Category: 1989
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A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child is inept. Some of the ineptness isn’t too damaging–director Hopkins can’t make anything scary, even though he’s got his cast in these scary looking sets and so on. He handles it too matter-of-factly. But, after the first couple times, that ineptness stops surprising. By then, the film’s…
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Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan has a number of significant problems. Director Hedden can’t direct actors or compose a shot well, the actors aren’t any good (even experienced character actor like Peter Mark Richman can’t seem to figure out what Hedden wants him to do), Bryan England’s photography is lousy, Fred Mollin’s…
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Director (and adapter) Branagh splits Henry V into three sections. They aren’t equal, they don’t match the act changes (usually); Branagh lets photographer Kenneth MacMillan open up the film to (outdoor) light while Patrick Doyle’s score becomes essential. The first outside, daylight sequence–Branagh (as Henry) gives his troops a rousing speech–defines the rest of the…
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Mystery Train is a comedy. It’s many other things–an examination and comparison of various kinds of differentness–but it’s also a very funny comedy. In fact, Jarmusch keeps characters around for nothing else. Train is the interconnected story of seven people (across three chapters) all culminating at a Memphis hotel. Cinqué Lee is the suffering bellboy,…
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For the first episode of “Dekalog,” director Kieslowski and co-writer Krzysztof Piesiewicz go straight for the jugular. Kieslowski fills the episode with foreshadowing until it spills over. And no symbolism is too obvious. One is about a computer programming professor (Henryk Baranowski) and his similarly tech-enthusiastic son (Wojciech Klata). The tech is poorly visualized–in one…
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There’s so much strong acting in Major League and director Ward’s script has such likable characters (and such a hiss-worthy villain in team owner Margaret Whitton), the film moves on momentum alone for quite a while. It’s only in the third act, when Ward throws in an unnecessary plot twist to ratchet up tension. He…
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The issue takes place over a day at a diner. Doctor Destiny is trying to bring about the end of the world and he traps a bunch of people in the diner and slowly drives them mad. Or not slowly. Gaiman makes the characters distinct, horrific, pitiable. He doesn’t have time to establish them as…
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Dream goes to Hell, which requires the Demon as a guest star. Gaiman doesn’t have anything for him to do, past rhyme a little for the protagonist and cause some mischief. It’s a pointless cameo, though Kieth and Dringenberg do fine on the Demon. They don’t do so well later, when they have to draw…
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About halfway through Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, the film becomes truly excellent. Dimwitted metal heads Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves have successfully brought historical figures to the present and loosed them on the modern world–the mall. That sequence of the film, along with Terry Camilleri’s Napoleon at a water park, is when the film…
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One of the great tragedies for soap operas has to be Fly II director Chris Walas being too good with special effects–his company does them on the film–to have to direct soap operas. With the exception of these high angle shots of impossibly expansive sets, presumably to emulate thirties horror films, Walas is a supremely…
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In some ways, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is an ambitious movie pretending to be popcorn entertainment pretending to be an ambitious movie. There's a lot of nonsense about self-help, not to mention the whole God thing, and none of it works. Partially, it doesn't work because David Loughery's script is too thin, but…
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Honey, I Shrunk the Kids is a constant battle between trite and sincere. Except the special effects stuff; the special effects are astounding, especially the sequences where there's a mix of styles, between practical and optical, and a mix of sizes. Director Johnston does such an exceptional job making the fantastic palatable, it's too bad…
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Fletch Lives is a dreadful motion picture. Typing out its title, I remember–once again–the filmmakers weren’t even creative enough to come up with a good title. There’s no pun in it, no reference to the film’s narrative–no one ever thinks the character has died only to come back in a surprise. Maybe it’s a newspaper…
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What’s most admirable about Weekend at Bernie’s, outside the acting, has to be the narrative structure. The first third takes place before the titular weekend, establishing all the characters, then the rest of it takes place over a twenty or so hour period. Robert Klane’s script changes gears during the film’s final third too. Instead…
