Weekend at Bernie’s II (1993, Robert Klane)

Suppose one makes it to the third act of Weekend at Bernie’s II, which is not a suggestion or recommendation to undertake such a burden. In that case, one will see some bewilderingly competent underwater photography. Including what appears to be Terry Kiser doing takes without any oxygen nearby. Maybe it’s Kiser, maybe it’s not. He already deserved an Oscar nomination for his physical performance in Bernie’s II; if he actually did the underwater stuff, it’s just more apparent he was robbed. Tommy Lee Jones should’ve called him up to the stage and handed over the statue.

Kiser gets a lot to do this movie because he’s a voodoo zombie. See, something something criminal conspiracy, it turns out Kiser was in league with some voodooed-up mobsters. It’s unclear if Novella Nelson’s voodoo priestess runs the mob or what, but she’s certainly in charge of getting Kiser’s money back. So she sends Tom Wright and Steve James to resurrect Kiser in the New York City morgue; the spell will have him leading Wright and James to the money, which they’ll then bring to Nelson.

Wright and James are actors playing a comedy routine. A lousy comedy routine, poorly directed, and entirely composed of Black media stereotypes (Wright and James are Black men). It’s sometimes a lot, sometimes quite terrible, sometimes actually impressive. Wright and James are atrocious at the physical comedy, but their dance sequence is good work. Technically. There’s not a lot of good work in Bernie’s II, so it stands out. Their dancing, the underwater photography, the rest is pretty terrible. Except Kiser.

But Wright and James are just one set of comedy duos in the film. Bernie’s II recasts returning leads Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman as a comedy team. McCarthy’s the obnoxious dumb one (with what I think McCarthy thinks is a New Yorker accent); Silverman’s the cautious, sweet, probably Jewish one. In this sequel, both actors literally repeat the performance from last time, just mixed up. They even have McCarthy repeat his lines like they were pop culture catchphrases. It’s terrible. And while it’s embarrassing to watch McCarthy humiliate himself for what cannot have been worth it pay-wise, he’s also never sympathetic. You feel bad for Silverman, you feel bad for Kiser, you feel bad for Troy Byer (as the not love interest love interest), for Wright, James, Nelson—even Barry Bostwick. But you never feel bad for McCarthy because you’re watching his complicity.

Byer’s a resort employee who makes the mistake of going out with McCarthy, which embroils her in the plot later on because she’s the only islander they know. Bostwick’s the insurance company investigator who follows McCarthy and Silverman down to St. Thomas. I assume they got a tax break to shoot in St. Thomas, who mustn’t have realized Weekend at Bernie’s II wasn’t going to do them much good tourism-wise.

See, McCarthy and Silverman want into Kiser’s safety deposit box, so they’re going to steal his body and Bernie’s him into the bank. It might be too macabre if it weren’t such an insipid film.

Anyway.

There’s nothing good about it (except Kiser, the underwater sequence, and the one dancing scene). Klane’s direction is much better than his script and still godawful. Bernie’s II leans in heavy to misogyny and racial stereotyping but then doesn’t even do anything once it’s there. There’s no joke, just a shitty setup. Klane’s not edgy; he’s just desperate.

It’s a terrible movie. And long. So long.

Jurassic World Dominion (2022, Colin Trevorrow)

It’s not hard to pinpoint what’s wrong with Jurassic World Dominion, the inglorious (hopefully) end of a twenty-nine-year-old franchise. Director Trevorrow does a bad job directing, he and co-writer Emily Carmichael do a bottom-of-the-barrel job with the script, the actors all seem contractually bound and miserable (even the new additions, with one exception), and Michael Giacchino’s musical score is so terrible they should’ve stopped payment on the check. Otherwise, Dominion would be fine. Just needs a better director, an entirely different story and script, and—I don’t know—the music from the original Jurassic Park SEGA Genesis game instead of Giacchino.

The film opens with a news break, which Trevorrow and Carmichael are incapable of writing. Dominion’s what happens when blockbusters don’t even need to hire script doctors so they don’t embarrass themselves. Trevorrow’s only positive quality is his dogged determination in not letting each horrifyingly embarrassing moment of film slow him from reaching the next. Dominion’s third act is nowhere near as bad as it could be, but the first and second acts—all two endless hours of them—are crashing behind it and the debris distracts from the film at least not getting any worse. Except for Giacchino’s music. Giacchino’s music always gets worse, right into the credits.

