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The Abyss (1989, James Cameron), the special edition
Running almost three hours, the special edition of The Abyss manages to be too long in an interesting way. It forgets its story. There’s about an hour there with the valiant undersea oil workers battling the psychotic military man–there’s fight scenes and chase scenes and drama scenes and all sorts of scenes… just nothing about… 📖
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Conspiracy (2008, Adam Marcus)
Well, Val Kilmer’s gone all the way. After some serious flirtation over the last few years, he’s finally made it to the under ninety minute direct-to-video action movie. But, given he’s Val Kilmer and he’s difficult, Conspiracy is no simple ex-Marine direct-to-video revenge action movie. Oh, no, with the director and screenwriter of Jason Goes… 📖
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Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (2008, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg)
As far as sequels go, Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (huh, Guantanamo isn’t in Apple’s dictionary) is superior to the first. It’s far more absurd and the characters have comfortably become a modern comedy duo. Their adventures are modernized comedy bits, which work due to the movie’s absence of realistic pretense, but where… 📖
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State of the Union (1948, Frank Capra)
Capra tries for another entry in his humanist series (Mr. Deeds, Mr. Smith and John Doe) and fails miserably. Two of the principal ingredients–Robert Riskin and Gary Cooper–are missing, but since State of the Union is from a play, it’s questionable if Riskin could have helped (Union‘s problems are fundamental). As for Cooper… Spencer Tracy’s… 📖
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Mary of Scotland (1936, John Ford)
Even with the overbearing music and the strange lighting for emphasis (play-like, it dims to concentrate attention on an object or person), lots of Mary of Scotland is rather well done. Ford’s got some excellent shots and, at times, creates anxious scenes. It’s hard to get particularly excited during most of the film because, while… 📖
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Parenthood (1989, Ron Howard)
I’m trying to find a synonym for genial… excuse me a moment. I like the look of gregarious, but the definition doesn’t fit. Convivial is going to be the compromise word. Parenthood is convivial. Somehow, Howard and company manage to convince the viewer to be touched by the movie’s events, but not to give them… 📖
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Equus (1977, Sidney Lumet)
The inevitable unpleasantness in Equus, which is promised from the second or third scene, manages to be more horrifying than I expected. At the beginning of the film, it’s possible to steel oneself for it, but by the end, it becomes a lot more like the sensation of striking one finger against the other. At… 📖
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A Good Lawyer’s Wife (2003, Im Sang-soo)
A Good Lawyer’s Wife is beautifully directed. Im shot it Super 35 (full frame, then cropping it down to 2.35:1) and he uses a lot of steadicam, creating these fragile, exquisite compositions. Usually when I kick off with a description of the excellent technical filmmaking, it isn’t a particularly good sign. This one is no… 📖
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The Big Fix (1978, Jeremy Kagan)
The Big Fix is a fundamentally different detective movie. While there are some elements updating it to time period, a lot of it is still a detective investigating in LA, meeting all sorts of people all around town and so on. It’s still Raymond Chandler to some degree–with Dreyfuss playing his (marginally) goofy, but caring… 📖
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The Uninvited (2003, Lee Soo-youn)
The Uninvited is a technically a horror movie, I suppose. There are ghosts and all. With the exception of the protagonist finding a kindred spirit–and her seeing ghosts too–the whole thing could work as a drama about trauma. In fact, as a drama, it would work well. During the movie, when the inevitable dumb horror… 📖
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88 Minutes (2007, Jon Avnet)
Al Pacino has reached the point William Forsythe has supporting roles in his movies. That facet just about sums up 88 Minutes, which would have been a great late 1990s Dimension movie, maybe even with Pacino, and all those young actors Miramax had on call (I’m thinking it would have been most effective with Neve… 📖
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Street Kings (2008, David Ayer)
I wonder who came up with the title Street Kings, as it has nothing to do with the film’s actual content. I didn’t realize Fox Searchlight had a dimwit exec in charge of re-titling movies. Silly me. The original title, The Night Watchman, actually makes sense (especially since the movie appears to be shot with… 📖
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Smart People (2008, Noam Murro)
It’s hard to intelligently describe Smart People because the best way to describe it is quite simple. It’s a bunch of movie trailers for quirky family dramatic comedies strung together. Not five minutes goes by without two montages to songs (I’m shocked the soundtrack CD wasn’t available in the lobby) and one instrumental. There are… 📖
