Reviews Written By: A3IP0R4JOD4R5Gprovided by Amazon.com |
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 | Battlefield Earth | |
 | "WHAT PRICE SCIENTOLOGY? WHO CARES?" | 2009-07-21 |
| Well, poodles, Once more I returned home after a relaxing facial and manicure only to find that little Jimmy jr. had yet again poisoned the family DVD player with some heinous assault called BATTLEFIELD EARTH. How he managed to bribe his Germanic governess Mrs. Whipcrack to remove his fetters and take him to the local video store is still under investigation. (I would have thought this beyond her. She claimed to be former Gestapo on her resume.) With my freshly painted nails digging into my palms, and a growing concern for the I.Q. of my youngest son, I sat down to witness what could quite possibly be the worst movie of the new millennium.
Released to scathing reviews in the summer of 2000, one could only hope that BATTLEFIELD EARTH was, as many paranoid trogs would have it, a subliminal recruitment for the L. Ron Hubbard religion/carpetbagging operation, because then it might have some purpose. Otherwise, it is a brain-baking travesty, a Hollywood laughingstock that must inevitably damn at least some of the careers wrapped up in it. It's difficult to imagine how John Travolta, (whose personal project this was in one way or another), got away with his reputation and price tag intact. As a Rasta-coiffed alien in six-finger fur gloves and big Gene Simmons boots prone to drinking what looks like Gatorade at his local alien gin mill, Travolta utters dialogue only LOST IN SPACE's Dr. Smith could get away with, including multiple exclamations about Earth being "this horrid planet!" Much to his hammy dismay, Travolta's Terl is stuck on Earth monitoring its security after the Psychlos have essentially wiped out civilization and are busy strip-mining the planet. Jonnie (Barry Pepper) gets captured by the Psychlos; when Terl decides to surreptitiously have "man-animals" mine gold for personal profit, he slaps Jonnie into a brain-educating machine, not realizing that Jonnie has a Captain Kirk-like need to be free. The revolution takes forever to happen, and director Roger Christian's 45-degree angles, hyper-closeups and hemorrhaging slo-mo shots virtually comprise a textbook in how to make an irritating, ineffective and dull action film. Unarguably the dumbest sci-fi novel ever to be a bestseller in this country (if it was one - anti-Hubbardians think there's a warehouse full of paperbacks somewhere), BATTLEFIELD EARTH makes it to the screen with its nova-sized plot holes (caveman learning how to formation-fly Harriers in a few days!), glaring inconsistencies ("Six Psychlos coming fast!"; cut to six aliens walking very slowly) and slackjawed foolishness intact. Don't even get me going on the Fort Knox debacle, or Kelly Preston's cameo as an alien trollop with a foot-long tongue, or Pepper's portentous reading of the Declaration of Independence. I haven't seen such a laughably incompetent summer movie since summer movies became summer movies some years ago, and that's saying a pantload. As to Mrs. Whipcrack, we have a special room in our basement for people who don't follow orders. Perhaps she might enjoy a little visit down there next to our sloppy gardener Mr. Chu. | ||
 | Battlefield Earth | |
| "WHAT PRICE SCIENTOLOGY? WHO CARES?" | 2009-07-21 |
| Well, poodles, Once more I returned home after a relaxing facial and manicure only to find that little Jimmy jr. had yet again poisoned the family DVD player with some heinous assault called BATTLEFIELD EARTH. How he managed to bribe his Germanic governess Mrs. Whipcrack to remove his fetters and take him to the local video store is still under investigation. (I would have thought this beyond her. She claimed to be former Gestapo on her resume.) With my freshly painted nails digging into my palms, and a growing concern for the I.Q. of my youngest son, I sat down to witness what could quite possibly be the worst movie of the new millennium.
Released to scathing reviews in the summer of 2000, one could only hope that BATTLEFIELD EARTH was, as many paranoid trogs would have it, a subliminal recruitment for the L. Ron Hubbard religion/carpetbagging operation, because then it might have some purpose. Otherwise, it is a brain-baking travesty, a Hollywood laughingstock that must inevitably damn at least some of the careers wrapped up in it. It's difficult to imagine how John Travolta, (whose personal project this was in one way or another), got away with his reputation and price tag intact. As a Rasta-coiffed alien in six-finger fur gloves and big Gene Simmons boots prone to drinking what looks like Gatorade at his local alien gin mill, Travolta utters dialogue only LOST IN SPACE's Dr. Smith could get away with, including multiple exclamations about Earth being "this horrid planet!" Much to his hammy dismay, Travolta's Terl is stuck on Earth monitoring its security after the Psychlos have essentially wiped out civilization and are busy strip-mining the planet. Jonnie (Barry Pepper) gets captured by the Psychlos; when Terl decides to surreptitiously have "man-animals" mine gold for personal profit, he slaps Jonnie into a brain-educating machine, not realizing that Jonnie has a Captain Kirk-like need to be free. The revolution takes forever to happen, and director Roger Christian's 45-degree angles, hyper-closeups and hemorrhaging slo-mo shots virtually comprise a textbook in how to make an irritating, ineffective and dull action film. Unarguably the dumbest sci-fi novel ever to be a bestseller in this country (if it was one - anti-Hubbardians think there's a warehouse full of paperbacks somewhere), BATTLEFIELD EARTH makes it to the screen with its nova-sized plot holes (caveman learning how to formation-fly Harriers in a few days!), glaring inconsistencies ("Six Psychlos coming fast!"; cut to six aliens walking very slowly) and slackjawed foolishness intact. Don't even get me going on the Fort Knox debacle, or Kelly Preston's cameo as an alien trollop with a foot-long tongue, or Pepper's portentous reading of the Declaration of Independence. I haven't seen such a laughably incompetent summer movie since summer movies became summer movies some years ago, and that's saying a pantload. As to Mrs. Whipcrack, we have a special room in our basement for people who don't follow orders. Perhaps she might enjoy a little visit down there next to our sloppy gardener Mr. Chu. | ||
 | Battlefield Earth | |
| "WHAT PRICE SCIENTOLOGY? WHO CARES?" | 2009-07-21 |
| Well, poodles, Once more I returned home after a relaxing facial and manicure only to find that little Jimmy jr. had yet again poisoned the family DVD player with some heinous assault called BATTLEFIELD EARTH. How he managed to bribe his Germanic governess Mrs. Whipcrack to remove his fetters and take him to the local video store is still under investigation. (I would have thought this beyond her. She claimed to be former Gestapo on her resume.) With my freshly painted nails digging into my palms, and a growing concern for the I.Q. of my youngest son, I sat down to witness what could quite possibly be the worst movie of the new millennium.
Released to scathing reviews in the summer of 2000, one could only hope that BATTLEFIELD EARTH was, as many paranoid trogs would have it, a subliminal recruitment for the L. Ron Hubbard religion/carpetbagging operation, because then it might have some purpose. Otherwise, it is a brain-baking travesty, a Hollywood laughingstock that must inevitably damn at least some of the careers wrapped up in it. It's difficult to imagine how John Travolta, (whose personal project this was in one way or another), got away with his reputation and price tag intact. As a Rasta-coiffed alien in six-finger fur gloves and big Gene Simmons boots prone to drinking what looks like Gatorade at his local alien gin mill, Travolta utters dialogue only LOST IN SPACE's Dr. Smith could get away with, including multiple exclamations about Earth being "this horrid planet!" Much to his hammy dismay, Travolta's Terl is stuck on Earth monitoring its security after the Psychlos have essentially wiped out civilization and are busy strip-mining the planet. Jonnie (Barry Pepper) gets captured by the Psychlos; when Terl decides to surreptitiously have "man-animals" mine gold for personal profit, he slaps Jonnie into a brain-educating machine, not realizing that Jonnie has a Captain Kirk-like need to be free. The revolution takes forever to happen, and director Roger Christian's 45-degree angles, hyper-closeups and hemorrhaging slo-mo shots virtually comprise a textbook in how to make an irritating, ineffective and dull action film. Unarguably the dumbest sci-fi novel ever to be a bestseller in this country (if it was one - anti-Hubbardians think there's a warehouse full of paperbacks somewhere), BATTLEFIELD EARTH makes it to the screen with its nova-sized plot holes (caveman learning how to formation-fly Harriers in a few days!), glaring inconsistencies ("Six Psychlos coming fast!"; cut to six aliens walking very slowly) and slackjawed foolishness intact. Don't even get me going on the Fort Knox debacle, or Kelly Preston's cameo as an alien trollop with a foot-long tongue, or Pepper's portentous reading of the Declaration of Independence. I haven't seen such a laughably incompetent summer movie since summer movies became summer movies some years ago, and that's saying a pantload. As to Mrs. Whipcrack, we have a special room in our basement for people who don't follow orders. Perhaps she might enjoy a little visit down there next to our sloppy gardener Mr. Chu. | ||
 | Hello, Dolly! | |
 | "A LOOK BACK AT A DELICIOUS "DOLLY!"" | 2009-05-17 |
| Barbra Streisand stars as the memorable "woman who arranges everything," Dolly Levi, in Gene Kelly's Oscar-winning 1969 film version of the Jerry Herman musical classic HELLO, DOLLY! Originally produced on Broadway in 1964, Hello, Dolly! is based on Thornton Wilder's 1954 play The Matchmaker. In her musical incarnation, Dolly! thrilled and delighted audiences in New York for over 6 years, featuring such legendary "Dollys" as Carol Channing, Ethel Merman and Pearl Bailey. The setting is New York, just before the turn of the century. Matchmaker Dolly Levi, that seemingly ageless widow, sets out for Yonkers to deliver her hand-picked match for Mr. Horace Vandergelder (Walter Matthau), the "well-known half a millionaire." Vandergelder has his eyes on Miss Irene Malloy (Marianne McAndrew) but, before he leaves for New York City to propose marriage, Dolly has some ideas of her own. With her eye on the unsuspecting Horace, Dolly sets in motion a dizzying plan of "love happily ever after" involving everyone in Vandergelder's circle. It's easier to view Dolly! years later and enjoy it now for what it really is. After you've been removed from the media hype, after the publicity and reviews blend into one another, the film stands not only asa a humorous and nostalgic peak at a bygone era in New York City, but a tribute to the bygone era of movie musicals. Reuniting director Kelly with many of the creative people from his days as an actor/director at MGM, the film, with it's grand artifice, eager cast and exuberant dancing, could easily have been a product of that old golden studio system. Hello, Dolly! was released in 1969 at the tail end of a trend of big-budget musicals precipitated by the tremendous success of The Sound of Music in 1965. None of these films came close to duplicating its success and, subsequently, were blamed for the ruination of many studio balance sheets. Suddenly, the merits of these films were beside the point. While some deserve their fate of late-night cable obscurity, others, like Hello, Dolly!, do not. Like most of the other road show musicals of the late sixties, Hello, Dolly! was considered overproduced and out-of-sync with the times. By the time Dolly! reached the movie screen, she had already been played by many larger-than-life ladies of the theatre. Her score, including the title song immortalized on pop charts by Louis Armstrong, was filled with brassy Broadway cheer, An intimate version of Dolly! would have worked against both the material and its leading lady. Though criticized at the time for being too young, Streisand brought rapid-fire humor, sex appeal and, of course, an inimitable voice to the role of Dolly Levi. Her performance gives Dolly, and the film, an unexpected urgency previously hidden