Category: ★½
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The Man Who Knew Too Much is Hitchcock’s only remake and, as such, it probably ought to be a whole lot better. The resulting film suggests he really wanted to make a Moroccan travelogue and symphony picture… assuming he didn’t set out to make a turgid thriller. There’s also something else awkward about Man–Doris Day.…
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MGM cut at least twenty-five percent out of Mark of the Vampire, which accounts for some of the plotting problems but still leaves the film a little messy. Ben Lewis’s editing is weak during dialogue exchanges, not just in general. And no amount of studio interference could have changed Browning’s reliance on weak special effects.…
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For an innocuous Touchstone family comedy, Captain Ron isn’t bad. Like most Touchstone movies, it lacks any real personality–Daryn Okada’s photography, for example, should be full of lush Caribbean visuals but it isn’t. Part of the blame goes to director Eberhardt, who doesn’t know how to open up his shots, and Okada’s no help. Ron…
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Jennifer Garner plays a Sarah Palin-type evil Republican woman in Butter. There’s her character. She does a Sarah Palin in Iowa impression; nothing else. It’s easily the most useless performance in the film, but the film’s otherwise filled with good, rounded performances so it’s even more glaring. And Garner produced the film too so she…
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Twister tries very hard to be avant-garde, but ends up just being a quirky family comedy. Worse, director Almereyda changes up the narrative style about fifty minutes into the film. Although Twister is based on a novel, Almereyda’s style is more appropriate for stage. The first half or more takes place on one set–Harry Dean…
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House of Games is a very small film, but Mamet and cinematographer Juan Ruiz Anchía manage to make it appear a lot bigger. When there’s no one in a shot, in a public place, except a principal, Mamet makes it seem stylistic instead of budgetary. It’s only during the final fifteen minutes, when there’s a…
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One of the best gags in Wet Hot American Summer is having the twenty and (some) thirty somethings play teenage summer camp counselors. One big problem? Not making the gag clear until the end of the movie. It would have gotten a lot more mileage throughout. Summer goes out on an awkward note–almost an homage…
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Besides an absurd reliance on flip and pan transitions, director Armitage does an often excellent job directing Miami Blues. His script–adapting a novel, so who knows how much is his fault–is a different story. Blues is the story of a charismatic psychopath (Alec Baldwin) fresh from prison who wrecks havoc in the Miami area. The…
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There’s enough story for three really good movies in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, maybe even four. The film opens with two of them, a good, old fashioned journalism movie, and then the very serious experiences of Noomi Rapace. There’s some crossover, but it’s all contrived. Then the film blossoms and has two more…
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Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol might be a vanity project for producer-star Tom Cruise, but he sort of deserves it. His first scene features some athletics from him–the film’s full of them–and it’s hard to believe Cruise is nearly fifty. Either he’s got a portrait locked in a closet, they CG’ed his body or vitamins…
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Karyn Kusama can’t direct action, which hurts Aeon Flux a little bit, but she also can’t keep up the pace of her film. It should be a literal roller coaster–there’s some establishing material, which is nonsense, then the film drops Charlize Theron (as the titular character) in a mission. The mission runs the length of…
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John Carpenter does some amazing work on Christine. He’s got help from his cinematographer, Donald M. Morgan, but the first forty-five or fifty minutes of the film are simply masterful. Carpenter has a wide variety of scenes–high school, ominous, family scenes, conversations–and all of them are magnificent. It’s just too bad Bill Phillips’s script falls…
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Unknown is not a bad continental thriller. Liam Neeson is an American scientist in Berlin who wakes from a coma to find no one remembers him. As often happens in these situations, he finds himself a pretty sidekick (Diane Kruger) and a sympathetic native (Bruno Ganz) who try to help him unravel the mystery. The…
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Alda opens A New Life likes it’s going to juxtapose he and Ann-Margret’s lives immediately follow their divorce. For a while, it does. Alda’s got Hal Linden as a sidekick, Ann-Margret’s got Mary Kay Place. It’s all very even. She’s going back to school, he’s trying to figure out how to date. The beginning might…
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The Lincoln Lawyer is—in addition to being, besides the cast, a great pilot for a cable series—a standard legal thriller. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a new one of these, probably because there are so many decent old ones to go through. Nothing in the film is a particular revelation, which might explain…
