Change Your Image
jvalatka
Reviews
The Oblique Sector (2011)
Very good fun, but let's hope there's more!
Here's an amiable comedy with nods to "The Twilight Zone" and, perhaps, "Love, American Style", but smartly written and deftly played for 21st-century audiences. It's an idea that could very well work for a similar anthology-style TV (or web) series, and if you have the same players in every episode as were featured in this one, I believe it would be well worth it! Amanda Good Hennessey captivates as the woman who dates while evaluating restaurants for dining guides and falls victim to the dreaded Oblique Sector! Erik Rodenhiser is pitch-perfect as Amanda's date who reveals a darkly different side of himself on their second time around. And, of course, Jason Reulet's lovably daft narrator is the frosting on the confection, able to impose himself in an ongoing situation to help us fill in the blanks, but becoming frantic and goofy when looking for his way out! Bring in some light jazzy music and you've got a great way to get yourself grinning in just nine minutes!
The Second Comeback (1999)
Incredibly unfunny
I happened to be one of the unlucky holders of the Total Movie DVD issue for January 2001, which includes this clunker of a short film.
The Second Comeback takes the easy road to completion merely by inserting a faux Jesus in front of a fast-talking, odious Hollywood agent and into modern-day TV adverts and Hollywood action films. When the marketing genius sits down and asks pseudo-Jesus, "Are you ready for this?", you quickly imagine the worst that could happen and it does. Furthermore, the Jesus in this film comes off as narcissistic in some moments, and other times seems clueless about what is happening to him.
Come on now. If someone wants to build a film around a Jesus-gets-a-makeover concept (which is an intriguing idea when you really think about it) and actually make it funny, the first rule is to NOT put a surfer dude in front of a camera and call him Jesus. You have to know your subject a little better than that. You actually gotta ask yourself that bumper sticker of a question, "What would Jesus do?" What would Jesus say? How would Jesus act? Can someone maybe ask Ron Howard?