in all the familiar material. As film critic Pauline Kael wrote when the film opened, "she [Streisand] opens up such an abundance of emotion that it dissolves the coarseness of the role. Almost unbelievably she turns this star role back into a woman..." Director Kelly recognizes this as he balances her "big" scenes with those of quiet introspection. Streisand's delicate reading of "Love is Only Love" (dropped from Jerry Herman's Mame and re-written especially for this film) reveals a vulnerability and warmth in Dolly Levi that grounds the character and prevents her brash antics from turning to caricature. While she does at times seem to be possessed by the spirit of Mae West, Streisand uses this as a humorous facade for something much deeper and no doubt sensitive. Until the success of recent films like Chicago, Hairspray and Mamma Mia, the traditional movie musical as a commercially viable genre seemed all but lost. The sporadic attempts at reviving the form (A Chorus Line, The Wiz) were close to disastrous. The lack of a unified team of musical talent (such as at the old MGM or 20th Century-Fox studios) made an actress such as Barbra Streisand all the more rare. Thankfully, Streisand emerged in films at a time when there was still opportunity to feature her musical talents. While still in her twenties, she blazed her way onto the screen like a seasoned pro, but, like her films, she seemed to belong to a different era. Among Hello, Dolly!'s competitors for the Best Picture Oscar in 1969 were Midnight Cowboy and Z, signaling the beginning of a new wave of more socially relevant films that would bury the likes of such "dated" properties as Dolly!. Now looking back on these films, whatever their merits, they ironically all seem to be part of another world as equally "dated" as Dolly! But now, preserved on DVD in its original aspect ratio, Hello Dolly! sheds its "dated" reputation and becomes as timeless as its star and the era of moviemaking it recalls. It's so nice to have her back where she belongs! | ||
 | Hello, Dolly! | |
| "A LOOK BACK AT A DILLY OF A "DOLLY!"" | 2009-05-17 |
| Barbra Streisand stars as the memorable "woman who arranges everything," Dolly Levi, in Gene Kelly's Oscar-winning 1969 film version of the Jerry Herman musical classic HELLO, DOLLY! Originally produced on Broadway in 1964, Hello, Dolly! is based on Thornton Wilder's 1954 play The Matchmaker. In her musical incarnation, Dolly! thrilled and delighted audiences in New York for over 6 years, featuring such legendary "Dollys" as Carol Channing, Ethel Merman and Pearl Bailey. The setting is New York, just before the turn of the century. Matchmaker Dolly Levi, that seemingly ageless widow, sets out for Yonkers to deliver her hand-picked match for Mr. Horace Vandergelder (Walter Matthau), the "well-known half a millionaire." Vandergelder has his eyes on Miss Irene Malloy (Marianne McAndrew) but, before he leaves for New York City to propose marriage, Dolly has some ideas of her own. With her eye on the unsuspecting Horace, Dolly sets in motion a dizzying plan of "love happily ever after" involving everyone in Vandergelder's circle. It's easier to view Dolly! years later and enjoy it now for what it really is. After you've been removed from the media hype, after the publicity and reviews blend into one another, the film stands not only asa a humorous and nostalgic peak at a bygone era in New York City, but a tribute to the bygone era of movie musicals. Reuniting director Kelly with many of the creative people from his days as an actor/director at MGM, the film, with it's grand artifice, eager cast and exuberant dancing, could easily have been a product of that old golden studio system. Hello, Dolly! was released in 1969 at the tail end of a trend of big-budget musicals precipitated by the tremendous success of The Sound of Music in 1965. None of these films came close to duplicating its success and, subsequently, were blamed for the ruination of many studio balance sheets. Suddenly, the merits of these films were beside the point. While some deserve their fate of late-night cable obscurity, others, like Hello, Dolly!, do not. Like most of the other road show musicals of the late sixties, Hello, Dolly! was considered overproduced and out-of-sync with the times. By the time Dolly! reached the movie screen, she had already been played by many larger-than-life ladies of the theatre. Her score, including the title song immortalized on pop charts by Louis Armstrong, was filled with brassy Broadway cheer, An intimate version of Dolly! would have worked against both the material and its leading lady. Though criticized at the time for being too young, Streisand brought rapid-fire humor, sex appeal and, of course, an inimitable voice to the role of Dolly Levi. Her performance gives Dolly, and the film, an unexpected urgency previously hidden in all the familiar material. As film critic Pauline Kael wrote when the film opened, "she [Streisand] opens up such an abundance of emotion that it dissolves the coarseness of the role. Almost unbelievably she turns this star role back into a woman..." Director Kelly recognizes this as he balances her "big" scenes with those of quiet introspection. Streisand's delicate reading of "Love is Only Love" (dropped from Jerry Herman's Mame and re-written especially for this film) reveals a vulnerability and warmth in Dolly Levi that grounds the character and prevents her brash antics from turning to caricature. While she does at times seem to be possessed by the spirit of Mae West, Streisand uses this as a humorous facade for something much deeper and no doubt sensitive. Until the success of recent films like Chicago, Hairspray and Mamma Mia, the traditional movie musical as a commercially viable genre seemed all but lost. The sporadic attempts at reviving the form (A Chorus Line, The Wiz) were close to disastrous. The lack of a unified team of musical talent (such as at the old MGM or 20th Century-Fox studios) made an actress such as Barbra Streisand all the more rare. Thankfully, Streisand emerged in films at a time when there was still opportunity to feature her musical talents. While still in her twenties, she blazed her way onto the screen like a seasoned pro, but, like her films, she seemed to belong to a different era. Among Hello, Dolly!'s competitors for the Best Picture Oscar in 1969 were Midnight Cowboy and Z, signaling the beginning of a new wave of more socially relevant films that would bury the likes of such "dated" properties as Dolly!. Now looking back on these films, whatever their merits, they ironically all seem to be part of another world as equally "dated" as Dolly! But now, preserved on DVD in its original aspect ratio, Hello Dolly! sheds its "dated" reputation and becomes as timeless as its star and the era of moviemaking it recalls. It's so nice to have her back where she belongs! | ||
| Hello, Dolly! | |
| "A LOOK BACK AT A DILLY OF A "DOLLY!"" | 2009-05-17 |
| Barbra Streisand stars as the memorable "woman who arranges everything," Dolly Levi, in Gene Kelly's Oscar-winning 1969 film version of the Jerry Herman musical classic HELLO, DOLLY! Originally produced on Broadway in 1964, Hello, Dolly! is based on Thornton Wilder's 1954 play The Matchmaker. In her musical incarnation, Dolly! thrilled and delighted audiences in New York for over 6 years, featuring such legendary "Dollys" as Carol Channing, Ethel Merman and Pearl Bailey. The setting is New York, just before the turn of the century. Matchmaker Dolly Levi, that seemingly ageless widow, sets out for Yonkers to deliver her hand-picked match for Mr. Horace Vandergelder (Walter Matthau), the "well-known half a millionaire." Vandergelder has his eyes on Miss Irene Malloy (Marianne McAndrew) but, before he leaves for New York City to propose marriage, Dolly has some ideas of her own. With her eye on the unsuspecting Horace, Dolly sets in motion a dizzying plan of "love happily ever after" involving everyone in Vandergelder's circle. It's easier to view Dolly! years later and enjoy it now for what it really is. After you've been removed from the media hype, after the publicity and reviews blend into one another, the film stands not only asa a humorous and nostalgic peak at a bygone era in New York City, but a tribute to the bygone era of movie musicals. Reuniting director Kelly with many of the creative people from his days as an actor/director at MGM, the film, with it's grand artifice, eager cast and exuberant dancing, could easily have been a product of that old golden studio system. Hello, Dolly! was released in 1969 at the tail end of a trend of big-budget musicals precipitated by the tremendous success of The Sound of Music in 1965. None of these films came close to duplicating its success and, subsequently, were blamed for the ruination of many studio balance sheets. Suddenly, the merits of these films were beside the point. While some deserve their fate of late-night cable obscurity, others, like Hello, Dolly!, do not. Like most of the other road show musicals of the late sixties, Hello, Dolly! was considered overproduced and out-of-sync with the times. By the time Dolly! reached the movie screen, she had already been played by many larger-than-life ladies of the theatre. Her score, including the title song immortalized on pop charts by Louis Armstrong, was filled with brassy Broadway cheer, An intimate version of Dolly! would have worked against both the material and its leading lady. Though criticized at the time for being too young, Streisand brought rapid-fire humor, sex appeal and, of course, an inimitable voice to the role of Dolly Levi. Her performance gives Dolly, and the film, an unexpected urgency previously hidden in all the familiar material. As film critic Pauline Kael wrote when the film opened, "she [Streisand] opens up such an abundance of emotion that it dissolves the coarseness of the role. Almost unbelievably she turns this star role back into a woman..." Director Kelly recognizes this as he balances her "big" scenes with those of quiet introspection. Streisand's delicate reading of "Love is Only Love" (dropped from Jerry Herman's Mame and re-written especially for this film) reveals a vulnerability and warmth in Dolly Levi that grounds the character and prevents her brash antics from turning to caricature. While she does at times seem to be possessed by the spirit of Mae West, Streisand uses this as a humorous facade for something much deeper and no doubt sensitive. Until the success of recent films like Chicago, Hairspray and Mamma Mia, the traditional movie musical as a commercially viable genre seemed all but lost. The sporadic attempts at reviving the form (A Chorus Line, The Wiz) were close to disastrous. The lack of a unified team of musical talent (such as at the old MGM or 20th Century-Fox studios) made an actress such as Barbra Streisand all the more rare. Thankfully, Streisand emerged in films at a time when there was still opportunity to feature her musical talents. While still in her twenties, she blazed her way onto the screen like a seasoned pro, but, like her films, she seemed to belong to a different era. Among Hello, Dolly!'s competitors for the Best Picture Oscar in 1969 were Midnight Cowboy and Z, signaling the beginning of a new wave of more socially relevant films that would bury the likes of such "dated" properties as Dolly!. Now looking back on these films, whatever their merits, they ironically all seem to be part of another world as equally "dated" as Dolly! But now, preserved on DVD in its original aspect ratio, Hello Dolly! sheds its "dated" reputation and becomes as timeless as its star and the era of moviemaking it recalls. It's so nice to have her back where she belongs! | ||
 | Masters of the Universe | |
| "No Bad Movie collection is complete without this shameless ode to modern consumerism." | 2009-04-18 |