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King of the Hill (1993, Steven Soderbergh)
Two major things about Soderbergh’s approach to a memoir adaptation. They’re somewhat connected, so I might not manage to separate them out. King of the Hill has no frame, it has no narration. It has no context. It does not feel, at all, like a “true” story because there’s no attempt to classify itself as… 📖
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The Mist (2007, Frank Darabont), the director’s version
It’s rare and relatively modern to come across the film where the ending can ruin it. The surprise ending as opposed to the natural narrative progression. They rarely work. I’d read The Mist had a controversial ending, which, watching the last minutes of the film, I assumed referred to the incredibly bold thing Darabont does.… 📖
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The Paper (1994, Ron Howard)
For a painfully brief period in the 1990s, Ron Howard was one of the best filmmakers working. It didn’t last. The Paper kicked off his run. Howard and the Koepp brothers (I can’t remember for sure, but I think Stephen worked at a newspaper) imbue the film with the traditional Hollywood newspaper movie idealism, but… 📖
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Q & A (1990, Sidney Lumet)
Sidney Lumet’s awkward examination of political corruption and race in New York City hits some bumps it shouldn’t. One of the major problems–because the film, after all the minor problems, only has two major problems–is the ending. Lumet has a perfectly well-intentioned ending, but he doesn’t quite get it. There’s not enough groundwork for it… 📖
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True Believer (1989, Joseph Ruben)
True Believer is never quite anything it sets out for (story-wise)–it’s not the story of a lost man finding his way, it’s not a legal drama, it’s not the story of a young lawyer spurning riches for morals. Instead, it’s a courtroom movie with corruption, chase scenes through metal shops, a great Brad Fiedel score… 📖
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The Return of Swamp Thing (1989, Jim Wynorski)
The Return of Swamp Thing belongs on the modern movie equivalent of “Mystery Science Theater,” or maybe “USA Up All Night!” (I think it might have gone on “Up All Night” actually). But Return came out in the late 1980s, before the direct-to-video deluge and I saw it in a theater (an absolutely wonderful old… 📖
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Soapdish (1991, Michael Hoffman)
Zany. Soapdish is zany. At its most amusing, it’s a rapid-fire, carefully scored (Alan Silvestri’s score is essential, given how it establishes the movie’s mood) set of fast scenes with decent laughs. Garry Marshall is hilarious, Carrie Fisher is even funnier. Cathy Moriarty is terrific. So where’s the big problem? Well, Soapdish‘s most amusing parts… 📖
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Dangerous Game (1987, Stephen Hopkins)
If Dangerous Game were an American movie from the 1980s, Steven Grives’s jerky cop turned psycho killer would undoubtedly be a Vietnam vet. Since Game is Australian, he’s not. Instead, with no explanation of mental trauma in his past given, he’s just from Ireland. That’s it. Nutso cop is an Irish immigrant to Australia. Some… 📖
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The Gingerbread Man (1998, Robert Altman)
Somehow Altman lets The Gingerbread Man get away from him. Never the direction, which holds up until the end–and seeing Robert Altman direct a fight scene is something to behold–but the plotting. The film starts high, thanks to the compelling plot and the performances, but then the plot gets more and more… not convoluted, but… 📖
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Network (1976, Sidney Lumet)
Network lost Oscars. It doesn’t really matter what it lost them to, because the absurdity of the Academy Awards is summed up in that one statement. Network lost Oscars. I’m not sure what shot is Sidney Lumet’s best in the film, because I’m remembering two of them from the last half. These aren’t necessarily the… 📖
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Runaway (1984, Michael Crichton)
Given the star and the director, it shouldn’t be surprising Runaway is rather conservative. And, given the endless kissing montage over the end credits, it also appears to have been geared toward female viewers (but with Selleck, that one isn’t a surprise either). As science fiction, Runaway is very, very safe. It’s an unexciting safe.… 📖
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Nightmare Alley (1947, Edmund Goulding)
Nightmare Alley is–or should be–a cautionary tale about the dangers of foreshadowing and being really cute about it. The end of the movie is forecast in the opening scene, then again in the third or fourth scene–hammered in for those who weren’t paying enough attention the first time. The second time key phrases are dropped… 📖
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Hulk (2003, Ang Lee)
Hulk had a huge box office drop-off after its opening weekend–wow, almost seventy percent. It’s actually somewhat lucky, because I’d have thought people would have gotten up and walked out of the theater. The Hulk doesn’t show up until about an hour into the movie and doesn’t do anything interesting for another half hour after… 📖