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Gance has a real problem with Lucrezia Borgia… none of his characters are likable. Even Antonin Artaud, playing a friar who rallies against the Borgia regime, is unlikable and he’s the film’s closest thing to a good guy. Gance shoots Artaud like a lunatic. It’s also not a film about Lucrezia Borgia, it’s a film…
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Muppets from Space is definitely missing some important elements (like subplots and a first act), but it usually doesn’t matter. Even though Hill is a poor director–the film doesn’t just lack personality, it looks like a TV show–the Muppet performers are incredibly strong and the script has a bunch of great lines. The film focuses…
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Diplomatic Courier starts a lot stronger than it finishes. For the first half or so, it’s a post-war variation of a thirties Hitchcock–a lot of unexplained, strange incidents and a protagonist trying to unravel them. Then it changes gear, becoming a Hollywood attempt at The Third Man. It’s successful during the first part and it…
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Engaging enough thriller about American journalist in London Stephen Boyd investigating the death of his psychologist and developing a friendship with the psychologist’s daughter, played by Pamela Franklin. Both Boyd and Franklin are excellent; the supporting cast is strong. Unfortunately, the mystery angle isn’t particularly compelling (which almost seems like a conscious choice on the…
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Blue Thunder is astoundingly dumb. It’s not exactly bad, as there are some fantastic effects and some of the script has shockingly sublime moments, but it’s astoundingly dumb. It starts off strong, with a decent enough first act. Daniel Stern is new to the Astro division of the LAPD and, through him, the film introduces…
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It would be interesting to know how much of Inspector Hornleigh features Gordon Harker (playing Inspector Hornleigh) on screen. While Harker does get a fair amount of the running time, a lot is spent on his sidekick, played by Alastair Sim, and the villains. The script’s approach to narrative drains the mystery from the film.…
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Narrow Margin plays like a TV pilot for Gene Hackman as a crusading (but big mouthed) district attorney. There’s not a lot of depth to the characters and Hyams is never able, even with some great Panavision composition throughout, to make it feel cinematic. Maybe it’s the lack of establishing shots. Most of the film…
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In the listless younger man, experienced older woman genre, Meet Monica Velour is a painfully obvious modernization (the older woman is a former porn star, the younger man is an… avid fan). I use the ellipses because Meet Monica Velour’s protagonist is the finest example of the stalkers of the eighties growing up to be…
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Once upon a time, I read how what Apatow really does with Knocked Up is make a film about how men need to change to be acceptable for women. I think the article used stronger language. While that aspect of the film is present, it’s an extreme reading. It could just as well be about…
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From the title A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas sounds like a TV special, not a 3D movie extravaganza and director Strauss-Schulson feels the need to prove it every four minutes or so. Harold & Kumar often has pointless (if occasionally amazing) 3D set-pieces but they eventually stop. They stop after writers Jon Hurwitz…
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No Escape opens with this lovely piece of music from composer Graeme Revell. It’s sort of the film’s theme music and it doesn’t fit at all with the action or sci-fi elements integral to the plot. The film’s this odd mix of genres and filmmaking approaches. At times it’s anti-climatic to such an incredible point,…
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Usually when I say Korean films effortlessly mix genre, I mean it in a good way. It’s still impressive in Murder, Take One; director Jang definitely makes the final ingredient a surprise, but it’s a questionable choice…. The majority of the film—albeit on a reduced budget—is successful. It’s a police procedural with one caveat, the…
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For a “revealing the secrets of a small town” thriller, Moss has a number of problems. The first one might just be me. The town has six residents. It’s not a town in my American understanding. A viewer with more cultural knowledge might experience it differently. Second, and more to the point, it’s just too…
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If it weren’t for the cast and direction, I’m not sure how The Package would play. The combination of Gene Hackman and Andrew Davis makes the film, which has a bunch of problems, noteworthy. Davis gives the film enough grit and realism to make it seem wholly believable, just so long as one doesn’t think…
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Turbulence raises a good point—why bother trying to make a good serial killer thriller? Ray Liotta runs rampant throughout the film, having serving after serving of scenery. The script’s got a bunch of dialogue issues in the third act, but none of them bother Liotta, who’s operating at way too high an adrenaline level to…
The Stop Button 