Jasmine Chiu plays the newscaster. She wouldn’t be believable as a TikToker on “CSI: Sheboygan,” so introducing twenty-nine years of cloned dinosaur backstory is out of the question. Especially since her news report also sets up this movie’s villain—and the only person who seems like he’s having a good time—Campbell Scott. Scott’s playing a character from the first Jurassic Park, but the part’s recast (for good reasons). Now, Scott’s got a lousy part. He’s playing the not-so-smart head of a genetics company; they’re using prehistoric DNA to cure diseases and create monster bugs. The monster bugs are important. If Trevorrow were any good, there’d be a great Godzilla 1985 reference. But he’s not any good. Instead of an on-point Godzilla bug reference, there are desperate Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and Jaws references like Trevorrow’s still sucking up to executive producer Steven Spielberg.

But Trevorrow directs Scott like he’s doing an incompetent, megalomaniac hipster Steve Jobs. It’s a string of terrible decisions and Scott’s willingness to commit to the bit and somehow get through. He’s never good; it’s impossible, with Carmichael and Trevorrow’s lousy script, for anyone to actually be good, but he’s never boring, bored, or defeated.

Everyone else goes through those emotions, though no one more despondently than Chris Pratt. He’s fifth fiddle in his own franchise, but he doesn’t even care. He’s got one good scene, and it’s from Congo. The rest of the time, he looks like he’s trying to disappear, similar to Bryce Dallas Howard.

Laura Dern and Sam Neill work pretty hard to make their parts work. Either Trevorrow didn’t direct them, or he told them to play their characters exactly the same as they did thirty years ago, only Neill doesn’t have the same American accent anymore. It’s a better accent, but it’s a different one. They get some genuinely terrible dialogue but get through all right.

Also back is Jeff Goldblum, who doesn’t get very much to do, even when he’s around. The second half of the movie is about putting the Jurassic World characters together with the Jurassic Park characters to they can fight the Thanosaurus at the end. Goldblum’s around, but it’s like Trevorrow and Carmichael are scared to write him. Goldblum seems ready to work but never gets asked to do any.

Isabella Sermon plays a cloned human who’s supposedly important to the monster bug plot. It’s all nonsense. Sermon’s fine, but fine in the way you’re being nice about a middling child actor. She was in the last movie.

Then BD Wong’s back, of course. He’s shockingly good in a silly role.

New characters this movie—besides Campbell (sort of)—are pilot DeWanda Wise and lackey Mamoudou Athie. The film would be an excellent showcase for both actors if Trevorrow weren’t terrible. But, instead, he flops with both. More with Wise because she’s got more to do—she and Pratt are chemistry-free action buddies. Athie’s just around for various exposition dumps and plot contrivances, but he’s not bad doing them.

Technically, Dominion’s fine. Good CGI. Good photography from John Schwartzman. Not good editing from Mark Sanger, but he’s working from Trevorrow’s footage, set to Giacchino’s music. There’s no way to edit Dominion into a good movie with those quality sinkholes.

Despite teaming up two generations of Jurassic adventurers, Dominion’s a bad, boring, anti-trip down memory lane. Even when Trevorrow’s aping old Park moments, they’re just so desperate they don’t get the nostalgia going; instead, they just further embarrass this entry.

All set to Giacchino’s godawful music, of course.

Code 46 (2003, Michael Winterbottom)

Code 46 is a budget future-noir, down to the male lead being a fraud investigator (though it’s unclear why there’d be a third-party contractor investigating identity theft). But it’s not just a budget future-noir; it’s also a future eugenics thriller; the title refers to the legal code forbidding procreating with your near relatives. Cousins would probably be all right. The movie opens with the explanation as two title cards; it doesn’t matter for half the movie.

And once it does matter, it’s another ten or fifteen minutes before someone explains there are clones everywhere. Most people never know their birth parents—just their “nurture” parents—so you’d never know if someone was actually your genetic sibling. Though without ever really breaking it down, the exposition has to be opaque to some degree because not everyone’s going to know about the Code 46. Or at least not at the same time. Though it’s unclear how some people find out about it because Code 46 has some very broken noir-ish narration. Screenwriter Frank Cottrell-Boyce writes just to the edge of the plot hole and then leaves it up to director Winterbottom to cover.

“Cover” is another of the film’s MacGuffins. To get around in the future, you need to have “cover,” which is basically either a travel pass or a living permit. Some people get to live in the nice cities, and some people live outside the nice cities. Those living outside don’t have “cover.” Though when you want to go someplace and can’t, it’s because you don’t have “cover.”

Samantha Morton works at a cover manufacturer. Since Code 46 is pre-smartphone (though people do have video phones), the “cover” is a physical object. Tim Robbins is investigating someone making counterfeit cover and giving it to undesirables. Though it turns out, they might not be so much undesirable as in danger. Code 46 doesn’t pay its oppressive future society enough attention—or define it enough—because it seems generally altruistic.

Like, preventing unnecessary deaths and in-breeding isn’t villain activity.