| Somewhere along the line, while HE-MAN, the animated series/half-hour toy commercial was at its peak, some enterprising, self-proclaimed studio genius must have said, "Dolph Lundgren! He'd be a perfect He-Man!" The error lay, of course, in not realizing the differences between the two: one is a lifeless, two-dimensional caricature of masculinity; the other is a cartoon character. So instead of a faithful adaption of the cartoon series, the producers offered this stripped-down rendition (scaled back, one would suppose, to the thespian abilities of its star). Lundgren -- blond, brawny and with a set of pecs that would give Dolly Parton pause -- playsthe superhero locked in an eternal, epic battle with Skeletor, a power-crazed supervillain played by scenery-shredding "superham" Frank Langella. They move through the story, such as it is, as statically as their counterparts in the afternoon kiddie cartoon. Langella, (made up to look like Jack Palance with leprosy), aims to take over the planet Eternia, a war-torn paradise ruled by the Sorceress of Greyskull Castle ("St. Elsewhere's" Christina Pickles, wearing what appears to be a chandelier on her head), but her champion He-Man opposes him with his mighty sword. The titanic battle is brought to Earth when a brilliantly grating little troll (Billy Barty) magically transports them to Colby, Calif., via his Cosmic Key. Actually they were headed for another planet, but a stray power bolt (or perhaps a chintzy producer) altered their orbit. Why build an out-of-this-world set when you can just go down to the mall and shoot off sparklers? So Earth waitress Courteney Cox and her boyfriend Robert Duncan Mitchell are drawn into the otherworldly warfare when they happen to find the key, mistaking it for some sort of Japanese stereo speaker. Director Gary Goddard had previously created mythical kingdoms for Universal Studios -- "Kong on the Loose" and "Conan." And let's just say he hadn't quite made the leap from tourist traps to feature films. The actors are basically on their own -- either hamming it up behind a mask ( Langella), or nearly numb (Lundgren). It sounds as if the Scandinavian-born muscleman had been studying under Stallone's diction coach, but he has a sort-of-sweet, shining charisma, grinning and glistening, wearing thongs and things and accentuating his hunkiness with plenty of grease. (It takes a lot of Wesson Oil to make a movie like Masters of the Universe.) Goddard later went on to direct the live action segments for the Terminator 3-D ride. Over the years, Hollywood keeps threatening to remake He-Man. Please -- Make them stop. | ||
 | Masters of the Universe | |
| "No Bad Movie collection is complete without this shameless ode to modern consumerism." | 2009-04-18 |
| Somewhere along the line, while HE-MAN, the animated series/half-hour toy commercial was at its peak, some enterprising, self-proclaimed studio genius must have said, "Dolph Lundgren! He'd be a perfect He-Man!" The error lay, of course, in not realizing the differences between the two: one is a lifeless, two-dimensional caricature of masculinity; the other is a cartoon character. So instead of a faithful adaption of the cartoon series, the producers offered this stripped-down rendition (scaled back, one would suppose, to the thespian abilities of its star). Lundgren -- blond, brawny and with a set of pecs that would give Dolly Parton pause -- playsthe superhero locked in an eternal, epic battle with Skeletor, a power-crazed supervillain played by scenery-shredding "superham" Frank Langella. They move through the story, such as it is, as statically as their counterparts in the afternoon kiddie cartoon. Langella, (made up to look like Jack Palance with leprosy), aims to take over the planet Eternia, a war-torn paradise ruled by the Sorceress of Greyskull Castle ("St. Elsewhere's" Christina Pickles, wearing what appears to be a chandelier on her head), but her champion He-Man opposes him with his mighty sword. The titanic battle is brought to Earth when a brilliantly grating little troll (Billy Barty) magically transports them to Colby, Calif., via his Cosmic Key. Actually they were headed for another planet, but a stray power bolt (or perhaps a chintzy producer) altered their orbit. Why build an out-of-this-world set when you can just go down to the mall and shoot off sparklers? So Earth waitress Courteney Cox and her boyfriend Robert Duncan Mitchell are drawn into the otherworldly warfare when they happen to find the key, mistaking it for some sort of Japanese stereo speaker. Director Gary Goddard had previously created mythical kingdoms for Universal Studios -- "Kong on the Loose" and "Conan." And let's just say he hadn't quite made the leap from tourist traps to feature films. The actors are basically on their own -- either hamming it up behind a mask ( Langella), or nearly numb (Lundgren). It sounds as if the Scandinavian-born muscleman had been studying under Stallone's diction coach, but he has a sort-of-sweet, shining charisma, grinning and glistening, wearing thongs and things and accentuating his hunkiness with plenty of grease. (It takes a lot of Wesson Oil to make a movie like Masters of the Universe.) Goddard later went on to direct the live action segments for the Terminator 3-D ride. Over the years, Hollywood keeps threatening to remake He-Man. Please -- Make them stop. | ||
 | Zachariah | |
| "wow!" | 2009-03-29 |
| Anyone who thinks CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC, STAYING ALIVE and ZERO PATIENCE are the last word in homoerotic musicals is just a Bad Movie buff who has not seen the 1971 epic ZACHARIAH. Hollywood fired up this fat doobie of a rock-and-roll Western by hinting to the press that George Harrison would compose the score and "a younger Jack Nicholson" would star. When all that bogus smoke cleared, what emerged was a veritable stoner's crash pad of a movie that wobbles woozily from one hoot to another. Set in a fever-delirious Old West that we suspect was dreamed up on way too much acid, Zachariah opens with lithe Jewish cowboy John Rubinstein galloping across the desert towards a mysterious, giant, 2001-esque slab. On closer inspection, the slab turns out to be a huge speaker for a rock group that just happens to be loitering about, ready to play the psychedelic opening number. The appropriate atmosphere now having been established, our hero Rubinstein soon opens a mail-order parcel containing his new gun, which he practices yanking again and again from his trousers before rushing to show it off to androgynously pretty local blacksmith Don Johnson, at whom he makes goo-goo eyes and cracks feeble jokes. After Rubinstein has let this fellow buckaroo fondle his shiny new pistol, Johnson bats his long lashes, whispers "Far out," and the guys chase each other around in a Love Story-style montage. Later, Rubinstein queries philosophically, "Which do you think it would be easier to shoot it out with, the sun or the moon?" Rubinstein answers his own koan all by himself. It's the moon, of course, because, "It's old and it's dead." Unlike, say, Hollywood. The two boys ride off in tandem and join up with the outlaw gang the Crackers (played with mind-bending self-satisfaction by the rock group Country Joe and the Fish), who alternate stickups staged to the "William Tell Overture" with rock numbers dealing with such topics as what one might want from the cowboy life ("I want to wash in a bathtub of gold... I want 97 kilos already rolled"). Rubinstein earns a rep as a gunslinger, impressing reigning gunfighter Elvin Jones, who, after indulging in what feels like a 20-minute drum solo, is challenged by the newcomer to a quick-draw contest. All this competition makes our lads restless, however. When Rubinstein proposes that he and Johnson strike out on their own, he goes too far for even the most accommodating cowpoke: he tells Johnson, "I love you." This prompts Johnson to utter aloud the words that everybody's got to hear sometime: "You and me are not on the same trip." When Johnson splits, Rubinstein decides to investigate sex with a woman. Enter Pat Quinn, for whom Rubinstein gets bathed by hippie hookers to the strains of sitar music and decks himself out in rhinestone cowboy drag fit for Liberace. Quinn responds with a bizarre go-go dance and beds Rubinstein, aping Mae West as she declares, "Tom Mix, Ken Maynard, Lash LaRue, Bat Masterson--you're better than all of them!" Alas, Rubinstein doesn't feel the same way; he hightails it out of town to shack up with older man William Challee. When this duo isn't dancing together in the desert, the old codger is wowing Rubinstein with words of wisdom like "Hurry up and die, hurry up and die" -- which, of course, is what the film is doing.Back into Rubinstein's life struts Johnson, now sporting an earring with his rough-trade black outfit, and boasting, "I've got it together. I don't know if I'm the same, but I'm where I want to be and I'm on my way up!" He then announces that he, too, is through with women, whereupon he says to Rubinstein, "Strap on your gun." When Rubinstein responds prissily that he has renounced violence, Johnson throws a hair-pulling, scenery-chewing hissy fit during which he blurts, "Zachariah, come back. I can't do it alone!" How will it all end, you ask? We don't want to spoil the finale for you, but if you've guessed that the lads hug meaningfully while riding side-by-side atop their matching steeds and then gallop off into the sunset, well, you're quick on the draw. | ||
 | Zachariah | |
| "wow!" | 2009-03-29 |
| Anyone who thinks CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC, STAYING ALIVE and ZERO PATIENCE are the last word in homoerotic musicals is just a Bad Movie buff who has not seen the 1971 epic ZACHARIAH. Hollywood fired up this fat doobie of a rock-and-roll Western by hinting to the press that George Harrison would compose the score and "a younger Jack Nicholson" would star. When all that bogus smoke cleared, what emerged was a veritable stoner's crash pad of a movie that wobbles woozily from one hoot to another. Set in a fever-delirious Old West that we suspect was dreamed up on way too much acid, Zachariah opens with lithe Jewish cowboy John Rubinstein galloping across the desert towards a mysterious, giant, 2001-esque slab. On closer inspection, the slab turns out to be a huge speaker for a rock group that just happens to be loitering about, ready to play the psychedelic opening number. The appropriate atmosphere now having been established, our hero Rubinstein soon opens a mail-order parcel containing his new gun, which he practices yanking again and again from his trousers before rushing to show it off to androgynously pretty local blacksmith Don Johnson, at whom he makes goo-goo eyes and cracks feeble jokes. After Rubinstein has let this fellow buckaroo fondle his shiny new pistol, Johnson bats his long lashes, whispers "Far out," and the guys chase each other around in a Love Story-style montage. Later, Rubinstein queries philosophically, "Which do you think it would be easier to shoot it out with, the sun or the moon?" Rubinstein answers his own koan all by himself. It's the moon, of course, because, "It's old and it's dead." Unlike, say, Hollywood. The two boys ride off in tandem and join up with the outlaw gang the Crackers (played with mind-bending self-satisfaction by the rock group Country Joe and the Fish), who alternate stickups staged to the "William Tell Overture" with rock numbers dealing with such topics as what one might want from the cowboy life ("I want to wash in a bathtub of gold... I want 97 kilos already rolled"). Rubinstein earns a rep as a gunslinger, impressing reigning gunfighter Elvin Jones, who, after indulging in what feels like a 20-minute drum solo, is challenged by the newcomer to a quick-draw contest. All this competition makes our lads restless, however. When Rubinstein proposes that he and Johnson strike out on their own, he goes too far for even the most accommodating cowpoke: he tells Johnson, "I love you." This prompts Johnson to utter aloud the words that everybody's got to hear sometime: "You and me are not on the same trip." When Johnson splits, Rubinstein decides to investigate sex with a woman. Enter Pat Quinn, for whom Rubinstein gets bathed by hippie hookers to the strains of sitar music and decks himself out in rhinestone cowboy drag fit for Liberace. Quinn responds with a bizarre go-go dance and beds Rubinstein, aping Mae West as she declares, "Tom Mix, Ken Maynard, Lash LaRue, Bat Masterson--you're better than all of them!" Alas, Rubinstein doesn't feel the same way; he hightails it out of town to shack up with older man William Challee. When this duo isn't dancing together in the desert, the old codger is wowing Rubinstein with words of wisdom like "Hurry up and die, hurry up and die" -- which, of course, is what the film is doing.Back into Rubinstein's life struts Johnson, now sporting an earring with his rough-trade black outfit, and boasting, "I've got it together. I don't know if I'm the same, but I'm where I want to be and I'm on my way up!" He then announces that he, too, is through with women, whereupon he says to Rubinstein, "Strap on your gun." When Rubinstein responds prissily that he has renounced violence, Johnson throws a hair-pulling, scenery-chewing hissy fit during which he blurts, "Zachariah, come back. I can't do it alone!" How will it all end, you ask? We don't want to spoil the finale for you, but if you've guessed that the lads hug meaningfully while riding side-by-side atop their matching steeds and then gallop off into the sunset, well, you're quick on the draw. | ||
