Reviews

I can't think of anything worse to say about an action fantasy thriller than that it put me to sleep. The action was boring and predictable, the fantasy was hideously taped together from bits of real Egyptian mythology, and the, um, thrills were what put me to sleep.

The acting was okay, but it's actually pretty easy to spout line after line of horrific dialogue in a convincing way. Special effects? Not overly pathetic, but CGI is not my cup of tea even in good movies.

The romance, drama and (attempts at) comedy were also all incredibly predictable. At least I don't feel badly about falling asleep, because I know I didn't miss much.

Jeez, even Pacific Rim was FAR better than this. And Pacific Rim was spectacularly awful.

I love deli food and I loved this movie. The historical stuff was fascinating, while Ziggy, the main focus, is delightful and lovable. I really have nothing bad to say EXCEPT-- the deli they featured in San Francisco is the only one in the movie that doesn't stick to traditional deli food, but specializes in chi-chi California Cuisine- style variations on the theme. Okay great. But most restaurants in San Francisco, featuring ANY type of cuisine, do the same thing. It's not noteworthy for any restaurant in SF to feature smoked caramelized arugula drizzle. So the filmmakers should have shown a traditional Jewish deli in San Francisco-- - THAT would be special. And one does exist. I went there after the movie and had a heavenly whitefish salad sandwich.

Okay, rant over. Despite that one major flaw, it's still a great movie.

The only other movie this reminds me of is Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Similar cheesy aliens/space outfits, a goofy comic relief guy and an intellectual level below the IQ of most 4 year olds. And it has the same incredibly cheesy overall look and feel to it, too. Bad? Well, yes, it's a bad movie. But I'm one of those people who loves bad movies. I mean, just reading the plot on the DVD sleeve made me burst out laughing, so I figured I was in for some spectacularly bad cinema, and I wasn't disappointed.

The story? Aliens come to rescue an alien whale who was left on earth ten years earlier. With a plot line like that, how can you resist? This movie isn't so bad that it's good; rather, it's so ineffably horrific that it's great.

Highly, highly recommended. And bonus points for the flying saucer that looks like a giant inflatable starfish.

Judging from the lack of reviews this movie isn't very well known, but it is quite funny. The main character is a con man who seems pathologically driven to take on new identities at the drop of a hat. He then runs scams using the new identity. The movie has a light touch, and though the humor might be a bit dry for some, I found it to be very funny throughout. It seems that some of the scams he runs are facilitated by the vagaries of the communist system that Poland was under at the time, and since the movie came out in 1989 I'm sure it was an intentional critique of a crumbling hierarchy. The funniest sequence is the last one, in which our hero of many names becomes a high-level dignitary until his luck inevitably runs out. Beautifully done.

I saw this documentary at opening night of the South Asian Film Festival in San Francisco. It shows Buddhist monks bringing children from the mountaintop enclave of Zanskar in the hinterlands of India on a harrowing trip through snow-choked passes to schools where they have a chance to become teachers, monks and nuns.

Seeing people working together their whole lives to help each other in one of the most isolated, harshest areas on earth was a humbling experience. And the Buddhist monks who sacrifice their own safety to help these people survive the encroaching outside world is so uplifting after being exposed to all the slimy religious televangelist types in the United States. The scenery is beautiful, but the people are more beautiful. But it's devastating to realize that these kinds of people are the ones whose way of life is being threatened by globalization, monetization and McDonaldization.

Documentaries like this one always raise the question of why the filmmakers, who obviously have the resources to do so, don't just help the people they are filming rather than record their struggles for the entertainment of comfortable moviegoers. There is no easy answer. But the point of documentaries is to show what is happening, not to change what is happening. And it was clear from the q&a with the filmmaker afterward that he is trying to help these people through his involvement with a nonprofit organization. So-- it is possible to both record the reality AND change the reality-- but the two things do not have to be done at the same time.

This movie made me want to volunteer at the new school that is being built in Zanskar. Pretty effective.

Wow. A boring comedy. My movie companion and I each thought of walking out early but didn't realize it until we compared notes at the end. I heard very few chuckles from the rest of the audience, so maybe everybody there wanted to leave long before the credits rolled. The characters were so cartoonish and one dimensional that I wasn't even interested in seeing what happened to them. It was like watching a Three Stooges movie that went on for far too long. It could have used some of the actual Stooges too, rather than the stooges who populate this lushly filmed laugh-deprived mess.

Supposedly this is a remake of Blood Simple. I didn't see Blood Simple. I don't think I ever will.

This is one of the most pretentious of the many pretentious art movies I've seen. Why do I see so many? It's become, for me, almost like watching unintentionally funny movies. I like to see just how self-enamored the directors of these things can get.

So, yes. The Oscar may win for funniest bad movie, but this might win for most precious piece of artistic excess ever committed. Oh, some other directors have tried-- Tarkovsky with his five minute scenes of window curtains blowing in the wind; Jean Rollin with his stunning depictions of people walking... and... we're... walking; even one of my favorite directors, Pasolini, who also has some incredibly endless walking scenes to his credit.