Such observations do not matter, however. Any observations about Code 46’s plot or any details with potential are useless; it all goes nowhere; Code 46 has a sparse script, which just draws attention to the worse aspects. Like Morton’s MacGuffin dream sequence. The film opens on her birthday and promises to be about her recurring dream and then is never, ever, ever about her recurring dream. Partially because it’s not a real detail, it’s just something to kill time.

The film’s only ninety-three minutes. It’s concerning how much time they waste.

The whole thing hinges on Robbins and Morton having chemistry, which they do not. He becomes infatuated with her and frames someone else for her crime. She apparently has a thing for much older men. Part of Robbins’s character involves him being on an “empathy virus,” which lets him read minds. Including passwords. No one in the future uses good passwords, it turns out.

The film could get away with all the future silliness and plot conveniences if it didn’t go spectacularly off the rails in the second half and then just keep going, making less and less internal sense as it goes along.

Morton and Robbins do better than expected. In the first half, anyway, when it seems like Morton’s got a character. She will not, with the film increasingly restricting and erasing her development in the second half. At the same time, it’ll turn out Robbins doesn’t have anything going on either.

There’s good photography from Alwin H. Küchler and Marcel Zyskind, though Peter Christelis’s editing is probably more impressive, even though the film uses his cutting abilities for questionable purposes. Okay music from Stephen Hilton and David Holmes. Mark Tildesley’s production design is excellent.

Winterbottom’s direction is just okay. He makes some big swings—having Morton stare directly into the camera a lot, a Coldplay song—and they don’t often connect.

Code 46 is an unfortunate fail; it seems like there might be a decent picture in the cast, crew, and concept, but Cottrell-Boyce’s script isn’t it. It doesn’t help Winterbottom’s checked out too. There are some solid moments and efforts, but they’re nowhere near enough to compensate for the problems.

Carnival of Souls (1962, Herk Harvey)

Carnival of Souls is another film in the “way too literal ending” genre. After seventy-five minutes (of seventy-eight) recounting its protagonist’s bewildering, terrifying experiences, the finish is a big wink and shrug. Though there’s a seemingly unintentional casting gaffe to tie the disparate narratives together. Unfortunately, that low-budget coincidence doesn’t add anything to the ending.

The film opens with lead Candace Hilligoss surviving a terrible car accident. She and her gal pals are drag racing some boys, and their car goes off a bridge; Hilligoss is the sole survivor. The opening titles are moody, beautiful lighted shots of the river, so when Hilligoss emerges, it’s in a familiar location. It sets a higher expectation than the film will achieve with recurring locations.

Hilligoss can’t remember what happened in the car—the boys have already lied to the cops about what happened, so they luck out, but it goes unexplored anyway. After a very brief recovery, Hilligoss is ready to move on to her new job at a church in Utah; she’s a professional organist, which means there’s going to be so much organ music in the movie. At the beginning, especially during the titles, it seems like Gene Moore’s music will be an asset. However, once it’s clear it’s just organ music—probably the same organ music, it’s all indistinguishable, even when the music becomes a plot point—and it’s very tiresome.

In Utah, Hilligoss hallucinates some scary ghouls around her car as she passes a closed carnival pavilion in the distance. The pavilion’s Souls’s best and worst; when Hilligoss eventually tours it, the experience is perfectly dreamy (Maurice Prather’s black and white photography is remarkable for such a low-budget effort and superb in general). But when she frequently daydreams about it, those sequences don’t have any of the dreaminess. Bill de Jarnette and Dan Palmquist do the cutting, and they’re a little too blunt about it; they’ve got no rhythm. Though with Moore’s organ music going in the background, what could they really do?

Hilligoss finds herself a room; Frances Feist’s her landlady, Sidney Berger’s the creepy sexual predator neighbor who judges Hilligoss for not being religious enough even though she works at a church. She wants to be paid for playing music in church—doesn’t it give her nightmares? Souls has a peculiar relationship with religion, especially since Hilligoss’s boss, Art Ellison, is a combination dipshit and asshole. At least he’s not a creep. Lots of the old dudes in Souls exude creep, including the local doctor (Stan Levitt), who determines Hilligoss is unfit to be in public without him evaluating her (even though he’s not qualified). Her old boss, organ manufacturer Tom McGinnis, was also a little too intrusive.

All the men agree Hilligoss is a little too independent, a little too headstrong, and has too much agency, which are interesting complaints, though none of them matter in the end.

As she tries to get acclimated to her new job and surroundings, Hilligoss starts seeing one of the ghouls from her trip around town. Director Harvey plays this lead ghoul, who’s definitely creepy, but technically much less threatening than, say, Berger. No one else can see Harvey, which confuses Hilligoss, but not as much when she has fits of insubstantiality when no one else can see or hear her, and she can’t hear them either.

