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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… 📖
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Sabrina (1995, Sydney Pollack)
I remember the back of the laserdisc for Sabrina said something about how, going in to the film, one knows what’s going to happen, but the film’s about enjoying it happen. For a back of the disc blurb, it’s incredibly accurate. Sabrina is a joy from start to finish, mostly because Sydney Pollack has put… 📖
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Stalingrad (1993, Joseph Vilsmaier)
I remember when Stalingrad came out on VHS. I was working at a video store and argued for ordering it, based on the ads mention of it having the same producer as Das Boot. Still, I was a little surprised at how much the opening credits try to go for a Das Boot feel. It’s… 📖
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Pandora’s Box (1929, Georg Wilhelm Pabst)
I think there’s one bad shot in Pandora’s Box. Maybe not even bad. It’s one of the standard silent one-shots, where the person is shot from low, disregarding the continuity of the scene (i.e. he or she is standing too close to another person). There’s one of those shots in the film and it’s the… 📖
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Cape Fear (1962, J. Lee Thompson)
Maybe half of J. Lee Thompson’s shots in Cape Fear are good. Unfortunately, the other half aren’t mediocre, they’re bad. He’s given to iconic shots of Robert Mitchum, some of which make Cape Fear look like stills from an old Universal horror picture, with Mitchum as Frankenstein’s Monster. As a horror film–Mitchum’s Max Cady is… 📖
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Flesh and Bone (1993, Steve Kloves)
Dennis Quaid’s performance in Flesh and Bone is complicated. The character, the hints the film offers into him, is more complicated, but Quaid’s performance somehow encapsulates all those unknowns without defining them. The film has some really strange touching scenes, as Quaid’s character lets down the wall long enough to express himself. And the anguish… 📖
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Gone Baby Gone (2007, Ben Affleck)
There’s one singularly profound moment in Gone Baby Gone, when Affleck plus vieux has one of those filmic moments directors rarely have. He takes a broken, melodramatic scene and makes it sublime. It’s a wonderful moment, coming just after the film’s second ending and before the third and fourth. The film has a lengthy list… 📖
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Class Action (1991, Michael Apted)
With Conrad L. Hall shooting it and James Horner (pre-Titanic and fame) scoring, Class Action is great looking and sounding. Apted’s composition is frequently excellent. But it’s a vehicle for Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and it, rather unfortunately, eventually just works on that vehicle level. There’s no real surprises, no real content… just running time with… 📖
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The Magic Cloak of Oz (1914, J. Farrell MacDonald)
I was going to say it was odd Frank Baum wrote the screenplay, but I guess he wrote a bunch of them back in the teens. The Magic Cloak of Oz is a silly little film–I’m assuming the target audience was children–and a lot of fun. Baum has a good time with the title cards… 📖
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The Last Hunt (1956, Richard Brooks)
Here’s a strange one. I just had to look to see where it fell in careers, Richard Brooks’s and Robert Taylor’s, because it’s… well, it’s something else. It’s sort of early in Brooks’s directing career, before he took off, and it’s at the very end of Taylor’s MGM contract. Taylor plays a villain in it.… 📖
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Daylight (1996, Rob Cohen)
Stallone is Kit Latura, disgraced EMS chief (he cared too much). Besides the name, Stallone’s just the disaster movie lead and not even any interesting one (besides the caring too much). There aren’t even any Stallone grunts in the movie and he plays it straight and as well as anyone can play the terrible script.… 📖
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Hotel Reserve (1944, Lance Comfort, Mutz Greenbaum and Victor Hanbury)
Though Hotel Reserve is a British production of a continental story (in other words, British actors playing French and Germans), it does have a certain flare to the visual. It’s a spy thriller set in the south of France with lots of models standing in for buildings and lots of sets. It very often looks… 📖
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Mare Nostrum (1926, Rex Ingram)
Even if forgiving the melodramatic story, Mare Nostrum plays more like a travelogue with occasionally interesting effects scenes than anything else. Ingram’s a fine director–except his awkward cuts to close-up, they’re common, which is annoying since his other compositions are not–and the film moves quite well. It’s predictable (the end is foreshadowed in the first… 📖
