the phone anyway , where an anonymous caller tells him to go to the Watts Towers , without giving him any reason to do so . Lithgow , who has shown all sorts of brains until now , does exactly as he's asked . The holes ? Lithgow would never have shown up at the scene in the first place . How could he possibly stop Washington from jumping off a fourteen-story building ? Why would he risk revealing his existence in front of a horde of police and frenetic media ? Two - - instead of answering the phone , anyone with brains would deny being the dead Mr . Blake and walk away . Three - - follow directions and go to the Watts Towers ? Why ? There is plenty of action for action fans . Cars do stunts . People get electrocuted and shot . Buildings explode . People live in a Biblical world of pure good and pure evil . If that's what you're looking for you'll find it here . Washington should never have put himself into this movie though . He's a decent actor but absolutely NOBODY could bring off the several scenes in which he tries to explain the nature of the frame and instead sounds like a raving lunatic , stuttering out gibberish worthy of a schizophrenic's word salad . It's already been done to death . ( Watch Jack Lemon try to explain why he's holding the nuclear power plant at gunpoint , while SWAT is banging on the locked door in " The China Syndrome " . ) There's another element that some might find unsettling too . In the end , you can only trust your own people . There are four classes of white people . The purely evil Lithgow , the dutiful but dumb legal colleagues who don't like him from the beginning , the good friend who is only there to be killed , and a collection of Nazi wannabees and the Aryan Brotherhood in prison . The homies we meet are cynical but they believe Washington . They are street people but they protect his family , help him carry out his scam , prevent the police from ruining the revelatory climax , and they're clever as hell at what they do . Want to see somebody get an electric shock atop the Watts Towers ? Watch this . |
442,585 | 819,382 | 315,110 | 3 | Life is like an empty road - - | It must have been a small-budget film and it shows . Sort of a travelogue with sex and violence , it meanders along the byways of Jumbo Rocks and Twentynine Palms , California . Impressive , dignified scenery , and that's about it . Katia plays Katia , who speaks only French . David plays David , who speaks English and some French that falls just short of execrable , which is to say very much like my French . From some angles she looks a bit like Michelle Pfeiffer and from some angles he resembles Harry Dean Stanton . It's difficult to comment on their acting because , aside from some memorized exchanges , it seems that most of the time the director simply aimed the camera their way and said , " Okay , make something up . " There's a good deal of playful poking and laughter , like that in John Cassavetes ' films . People chuckle and giggle because they can't seem to think up anything else to do . The couple has squabbles and sex . The reasons for the squabbles ? Let's see . He looks at another woman in a cafe . He buys her ice cream and asks if she likes it . " C'est bon , " she replies , then , " Pas bon . " ( He sulks because she contradicts herself . ) He hits a dog while driving the Hummer because she's blocking his window . Another argument , a serious one , occurs when she locks herself in the bathroom for reasons unexplained . Is there sex ? Yes , there is sex , simulated , and a lot of nudity . I had a sneaking suspicion that Katia and David weren't even married , yet here they are , stripping off in the desert , revealing themselves in all their hairy , angular , bilaterally symmetrical splendor . They lie on abrasive rocks , spreadeagled shamelessly . A couple of airliners pass overhead and any passenger who wanted to could look down on them from 37 , 000 feet and watch them rut and squirm like two javelinas . They don't care . They fornicate on rocks , in swimming pools , and in motel rooms . Oh , and speaking of animals , when David has an orgasm he makes more noise than Katia , although , to be sure , both of them overact in these scenes like porno superstars . What repugnant physicality . The movie drags along for quite a while and when the climax comes we are totally unprepared for it . I don't know whether to get into it or not . I don't think I will , except to say that the scene seems to have been brought in from another movie entirely , some kind of slasher flick with a title like " Blood and Cactus " . The heavies seem to be either Marines or skinheads , maybe both . The final episode of violence takes place for reasons that escape me completely . Maybe I missed something . Could it be that life is like a road ? It has its asphalt pavement and its potholes ? Occasional stop signs ? Long waits while indifferent freight cars rumble slowly through the crossing , sometimes stopping completely ? And at the end you have a fatal traffic accident ? This is a French movie so maybe I used the wrong national heuristic . The point of a French film might be