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Doug Wheeler takes over the writing and does all right. He recaps the previous time travel adventures–this issue comes after an unexpected publishing delay–and sticks close to Alec. Wheeler basically rips off The Clan of the Cave Bear, with Alec hanging out with Neanderthals (guess what, they should have made it, not humans), while splitting…
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Coffee and Cigarettes II stars twins Cinqué Lee and Joie Lee as twins having coffee in Memphis. Why are they in Memphis? They don’t know, but it seems like it’s Cinqué’s fault. Jarmusch le’s the twins bicker though most of the short, which is funny enough but then there’s Steve Buscemi too. Buscemi’s playing the…
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Given the abundance of terrible television sitcoms, seeing what kind doesn’t make it past pilot stage should be interesting. But it’s not. “Adventures in Babysitting” is a semi-sequel to the movie–with David Simkins, the original writer, co-writing the pilot. It recasts every role. It’s fairly clear why “Babysitting” didn’t make it to series, though mixing…
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Halloween 5 shouldn’t be mind-numbingly boring. There’s no chance something called Halloween 5 is going to be smart, so I was expecting mind-numbing stupidity… but not boredom. The movie opens with a recap of the previous entry, with some changes to the ending to keep Michael Myers alive (he escapes in a manner straight out…
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Tummy Trouble goes out of its way to pay homage to Tex Avery (down to a Droopy cameo) and director Minkoff does a decent job of it. Not to say Tummy‘s successful, however. While Minkoff apes Avery all right, it’s a combination of too obvious and too reverential. Outside being an “original” Roger Rabbit cartoon,…
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Back to the Future Part II, while front heavy with special effects, ends up being a small picture. The first half or so deals with the sequel setup from the first movie’s finale but then Part II tells a side story set during the first film. Time travel franchises can be, it turns out, rather…
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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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Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation clearly shows all you need for rousing adventure is enthusiasm, a willful abandon for one’s physical safety and John Williams music. The film is an attempt at a shot-for-shot adaptation of the original, made by and starring children (over approximately seven years). Their motive? Well, when they started,…
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Crimes and Misdemeanors is not a particularly nice film. It juxtaposes two men in crisis–Martin Landau’s successful ophthalmologist has a girlfriend (Angelica Huston) who is threatening to tell his wife and Woody Allen’s failing filmmaker is crushing on the producer (Mia Farrow) of the his project. Allen’s only on the project, a biography of his…
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A lot of Slipstream plays like The Road Warrior with gliders. In this post-apocalyptic wasteland, everyone flies around because of a jet stream ravaging the surface. It’s never clear where this jet stream is located and not, in a geographic sense, because they always manage to safely take off and land… while at other times…
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There are some funny lines in Second Sight. Not many, but some. And they’re good, laugh out loud lines. It’d be hard for John Larroquette, reacting to Bronson Pinchot acting like an idiot, not to get some laughs. The whole thing feels like a “what I did on summer hiatus” for Larroquette and Pinchot. It’s…
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Until The 'burbs gets around to actually having to pay off on its premise–the strange new neighbors are really serial killers–it’s quite good. There’s no way the third act pay off can deliver and the film’s quality takes a number of hits in the last half hour or so. Olsen’s script is, technically, at fault……
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Gross Anatomy is harmless and diverting. It’s got some good performances–Christine Lahti is fantastic, Matthew Modine barely does any work and is solid as the lead. The supporting cast has some bright points (Alice Carter and John Scott Clough), but it’s also got Daphne Zuniga. Now, Anatomy is a big bright Touchstone movie. It’s less…
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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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I wonder how Let It Ride would play if it were competently made. Pytka’s not a terrible director, but he’s not any good either. His mediocre composition is undone by the absolutely atrocious song choices for the soundtrack. The film would probably be better with no changes other than that track excised. Not that Giorgio…
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I’ve been meaning to see Blind Fury again for twenty-one years or so. For a while, I assumed it would be pretty good (not entirely trusting my opinion at age ten) because Phillip Noyce directed it. Unfortunately, Noyce directs it with all the enthusiasm of a cologne commercial. It’s not like there’s much he could…
The Stop Button 