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Rough Magic (1995, Clare Peploe)
Rough Magic isn’t a bad idea, it’s just poorly plotted. Most of the movie takes place in Mexico, where it’s mildly engaging and generally amusing (except when Paul Rodriguez shows up to annoy and he is incredibly annoying). Notice all the qualifiers? The movie starts strong and even gives the impression of ending strong (it… 📖
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Monument Ave. (1998, Ted Demme)
An utterly depressing Mean Streets knock-off–but beautifully directed by Ted Demme, who manages to make it both derivative and affecting–which might not have much potential, but certainly has the cast for it. Even though Denis Leary is over forty as the guy who wants to get out but they keep pulling him back in–and, honesty,… 📖
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Rambo III (1988, Peter MacDonald)
According to IMDb, Rambo III was the most expensive movie ever made at the time of its release. It shows. Enormous sets, lots of vehicles–Rambo versus a helicopter, Rambo versus a tank, Rambo in a tank versus a helicopter. For all the money, it ought to look fantastic–except director Peter MacDonald, a camera operator and… 📖
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Love Actually (2003, Richard Curtis)
Richard Curtis–I think–said he wrote Love Actually from all his unused ideas. Just threw them into the oven and baked them together. To some degree, it shows. Unlike the usual big cast films, with lots of incidental meetings and relationships (as P.T. Anderson wrote, these things “happen all the time”), Love Actually is very loose.… 📖
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Die Another Day (2002, Lee Tamahori)
Fun. I’m trying to think–besides the Ocean series–of fun Hollywood blockbusters these days. It seems like fun is out. Certainly with James Bond. Die Another Day is a lot of fun. In fact, unlike some of the other Bond movies–the ones I can remember well–it seems to be more concentrated on being fun than anything… 📖
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Black Sheep (2006, Jonathan King)
Black Sheep plays like a more discreet, larger budgeted young Peter Jackson. Less ambitious too (I’m thinking of Braindead as the comparison). Both Jackson and King are New Zealanders and so on. Weta, who works with Hollywood Peter Jackson, did the effects for Black Sheep, turning in–besides the gore–were-sheep transformations with heavy American Werewolf in… 📖
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Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985, George P. Cosmatos)
Rambo‘s pretty awful. It’s not terrible–not too terrible to watch anyway (at least once, though New York Times critic A.O. Scott should probably be fired for supporting it to any degree). The main technical fault lies with George P. Cosmatos, who somehow managed to stock the crew with capable people (editor Mark Goldblatt is no… 📖
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Runaway Jury (2003, Gary Fleder)
I thought there were no anti-conservative Hollywood films for a long while after 9/11, so I guess Runaway Jury went under the radar. It appears to have been a significant bomb and, watching it, it seemed strange to see John Grisham’s name on screen. It’s been a long time since adaptations of his novels have… 📖
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Now You Know (2002, Jeff Anderson)
So, Now You Know is an odd mix. It’s one part romantic comedy (where the problems between Jeremy Sisto and Rashida Jones aren’t just conveniently solved, but shallowly too), one part talking comedy a la Clerks, and one part low budget inventive movie. The last part is the most interesting–Jeff Anderson gets some familiar faces… 📖
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The Mexican (2001, Gore Verbinski)
No kidding The Mexican has a lot of the same score as The Abyss, Alan Silvestri composed both… oddly, I didn’t even think he was working anymore (or even back when The Mexican came out). Besides the Abyss rips, he turns in a good, funny score. But anyway…. The Mexican is kind of strange and… 📖
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London (2005, Hunter Richards)
Movies with lots of conversation–made up primarily of conversation–used to be rare. Then came Reservoir Dogs and Clerks. While Tarantino and Smith can still make it work, the world now has to suffer through films like London, which appears to be ninety-two minutes of bad dialogue. It’s obvious the dialogue’s going to be terrible from… 📖
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Rambo (2008, Sylvester Stallone)
First, I need to get the theater-going experience out of the way. I do not remember the last time I’ve been in a theater filled with stupider people. They did not shower for the most part. Their girlfriends had to explain the complicated parts to them. I can only imagine what seeing Rambo III would… 📖
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Perfect Witness (1989, Robert Mandel)