that there is no point . That's the whole point . In the end I found the film kind of sad . Not just because of what happens to Katia and David , but for reasons the producers probably never intended . At the beginning the couple stare in awe at acres and acres of energy-generating windmills arrayed across the desert . They find it splendid . I didn't . The ivory sand is dotted with Joshua trees and creosote bush , and littered with flowery paper wrappers , glittering aluminum cans and empty shotgun shells . The Hummer matter-of-factly passes a pile of half a dozen huge , black , discarded tires . If you fly into LAX there are days when you can see the smog as far inland as Twentynine Palms . The point I took away from the film is that if you treat a natural landscape as a garbage dump it becomes a garbage dump sooner or later . A desert ecosystem is a fragile one and , like a human life , can only take so much abuse before it is destroyed . |
442,522 | 819,382 | 372,183 | 3 | Stillbirth . | Few sequels are as good as the original , but this one is really pretty bad , distilling out of the first version everything that was good and simply throwing it away , then adding some stuff that makes it almost impossible to watch . . Take the title . " The Bourne Identity " actually had meaning . There was a question driving the movie - - just who IS this amnesic guy ? Even the name " Bourne " added a bit of symbolic weight . This one is called " The Bourne Supremacy . " Supremacy in what endeavor ? And why supremacy ? Why not just superiority ? Or even equality ? " The Bourne Equality ? " I guess not . No one could fault the performers , who in other environments have been more than adequate . Matt Damon was good as Mister Ripley , and superb as the guilt-ridden junkie in " Courage Under Fire . " Joan Allen , as always , projects a curious but appealing mixture of fortitude and femininity . Nobody else in the movie counts for much . The plot is more or less dismissible . Bourne is set up and then pursued by some corrupt inner circle of CIA officials and Russians . It has something to do with the privatization of Russian oil , but it all boils down to one long chase . What really dismembers the movie is the direction and the editing . If you can imagine Oliver Stone on meth , you'll get the general picture . There is , first , a terrible imposition of directorial self display during some scenes . A blurry step-motion murder . A zapped up memory flashback in negative . But that in itself wouldn't be so awful . The problem is that it never stops . The camera seems to be ataxic . I can't remember a single scene in which it held still . It wobbles pointlessly all over the place or it focuses on some unimportant object like a venetian blind while the action takes place elsewhere , as if the director had been weaned on MTV or one of those TV commercials for a brokerage firm or a toothpaste whitener . ( " I was afraid to smile in public until I discovered Dentabrite with Endorphin . " ) Let me give an example . Jason Bourne is doing some library research . He's reading microfiche of newspaper items in Russian and English and turns up some important information . The camera shows us the articles and the associated photographs - - but it WOBBLES so we can't read anything . There are dozens of ways of giving a viewer the gist of a story without asking him or her to read the details of the article . Erroll Morris showed us one effective way - - just hold the camera on the header . But this aimless wavering is positively irritating . The editing is equally poor . Every change of scene seems to be a cut , not a dissolve . And the cuts come fast and thick - - say every few seconds . Objects zoom aimlessly in and out of focus . And the director is given to lightning-quick pans , often past unidentifiable dark objects . If the direction and editing are a major problem during most of the movie , they turn into insurmountable obstacles during action scenes . A furious mano a mano shows us one-second glimpses of a fist here , a foot there , a knife skittering along the floor , a window breaking . The obligatory car chase comes towards the end , with the possible novelty of having been actually filmed in the gray streets and tunnels of Moscow , but the promise is unfulfilled . Each shot lasts a second or so and gives us mostly details - - Bourne's grimace at the wheel of his speeding taxi , a pistol being fired by somebody whose identity we must guess , cars chasing cars chasing cars chasing a car - - the movie should have been called " Chasing Sanbourne . " ( That was a wretched play on words . Can I take it back ? ) You know why the original " Bourne Identity " was above average , at least in my humble opinion ? It had a better plot , for one thing . We were as interested as Bourne himself in finding his identity . For another thing , it had a developing relationship between Bourne and the girl ( Famke Potente ) whose car he hires . For another , there was violence , but it was not done to the viewer . The fights were unexpected , brutal , and staged in such a way that we could follow the events . And finally , the original gave us a chance to breathe between the zaps , an opportunity to learn something about the characters and their situations , about the kinds of music they listen to on a car radio . All of that - - and more - - is missing from this meretricious attempt to make a few bucks by tapping into the inelastic demand of an audience of viewers whose heads are as empty as their intolerance of boredom is great . I don't mean to cast aspersions on people who may have enjoyed this movie more than I did , just on the people who assembled it with that audience in mind . |