This one at least has a lot of variety in its boring scenes. That may partly be because it's based on three different short stories, but I think it takes a singular kind of twisted genius to wring boredom out of so many different types of scenes and three different plot lines within the space of a mere 90 minutes. And I'm not talking about curtains blowing in the wind or ascetics trudging through b&w deserts here, folks. There are sex scenes, bloody ghosts, violent killings, even fireworks. literally. Fireworks. And still I had trouble watching this movie for more than ten minutes at a time without falling asleep.

So this director's name-- Rochin-- must be whispered in the reverent tones generally reserved for such greats as Ed Wood.

Oh, according to the notes accompanying this movie, it shows 'the modernization of Mexico.' I was wrong, then. I thought it showed directors how to put viewers to sleep.

This should have been a much shorter movie-- thirty seconds at most. Seriously, a few of the hundreds of visual gags work, and they probably add up to thirty ticks or less. They were going for the self-referential post-pop-populist de-deconstructionist sorta thing, but they failed horribly. It's obviously the audience's fault, though: the filmmakers, actors and everyone else involved were too cool for us, so their endless attempts at intentional humor go way over our heads, and the same terminal hipness also rules out any chance of us flyover types finding even a smidgen of unintentional humor in this eighty-one-and-a-half-minute-too-long epic.

What was Ally Sheedy thinking? Did she formulate any coherent thoughts at any time during the making of this movie?

And those superhero suits on the adult actors Are. Just. Wrong.

On a positive note, Peter Tork seems to be aging quite gracefully.

And-- this might be Pauly Shore's best movie.

A guy has just crashed his motorcycle so he goes to a dive bar and drinks himself silly. A woman there picks him up, takes him home, chains him to the bed and steals his money for heroin. He falls in love with her and you'll never guess what happens next. Actually, you will.

In addition to an utterly predictable story line, this movie features bad acting by disturbingly hirsute, unattractive (physically and otherwise) people playing unlikable characters. Other pluses include horrible porno-quality music and long, nausea-inducing sex scenes.

So was there anything actually good about this movie? Maybe. The interiors captured the feel of punk life in the 1970's, but the movie was made in 1996 and my copy gives a release date of 2001; there is no indication in the movie that it is a period piece. And I watched it at about 6am after staying up all night watching the first two Underworld epics. It did a much better job of keeping me awake than either one of those. So I guess that's a good thing.

This movie does have some great noirish/neorealist visuals, and it tells a story that is refreshingly free of Hollywood's sugar-coating, which was only possible because it was essentially an independent foreign film. But some of the scenes go on for much too long (the wedding, especially), and I found the exaggerated acting and unrealistic dialog to be more fit for the stage than for the silver screen.

The dialog was particularly distracting, and it seemed to get worse as the movie went on. Most of the characters were either Italian-Americans or Italian immigrants living in New York in the twenties and thirties, but their dialog sounded like they were practicing lines for a Shakespeare play while they mixed cement and laid bricks. Toward the end I was laughing, and not because the filmmakers wanted me to. I guess the stilted poetry could be defended by saying that the characters would have been speaking Italian, and the dialog is a literal translation of how they would really talk. But it absolutely did not work for me.

Another line of dialog made me laugh for a different reason: the main character's son, born and raised in New York in the 1920's, suddenly picks up a lovely lilting British accent. I'm only guessing this had something to do with the fact that the movie was made in England.

I give this movie an 'A' for effort and intention, but a considerably lower grade for execution.

Okay, this isn't traditional shadowy urban black and white film noir. In fact it's rural, sun-drenched, and in vivid, circus-like color. But the story and characters reek wonderfully of noir. It made me think of The Postman Always Rings Twice, though the plot is completely different. The three main characters are all absolutely unforgettable, beautifully painted against a gorgeous seaside backdrop and brought to raging life by great, great, great actors. Even the supporting characters are all unique, fully rounded real people despite limited screen time, which is a credit to the writing and directing. There is not one wasted moment, not one superfluous word of dialogue in El Leyton.

I picked this up on a whim at the public library and now I'm contemplating putting it on my all-time top ten list. Amazing.

Test Tube Babies may be as bad as Plan 9, but it is also just as funny. It features a sickeningly wholesome couple whose friends are all drunks, lechers and strippers. Likewise, the scenes in the doctor's office come straight out of the kind of cautionary films they used to show in high school 'health' class, but the party scenes are vintage soft-core porn filler. It's like two different movies crashed into each other, and Test Tube Babies is the wreckage they left behind.

The actors are nearly as good as the barely-animated characters in the Clutch Cargo cartoons, except for the drunk. His humor is intentional, and some of it actually works. And the girl-fight is sensational! Especially the yells the women let out as they roll around on the floor. I'm just trying to figure out where to place this on my list of ten greatest bad movies of all time.