 | Zachariah | |
| "wow!" | 2009-03-29 |
| Anyone who thinks CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC, STAYING ALIVE and ZERO PATIENCE are the last word in homoerotic musicals is just a Bad Movie buff who has not seen the 1971 epic ZACHARIAH. Hollywood fired up this fat doobie of a rock-and-roll Western by hinting to the press that George Harrison would compose the score and "a younger Jack Nicholson" would star. When all that bogus smoke cleared, what emerged was a veritable stoner's crash pad of a movie that wobbles woozily from one hoot to another. Set in a fever-delirious Old West that we suspect was dreamed up on way too much acid, Zachariah opens with lithe Jewish cowboy John Rubinstein galloping across the desert towards a mysterious, giant, 2001-esque slab. On closer inspection, the slab turns out to be a huge speaker for a rock group that just happens to be loitering about, ready to play the psychedelic opening number. The appropriate atmosphere now having been established, our hero Rubinstein soon opens a mail-order parcel containing his new gun, which he practices yanking again and again from his trousers before rushing to show it off to androgynously pretty local blacksmith Don Johnson, at whom he makes goo-goo eyes and cracks feeble jokes. After Rubinstein has let this fellow buckaroo fondle his shiny new pistol, Johnson bats his long lashes, whispers "Far out," and the guys chase each other around in a Love Story-style montage. Later, Rubinstein queries philosophically, "Which do you think it would be easier to shoot it out with, the sun or the moon?" Rubinstein answers his own koan all by himself. It's the moon, of course, because, "It's old and it's dead." Unlike, say, Hollywood. The two boys ride off in tandem and join up with the outlaw gang the Crackers (played with mind-bending self-satisfaction by the rock group Country Joe and the Fish), who alternate stickups staged to the "William Tell Overture" with rock numbers dealing with such topics as what one might want from the cowboy life ("I want to wash in a bathtub of gold... I want 97 kilos already rolled"). Rubinstein earns a rep as a gunslinger, impressing reigning gunfighter Elvin Jones, who, after indulging in what feels like a 20-minute drum solo, is challenged by the newcomer to a quick-draw contest. All this competition makes our lads restless, however. When Rubinstein proposes that he and Johnson strike out on their own, he goes too far for even the most accommodating cowpoke: he tells Johnson, "I love you." This prompts Johnson to utter aloud the words that everybody's got to hear sometime: "You and me are not on the same trip." When Johnson splits, Rubinstein decides to investigate sex with a woman. Enter Pat Quinn, for whom Rubinstein gets bathed by hippie hookers to the strains of sitar music and decks himself out in rhinestone cowboy drag fit for Liberace. Quinn responds with a bizarre go-go dance and beds Rubinstein, aping Mae West as she declares, "Tom Mix, Ken Maynard, Lash LaRue, Bat Masterson--you're better than all of them!" Alas, Rubinstein doesn't feel the same way; he hightails it out of town to shack up with older man William Challee. When this duo isn't dancing together in the desert, the old codger is wowing Rubinstein with words of wisdom like "Hurry up and die, hurry up and die" -- which, of course, is what the film is doing.Back into Rubinstein's life struts Johnson, now sporting an earring with his rough-trade black outfit, and boasting, "I've got it together. I don't know if I'm the same, but I'm where I want to be and I'm on my way up!" He then announces that he, too, is through with women, whereupon he says to Rubinstein, "Strap on your gun." When Rubinstein responds prissily that he has renounced violence, Johnson throws a hair-pulling, scenery-chewing hissy fit during which he blurts, "Zachariah, come back. I can't do it alone!" How will it all end, you ask? We don't want to spoil the finale for you, but if you've guessed that the lads hug meaningfully while riding side-by-side atop their matching steeds and then gallop off into the sunset, well, you're quick on the draw. | ||
 | The World of Suzie Wong | |
| "IRRESISTIBLY, DELICIOUSLY BAD! "YOU BELIEVE?"" | 2008-11-23 |
| "It'd be laughable if it weren't so filthy!" rants one character in THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG, but au contraire, this costly 1960 film is laughable BECAUSE it's so filthy. Refreshingly unlike many other Hollywood hooker sagas -- the kind where Elizabeth Taylor's paid cash to model gowns, or Audrey Hepburn gets $50 for the powder room -- Nancy Kwan seems to know she's playing a whore in Wong. When penniless artist William Holden, who lives atop a sleazy Hong Kong brothel, spies Kwan in the building's pick-up bar, we're told she is the "most popular girl -- got sex appeal!" And how: her hot-cha dance routine still registers, decades after the fact, on the Bad Movie Bump 'n' Grind Allure-O-Meter. Holden asks Kwan to his room, but when he says, "Can't pay much, but I'd like you to pose for me," she replies, "Just sit? No, I lose face. My girlfriends will say, 'You go to gentleman's room and sit? You're slipping!'" Since there's no story unless she changes her mind, Kwan instantly reconsiders, asking hopefully, "Take clothes off?" Curbing his artistic impulses for a moment, Holden takes Kwan off to dinner, during which the spunky prostitute admits hooking is "dirty," but insists, "I not dirty street girl. Inside, I still good." To demonstrate this, she offers herself up as dessert--for free. When Holden rejects her, she starts picking up men out in the street. As she chirps, "Hi, sailor!" over and over with irresistable neediness in her voice, we can only wonder: How long will it take before Holden falls? Quite a while, thanks to Kwan's trampy behavior. When Holden decks a gob who's called Kwan (accurately) "a filthy little slut," she asks him, "Do me a favor--let me tell my girlfriends you beat me up." (He refuses, but Kwan does so anyway, eliciting this from another whore: "You're very lucky!") However, when Kwan starts a catfight because she thinks that Holden is flirting with another vixen, she's gone too far. "I came her to paint," Holden snarls at her. "I can't have you giving me your love on the days that you're free." Conveniently, fellow tramp-hound Michael Wilding barges in with news he's split with his wife and wants to make Kwan his "permanent girlfriend." Kwan gives him the old "I not dirty street girl" line, adding, "If I your regular girlfriend, I never go with another man." And off she goes with him. Respectable English art expert Sylvia Syms (this crazy film's craziest character, inasmuch as she views Holden as marriage material) starts posing for paintings in Kwan's stead -- at least til Kwan returns to show off her kept-woman wardrobe. "Take that terrible dress off," Holden hollers. "You look like a cheap European streetwalker." (Helpfully, he rips the clothes off her -- in the name of the fashion police, mind you, not because he wants her looking like a cheap Eurasian streetwalker. After Wilding's estranged wife samples what he's been learning in Kwan's bed, she wants him back pronto. Holden agrees to break this bad news, and when he does, hang on for Kwan's full meltdown -- a bizarre identity-crisis split that leads, as such things often do, to a happy ending. Suddenly taking on the personality of a demure virgin, Kwan once again cries, "I not dirty street girl!" and then says, "I want to be like nice English girl for you. I go now." She exits Holden's room, then bounds right back in, announcing, "It's now tomorrow. You my first man. You believe?" Strange? Yep, but not as strange as Holden's reply: "I believe. And you're my first girl." OK, so they face a cruel, uncomprehending world. Sym's Brit dad asks Holden in alarm, "You'd be happy to spend the end of your days with a little, old, Chinese wife?" But aren't these the kind of problems that bind a couple together? Somewhere, they're living happily ever after together, right now. You believe? | ||
 | High School Musical | |
| "There's nothing like A GOOD musical..." | 2008-09-10 |
| ...and this is NOTHING LIKE a good musical. Adults should be warned to stay clear of this dreary exercise at ALL costs. This is time better spent with an insurance agent or doing your taxes. (Yes...It's THAT bad.) If you have tweens at home and they clamour for this abomination, be warned, it never ends. Long after the movie has finished there is the CD of the film's unmemorable soundtrack which can only lead to the sequels (2 of them at this writing.) and the ripoffs. (AMERICAN MALL anyone?) Do yourself a favor and run far and fast when the kiddies get a yen to pop this one in the old dvd player or you'll be visiting your dentist to fix the damage caused from grinding your teeth. | ||
 | Lipstick | |
| "UNINTENTIONAL HILARITY ABOUNDS IN THIS EXPLOITATION TRASH DISGUISED AS A LIFETIME MESSAGE MOVIE." | 2008-08-18 |
| You haven't lived until you've witnessed stuporous fashion mannequin Margaux Hemingway race away from a Francesco Scavullo fashion shoot in a slinky red dress and heels, grab a rifle from her car, and blast the bejesus out of her psycho rapist Chris Sarandon. This knock-down-drag-out-funny thriller was designed by no less than superagent-producer Freddie Fields to present the world the movie debut of stunning (that is, stunningly untalented) Margaux. It became obvious during production that it was another Hemingway, little sister Mariel, who was stealing the show and would be heard from again. Mariel invites her creepy music teacher, Sarandon, to come to one of Margaux's nude photo sessions -- posing for lipstick ads -- because though Mariel has a crush on him, he's got a crush on Margaux. He turns up at their apartment, plays Margaux his shrieking avant-garde music, gets positively nutsy when she tries to blow him off, then attacks her. Growling about her lipstick, "I want it on me," Sarandon ties Margaux to her bed, beats her, and subjects her to rough sex of every possible persuasion, then cutting her loose, advises, "Listen, don't do this with anyone else." Hemingway gets a lawyer (an embarrassed-looking Anne Bancroft) and decides to prosecute Sarandon. "You hard-sell her all over this country," bellows Bancroft to Perry King, Margaux's photographer boyfriend. "We're allowed to look and we're allowed to buy, but don't touch!" She's trying to warn Margaux that she'll "be abused again in court." provoking a response from Margaux about her rapist: "He wanted to kill me . . . with his c--k! I hate him!" The jury aquits Sarandon, which so rattles the victim that she and Mariel decide to escape to a rural life. "We'll be the first sister team," jokes Margaux, "to make a living by starving." After a ridiculously prolonged chase sequence through L.A.'s Pacific Design Center, Sarandon assaults Mariel, prompting hot revenge from big sis Margaux, who literally blows him away. "Crime is expected since humans are never perfect," Bancroft says, addressing the jury on Hemingway's behalf, "but the failures of justice may be more damaging to society than crime itself." Still, there is justice; after this big debut, Hemingway next starred, four years later, in KILLER FISH. Later still, she changed the spelling of her first name to "Margot," but honey, you didn't fool us. | ||
 | Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man | |
| "BAD MOVIE HEAVEN!!!" | 2008-08-09 |