Perfect Witness is a standard TV movie, even if it was on HBO (I’m not sure what got it on HBO even… language, maybe?), even if it does have a great cast. During the opening credits, it’s names like Brian Dennehy, Stockard Channing, Delroy Lindo, Joe Grifasi, and Aidan Quinn. Robert Mandel directed it. It… 📖
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Death Proof (2007, Quentin Tarantino), the extended version
The funny thing about Death Proof is the first half is excellent. With the exception of Sydney Poitier, who is awful, it’s a fantastic hour. Tarantino’s got great editing, great shots, great mood, great conversations, great everything. I had planned on going on and on about it–like, for example, how charming and scary Kurt Russell’s… 📖
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Quicksand (2003, John Mackenzie)
Most of Quicksand plays like a multi-national mystery from the 1970s, filled with familiar faces (or a few familiar faces anyway). About three-quarters of it, approximately. There’s good and bad stuff in those seventy minutes. Michael Keaton’s excellent, which isn’t surprising. Michael Caine shows up for what appears to be a small role (it gets… 📖
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Medicine Man (1992, John McTiernan)
Whoever–studio executive, director, producer, whatever–gave Lorraine Bracco another job after Medicine Man is a couple things. One of the bravest persons in Hollywood and, additionally, a film criminal. Bracco’s performance is astoundingly bad. I mean, the character is terribly written too–a scientist smart enough to run a foundation, but she doesn’t know a thing about,… 📖
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Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977, Steven Spielberg), the director's cut
This version–now called ‘The Director’s Cut’–originally came out as ‘The Collector’s Edition’ maybe ten years ago (maybe less). The most striking thing about this cut is Dreyfuss’s insanity. In this version, he’s totally nuts… Spielberg edits back in (from the original, excised from the Special Edition) a couple significant scenes. First, showing off Roberts Blossom–one… 📖
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The Thomas Crown Affair (1999, John McTiernan)
Every time I watch Thomas Crown, I wonder if there’s some magical explanation for all John McTiernan’s other films (except Die Hard, which is, too, singular). Because The Thomas Crown Affair, as I love saying, is the last great utterly mainstream film. But there’s something more… the tone of the film, the Bill Conti score,… 📖
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Ocean's Thirteen (2007, Steven Soderbergh)
A friend of mine thinks this entry is the series’s most successful, but–while it is a tad confrontational–I prefer the outright hostility to the average viewer the second one exhibits. Ocean’s Thirteen seems to be made more for the remaining audience. The people who got Twelve. The scenes in Mexico, in particular, are the sort… 📖
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A History of Violence (2005, David Cronenberg)
There’s something about A History of Violence from the first scene, something about the way the titles become part of the motel exterior. It’s a nice long tracking shot from Cronenberg, with a great (small part though) performance from Stephen McHattie. After the opening, Cronenberg spends a lot of time introducing Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello… 📖
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Good Night, and Good Luck (2005, George Clooney)
George Clooney directs Good Night, and Good Luck with an absolute confidence. It’s Clooney’s second film, but he doesn’t just know how to make a restricted setting story (the film takes place in the CBS building, a bar, and two to three other locations) exciting… he also knows how to make an informative docudrama into… 📖
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Goldfinger (1964, Guy Hamilton)
How can a film, with such a beautiful, awe-inspiring fight scene (Bond and Oddjob), have such terrible editing overall? In fact, how can the technical side be so contradictory… terrible direction from Guy Hamilton on most scenes, but fine or excellent when he’s on set. Terrible editing for most of it, but then the rest… 📖
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Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott), the final cut
I’m having trouble working up the enthusiasm for a Blade Runner post. Not because it isn’t a great film, but because I don’t really want to engage in this “Final Cut” business, which I guess I’m going to do anyway. I’ll get it out of the way… Ridley Scott’s “Final Cut” is, so far as… 📖
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Spaceballs (1987, Mel Brooks)
It’s kind of amazing how much of Spaceballs is actually funny–pretty much everything with Rick Moranis and Mel Brooks as the Spaceballs president–given how everything with Bill Pullman and Daphne Zuniga falls flat. It doesn’t even fall… it’s a zero degree plane. Some of it has to do with the writing of that portion–Brooks and… 📖