It’s basically a “Twilight Zone” stretched out, with less budget than the TV show and questionable performances. Hilligoss does about as well as can be expected in the lead with such thin motivation and characterization. As needed, she looks terrified, though sometimes it’s unclear why she’s not terrified by what she’s experiencing (and vice versa). Berger’s amateurish but such a creep it ends up helping. Doctor Levitt and (apparently not Mormon in Utah) preacher Ellison are just bad. Though Souls has terrible ADR from the start, the looped deliveries aren’t just poorly acted but often clearly do not match the actors’ lips. So maybe it’s not all on them. Also, the script; Levitt and Ellison are the biggest patronizing assholes in a movie full of condescending assholes.

As far as Harvey’s direction… he’s definitely got his moments. However, he can’t do a regular conversation scene, which hurts the film since it’s mostly conversation scenes. The eerie pavilion material is usually quite good, and he makes some other big swings, mainly in the first act. Once Hilligoss is settled in Utah, fending off Berger, running from ghoul Harvey, there’s basically none. Harvey instead relies on the editing, which doesn’t (no pun) cut it.

Carnival of Souls isn’t terrible. It’s got a handful of moments; John Clifford’s script doesn’t do the film (or its actors) any favors, outside—albeit pointlessly—establishing Hilligoss as a singular (for the setting) protagonist. None of it adds up, not Hilligoss, not even the eerie pavilion, but at least the cinematography maintains throughout.

Sadly, so does that organ music.

The Brain from Planet Arous (1957, Nathan Juran)

Given its micro-budget and absurdity, The Brain from Planet Arous is often surprisingly okay. Director Juran was so embarrassed he took his name off the final product (using his middle name, Hertz, as his surname on the credits), and the movie does get goofy, but its biggest problem isn’t the budget in the end.

Instead, it’s how Arous treats leading lady and de facto protagonist Joyce Meadows. She’s second-billed, but lead John Agar has been possessed by an evil space brain. For the vast majority of the… seventy-minute runtime, it’s not Agar bent on world domination and assaulting Meadows; it’s this evil super brain. Literal super brain. There are two of them, one bad, one good, and they’re usually physically immaterial but visible, something Agar never figures out when trying to fight the bad one initially. Concerning since he’s a nuclear physicist.

He and his sidekick, Robert Fuller, measure a way too much radiation out at “Mystery Mountain” (Ray Buffam’s script seems written for a “Scooby-Doo” in more ways than one) and go out to investigate. Before they go, they go over to Meadows’s house for some all-American grub. Hamburgers, French fries, and casual sexism. Though not as much as later when Meadows’s dad, Thomas Browne Henry, says he’s going to hide in his office, so he doesn’t have to help with the dishes and will only come out when she’s finished.

Henry is terrible, which ends up helping the film a little. The only time the space brains appear in shots with the actors is when the brains are possessing someone. Otherwise, they never share shots, so there’s a lot of Agar dramatically flailing around the frame all by himself. There’s only so much he can do, right? Like, come on. It’s called The Brain from Planet Arous, after all.

And when Agar’s possessed and planning world domination, he has moments of success. He’s able to get absurd enough to match the script. Rolling around by himself, there’s nothing to be done with it.

He also gets metallic mutant eyes, which are clearly painful to wear, and Agar’s wincing pain makes for a more effective moment.

After the opening, when Agar and Fuller go out and find the alien, most of the movie is set either in Agar’s lab or Meadows’s house. Specifically, her backyard because it seems like the lab is in a different part of that same house. The first scene makes it look like she’s coming in to get them for lunch, not getting in a car and driving over and bringing them back for lunch.

Later, her dog will run between the houses regularly, but Agar always drives back and forth. It’s a little weird, but I guess even Arous knew the idea of scientists Agar and Fuller living with his girlfriend Meadows and her dad Henry was too silly.

Meadows and Agar only get a couple scenes together before he becomes possessed by the evil brain, who taunts Agar about what they’re going to do to Meadows and how she brings out a certain malicious lust in the otherwise asexual brain. It’s a lot, and Meadows spends most of the movie terrified of Agar attacking her. She’s pretty damn good at it.

Of course, after Agar gets back and assaults her, dad Henry tells her to get over it; Meadows doesn’t get any support until the good alien space brain shows up and confirms Agar’s now dangerous to Henry. It’s obvious what kind of world Meadows is living in.

And, just when the film needs to acknowledge her ability to overcome that world’s hindrances… it makes a sexist joke about her. And she’s a silly, silly lady. It’s a mean ending for the character, a bad one for the film, a big diss to Meadows (who kept a straight face not just opposite translucent space brains but also Henry’s bad acting), and a crap end for the film overall.

Instead of having a resolution, the movie literally just has someone gaslight Meadows and make her the butt of a joke.