| "High concept" movies -- that's Hollywoodspeak for two-sentence descriptions used by screenwriters to convey the entire idea of a proposed film to catch a studio executive's interest -- have been providing us with Bad Movies We Love for years now. "An all-star cast at an opening night party atop the world's tallest building. Fire breaks out below, the sprinkler system doesn't work yet, and only Steve McQueen and Paul Newman can save them." Not every no-brainer sales pitch results in THE TOWERING INFERNO, however. High concept meets rock bottom with HARLEY DAVIDSON AND THE MARLBORO MAN, which surely was sold with something like, "Picture this: a remake of BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, set in the future, with motorcycles instead of horses, and we don't kill the heroes at the end. Here's the beauty part -- we've got two product placement tie-ins right in the title alone. Doncha love it?" We sure do, but not for the reasons that the writers might have guessed. The movie opens with Mickey Rourke flashing his bare buns, then lovingly revving up his Harley. Like your homoerotic associations more deliberate than that? You have only to read the names of cast members like "Big John Studd" and "Tom Sizemore" to start collapsing with mirth. When Roarke (dressed in leather lad regalia, replete with tattoo and earring) bumps into his ol' high school pal Don Johnson (dressed in cowpoke drag, including Stetson, boots, and whiskers), we suspect the pair must have attended Village People High. When Rourke ponders, "If there is a God, I'd like to meet the dude,"i'd like to hang out with him," it's hard not to cry out to the screen "Yo, Mick -- you're already in Bad Movie Heaven, and your'e God there." Though HARLEY's all tricked out with costly high-speed chases, helicopter footage, and leaps off Vegas hotels, it never passes muster as a LETHEL WEAPON clone, and the two stars are the reason why. They're just B actors time-warped into the wrong period of movies: both belong in the mid-'60s, when America was the land of drive-in movies, and Roger Corman was churning out cheapo WILD ANGELS biker flicks. "It's better to be dead and cool than alive and uncool," the stars tell each other, oblivious to the fact that, as actors, they're already both dead and uncool. At movies end, Rourke pulls over his Harley for a shapely starlet with her thumb out. "Where you heading?" he asks. She says, "Nowhere special." "C'mon," says Rourke, "I'll take you there." Indeed. Nowhere special is where Rourke always takes us, down that long lonesome highway, headed straight for Unintentional Laughter, U.S.A. Look for Chelea Field, Vanessa Williams and Daniel Baldwin (who does a dead-pan take on brother Alec doing Steven Seagal). | ||
 | Species | |
| "SEX IN L.A. JUST GOT EVEN MORE DIFFICULT IN THIS LAUGH-A-MINUTE ALIEN RIP-OFF" | 2008-08-03 |
| Just when you thought it was safe to skinny-dip with a semen-hungry supermodel, along comes SPECIES to warn you that at any moment she might grow horns on her back and rip you up like a parking ticket. This blech-gak-ptooey sci-fi thriller is in fact mostly ptooey - sillier than it is frightening. The movie puts the definitive '90s twist on the old alien-is-loose scenario: she's a six-foot blonde goddess, and all she wants to do is copulate. If you decided to pass on this load of goosey nonsense while it was in the theaters, it's easy to see why: its biggest star was Ben Kingsley, and it reeked heavily of Alien rip-off. But SPECIES had one thing all three Alien movies didn't have -- sex. In short, the movie details what a beautiful alien/human (spawned by dark and stupid government forces from alien DNA received via radar) must go through to spawn in L.A. Sil (glassy-eyed model Natasha Henstridge) is a guileless, Nordic, man-hungry mating machine whose life cycles are commemorated by a trail of male corpses. Sil's F/X designs were indeed mustered up by H.R. Giger, the depressive Swiss artist behind that distinctive rib-cage-and-womb vibe that anyone who's seen Alien will instantly recognize. Sil is pursued through L.A.'s worst nightclubs and bachelor pads by head honcho Kingsley, sleepy manhunter Michael Madsen, blubbering "empath" Forest Whitaker, scientific Brit Alfred Molina and hot-to-trot biologist Marg Helgenberger. SPECIES gets its snarkiest thrills from Sil's nightmarish physical changes, though they're less shocking than cool, like watching a blister rash spread on your own arm. In fact, the scare factor is dwarfed by the movie's bumper crop of outrageous Freudian subtext. It's the winner of this year's What This Movie's Really About Award: there's really no way to ignore the film's horrified view of feminine body rites, from puberty to childbirth. (The sequel should have taken on menopause.) The film practically shudders with fear: fear of sex, of menstruation, of dating, of female orgasms, of impotence, of fatherhood, of pregnancy, of birth, of statuesque blondes who undress in front of you without your having to so much as buy them a cocktail first. Well, the last one might be a legit source of dread, but wouldn't it have been more interesting, though significantly less hilarious, if Sil hadn't been gorgeous - can you imagine the drama of a homely alien trying to get laid in L.A.? But it's not our fear we're writing about, anyway - it's the filmmakers'. Their apparent horror outpaces ours by a mile. Giger, director Roger Donaldson, writer Dennis Feldman, co-producer Frank Mancuso Jr.- these guys must have some super dating stories. We can't help picturing them dissolving into quaking, bug-eyed panic whenever their wives complain of mid-month bloat. In the movie, catch Sil's tentacle-filled cocoon-transformation from girl to woman - it's the wackiest first period ever captured on film. Every time she gets aroused after that, it's time for some poor sucker to get mauled. You'd imagine that somebody might have noticed that the film boils down to a bunch of nervous guys covering their testicles. But apparently no one did; maybe it is all just subconscious terrors worming their way to the surface. Which is even better, frankly; it's a timeless joy when Hollywood unknowingly unleashes its own neuroses on the world. We laughed so hard we nearly popped a blood vessel in our eye when Sil aggressively tries to mount one guy in a pool and the luckless dope promptly loses his ...erm... drive. She turns into a cat-eyed alien thing and kills him. And there's plenty of incidental fun to be had: Helgenberger is charming, the computerized effects are startling, and there's even the infrequent, authentically frightening scene. Though it's far more polished, SPECIES reminded us most of HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP, a Doug McClure piece of crap in which rangy reptilian creatures rape and impregnate human women. Real sweet stuff. SPECIES is a lot more fun, because you can just see everyone sweating tremulously behind the cameras. | ||
 | Species | |
| "SEX IN L.A. JUST GOT EVEN MORE DIFFICULT IN THIS LAUGH-A-MINUTE ALIEN RIP-OFF" | 2008-08-03 |
| Just when you thought it was safe to skinny-dip with a semen-hungry supermodel, along comes SPECIES to warn you that at any moment she might grow horns on her back and rip you up like a parking ticket. This blech-gak-ptooey sci-fi thriller is in fact mostly ptooey - sillier than it is frightening. The movie puts the definitive '90s twist on the old alien-is-loose scenario: she's a six-foot blonde goddess, and all she wants to do is copulate. If you decided to pass on this load of goosey nonsense while it was in the theaters, it's easy to see why: its biggest star was Ben Kingsley, and it reeked heavily of Alien rip-off. But SPECIES had one thing all three Alien movies didn't have -- sex. In short, the movie details what a beautiful alien/human (spawned by dark and stupid government forces from alien DNA received via radar) must go through to spawn in L.A. Sil (glassy-eyed model Natasha Henstridge) is a guileless, Nordic, man-hungry mating machine whose life cycles are commemorated by a trail of male corpses. Sil's F/X designs were indeed mustered up by H.R. Giger, the depressive Swiss artist behind that distinctive rib-cage-and-womb vibe that anyone who's seen Alien will instantly recognize. Sil is pursued through L.A.'s worst nightclubs and bachelor pads by head honcho Kingsley, sleepy manhunter Michael Madsen, blubbering "empath" Forest Whitaker, scientific Brit Alfred Molina and hot-to-trot biologist Marg Helgenberger. SPECIES gets its snarkiest thrills from Sil's nightmarish physical changes, though they're less shocking than cool, like watching a blister rash spread on your own arm. In fact, the scare factor is dwarfed by the movie's bumper crop of outrageous Freudian subtext. It's the winner of this year's What This Movie's Really About Award: there's really no way to ignore the film's horrified view of feminine body rites, from puberty to childbirth. (The sequel should have taken on menopause.) The film practically shudders with fear: fear of sex, of menstruation, of dating, of female orgasms, of impotence, of fatherhood, of pregnancy, of birth, of statuesque blondes who undress in front of you without your having to so much as buy them a cocktail first. Well, the last one might be a legit source of dread, but wouldn't it have been more interesting, though significantly less hilarious, if Sil hadn't been gorgeous - can you imagine the drama of a homely alien trying to get laid in L.A.? But it's not our fear we're writing about, anyway - it's the filmmakers'. Their apparent horror outpaces ours by a mile. Giger, director Roger Donaldson, writer Dennis Feldman, co-producer Frank Mancuso Jr.- these guys must have some super dating stories. We can't help picturing them dissolving into quaking, bug-eyed panic whenever their wives complain of mid-month bloat. In the movie, catch Sil's tentacle-filled cocoon-transformation from girl to woman - it's the wackiest first period ever captured on film. Every time she gets aroused after that, it's time for some poor sucker to get mauled. You'd imagine that somebody might have noticed that the film boils down to a bunch of nervous guys covering their testicles. But apparently no one did; maybe it is all just subconscious terrors worming their way to the surface. Which is even better, frankly; it's a timeless joy when Hollywood unknowingly unleashes its own neuroses on the world. We laughed so hard we nearly popped a blood vessel in our eye when Sil aggressively tries to mount one guy in a pool and the luckless dope promptly loses his ...erm... drive. She turns into a cat-eyed alien thing and kills him. And there's plenty of incidental fun to be had: Helgenberger is charming, the computerized effects are startling, and there's even the infrequent, authentically frightening scene. Though it's far more polished, SPECIES reminded us most of HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP, a Doug McClure piece of crap in which rangy reptilian creatures rape and impregnate human women. Real sweet stuff. SPECIES is a lot more fun, because you can just see everyone sweating tremulously behind the cameras. | ||
![Species [Blu-ray]](product_images/4922000/4922732_thumb.jpg) | Species [Blu-ray] | |
| "SEX IN L.A. JUST GOT EVEN MORE DIFFICULT IN THIS LAUGH-A-MINUTE ALIEN RIP-OFF" | 2008-08-03 |