442,808 | 819,382 | 144,214 | 3 | Disappointing Military Whodunnit . | All the ingredients seem to be there but the dish comes out flat . Nice cast , and they all do a journeyman job , but most of them are in minor roles and some of them contribute virtually nothing to the goings on . Madeleine Stowe for instance is radiant , as usual , with those crossed coal-black irises , but why is she here ? I don't object to her presence . How could anyone ? With that iliac garland and that modest bosom ? I just question her presence . And there is a mean-looking redneck Southern sheriff whose only reason for being there seems to be providing a target for Travolta's unnecessary remark that he should be out clubbing the colored folks somewhere . The photography is first-rate too . Savannah has never looked quite so - - Southern . And that's about it . The story is so intricate that it's hard to follow . The script makes everyone except Travolta and Stowe into a suspect . People lurk in shadows . They peer intensely at a pair of general's stars ( which have nothing to do with the movie ) while ominous music slowly builds . Some speak elliptically , hinting at horrors , and it leads nowhere . Red herrings all over the place . The moment one is identified as some sort of villain , he's revealed as innocent and someone else comes under the magnifying glass , until he too is discarded , and we wind up with the one guy who has never been shown to be involved in any way in the crimes and who has been nothing but a cooperative friend to the two investigators . And even this revelation ( involving a slow-motion explosion - - what else ? ) is anti-climactic because we have yet to get to the REAL villain ! What the hell is the movie supposed to be about anyway ? Is it an exercise in surrealism ? It begins with Travolta asleep in his bed . An assassin creeps into his houseboat and shoots the place into little pieces before Travolta jumps him and they fall in the water and somebody starts an outboard motor in the middle of an underwater fight and the spinning screw fortuitously Cuisinearts somebody's face up and the water turns red and no satisfactory explanation for the fight to the death follows . Or - - let me put it this way . If you were a woman who was gang raped and beaten and your father visited you in the hospital , kissed your forehead , assured you of his love , and advised you to never think of the incident again , would you be willing to destroy your life in order to destroy his ? Not to argue that the father - - in this case James Cromwell - - is morally right in taking his career into account . That's pretty selfish and his lack of righteous anger at his daughter's rapists is a big hole in his character . But his daughter , an Army captain of delicious aspect , tries to get her revenge by sleeping with every guy on the base in order to make him seem a fool . She succeeds and he finally tells her she must see a therapist or resign her commission . Now - - get this - - and this is seven years after the original brutal rape , which is implausibly presented to begin with - - she enlists the help of her friend and mentor ( James Woods ) who ties her spreadeagled and naked on the ground . And she arranges to have her father drive out to see her in this position , alone at night , and screams at him , something like , " Do you see what they did to me ? Do you feel guilty NOW ? " She tells him that she is going to remain in this position until everyone on the base knows about it and her father's career is torpedoed . Well - - the best advice she ever got came from him . ( 1 ) Try not to think about the original rape . And ( 2 ) get help . There is no help in the direction either . Lots of closeups of faces with tears or agonized expressions . ( Except for Clarence Williams , who can produce tears but no expressions at all . ) I suppose , in the end , we are supposed to find ourselves brimming over with the self-righteous anger that Cromwell's general lacks . A woman in the Army has been foully mistreated and we are enraged . The problem is a real one . There seem to be more sexual assaults on women in the military than is usually assumed , although it's doubtful that many of them are officers . As a social problem , it deserves a more thoughtful and skillful treatment than you can find in this movie . |