It’s a bummer since it didn’t have to end so badly. And it didn’t have anything to do with the budget, just bad writing. Arous just needed to take itself as seriously as its two leads did. Agar and, especially, Meadows get nothing for their efforts.

The Last Days of Pompeii (1935, Ernest B. Schoedsack)

The Last Days of Pompeii opens with a disclaimer. Despite sharing a title, it is not based on Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1834 novel. That disclaimer should be read as a warning.

The film runs ninety-six minutes. The last days of Pompeii are the third act; the first two acts… wait, no. The timeline doesn’t even work internally. Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, but when lead Preston Foster doesn’t give his life trying to free Jesus from the cross on the way to Golgotha, it’s 33 AD. Oh, sorry, spoiler. Last Days of Pompeii is not an exciting disaster movie; it’s a jejune Christian movie about how selfish dipshit jock Foster finds Jesus but not really.

Anyway.

In 33 AD, Foster’s got a nine-year-old adopted son—played by David Holt. It’s Foster’s second try at fatherhood; the first time, his selfishness and stupidity got his wife and baby son killed. After their deaths, he became a gladiator, eventually killing Holt’s dad in the ring. So Foster adopts him and strives to provide him with all the money in the world, including taking him to Jerusalem on a business trip. An old lady fortune teller tells Foster to take Holt to see the greatest man in Judea, so he takes Holt to meet Pontius Pilate (Basil Rathbone).

When the action gets to the Last Days, Holt’s character has grown into John Wood, who’s eighteen years older. Wood’s probably supposed to be playing a teenager, so screenwriter Ruth Rose’s taking the timeline even less seriously than she could.

Wood’s grown to resent his adoptive father’s greed and is trying to help escaped slaves get away from Pompeii. The slaves are headed to the gladiator games, dad Foster runs the games, but Wood knows he can’t tell his dad to stop being terrible. Even though they both met Jesus once, Foster has been trying to gaslight Wood into forgetting ever since.

The scary part of Foster’s performance is his angry old man, complete with makeup, is his best work in the movie. He’s lousy when he’s the greasy stud in the first act. He’s not the worst, but he’s bad. He slightly improves in the second act, when Pompeii introduces the real master of Judea, wink wink (not on screen, rather the Marsellus Wallace suitcase device), but only barely. Maybe the improvement is the lack of a greased-up chest.

Along the way, Foster buys a family slave, Wyrley Birch, who’s supposed to be a tutor but never tutors. Instead, Birch plays butler for Foster and sounding board for Wood. Birch seems like he’s always going to be better, but the movie never gives him anything to do.

Besides Rathbone alternating between sincere in his Christian movie performance and visibly restraining himself from chewing up the scenery, the most amusing thing about the film is spotting the character actors in the supporting cast. What other movie’s got Ward Bond as a gladiator (uncredited, which is weird because it’s a reasonably prominent role), Edward Van Sloan, Louis Calhern, Frank Conroy, and Jason Robards Sr. hacking it up in a costume drama. Plus a cameo from Jim Thorpe — All-American!

Unfortunately, the occasional appearance of a familiar character actor isn’t enough to keep the film going. Especially since none of them recur enough to matter. Alan Hale, but he’s second-billed and just not bad like Foster. Hale and some of the character actors can overcome the script, Foster cannot. Neither can Wood, unfortunately. Though he does better than his love interest, Dorothy Wilson. Pompeii’s got no time for ladies; they’re one kind of fodder or another, chariot or class.

Obviously, if the script were better, who knows. Director Schoedsack’s similarly unenthused, going from one rote setup to the next. He doesn’t even put any energy into the early gladiator fights, instead waiting for the finale when there’s much less time–though for a while, I wondered if they were going to skip the eruption altogether. The amphitheater in the finale’s much more elaborate than in the first act; maybe they weren’t done building it.

Most of Pompeii is just backlot street shots with questionable architecture. There’s not much special effects work outside some composite establishing shots. Unfortunately, the finale’s nowhere near enough to make up for it.

There’s more to say about Pompeii, especially the film’s presentation of slavery, but there’s not much reason to say it. It’s atrocious from the start, with some good but not good enough special effects at the very end.

Presumably, the Bulwer-Lytton novel has to have a better story, but I’ve got no inclination to find out.

This post is part of the Second “Disaster” Blog-A-Thon hosted by J-Dub of Dubsism and Gabriela of Pale Writer.

Miss Meadows (2014, Karen Leigh Hopkins)

There are so many things wrong with Miss Meadows, it’s hard to know where to start. There are easy pickings, like Jeff Cardoni’s music. There are complicated pickings, like the film’s suburban mama bear fascist “everywhere you look there’s a pedophile no one will take care of, check that pizza shop basement” message. There’s the acting. Wow, is there the acting. But with the acting, much has to do with director Hopkins, her script, and Joan Sobel’s editing.