| Just when you thought it was safe to skinny-dip with a semen-hungry supermodel, along comes SPECIES to warn you that at any moment she might grow horns on her back and rip you up like a parking ticket. This blech-gak-ptooey sci-fi thriller is in fact mostly ptooey - sillier than it is frightening. The movie puts the definitive '90s twist on the old alien-is-loose scenario: she's a six-foot blonde goddess, and all she wants to do is copulate. If you decided to pass on this load of goosey nonsense while it was in the theaters, it's easy to see why: its biggest star was Ben Kingsley, and it reeked heavily of Alien rip-off. But SPECIES had one thing all three Alien movies didn't have -- sex. In short, the movie details what a beautiful alien/human (spawned by dark and stupid government forces from alien DNA received via radar) must go through to spawn in L.A. Sil (glassy-eyed model Natasha Henstridge) is a guileless, Nordic, man-hungry mating machine whose life cycles are commemorated by a trail of male corpses. Sil's F/X designs were indeed mustered up by H.R. Giger, the depressive Swiss artist behind that distinctive rib-cage-and-womb vibe that anyone who's seen Alien will instantly recognize. Sil is pursued through L.A.'s worst nightclubs and bachelor pads by head honcho Kingsley, sleepy manhunter Michael Madsen, blubbering "empath" Forest Whitaker, scientific Brit Alfred Molina and hot-to-trot biologist Marg Helgenberger. SPECIES gets its snarkiest thrills from Sil's nightmarish physical changes, though they're less shocking than cool, like watching a blister rash spread on your own arm. In fact, the scare factor is dwarfed by the movie's bumper crop of outrageous Freudian subtext. It's the winner of this year's What This Movie's Really About Award: there's really no way to ignore the film's horrified view of feminine body rites, from puberty to childbirth. (The sequel should have taken on menopause.) The film practically shudders with fear: fear of sex, of menstruation, of dating, of female orgasms, of impotence, of fatherhood, of pregnancy, of birth, of statuesque blondes who undress in front of you without your having to so much as buy them a cocktail first. Well, the last one might be a legit source of dread, but wouldn't it have been more interesting, though significantly less hilarious, if Sil hadn't been gorgeous - can you imagine the drama of a homely alien trying to get laid in L.A.? But it's not our fear we're writing about, anyway - it's the filmmakers'. Their apparent horror outpaces ours by a mile. Giger, director Roger Donaldson, writer Dennis Feldman, co-producer Frank Mancuso Jr.- these guys must have some super dating stories. We can't help picturing them dissolving into quaking, bug-eyed panic whenever their wives complain of mid-month bloat. In the movie, catch Sil's tentacle-filled cocoon-transformation from girl to woman - it's the wackiest first period ever captured on film. Every time she gets aroused after that, it's time for some poor sucker to get mauled. You'd imagine that somebody might have noticed that the film boils down to a bunch of nervous guys covering their testicles. But apparently no one did; maybe it is all just subconscious terrors worming their way to the surface. Which is even better, frankly; it's a timeless joy when Hollywood unknowingly unleashes its own neuroses on the world. We laughed so hard we nearly popped a blood vessel in our eye when Sil aggressively tries to mount one guy in a pool and the luckless dope promptly loses his ...erm... drive. She turns into a cat-eyed alien thing and kills him. And there's plenty of incidental fun to be had: Helgenberger is charming, the computerized effects are startling, and there's even the infrequent, authentically frightening scene. Though it's far more polished, SPECIES reminded us most of HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP, a Doug McClure piece of crap in which rangy reptilian creatures rape and impregnate human women. Real sweet stuff. SPECIES is a lot more fun, because you can just see everyone sweating tremulously behind the cameras. | ||
 | Species | |
| "SEX IN L.A. JUST GOT EVEN MORE DIFFICULT IN THIS LAUGH-A-MINUTE ALIEN RIP-OFF" | 2008-08-03 |
| Just when you thought it was safe to skinny-dip with a semen-hungry supermodel, along comes SPECIES to warn you that at any moment she might grow horns on her back and rip you up like a parking ticket. This blech-gak-ptooey sci-fi thriller is in fact mostly ptooey - sillier than it is frightening. The movie puts the definitive '90s twist on the old alien-is-loose scenario: she's a six-foot blonde goddess, and all she wants to do is copulate. If you decided to pass on this load of goosey nonsense while it was in the theaters, it's easy to see why: its biggest star was Ben Kingsley, and it reeked heavily of Alien rip-off. But SPECIES had one thing all three Alien movies didn't have -- sex. In short, the movie details what a beautiful alien/human (spawned by dark and stupid government forces from alien DNA received via radar) must go through to spawn in L.A. Sil (glassy-eyed model Natasha Henstridge) is a guileless, Nordic, man-hungry mating machine whose life cycles are commemorated by a trail of male corpses. Sil's F/X designs were indeed mustered up by H.R. Giger, the depressive Swiss artist behind that distinctive rib-cage-and-womb vibe that anyone who's seen Alien will instantly recognize. Sil is pursued through L.A.'s worst nightclubs and bachelor pads by head honcho Kingsley, sleepy manhunter Michael Madsen, blubbering "empath" Forest Whitaker, scientific Brit Alfred Molina and hot-to-trot biologist Marg Helgenberger. SPECIES gets its snarkiest thrills from Sil's nightmarish physical changes, though they're less shocking than cool, like watching a blister rash spread on your own arm. In fact, the scare factor is dwarfed by the movie's bumper crop of outrageous Freudian subtext. It's the winner of this year's What This Movie's Really About Award: there's really no way to ignore the film's horrified view of feminine body rites, from puberty to childbirth. (The sequel should have taken on menopause.) The film practically shudders with fear: fear of sex, of menstruation, of dating, of female orgasms, of impotence, of fatherhood, of pregnancy, of birth, of statuesque blondes who undress in front of you without your having to so much as buy them a cocktail first. Well, the last one might be a legit source of dread, but wouldn't it have been more interesting, though significantly less hilarious, if Sil hadn't been gorgeous - can you imagine the drama of a homely alien trying to get laid in L.A.? But it's not our fear we're writing about, anyway - it's the filmmakers'. Their apparent horror outpaces ours by a mile. Giger, director Roger Donaldson, writer Dennis Feldman, co-producer Frank Mancuso Jr.- these guys must have some super dating stories. We can't help picturing them dissolving into quaking, bug-eyed panic whenever their wives complain of mid-month bloat. In the movie, catch Sil's tentacle-filled cocoon-transformation from girl to woman - it's the wackiest first period ever captured on film. Every time she gets aroused after that, it's time for some poor sucker to get mauled. You'd imagine that somebody might have noticed that the film boils down to a bunch of nervous guys covering their testicles. But apparently no one did; maybe it is all just subconscious terrors worming their way to the surface. Which is even better, frankly; it's a timeless joy when Hollywood unknowingly unleashes its own neuroses on the world. We laughed so hard we nearly popped a blood vessel in our eye when Sil aggressively tries to mount one guy in a pool and the luckless dope promptly loses his ...erm... drive. She turns into a cat-eyed alien thing and kills him. And there's plenty of incidental fun to be had: Helgenberger is charming, the computerized effects are startling, and there's even the infrequent, authentically frightening scene. Though it's far more polished, SPECIES reminded us most of HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP, a Doug McClure piece of crap in which rangy reptilian creatures rape and impregnate human women. Real sweet stuff. SPECIES is a lot more fun, because you can just see everyone sweating tremulously behind the cameras. | ||
 | Species (Special Edition) | |
| "SEX IN L.A. JUST GOT EVEN MORE DIFFICULT IN THIS LAUGH-A-MINUTE ALIEN RIP-OFF" | 2008-08-03 |
| Just when you thought it was safe to skinny-dip with a semen-hungry supermodel, along comes SPECIES to warn you that at any moment she might grow horns on her back and rip you up like a parking ticket. This blech-gak-ptooey sci-fi thriller is in fact mostly ptooey - sillier than it is frightening. The movie puts the definitive '90s twist on the old alien-is-loose scenario: she's a six-foot blonde goddess, and all she wants to do is copulate. If you decided to pass on this load of goosey nonsense while it was in the theaters, it's easy to see why: its biggest star was Ben Kingsley, and it reeked heavily of Alien rip-off. But SPECIES had one thing all three Alien movies didn't have -- sex. In short, the movie details what a beautiful alien/human (spawned by dark and stupid government forces from alien DNA received via radar) must go through to spawn in L.A. Sil (glassy-eyed model Natasha Henstridge) is a guileless, Nordic, man-hungry mating machine whose life cycles are commemorated by a trail of male corpses. Sil's F/X designs were indeed mustered up by H.R. Giger, the depressive Swiss artist behind that distinctive rib-cage-and-womb vibe that anyone who's seen Alien will instantly recognize. Sil is pursued through L.A.'s worst nightclubs and bachelor pads by head honcho Kingsley, sleepy manhunter Michael Madsen, blubbering "empath" Forest Whitaker, scientific Brit Alfred Molina and hot-to-trot biologist Marg Helgenberger. SPECIES gets its snarkiest thrills from Sil's nightmarish physical changes, though they're less shocking than cool, like watching a blister rash spread on your own arm. In fact, the scare factor is dwarfed by the movie's bumper crop of outrageous Freudian subtext. It's the winner of this year's What This Movie's Really About Award: there's really no way to ignore the film's horrified view of feminine body rites, from puberty to childbirth. (The sequel should have taken on menopause.) The film practically shudders with fear: fear of sex, of menstruation, of dating, of female orgasms, of impotence, of fatherhood, of pregnancy, of birth, of statuesque blondes who undress in front of you without your having to so much as buy them a cocktail first. Well, the last one might be a legit source of dread, but wouldn't it have been more interesting, though significantly less hilarious, if Sil hadn't been gorgeous - can you imagine the drama of a homely alien trying to get laid in L.A.? But it's not our fear we're writing about, anyway - it's the filmmakers'. Their apparent horror outpaces ours by a mile. Giger, director Roger Donaldson, writer Dennis Feldman, co-producer Frank Mancuso Jr.- these guys must have some super dating stories. We can't help picturing them dissolving into quaking, bug-eyed panic whenever their wives complain of mid-month bloat. In the movie, catch Sil's tentacle-filled cocoon-transformation from girl to woman - it's the wackiest first period ever captured on film. Every time she gets aroused after that, it's time for some poor sucker to get mauled. You'd imagine that somebody might have noticed that the film boils down to a bunch of nervous guys covering their testicles. But apparently no one did; maybe it is all just subconscious terrors worming their way to the surface. Which is even better, frankly; it's a timeless joy when Hollywood unknowingly unleashes its own neuroses on the world. We laughed so hard we nearly popped a blood vessel in our eye when Sil aggressively tries to mount one guy in a pool and the luckless dope promptly loses his ...erm... drive. She turns into a cat-eyed alien thing and kills him. And there's plenty of incidental fun to be had: Helgenberger is charming, the computerized effects are startling, and there's even the infrequent, authentically frightening scene. Though it's far more polished, SPECIES reminded us most of HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP, a Doug McClure piece of crap in which rangy reptilian creatures rape and impregnate human women. Real sweet stuff. SPECIES is a lot more fun, because you can just see everyone sweating tremulously behind the cameras. | ||
 | Species | |
| "SEX IN L.A. JUST GOT EVEN MORE DIFFICULT IN THIS LAUGH-A-MINUTE ALIEN RIP-OFF" | 2008-08-03 |