442,841 | 819,382 | 100,133 | 3 | Exciting , didactic , pastiche . | This film has virtually nothing to do with the original " Memphis Belle " of 1944 , except I suppose that it involves the crew of a B-17 on their final mission . Maybe a few duplicate shots . That's about it . Two notably good things about it . One is that it gives us the feeling of what it's really like to be aboard a bomber in combat , or at least I think it does , never having been in that situation myself . They've convinced me though . On the ground the big airplane shivers from the vibration of the four engines like a Magic Fingers mattress . Everyone and everything jiggles at high frequency . We see bombs armed in flight . We see what the target looks like through the bombardier's sight . We feel the airplane lurch upward after the couple of tons worth of bombs are released . And we catch some of the dynamics of the crew . The bombardier has posed as a doctor . One waist gunner plays grab with the other's religious medallion . The other outstanding feature is the aerial photography , or the computer-generated images . Everything is so crisp , so clean , so sky blue , except for those black blotches ahead and the drab B-17s droning their way to and from hell . It's extremely exciting too , once it gets off the ground . That's part of the problem . Everything we see happening to the Memphis Belle happened to one 8th Air Force bomber or another , but never to the same airplane on the same mission . It's as if all the very real dangers facing these fliers had been put into a duck press and slapped onto the plot . If you've seen airplane-in-jeopardy movies before , you'll find little that's innovative here . A man dangling out of a hole in the fuselage ( twice ) . The near miss after takeoff . The sight of a buddy's ship going down . Should we throw the badly wounded radio operator out with a parachute over Germany in hopes that his life will be saved ? We're running out of fuel - - throw out everything we don't need . Let's sing Danny Boy for good luck . The whole film is derivative , from the beginning to the end , and everything is spelled out in big letters like a child's alphabet book . The opening lines from a PR officer tell us a lot . " Let's see now . We have a guy from Omaha , then an Irishman from Boston , " or something like that . The PR officer ( John Lithgow ) turns out to be a knucklehead ( " Baloney is my business " ) but that doesn't stop the writers from using him as the crudest tool of exposition . The opening scene , a drunken party , is ripped off from " Das Boot , " only here , in case you didn't know why the party was taking place , it's made plain for you . " I don't want to die ! " one drunk screams at the sky . In " Das Boot " Wolfgang Peterson let you figure out for yourself that despair led to drunkenness . His writers thought you had enough in the way of inferential abilities to pick it up . These writers don't . The dialog is ludicrous , right out of a 1944 funnybook . Captain to crew : " Let's make this our best bomb run ever . " Crew member : " Right down the pickle barrel ! " Captain : " You bet ! " Captain to crew : " Boys , nobody ever said this was gonna be all fun and games . We're here to do a job so let's do it . If we don't do it somebody else will have to come back and do it . " There is virtually no swearing . It's alright for us to see a man's blood and guts splattered all over the nose , but we aren't allowed to hear a terrified or a wounded man shout or or even . I think the most nauseating bit that's included in this movie , from the point of view of poetics , is the damned dog . See , as in all other bombing movies , the ground crew are waiting tensely for the return of " their " airplanes and crew . They play desultory softball to distract themselves but glance into the skies from time to time . They have a dog . The dog mirrors the anxiety of the men , skulking around and looking worried . At one point he flops onto his belly , his chin buried in his paws , and seems to be looking airward . I think this is known as the pathetic fallacy . At least the writers left out the conflict of crew members about some mixed up love affairs back on the ground . Well - - the film may serve its didactic purpose anyway . Kids who don't know why this war was called World War TWO may learn something from it . ( A student at a well-known university once complimented Barbara Tuchman after a lecture on World War I , saying he'd always wondered why the other was called WWII . ) For the rest of us , if you can stomach that dog you can get through an exciting and well-photographed war movie . |