Because Miss Meadows isn’t just tedious; it’s exasperating.

The film opens with Hopkins’s best moment. Lead Katie Holmes walks down a suburban street where she gets accosted by a guy in a pickup truck, who threatens her with a gun if she doesn’t get in. So she shoots him dead. But before that interaction, she does a tap dance number. Hopkins cuts from Holmes walking to close-up on the tap-dancing feet, so it seems like it’s not Holmes (it’s probably not), but then they cut to Holmes tap dancing. She can do it, after all.

Best directing in the movie.

It’s like two minutes in, and Miss Meadows runs eighty-nine minutes. The story peaks in the first act, as Holmes meets local sheriff James Badge Dale, and they have a whirlwind romance. She’s a prim and proper substitute teacher (who threatens school administrators to keep the position, which the film drops right after introducing it), who also just happens to be a vigilante of the Charles Bronson Death Wish variety. Wherever she goes, she just happens across sexual predators or spree killers, and only Holmes can save the day.

Worse yet, they’re releasing a couple thousand felons early because of overcrowding, and it’s all the violent pedophile ones. For a while, the movie’s so on the nose you think it’s going to be about Holmes realizing Black and brown people get banged up for all sorts of bullshit by the corrupt criminal justice system and having to reexamine her hobby. But, nope. Miss Meadows does not, to its “credit,” villainize Black or brown men. There’s one Black guy—Dale’s sidekick, Stephen Bishop—otherwise, all white people. Holmes talks shit on the phone about the school she’s teaching at with all these poor kids. The Catholic Church is (not wrongly) demonized, but Holmes’s a good Christian girl who can’t stop talking about God. Apparently, the cops don’t do enough, including Dale, so it’s up to ladies like Holmes to keep the streets safe.

Of course, the one time Holmes really needs to be keeping someone safe, that person’s only a target because of Holmes’s shortsighted bravado.

It’s a messy, dull script with really long, really boring scenes, where Hopkins points the camera at actors and runs them to the ground. It’s worst with the kids in Holmes’s class; Hopkins isn’t good at writing the kids, but she’s worse at directing them. It’s excruciating, with Holmes not helping. When it seems like Holmes is in on the joke, she’s potentially charming. But there’s no joke; Meadows is just an ostensibly quirky Death Wish clone, and Holmes’s charmless in it. Especially once Dale becomes convinced she’s the vigilante. When Holmes has to act opposite suspicious Dale, Meadows crashes through the floor, plummeting towards the next new bottom.

Barry Markowitz’s photography is surprisingly good, and Jennifer Klide’s production design is solid. Otherwise, Miss Meadows is a complete waste of time. Including Jean Smart’s cameo; it’s definitely not her fault it’s pointless—it’s Hopkins’s fault; I didn’t even realize you could waste Jean Smart like Hopkins does.

At least it’s not eighty-nine and a half minutes. Or, heaven forbid–ninety.

Teen Wolf Too (1987, Christopher Leitch)

There are worse movies than Teen Wolf Too. There have to be worse movies than Teen Wolf Too. It’s a mantra you can use when watching Teen Wolf Too. Of course, given the era, there may be even a worse theatrically released movie from the same year (1987). But Teen Wolf Too is just the wrong combination of worthless and ponderous.

The obvious worst aspect of Teen Wolf Too is lead Jason Bateman. His performance is so inept, he’s not miscast, it’s a joke he was tested. A lot makes sense once you realize Bateman’s dad, Kent, produced the movie as a vehicle for his kid who couldn’t act. What’s so unfortunate about Bateman’s acting is his apparent effort. He clearly working with some suffering acting coach because his deliveries are laborious. Lots of pausing to think and consider, which just prolongs scenes and makes the deliveries longer. The less Bateman acting, the better, but there’s so, so much of it.

Because Teen Wolf Too can’t afford the makeup people from the first one, which leads to a lousy werewolf mask for Bateman, but then he’s barely in it. Bateman’s only got a handful of scenes wolfed out besides the numerous (four or five) montage sequences, where they can also use a stuntman.

Including an indescribable—but seriously, not worth seeing it for yourself—song and dance number where Bateman’s obviously not singing or dancing. See, Stuart Fratkin’s back from the first movie—well, Fratkin’s character is back. The original actor, Jerry Levine, didn’t return. Since he’d have been thirty or whatever acting opposite maybe just eighteen Bateman. Fratkin’s older but not lots and lots older. Mark Holton’s back from the first movie; he’s lots and lots older. He’s some weird non-trad who went to college to physically assault teenagers.

But Fratkin. He wanted to get Bateman to college to create a new Teen Wolf sensation, and so he’s prepared the song and dance number for Bateman’s Teen Wolf coming out. And hired dancers. Again, indescribably bad. Again, don’t find out for yourself. Don’t even YouTube it.

