Reviews

Ted Neely is the worst Jesus in film history, hands down. I love the original Broadway soundtrack of "JCS", and after listening to Ian Gillian's (of Deep Purple fame) incredible performance as Jesus, Neely's wimpy passive/aggressive Jesus is practically distracting. Carl Anderson's performance of Judas, however, is stunning.

So how do you turn the best original American rock opera into a movie? Well, you get singers that can act. Or, actors that can sing. This is the biggest problem with the movie version of JCS. The actors don't sing as well as they could, and the singers don't act as well as they could. Ted Neely does a fine job acting (and looking) like the stereotypical long haired, baby faced Jesus, but his singing is jerky, hesitant, and colorless. Carl Anderson as Judas, on the other hand, is a firebrand singer, but his acting is a tad overdone. Ditto for Yvonne Elliman who has a gorgeous voice, but is completely overwrought in the movie.

It must also be noted that Webber and Rice had to "flesh out" the original Broadway soundtrack a bit to extend it into a full length movie, and not everything they added was as sure fire as the original songs. This also translates into awkward moments of silence in the movie, where people who remember the soundtrack are already singing the next lines in their heads.

The scenery is wonderful, but you wonder about the use of all the anachronistic hippies, Romans with machine guns, and the like. The pure 70's-ishness of the dance routines also dates the movie - terribly.

Still, this movie is basically the songs it contains, and the songs are incredible. It sounds hard to believe that any combination of religion and Andrew Lloyd Webber of all people (give Tim Rice most of the songwriting credits) could produce anything worthwhile, but there you have it. Porn legend Ron Jeremy is supposedly cast somewhere as a face in the crowd, but I'll be damned if I can find him.

The bottom line is: it's worth seeing once, but if you want the real thing, listen to the Broadway soundtrack, and imagine the visuals in your head.

"The Spy Who Loved Me" is, to me, the definitive James Bond film. Roger Moore turns in the perfect performance as James Bond in his third appearance as 007. Everything about this film is pure Bond.. the incredible skiing sequence at the beginning of the film, the amazing Lotus Esprit scenes, and the awesome underwater bits.

The 70's weren't always kind to the Bond series, but this movie represents the absolute best of the entire series (yes, better than "Thunderball" and "Goldfinger"). Someone here also mentioned that Moore is the perfect *English* Bond (as opposed to Scottish or Australian). I have to agree. His performance in "TSTLM" more than redeems his eventual appearance in the gawdawful "Moonraker".

"Fear Of A Black Hat" is everything the (much weaker) "CB-4" SHOULD have been. Rusty Cundieff's satirical eye is ruthless, as he folds, spindles, and mutilates every aspect of hip-hop trends and culture. Does "FoaBH" resemble Spinal Tap? Yes, a bit. Is it derivative of Spinal Tap? No, not really. The aim is more focused, the satire is better focused, and to be honest, it's funnier.

Eating Raoul is probably the darkest, funniest American black comedy since "Dr. Strangelove". Paul and Mary Bland are the prototypically repressed (happily so!) all-American couple who are working hard to fulfill their dream of owning and operating a small gourmet restaurant in the sordid context of everyday life in Southern California.

The hilarity quickly ensues when the lily white Blands find a way to make money with sex and violence (I don't want to give away too much of the story) to finance their wholesome dreams. A further kink arises when they're blackmailed by the ne'er do well Raoul.

Simply put, this is one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. Paul Bartel is brilliant!

Harrison Ford is given the worst role of his career, and in turn, reciprocates with one of the most lifeless by-the-numbers performances in the last 20 years. This movie has characters that are nothing but lifeless ethnic stereotypes made large, replete with hamfisted "ethnic music" piped in at the appropriate times to remind you that the character being focused on is Irish/Italian/etc.

And the dialogue! Good lord! Clumsy, empty, cliche ridden speeches, monologues, and diatribes are the norm here. Is there any IRA ("you'll never understand!") or cop ("You shot a man in the back, Eddie!") that this film dared not explore? If the producers felt compelled to pack this film with so many stupid and hollow characters, couldn't they *at least* have given them something to say? Now I'm not asking for anything profound, but the vapid discourses between these moving mannequins is almost too much for all but the most ignorant i'll-pay-to-see-anything moviegoer to bear.

What's more, this film makes the dreadfully common mistake of painting it's good guys in such blindingly friendly tones that they become one dimensional. To wit: Harrison Ford as the "perfect" father, "perfect" cop, etc. etc. The camera loiters on the friendly sibling rivalry in the house (o, how those girls fight over the bathroom! tee hee!) to show just what sort of bliss Ford's character (a cop who never met a big hearted Irish cop cliche he didn't like) lives in. Execrable.

Brad Pitt is unspeakably bad as an IRA rogue, and the supporting cast (such as it is) takes the Patty O'Furniture school of bad Irish accents route, and the results are every bit as miserable as the description. By the time this horrible dirge of a movie sets it's moribund plot into motion, you won't care. Why? Because this movie gives you no characters to care about. I made the mistake of seeing this on HBO. You have been warned! Even if you got your money back, there'd still be almost 90 minutes of your life that you could never recover.

One part slapstick comedy, one part trenchant political satire, Used Cars represents the best work of Bob Zemeckis AND Kurt Russell. It would have been easy to play up the idea of a polyester clad used car salesman running for congress up for cheap laughs, but Used Cars ups the ante with surprisingly deep and funny characters.

Trust me: NOBODY goes to Miami.