| Just when you thought it was safe to skinny-dip with a semen-hungry supermodel, along comes SPECIES to warn you that at any moment she might grow horns on her back and rip you up like a parking ticket. This blech-gak-ptooey sci-fi thriller is in fact mostly ptooey - sillier than it is frightening. The movie puts the definitive '90s twist on the old alien-is-loose scenario: she's a six-foot blonde goddess, and all she wants to do is copulate. If you decided to pass on this load of goosey nonsense while it was in the theaters, it's easy to see why: its biggest star was Ben Kingsley, and it reeked heavily of Alien rip-off. But SPECIES had one thing all three Alien movies didn't have -- sex. In short, the movie details what a beautiful alien/human (spawned by dark and stupid government forces from alien DNA received via radar) must go through to spawn in L.A. Sil (glassy-eyed model Natasha Henstridge) is a guileless, Nordic, man-hungry mating machine whose life cycles are commemorated by a trail of male corpses. Sil's F/X designs were indeed mustered up by H.R. Giger, the depressive Swiss artist behind that distinctive rib-cage-and-womb vibe that anyone who's seen Alien will instantly recognize. Sil is pursued through L.A.'s worst nightclubs and bachelor pads by head honcho Kingsley, sleepy manhunter Michael Madsen, blubbering "empath" Forest Whitaker, scientific Brit Alfred Molina and hot-to-trot biologist Marg Helgenberger. SPECIES gets its snarkiest thrills from Sil's nightmarish physical changes, though they're less shocking than cool, like watching a blister rash spread on your own arm. In fact, the scare factor is dwarfed by the movie's bumper crop of outrageous Freudian subtext. It's the winner of this year's What This Movie's Really About Award: there's really no way to ignore the film's horrified view of feminine body rites, from puberty to childbirth. (The sequel should have taken on menopause.) The film practically shudders with fear: fear of sex, of menstruation, of dating, of female orgasms, of impotence, of fatherhood, of pregnancy, of birth, of statuesque blondes who undress in front of you without your having to so much as buy them a cocktail first. Well, the last one might be a legit source of dread, but wouldn't it have been more interesting, though significantly less hilarious, if Sil hadn't been gorgeous - can you imagine the drama of a homely alien trying to get laid in L.A.? But it's not our fear we're writing about, anyway - it's the filmmakers'. Their apparent horror outpaces ours by a mile. Giger, director Roger Donaldson, writer Dennis Feldman, co-producer Frank Mancuso Jr.- these guys must have some super dating stories. We can't help picturing them dissolving into quaking, bug-eyed panic whenever their wives complain of mid-month bloat. In the movie, catch Sil's tentacle-filled cocoon-transformation from girl to woman - it's the wackiest first period ever captured on film. Every time she gets aroused after that, it's time for some poor sucker to get mauled. You'd imagine that somebody might have noticed that the film boils down to a bunch of nervous guys covering their testicles. But apparently no one did; maybe it is all just subconscious terrors worming their way to the surface. Which is even better, frankly; it's a timeless joy when Hollywood unknowingly unleashes its own neuroses on the world. We laughed so hard we nearly popped a blood vessel in our eye when Sil aggressively tries to mount one guy in a pool and the luckless dope promptly loses his ...erm... drive. She turns into a cat-eyed alien thing and kills him. And there's plenty of incidental fun to be had: Helgenberger is charming, the computerized effects are startling, and there's even the infrequent, authentically frightening scene. Though it's far more polished, SPECIES reminded us most of HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP, a Doug McClure piece of crap in which rangy reptilian creatures rape and impregnate human women. Real sweet stuff. SPECIES is a lot more fun, because you can just see everyone sweating tremulously behind the cameras. | ||
 | Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band | |
| "A SPLENDID TIME IS GUARANTEED FOR ALL?" | 2008-06-29 |
| The 70's did have a dark side. Those who have seen the movies ROLLER BOOGIE or MOMENT BY MOMENT know a little something about that; but we're not talking about ordinary bad cinema, here. We're talking about soul-sucking, cosmic darkness. We're talking about... . . .SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND. The film may have been conceived in a spirit of merriment, but watching it feels like playing shuffleboard at the absolute insistence of a bossy shipboard social director. When whimsy gets to be this overbearing, it simply isn't whimsy any more. The point behind turning Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees into the Beatlesque band of the title was, presumably, to lure both young rock fans and members of the rocking chair set. But the plan has its drawbacks. However much of a fan rave Mr. Frampton may have been, he's a musician, not a movie star, and even a plot that merely requires him to look sad, peppy or joyful from time to time is more than he can manage. In the role of Mr. Frampton's brother, Paul Nicholas, (nasty Cousin Kevin in Ken Russell's film of The Who's TOMMY), provides a particularly unhelpful contrast, since he is every bit as lively as the singer is stiff. Still, Mr. Frampton looks like Marlon Brando beside the even more wooden Brothers Gibb. Even if the Bee Gees aren't natural-born cutups, their principal job here is to perform a number of Beatles songs. This sounds as if it ought to be child's play, but the musical numbers are strung together so mindlessly that the movie has the feel of an interminable variety show. Characters are named, invented or introduced to one another simply to provide excuses for the various songs. This reaches a pinnacle of idiocy when a character named Strawberry Fields (Sandy Farina) sings "Strawberry Fields Forever" to her beau, Billy Shears (Mr. Frampton), who has been knocked unconscious. "Living is easy with eyes closed / Misunderstanding all you see," Strawberry sings, for absolutely no good reason. Even worse, when the screenplay has Strawberry killed (temporarily - DON'T ASK) so that a few sad songs can be sung, Mr. Frampton is obliged to croon "Golden Slumbers" to the woman in a see-through coffin! There are three brief sequences good enough to put the rest of the picture to shame. Steve Martin, cackling his completely unhinged rendition of "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," is a reminder that the film is otherwise humorless. Billy Preston, doing a flashy, rousing dance to the tune of "Get Back," makes the other hoofers look sadly two-left-feet. And Aerosmith, singing a piercing rock version of "Come Together," bring a taste of the 60's to a movie dead-set on both exploiting and soft-pedaling that era. The lowlights (in a movie full of them) include George Burns (who also narrates) crooning "Fixing a Hole," and Donald Pleasence (as a sleazy Robert Stigwood-like record producer) attempting a bit of "I Want You." To bear witness to either of these moments is to die a little. You WILL cringe and say "Oh, that's just not right." Still, a splendid time IS guaranteed for all (who have a warped sense of humor and an iron tolerance for the ridiculous.) | ||
 | Batman Returns | |
| "Pfeiffer easily makes this the BEST of the Burton BATMANS" | 2008-06-03 |
| There's never been a more potent weapon than sex. In the hands of the wrong woman - an angry one - every man is in danger. Even Batman. Especially Batman. In Tim Burton's darkly oddball sequel BATMAN RETURNS, Batman seems unbeatable against Gotham City's nemesis Max Shreck (Christopher Walken) or The Penguin (Danny DeVito). He's not in any real danger until he meets Catwoman, a tiny, curvaceous blonde out there in that Gotham tomb of a city all by herself. Batman knows she wants to kill him, but he can't figure out why. And, confused neurotic that he is, deep down he digs it. Big mistake. Michelle Pfeiffer, cursed with a rare beauty, has spent most of her career playing someone's object of desire - an exhaustingly passive role for such a talent. In Catwoman, she found the part that would turn her image on its head, and she sank her formidable acting claws into it. Tim Burton isn't an actor's director - he's a visionary with his sights set elsewhere. But Pfeiffer can handle herself. First, she takes Selina Kyle - pre-Catwoman - and makes her much more than the frumpy, put-upon office gal the character might otherwise have been. Pfeiffer's Selina is full of nervous twitches, and when she talks to herself, it's scary. Pfeiffer brings Selina's sexual longing front-and-center, particularly when she's imagining the amorous exploits of her cat. And when Selina confronts her evil boss Shreck with his secrets, Pfeiffer plays it coy, almost like a seduction, as if she doesn't care about the danger. Everything Catwoman will be, Pfeiffer shows us, already exists in Selina. As Selina trashes her pink, frilly little girl's world on the way to her transformation into Catwoman, it's a pissed-off Michelle Pfeiffer we've never seen before. Then, once concealed in her skintight cat suit, Pfeiffer is free to climb over the top, and from her first line as Catwoman - "I don't know about you, Miss Kitty, but I feel so much YUMMIER" - we know she's not going to stop there. This character could have been just another campy confection, but Pfeiffer makes her truly dangerous. Her Catwoman voice is more a guttural growl than a purr. And when she gives herself an astounding tongue bath in front of the horny Penguin, it's too flat-out nasty to be a come-on. It's meant to provoke. Then, in that signature moment when she backflips up to Batman and Penguin and delivers a welcoming "Meow," it's perfect: jaded, world-weary and dripping with sex. Suddenly, the rest of the movie falls away and it's down to the two of them, circling each other, sizing each other up. As Selina to Keaton's Bruce Wayne, Pfeiffer struggles to control her neurotic alter ego in a comically dysfunctional relationship. As Catwoman to Keaton's Batman, she tries to rip her opponent/lover to shreds. In either guise, she's forever peeking from behind her mask, assessing the damage, wondering how far she should go - the perfect participant in a romance for the '90s. | ||
 | The War of the Roses | |
| "THE TRUE RETURN OF THE BLACK COMEDY" | 2008-06-02 |
| In 1989, with the arrival of THE WAR OF THE ROSES we witnessed the beginning of a welcome change in film comedy. And not a moment too soon. The past decade had been marked by a series of shameless, mean-spirited comedies celebrating the joys of middle class materialism - from RISKY BUSINESS to THE SECRET OF MY SUCCESS to any film starring former "Saturday Night Live" comics such as Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, etc. Extreme amorality in the pursuit of social gain was no vice in these comedies. No matter how nasty the characters were - Bill Murray in SCROOGED and GHOSTBUSTERS for example - they never had to account for their actions. The ends always justified the means. THE WAR OF THE ROSES offerred no such assurance. As in the great black comedies of the past - DR. STRANGELOVE, LOLITA, SUNSET BOULEVARD - the characters must face retribution. The story of Barbara and Oliver Rose (Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas) starts out mimicking classic Hollywood screwball comedies like THE AWFUL TRUTH or HIS GIRL FRIDAY, in which estranged husbands and wives are eventually reunited through a series of amusing incidents. Then, slowly, the film turns and you find yourself gagging on your guffaws as these partners in a disintegrating marriage engage in mutual assured destruction. THE WAR OF THE ROSES is often hilarious, but this comedy is not pretty. Rather, it is a bracing splash of carbolic acid in the face of romance and is thus likely to make a lot of people very uncomfortable. Toying with the conventions of domestic comedy is inflammatory stuff, particularly at the time, when we were used to drinking our genres straight up. After all, when Jonathan Demme messed with our expectations in SOMETHING WILD, shifting to a menacing tone in the second half, the audience turned on him. But, then, perhaps the film was just a little ahead of its time. Woody Allen's CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS also mixed comedy with darker material, and audiences responded to it. THE WAR OF THE ROSES is more subversive and corrosive than either of those films, however. And if the film is marred by a rather heavy-handed dose of misogyny (it's no coincidence that the movie was directed and written by men --Danny DeVito and Michael Leeson, respectively), you still have to give credit to any comedy that can make you feel this queasy. Like the Demme and Allen films, THE WAR OF THE ROSES wreaks havoc with our value systems and forces us to face up to the resulting mayhem. An alternative title for the film - uttered by Turner at one point and originally credited to Dorothy Parker - could be "What fresh hell is this?" | ||
 | The Stunt Man | |
| "A Great Film Is Elevated Even Higher By A Brilliant Peter O'Toole" | 2008-05-12 |