So, the first movie was high school, and this one is college. Bateman’s playing Michael J. Fox’s cousin from the first movie, who doesn’t think he will be a werewolf because neither of his parents are werewolves. There’s not not an implication the parents are related.

Anyway.

James Hampton is back from the first movie as Fox’s dad and Bateman’s uncle. There’s also not not the implication Bateman’s parents are dead. It’s like the Cat People remake, actually, when you think about it. A lot like it.

Hampton’s not any good because the script’s terrible. Much like untalented white guy lead Bateman, screenwriter Tim Kring failed upward, though maybe he learned to write someday like Bateman learned to act once his dad stopped making his movies for him.

Sorry. Hampton.

Hampton’s not good. But he doesn’t appear embarrassed to be in the movie, which is incredible because everyone else looks mortified. Even Bateman. Bateman looks just as miserable as everyone watching him act.

The film’s cast is a varied assortment of established actors down on their luck, middling ones about to quit acting for something else, or lousy actors kicking off careers acting poorly.

You feel bad for Kim Darby and Paul Sands (though Sands is terrible and Darby’s just bad), but not John Astin. Astin’s atrocious. Fratkin’s awful, Beth Miller’s awful; Holton’s bad but not especially bad. Estee Chandler plays the love interest, who Bateman mentally abuses, and the script treats like shit.

Chandler’s sympathetic. She’s one of the few people not actively making the movie worse. She’s trapped in Teen Wolf Too.

Leitch’s direction is terrible, Mark Goldenberg’s music’s terrible, Jules Brenner’s photography is terrible. On the other hand, the editing–the movie’s got four editors and is ninety-five minutes—isn’t incompetent.

Don’t watch Teen Wolf Too.

Unless Jason Bateman’s dad is paying you to watch it.

Teen Wolf (1985, Rod Daniel)

Teen Wolf is a rather dire Wolf. The best things about the movie are James Hampton as the dad and the werewolf makeup, which seems entirely designed to allow for a stuntman to play Michael J. Fox when he’s decked out.

Otherwise, it’s never better than middling and often much worse. Some of the problem is the script, though clearly not all of it, unless writers Jeph Loeb and Matthew Weisman introduced subplots to never address later, but most of it’s director Daniel and maybe editor Lois Freeman-Fox. Teen Wolf’s got absolutely no flow. Every scene feels like it’s the first time the characters have ever met… wait, I guess that one is script-related. Loeb and Weisman don’t do character arcs.

Ostensibly, Teen Wolf is about Fox accepting himself for himself and realizing his best friend Susan Ursitti is the right girl for him even though she’s not glamorous like Lorie Griffin. Griffin’s surprisingly not a cheerleader, instead doing a one-woman version of Gone With the Wind for theater teacher Scott Paulin. The film goes out of its way to suggest Paulin’s abusing her, but it’s always a joke because girls are property in Wolf. Paulin’s terrible. There’s not much good acting in Teen Wolf and some really bland bad acting, but Paulin somehow manages to be bad, bland, and eccentric. He’s atrocious.

Of course, Daniel doesn’t direct the actors. At all. Fox is all over the place, whereas Ursitti and Griffin are nowhere. Hampton handles it because he’s a professional, then other supporting actors just sort of luck into not needing much direction because the script’s so thin, or the film’s cut their characters down to nothing. Mark Arnold’s the bad guy; he’s Griffin’s boyfriend who goes to another high school. He’s on the basketball team, and they regularly trounce Fox and his team.

So, Teen Wolf is a bad high school sports movie with a werewolf subplot. When Fox turns into a werewolf when the wolfsbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright… well, wait, no. Fox can turn into a werewolf whenever he wants. The movie treats lycanthropy as peculiar but not unheard-of; it’s one of the script’s most successful moves because it allows Arnold to be a credible threat. He hates Fox for being different. The werewolf “curse” is an othering thing, not a bloodlust thing.

Griffin thinks it’s hot, Ursitti thinks it’s not, but Fox wants to be popular, so he’s going with blonde Griffin. But, again, Griffin’s not some popular girl; she’s the one being groomed and abused by the theater teacher. She hates her boyfriend and, seemingly, her life. Small wonder with both Arnold and Paulin treating her like their personal property and then Fox trying to do the same.

Though Fox is also miserable. He’s miserable before he’s the werewolf, miserable after. It doesn’t go anywhere.

Jerry Levine plays Fox’s obnoxious best bro. Levine needs some direction. He’s supposed to be an amusing wiseass. He’s a desperately unfunny one instead. Despite being filmed in Pasadena (in for Nebraska), Teen Wolf feels like a Canadian movie from the era that statement was a pejorative, and Levine seems like the one American who went north trying to make it. And then not.