442,781 | 819,382 | 86,984 | 3 | Deja View | I think I just had what they call an " epiphany . " It never occurred to me before , just as I'm sure it never occurred to anyone else , that there is a certain family resemblance between Brian DePalma's films and those of Alfred Hitchcock . Yes , it's true . For me , the dawn broke during the first half of this movie , when Jake freezes with fright upon finding himself in an enclosed space , in this case a fake coffin . The thought came to me unbidden that this was something like Jimmy Stewart's acrophobia in Hitchcock's " Vertigo . " He finds himself falling in love with a neighbor of his . She's a brunette , okay , but she is one longlimbed lankylooking looselipped lovely . Wow . Her lower lip is adroop in a perpetual pout . He follows this young woman around , just like Stewart follows Kim Novak around . And the woman , Gloria , wears this totally outstanding signature white dress , just like Novak wears the gray suit . She has her purse stolen on a beach by an ugly-looking galoot , and Jake pursues him into a tunnel . Sure enough - - his claustrophobia prevents him from catching the thief , just the way Stewart's disability stopped him from preventing a mishap . And just as in " Vertigo , " this whole deal with the pursuit across the sand and into the tunnel , followed by Jake's tonic immobility , is a SET-UP , except that in this movie the snare is so exquisitely executed and timed that its rehearsals must have begun at a time now shrouded in the mists of antiquity . Hitchcock had a naughty fantasy about icy-looking blondes who would assault a man in the back of a taxi . DePalma has the notion that when Jake returns what's left of Gloria's purse to this woman , whom he first met one minute ago and with whom he's exchanged fourteen words plus one sigh , she wordlessly falls in love with him , smooches him mercilessly , and lets him half undress her in public . It happens to me all the time . While this breathless display of lust is taking place , the entwined couple and their background whirl slowly in opposite directions , just like what happened in Novak's bedroom in the Empire Hotel before they made love for the first time , and elegiac strings swell tumescently in the score , just like Bernard Hermann's in " Vertigo . " But there's even more . " Vertigo " aside , Jake finds himself house-sitting for a stranger and soon he is watching his sultry neighbor doing the dance of one veil through a monstrous telescope , which reminded me immediately of Miss Torso bouncing around in " Rear Window " while Steward peeks at her through a telescopic lens . There are other echoes , of Miss Lonelyhearts and The Salesman's wife . By this time , halfway through the movie , my heart was racing alarmingly at the nearly religious revelation I was experiencing . DePalma and Hitchcock . Hitchcock and DePalma ! Of course ! How simple it all seemed in retrospect . But DePalma isn't really Hitchcock . The story gets pretty looped and twisted and even less logical than the master's . There is a gruesome death , gorier than , but not as shocking as Janet Leigh's in " Psycho . " There is a long , completely silly musical interlude about shooting a skin flick . ( THIS scene reminded me of Gene Kelly's Broadway Ballet in " Singin ' in the Rain " because of Jake's goofy , loud , hick outfit , his horn rimmed glasses , and the den of iniquity his character finds himself in . ) The acting is okay , no more than that . Craig Wasson is easy to identify with . Where is he ? Melanie Griffith is pleasant to watch but her voice is unappealing , at least to me , because it can't seem to make up its mind whether to emerge as a rasp or a whisper . Deborah Shelton looks gloriously glamorous but on the evidence of her few lines here doesn't seem like a powerful actress . The photography is superlative , though . What an easy movie to look at . The musical score is vintage Hermann . But I don't mean to be too hard on the film . It has one unusual thing going for it that lifts it out of the ordinary . Annette Haven is listed in the credits . I sat through the whole thing looking for her but missed her . Realizing this , as the end credits began to roll , I felt my mystic experience had been blunted . |
442,214 | 819,382 | 181,689 | 3 | Full of action and suspense , and still dull . | I'm afraid watching this thing , the images on the screen constantly in motion , the blurry images , the supersonic warp-speed editing , must have fused my synapses . I couldn't get through it . Oh , I enjoyed the score . Always liked Beethoven . But it was much easier to listen to with eyes closed . The performances weren't bad . How can a performance be bad in a plot-driven special-effects loaded action SF flick ? Even Max von Sydow , who , I was happy to see , is still working , was perforce animated . Lots of opportunities for exploring issues like , If you can see something coming and you stop it before it comes , how come it still comes ? It's the grandfather paradox of future time travel . I really didn't care much about the characters because I didn't get to know anything much about them except that they can run fast and jump from one vertically moving vehicle to another - - the car chase , as it were , in dimension number two , up and down . It seems to me that this movie will be an embarrassment when 2053 rolls around and everything looks and acts pretty much like it does now , in 2007 . " On the Beach " ( set in 1964 ) and " 2001 : A Space Odyssey " had similar problems . Well , I suppose they weren't BIG problems , but still . Will it really ever be easier to manipulate images by waving your hands like some guy in a demonic Tai Chi frenzy than by tweaking a few dials with your fingertips ? |
