Category: Film
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Buddy is in desperate need of some contextualizing. The film takes place—roughly—between 1928 and 1933. Given that timeline, it’s a little weird the Great Depression doesn’t start, but Buddy’s also really strange about when it decides to be grown-up and when it doesn’t. The film tells the story of eccentric socialite Gertrude Lintz, who raised…
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Besides the unfortunate special effects execution (the conceptions are fine), the only thing wrong with Beast from Haunted Cave is the title. And, I suppose, some first-act budgetary shenanigans—the movie’s about Frank Wolff’s crew knocking off a gold reserve in a mining town and heading across the mountains on skis to escape, and they have…
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Battle Beyond the Stars answers that age-old question… what if you mixed the star-fighting of Star Wars, the visual grandeur of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and some of the production design of Alien, but also had all the sexy babes in the galaxy hot for John-boy Walton’s bod. Also, it’s a remake of Seven…
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About the only compliment I can pay Ghostbusters II is the first half or so doesn’t reveal how terrible the movie’s going to get. The film had a troubled production, which might explain the special effects looking rough for the third act. II’s third act apes the third act from the first movie, only without…
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Polite Society is the story of British-Pakistani teenager Priya Kansara. She goes to an expensive London private girl’s school, where she’s got two best buds—Seraphina Beh and Ella Bruccoleri—and a nemesis—Shona Babayemi. Complicating matters is Kansara’s passion for martial arts stunt work. It leads to lots of fighting, which quickly reveals Polite’s major conceit: Kansara’s…
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The Quiet Man starts as a loving postcard tour of the Irish countryside. It’s pastoral, romantic, funny, human. Son of Ireland-gone American John Wayne returns home and immediately falls in love with neighbor Maureen O’Hara. Unfortunately, despite O’Hara having similar inklings, her big brother is Wayne’s new nemesis, Victor McLaglen. It’s this exceptionally lush, tender,…
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For a micro-budget horror movie, Gangnam Zombie isn’t unsuccessful, but it also isn’t much of a success. The setting is decent—locked in a trendy office building on Christmas Eve, except Zombie doesn’t have the money for Christmas decorations. It also doesn’t have money for zombie special effects, so it’s more like they’re rabid vampires (complete…
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I wholeheartedly recommend Silkwood. It’s beautifully made, with a singular performance from Meryl Streep and great performances from its astounding ensemble. I need to remember to list all the supporting actors in the film. But I caution against reading up on the actual history. The film’s very accurate; the problem isn’t with veracity; it’s with…
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In the almost forty years since Ghostbusters’s release, the film remains unparalleled in terms of present-day, urban sci-fi action. The film’s a mix of crisp action comedy and a special effects spectacular, with Reitman’s direction toggling as needed and Elmer Bernstein’s score tying a beautiful knot. With the special effects, the film never isn’t grasping…
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A Matter of Life and Death suffers the unusual condition of being too good for its own good. Writing, directing, and producing team Powell and Pressburger (The Archers), along with their crew and much of their cast, do singular work on Matter. Jack Cardiff’s Technicolor is so breathtaking a character can get away with commenting…
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I’m not sure The Killer Shrews is the best movie with a protagonist with the first name Thorne, but it’s got to be very high on the list. James Best plays that lead—Captain Thorne Sherman of the S.S. Minnow, and he and first mate Judge Henry Dupree are on a three-hour tour… okay, no, but…
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The Watermelon Woman is the story of video store clerk slash filmmaker Cheryl Dunye making a film about a 1930s Black female actor known only as “The Watermelon Woman.” At least initially. Dunye, in character, will spend the film discovering more and more about her subject, culminating in a documentary short. Surrounding Dunye dans le…
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I thought this one was called The Great Gila Monster, not The Giant Gila Monster. During the first act, I kept thinking how Great was one heck of a flex given the content, but it’s not Great; it’s Giant, which is technically correct. The film is about a giant Gila monster terrorizing a bunch of…
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I cannot, in any conscience, recommend Saratoga Trunk. The list of caveats to work through is a “Choose Your Own Adventure” of racism, ableism, and low-key misogyny (though less of the third, what with the first two). If you’re a Flora Robson completist, you presumably know about the time she was Oscar-nominated for playing Blackface,…
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Night Shift distinguishes itself immediately. The opening sequence is magnificent, featuring two crooks (Richard Belzer and Badja Droll) chasing down pimp Julius LeFlore and inciting the incident for the film. Director Howard has three credited editors on Night Shift—Robert James Kern, Daniel P. Hanley, and Mike Hill—and their cutting is deft. Lowell Ganz and Babaloo…