Also, Daniel didn’t have Fox get rid of his Canadian “sorries.”

Besides Hampton and Arnold, the other decent performance is Matt Adler as Fox’s friend who doesn’t like the werewolf business. It’s not a subplot in the film (probably in the script, maybe even filmed), but Daniel and Freeman-Fox only leave it in the background of the finished product, with Adler not even getting to voice his discomfort. Other people talk about him when he’s not around.

But he’s got an arc.

Also, Fox’s teammates Mark Holton and Doug Savant get an arc. They watch him become an attention-seeking ball hog and don’t like playing anymore. Savant gets Teen Wolf’s biggest diss when he’s shut out of the third act.

Jay Tarses plays Fox’s basketball coach. He’s terrible but funny, like Daniel couldn’t screw up Tarses’s deliveries even when working against them. James MacKrell plays the mean vice principal. He’s bad and not funny.

Teen Wolf is a smelly dog. It doesn’t even help it’s only ninety-two minutes. Daniel and Freeman-Fox constantly use slow motion to drag things out.

Oh, and the original soundtrack… woof.

Every Secret Thing (2014, Amy Berg)

There’s a lot to say about Every Secret Thing and nothing to say about it. And some things can only easily be phrased as complimentary insults, like Rob Hardy’s photography is valuable because the movie’s an object lesson in how not to photograph a film.

Or how director Berg’s a great example of why a director needs to be able to work with their actors and know what’s good and what’s not. It would also help if Berg were better at the visuals, but directing the actors would’ve made a big difference.

Though maybe not Diane Lane. Lane’s a celluloid vampire here. She sucks the life out of every frame. Well, every byte; Thing’s shot on video, so maybe Hardy’s just inept on the format. Though if he told Berg they could shoot a dark room with visible daylight under the shades and say it was nighttime… well, that one’s still on him.

Or maybe say something about Robin Coudert's omnipresent and lousy music. Billy McMillin and Ron Patane’s editing is about the only competent technical, and they clearly were cutting together a mess.

Because once you get past the snide not-compliments, Every Secret Thinghas serious problems. A lot of the acting’s terrible, some of it because the direction’s terrible, some of it because Nicole Holofcener’s script is terrible. I’m sure not all of it is Holofcener’s adaptation (the movie’s from Laura Lippman’s novel) because the narrative trickery and manipulation are straight out of middling crime novels. And, you know, incredibly famous crime thrillers, making the whole thing very predictable as far as villains, with some very convenient details withheld until the third act.

The film’s about eighteen-year-olds Danielle Macdonald and Dakota Fanning; they’ve just gotten out of juvie for kidnapping and killing a baby when they were eleven. There are flashbacks peppered throughout the film to reveal more and more about that incident, but Macdonald protests her innocence while Fanning mopes.

Now, the film will treat Macdonald as suspicious because she’s fat; mom Lane bullies her about it, and Macdonald talks about it at length to other characters. And the movie is all about demonizing her; I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything do fatphobia as phrenology, but Every Secret Thing wants to be a pioneer.

Separate from that treatment of Macdonald’s character, the movie also has a lot to imply about interracial relationships between Black men and white women. There’s also a vice versa couple (Black lady, white man) around too, but the film’s distracted during those scenes because they can do a “poor people are classless” thing instead.

So, again, the best worst things about Every Secret Thing are technical incompetencies because they distract from the more problematic issues.

Anyway.

Another little girl goes missing, and the original baby’s mother goes to cops Elizabeth Banks and Nate Parker and says to investigate the recently released duo. Banks was the uniform cop who found the dead baby, and she’s still got PTSD. It’s not actually important because there’s no character development in the movie, just timed reveals. Because it’s terrible.

Who took the baby, and will the good guys get there in time. There’s inherent tension—especially since the parents, played by Sarah Sokolovic and Common, are very sympathetic. Common because everyone treats him like shit for being a Black guy, including Black cop Parker. The movie threatens to explore Parker’s hostility but thankfully does not.

Acting-wise, the best performance is… Banks. Kind of by default. Macdonald’s bad in a terrible part, Fanning’s not good in a terrible part, Lane’s “pull out the thesaurus” bad. Sokolovic and Common are better than the main cast, same with Parker. But, of course, it doesn’t help the flashback children actors—Brynne Norquist and Eva Grace Kellner—are lousy, and Berg has even less ability directing kids than adults.

For a second, it’s nice to see Julito McCullum (Namond, Wee-Bay’s kid on “The Wire”) in a tiny part, but then you realize he’s in this movie. Sure enough, Thing ruins it.

Because Every Secret Thing is faulty. Sometimes it’s worse than faulty, but it’s always faulty.