442,031 | 819,382 | 60,186 | 3 | Aardvark . | I can't imagine why Bob Hope , a superb comedian in the 1940s , continued to grind out these rude lumps of deformity through the 1960s . It must have been the money . There were a couple of weaknesses consistent across this string of duds . One is that Bob Hope was simply not Bob Hope , and this one is a good demonstration of that proposal . He's an utterly bourgeois head of a relatively normal household - - sitcom standard , including the freakish cook and housekeeper Phyllis Diller in a fright wig . That's simply not the Bob Hope that everyone loved . Bob Hope is not your average family guy in a suit and tie . He's a sniveling coward , greedy and libidinous , and openly so . The second problem is that the gags stink . What happened to his writers ? Did they snore while grinding out this pap ? " Don't lose your head - - you might need it later on . " His wisecracks no longer fit his established persona . They're generic . Any comic could sling them around . ( They would still fall with a thud . ) Hope himself is older and has slowed down . Of course that's not his fault . " Fleeting time , thou hast left me old . " Still , it's painful to watch someone who was a fine physical actor reduced to showing that he could still walk with a bounce , but no more than that . He doesn't even move his head in a way that suggests suppleness . His facial expressions are limited ; his eyes don't bulge with fear . He's stiff all over . The plot is all fluff . Hope get mixed up with a fleeing international movie star , Elke Sommer , and tries to keep his wife , Marjorie Lord , from finding out . This involves hiding Didi in closets when the wife enters the room , dumping her into the cellar to hide her , and so forth . At least this running around might titillate the kids , but that's about it . Or - - no . Wait . Want a reason to watch this ? Elke Sommer runs around half naked through the entire movie and has a fine figure . |
443,134 | 819,382 | 36,161 | 3 | Routine and Inexpensive . | This is a Pine-Thomas Production , which should tell you a lot . I described a similar P-T story to my brother who advised me not to expect too much , that there were thousands of these cheap flag-wavers made during the war . This is a cheap flag-waver about two sailors ( Richard Arlen and Russel Hayden ) who are rivals for the affections of the same girl ( Jean Parker ) who happens to be the niece of their affable mutual friend ( Guinn " Big Boy " Williams ) . Those are the four principles and none of them can act , though I suppose Jean Parker could be considered a modest talent while the three men can't manage to project a believable line of dialog between them . Russell Hayden at least looks the part but the star , Richard Arlen , is too old for his character . The story , when it's not wrapped around that romantic triangle , has the three men together on a small harbor minesweeper that is removing Japanese mines from the channel at San Pedro , California . There never were any such mines but this is fiction all the way . Arlen's character rises from Seaman Recruit ( E-1 ) to Gunner's Mate Third Class ( E-4 ) in the blink of an eye . Arlen's character has an improbable secret past , and somebody gets blown up by a mine , but none of it is in the least gripping . What keeps one's interest in the movie is watching Dub Taylor as a young man and Robert Mitchum as a non-speaking but prominently featured extra . |
442,962 | 819,382 | 106,452 | 3 | Just Another Remake . . . | I don't know why Ferrara did it . I suppose just to add incremental touches to bring the story up to date . The original , directed by Don Siegel , was set in a small California town in which everyone knew everyone else and featured as its protagonist a doctor who was on familiar terms with his patients and made house calls . That world has disappeared , of course . The 1970s remake , more whimsical in its own way , was set in a city and featured a Public Health worker . It added special effects that weren't available in the 1950s and were creepy . It also added a pig-like squeal of betrayal when one of the pod-people discovered a human in their midst . This business of the pod people deserves more attention than it gets in these movies ; the human seem to turn into a kind of dirt after their absorption by the pods . They should be scientifically explicated but I'm afraid " podzology " would be claimed as a Russian invention . This one , from 1993 , brings the old story even more up to date . Not only do we have the special effects from the 1970s version , but they are accompanied by foleyed-in sounds that are a cross between sizzling bacon and a Yellowstone mud hole of moderate magnitude . This version also adds the obligatory apocalyptic fireballs at the end - - not that they accomplish anything , just that the times call for them nowadays . The novella by John Finney first appeared in , I think Collier's Magazine , now defunct , and was far more reasonable and comprehensible than any of the movies that have been made from it . In the book we learn where the seeds come from , what happens to the humans , and how the pods are defeated . ( They