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Tell Me Something (1999, Chang Yoon-hyun)
Tell Me Something is, for a graphically violent serial killer movie, kind of goofy. It mixes genres–well, but it leads to the problem–starting off a straight cop movie, moving to the serial killer, then bringing in Shim Eun-ha as the damsel in distress. The serial killer aspect slows over time (especially since the killings, all… 📖
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The Last Shot (2004, Jeff Nathanson)
The Last Shot is a comedy–and a funny one–but I’m not sure it qualifies as a story. It’s an idea for a movie–the FBI fakes producing a movie to catch mobsters, hiring Hollywood wannabes without telling them–but Nathanson’s execution of the idea is flawed. Alec Baldwin’s FBI agent is lying to would-be director Matthew Broderick… 📖
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Strange Cargo (1940, Frank Borzage)
A lot of Strange Cargo is really good. Borzage isn’t the most dynamic director, but every time he has a startlingly mediocre shot, he follows it with a good one in the next few minutes. The film’s got lengthy first act–thirty minutes–and then moves from confined location to confined location. The first act is the… 📖
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One Way Street (1950, Hugo Fregonese)
Here’s a goofy one–the title also could be The Doctor in the Sombrero–with James Mason as a mob doctor who makes off with two hundred grand and the boss’s girl, only to end up in rural Mexico, healing horses. It’s all pretty standard stuff, down to the excursion to Mexico, but Mason and Dan Duryea… 📖
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Split Second (1992, Tony Maylam)
Rutger Hauer plays a rogue cop who needs big guns, smokes cigars, and has his Zippo lighter fixed for a three-inch flame. Amusingly, the character being some kind of poster child for overcompensation isn’t recognized, neither by Hauer or by the filmmakers. Hauer’s performance is something extraordinary. I mean, sure, the lines are awful, but… 📖
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Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000, Bong Joon-ho)
Bong’s first film is unique, not just of Korean cinema, but of most. It’s a mostly lyrical piece–lyrical in the storytelling sense, not the filmmaking (there are only a couple of stylized moments in the film)–juxtaposing Lee Sung-jae and Bae Du-na. Lee’s a grad student trying to become a professor, Bae’s an office assistant in… 📖
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Justice League: The New Frontier (2008, Dave Bullock)
In terms of ambitiousness, Darwyn Cooke’s The New Frontier is in many ways as ambitious as a superhero comic book can get. Cooke tied DC Comics superheroes to the American political landscape of the 1950s and, while he didn’t have an absolute success, he did just fine, never losing the zeal (occasionally letting it go… 📖
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The Black Dahlia (2006, Brian De Palma)
The Black Dahlia really ought to be a lot better. The film’s problems vary from the slight to the significant, but for some reason, the James Ellroy plot keeps things going. The film ends on a problem too, which makes writing about it immediately following a pea in the bed–and the last act is a… 📖
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As Good as It Gets (1997, James L. Brooks)
As I recall, there were lots of production issues with As Good as It Gets, specifically in terms of boosting Cuba Gooding Jr.’s role (after winning his Oscar) and maybe shortening Skeet Ulrich’s. It all shows, as does the uneasy rewrite Brooks did of Mark Andrus’s script. I have no idea what Andrus’s original script… 📖
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Invincible Enforcer (1979, Cheng Gang)
Even with rats doing cute tricks–and maybe because of it–Invincible Enforcer is an unwatchable piece of… of something. I’m not even sure the correct noun. It’s my first or second attempt at a Shaw Brothers production and what’s really amazing about it is the editing. It’s got all the fast edits of a modern Hollywood… 📖
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Count Dracula (1977, Philip Saville)
The biggest problems with Count Dracula are completely unrelated. First, the obvious–the source material. Bram Stoker’s novel is, apparently, unadaptable. To date, no film version has been successful. The problem lies with Stoker’s plotting. After the compelling opening with Dracula in Transylvania, his subsequent disappearance leaves the reader or viewer with a bunch of rubes.… 📖
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Boys Town (1938, Norman Taurog)
I can’t figure out–past being an inspiring melodrama–if the filmmakers were trying for anything with Boys Town. The question of its success as that inspiring melodrama is easily answered… it fails. The first act of the film deals with Spencer Tracy trying to get Boys Town, starting just as a home, started. It works pretty… 📖
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Nobody’s the Greatest (1975, Damiano Damiani)
According to Wikipedia, Sergio Leone was so unhappy with Nobody’s the Greatest, he had his name taken off. He directed the first scene, which is a standard Leone Western opener and is quite good, he co-produced and he came up with the story. The movie’s a tedious, at times painful attempt at comedy–Terence Hill smiles… 📖