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Day of the Dead is a nightmare. Occasionally literally, with writer and director Romero not afraid to rely on a recurring “it was just a nightmare” bit. But more symbolically… Day is about a group of scientists working in a secured location in the Florida Everglades, ostensibly protected by the U.S. Army; they’re on a…
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Approximately three-quarters of the way through Mr. Mom (approximately because the movie is a series of sitcom set pieces, not necessarily in sound narrative order), I realized it wasn’t just about sitcom set pieces; the whole thing is a situation comedy. With very low stakes. When the third act has to gin up the big…
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Chaw tells the familiar tale of a man-eating wild boar and the brave villagers who confront it. The boar’s descended from the mutant boors the Japanese created when they invaded Korea. These abominations have been low-key terrorizing the countryside for decades and as the hipsters started doing weekend trips from Seoul into the countryside, things…
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Mad Monster Party? spends a solid portion of its runtime only slightly amusing. It’s technically competent stop-motion animation with a charming voice performance from Boris Karloff as Boris von Frankenstein. He’s just discovered the anti-life formula and has become destroyer of ravens, potentially worlds. Having run the gamut from creating life to creating anti-life, Karloff…
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At least a third of Sudden Impact is director, producer, and star Eastwood doing a Hitchcock homage starring Sondra Locke. Locke doesn’t speak during the Hitchcock homage sequences; she just walks silently, staring at various things, remembering her horrific origin story, then shooting some rapist in the balls and then the head. Now, Sudden Impact…
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Dead Man’s Curve’s opening titles are intercut with someone meeting with Dana Delany—playing a college campus therapist—and asking questions about signs of suicidal thoughts. Delany makes a joke about how first-time efforts from writer-directors might do it. Then the title card cuts to director Rosen’s writing and directing credit. All his other references are on…
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From the start, Wilson’s got two problems it can’t possibly overcome. First, director Johnson. He’s never got a decent idea. Not with the actors, not with the composition, not with the pacing. He does seem to understand Laura Dern’s far and away the best thing in the movie, but he doesn’t address compensating for her…
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There’s a moment in The Missing when Tommy Lee Jones appears to be dead-panning at the camera, clearly as exasperated being in the film as the people watching him in the film. He’s tired because The Missing makes sure to keep him busy, but he easily soldiers on because Jones is in Missing to soldier…
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The Man Who Knew Too Much is an action thriller. It doesn’t start as an action thriller—it begins with an English family (dad Leslie Banks, mom Edna Best, daughter Nova Pilbeam) vacationing in Switzerland. Their vacation has almost come to an end, and they’re saying goodbye to some of their trip friends. Their good trip…
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Spoiler: there’s no trial in Trial of the Incredible Hulk. Except maybe the viewer’s difficulty getting through the TV movie. Or producer, director, and star Bixby doing a special effects heavy (but not for Hulk Lou Ferrigno) backdoor pilot for a “Daredevil” TV show starring very special guest star Rex Smith. Ferrigno’s so shoe-horned into…
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I’d love to know the logic behind the episode arrangement in Photo Finish and Matter of State. Another “Amazing Spider-Man” compilation movie again puts the later episode first; while the series presumably didn’t have much in the way of season-long character arcs, it’s peculiar to see Nicholas Hammond and Ellen Bry’s relationship rewind in the…
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Wolfpack and the Kirkwood Haunting once again proves me very wrong in thinking these two-episode compilation movies were the way to watch the old “Amazing Spider-Man” show. However, that revision is less about the narrative packaging this time and more about the show itself. Independently or consecutively, Wolfpack and Kirkwood are stinkers. But the Wolfpack…
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While The Nightingale never gets more brutal than in its first hour—it runs two and a quarter—it’s almost more hopeless with less viciousness. The film’s about how the British slaughtered the Aboriginal Australians. It’s about quite a bit more, but the historical context is Australia in the early nineteenth century when people could still buy…
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Hit! is multiple movies all at once. It’s a heist procedural, with Billy Dee Williams putting together an unlikely crew of experts to take out the Marseille heroin syndicate. It’s a rogue secret agent movie—Williams’s boss, a profoundly under-cast Norman Burton, doesn’t want him showing up the U.S. government by taking out the bad guys.…
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Dial of Destiny opens with a very long prologue flashback to 1945, setting up Harrison Ford (a CGI-de-aged Ford) having Toby Jones as a best buddy in the forties during the war and running afoul of Nazi scientist Mads Mikkelsen. The flashback’s technically successful; de-aged Ford looks pretty good (the eyes are off, and the…
The Stop Button 