just give up and float away . ) The first movie is by far the best , just a black and white rendering of the tale , with a blandly handsome Dr . Binnell and his immaculate girl friend . People shake their heads and groan because of the " happy ending " that the studio insisted be tacked on , but I liked it . There's nothing wrong with tragedy when it grows out of something - - human weakness , as in " Othello , " or hubris , as in " Oedipus Rex . " But no one in any of these movies has done anything truly wrong ! They don't deserve to be robbed of their humanity , for however much that may be worth . The acting here is okay , not much more than that . Meg Tilly has interesting features . Like Merle Oberon's , her flaring cheeks seem to be tucked up just under her eyes , which slant upward and outward at an alarming dihedral . She has plump rounded lips and one or two moles scattered around her face , and it all adds up to a beautiful woman . But her voice is difficult to believe . Gabriel Anwar is likewise attractive , with wide-set eyes , a long gentle nose , and a generous mouth . Anwar has the innocence of one of those young virtuous maidens with long , floppy hair that sit around pools , staring wistfully into the ether , in Pre-Raphaelite paintings . She radiates adolescent nubility . Any normal man glimpsing her visage would immediately be prompted to pinch and bite her . And she acts as good as she looks . The guy who plays her Dad is a familiar face in TV movies , better as a heavy than a hero , and he's up to snuff . The dark-haired savior is just somebody's idea of a handsome movie star . If the first movie was supposed to be an analogy , with the pod people being Commies , or was it an anti-conformist tract , there seems to be some confusion - - this one looks like an anti-military analogy . It's set on an army base and all the pods are being trucked out for placement on yet other army bases - - Fort Bragg , Fort Bliss . Meg Tilly at one point , after her conversion to podness , asks her still straight husband , " Where will you go ? Where will you hide ? There is nobody left like you . " How about a Navy base ? How about the U . S . Coast Guard Light Station at Point Reyes ? And the direction . If Blake had been writing about " Body Snatchers " instead of " Tygers " he might have asked : " Did he who made " The Bad Lieutenant " make thee ? " Bad Lieutenant " is a truly shocking movie , far more powerful and scary than this one . Ferrara seems to have done nothing to perk this tired story up . It's craftmanship , and it's up to date , but nothing more than that . See the original . Read the novella , better yet . |
441,952 | 819,382 | 119,709 | 3 | Ka-Poof ! | I guess I've about reached satiation on noisy and implausible action films . They have to have some sort of sheen in order to make any impression at all . " The Bourne Identity " was interesting because of the location shooting , the direction , and the performances by the leads and the support . It also had a cool narrative thread . Just who IS this guy Bourne anyway ? This one isn't interesting . Keenan Ivory Wayans is an honorable Marine gunnery sergeant on death row , recruited by a rogue military group to be framed for the assassination of the first lady - - a dangerous woman who is a card-carrying member of the ACLU and who favors veterans ' benefits . He manages to escape the roof-top set up and rushes to the safe spot from which he calls his handlers , an army group headed by the viperous General John Voight with a Southern accent . The dialog in the scene is lifted straight out of " Three Days of the Condor . " " Are you damaged ? " " What ? " " Are you injured ? " " No . " " Stay where you are , Poker One , I'm going to bring you home . " Something like that . It hardly matters . The rest of the film contains no big surprises . As is customary , a beautiful young woman is swept up in Wayans ' attempts to save himself and expose the plot . Jill Hennessy is certainly pretty enough but the only thing that would have saved her here would be a gratuitous nude scene - - maybe a couple of them . Wayans himself is an imposing physical presence but his thespian talents are modest at best . There are some good guys on Wayans ' side . The CIA team led by Paul Sorvino is trying to help him but they're blocked and frustrated by one or another circumstance . But why go on with this . If you like action movies you'll like this production with all its bangs and zipping bullets and exploding time bombs and screeching cars and sprinting bodies and venal villains and some guy cold-cocking another by bumping foreheads in violation of every one of Newton's laws of physics - - you'll like this one too . You know something ? I made fun of this flick by citing Newton's laws ? Well , actually , this movie exemplifies one of them . All dynamic systems eventually run out of steam and grind to a halt - - unless they are fed some inventive energy from an outside source . How about another action movie , just like this one , except it stars nothing but kangaroos ? |
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