| By 1980, the year THE STUNT MAN was released, Peter O'Toole and his peers -- that infamous troupe of besotted British actors which included Richard Burton, Robert Shaw and Richard Harris -- were considered anachronisms by Hollywood. Fast living had aged them beyond their years, but more to the point, these classically trained Europeans, their mannered acting styles designed to project to the last rows of the Old Vic, seemed hopelessly dated compared with the introspective naturalism of America's latest generation of rising Method actors, led by De Niro. For the most part, this lot was best remembered by American audiences for their historical costume dramas and World War II epics of the '60s -- the kinds of films nobody was making anymore. For O'Toole in particular, the glory days of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA were long gone -- his screen work had recently included TV movies and the big-screen abomination CALIGULA. THE STUNT MAN, an ambitious black comedy about filmmaking and paranoia, resurrected O'Toole's career and garnered him his sixth Best Actor Oscar nomination. The irony in this is that O'Toole's comic performance as a half-mad movie director willing to risk everything to finish his film is quite purposely based on the same flamboyant dramatics that marked the actor as old-world and out of date. O'Toole's Eli Cross has three days to wrap his antiwar film, with both his ego and his career on the line, and so he slows for nothing, not even the accidental death of a stunt man. (Real-life directors have gone as far in pursuit of their goals.) In creating his character, O'Toole has mixed in touches of such directing legends as John Huston and David Lean, for whom he had worked. But Cross is no mere parody. Rather, Cross plays as a composite of Peter O'Toole's greatest hits: there are shades of Henry II, head of that ancient English dysfunctional family, whom O'Toole had played to perfection in both BECKET and THE LION IN WINTER. Well aware of the aptness of the director-as-king metaphor, O'Toole invests Cross with Henry's regal magnetism -- part warrior, part diplomat, part schemer. But in another sly stroke of insight, O'Toole draws even more heavily on his role as Jack, the paranoid schizophrenic nobleman who's certain he's Jesus Christ in THE RULING CLASS. Standing on a lofty perch above his cast and crew, Cross booms out in a voice that needs no megaphone: "We must have this shot!... I thereby order that no camera shall jam, and no cloud pass before the sun!" O'Toole grins crookedly -- he knows Cross is only half-serious -- but he plays his megalomaniacal director as a man who wants his crew to believe he is the closest thing to a deity they're likely to meet. "If God could do the tricks we can do, he'd be a happy man," Cross insists, and it's O'Toole's delivery, brimming with a crazed self-confidence, that makes this the film's tag line. O'Toole makes Cross larger than life, a screen presence whose hypnotic charm, more than his temper, reputation or title, is the true key to the manipulative power he wields. "I can't figure it out," says one character, an on-the-lam criminal whom Cross seduces into replacing the dead stunt man and risking his life on a movie set, "I can't take my eyes off the son of a bitch." It is an apt description of Cross the director, and a fitting tribute to O'Toole the actor, who roused himself from career torpor for one glorious performance which, in recalling the best moments of a bygone era, proved how compulsively watchable an old ham can be. | ||
 | The Stunt Man (Limited Edition) | |
| "A Great Film Is Elevated Even Higher By A Brilliant Peter O'Toole" | 2008-05-12 |
| By 1980, the year THE STUNT MAN was released, Peter O'Toole and his peers -- that infamous troupe of besotted British actors which included Richard Burton, Robert Shaw and Richard Harris -- were considered anachronisms by Hollywood. Fast living had aged them beyond their years, but more to the point, these classically trained Europeans, their mannered acting styles designed to project to the last rows of the Old Vic, seemed hopelessly dated compared with the introspective naturalism of America's latest generation of rising Method actors, led by De Niro. For the most part, this lot was best remembered by American audiences for their historical costume dramas and World War II epics of the '60s -- the kinds of films nobody was making anymore. For O'Toole in particular, the glory days of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA were long gone -- his screen work had recently included TV movies and the big-screen abomination CALIGULA. THE STUNT MAN, an ambitious black comedy about filmmaking and paranoia, resurrected O'Toole's career and garnered him his sixth Best Actor Oscar nomination. The irony in this is that O'Toole's comic performance as a half-mad movie director willing to risk everything to finish his film is quite purposely based on the same flamboyant dramatics that marked the actor as old-world and out of date. O'Toole's Eli Cross has three days to wrap his antiwar film, with both his ego and his career on the line, and so he slows for nothing, not even the accidental death of a stunt man. (Real-life directors have gone as far in pursuit of their goals.) In creating his character, O'Toole has mixed in touches of such directing legends as John Huston and David Lean, for whom he had worked. But Cross is no mere parody. Rather, Cross plays as a composite of Peter O'Toole's greatest hits: there are shades of Henry II, head of that ancient English dysfunctional family, whom O'Toole had played to perfection in both BECKET and THE LION IN WINTER. Well aware of the aptness of the director-as-king metaphor, O'Toole invests Cross with Henry's regal magnetism -- part warrior, part diplomat, part schemer. But in another sly stroke of insight, O'Toole draws even more heavily on his role as Jack, the paranoid schizophrenic nobleman who's certain he's Jesus Christ in THE RULING CLASS. Standing on a lofty perch above his cast and crew, Cross booms out in a voice that needs no megaphone: "We must have this shot!... I thereby order that no camera shall jam, and no cloud pass before the sun!" O'Toole grins crookedly -- he knows Cross is only half-serious -- but he plays his megalomaniacal director as a man who wants his crew to believe he is the closest thing to a deity they're likely to meet. "If God could do the tricks we can do, he'd be a happy man," Cross insists, and it's O'Toole's delivery, brimming with a crazed self-confidence, that makes this the film's tag line. O'Toole makes Cross larger than life, a screen presence whose hypnotic charm, more than his temper, reputation or title, is the true key to the manipulative power he wields. "I can't figure it out," says one character, an on-the-lam criminal whom Cross seduces into replacing the dead stunt man and risking his life on a movie set, "I can't take my eyes off the son of a bitch." It is an apt description of Cross the director, and a fitting tribute to O'Toole the actor, who roused himself from career torpor for one glorious performance which, in recalling the best moments of a bygone era, proved how compulsively watchable an old ham can be. | ||
| The Stunt Man | |
| "A Good Film Elevated To Greatness By A Brilliant Peter O'Toole" | 2008-05-12 |
| By 1980, the year THE STUNT MAN was released, Peter O'Toole and his peers -- that infamous troupe of besotted British actors which included Richard Burton, Robert Shaw and Richard Harris -- were considered anachronisms by Hollywood. Fast living had aged them beyond their years, but more to the point, these classically trained Europeans, their mannered acting styles designed to project to the last rows of the Old Vic, seemed hopelessly dated compared with the introspective naturalism of America's latest generation of rising Method actors, led by De Niro. For the most part, this lot was best remembered by American audiences for their historical costume dramas and World War II epics of the '60s -- the kinds of films nobody was making anymore. For O'Toole in particular, the glory days of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA were long gone -- his screen work had recently included TV movies and the big-screen abomination CALIGULA. THE STUNT MAN, an ambitious black comedy about filmmaking and paranoia, resurrected O'Toole's career and garnered him his sixth Best Actor Oscar nomination. The irony in this is that O'Toole's comic performance as a half-mad movie director willing to risk everything to finish his film is quite purposely based on the same flamboyant dramatics that marked the actor as old-world and out of date. O'Toole's Eli Cross has three days to wrap his antiwar film, with both his ego and his career on the line, and so he slows for nothing, not even the accidental death of a stunt man. (Real-life directors have gone as far in pursuit of their goals.) In creating his character, O'Toole has mixed in touches of such directing legends as John Huston and David Lean, for whom he had worked. But Cross is no mere parody. Rather, Cross plays as a composite of Peter O'Toole's greatest hits: there are shades of Henry II, head of that ancient English dysfunctional family, whom O'Toole had played to perfection in both BECKET and THE LION IN WINTER. Well aware of the aptness of the director-as-king metaphor, O'Toole invests Cross with Henry's regal magnetism -- part warrior, part diplomat, part schemer. But in another sly stroke of insight, O'Toole draws even more heavily on his role as Jack, the paranoid schizophrenic nobleman who's certain he's Jesus Christ in THE RULING CLASS. Standing on a lofty perch above his cast and crew, Cross booms out in a voice that needs no megaphone: "We must have this shot!... I thereby order that no camera shall jam, and no cloud pass before the sun!" O'Toole grins crookedly -- he knows Cross is only half-serious -- but he plays his megalomaniacal director as a man who wants his crew to believe he is the closest thing to a deity they're likely to meet. "If God could do the tricks we can do, he'd be a happy man," Cross insists, and it's O'Toole's delivery, brimming with a crazed self-confidence, that makes this the film's tag line. O'Toole makes Cross larger than life, a screen presence whose hypnotic charm, more than his temper, reputation or title, is the true key to the manipulative power he wields. "I can't figure it out," says one character, an on-the-lam criminal whom Cross seduces into replacing the dead stunt man and risking his life on a movie set, "I can't take my eyes off the son of a bitch." It is an apt description of Cross the director, and a fitting tribute to O'Toole the actor, who roused himself from career torpor for one glorious performance which, in recalling the best moments of a bygone era, proved how compulsively watchable an old ham can be. | ||
 | The Stunt Man | |
| "A Good Film Elevated To Greatness By A Brilliant Peter O'Toole" | 2008-05-12 |
| By 1980, the year THE STUNT MAN was released, Peter O'Toole and his peers -- that infamous troupe of besotted British actors which included Richard Burton, Robert Shaw and Richard Harris -- were considered anachronisms by Hollywood. Fast living had aged them beyond their years, but more to the point, these classically trained Europeans, their mannered acting styles designed to project to the last rows of the Old Vic, seemed hopelessly dated compared with the introspective naturalism of America's latest generation of rising Method actors, led by De Niro. For the most part, this lot was best remembered by American audiences for their historical costume dramas and World War II epics of the '60s -- the kinds of films nobody was making anymore. For O'Toole in particular, the glory days of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA were long gone -- his screen work had recently included TV movies and the big-screen abomination CALIGULA. THE STUNT MAN, an ambitious black comedy about filmmaking and paranoia, resurrected O'Toole's career and garnered him his sixth Best Actor Oscar nomination. The irony in this is that O'Toole's comic performance as a half-mad movie director willing to risk everything to finish his film is quite purposely based on the same flamboyant dramatics that marked the actor as old-world and out of date. O'Toole's Eli Cross has three days to wrap his antiwar film, with both his ego and his career on the line, and so he slows for nothing, not even the accidental death of a stunt man. (Real-life directors have gone as far in pursuit of their goals.) In creating his character, O'Toole has mixed in touches of such directing legends as John Huston and David Lean, for whom he had worked. But Cross is no mere parody. Rather, Cross plays as a composite of Peter O'Toole's greatest hits: there are shades of Henry II, head of that ancient English dysfunctional family, whom O'Toole had played to perfection in both BECKET and THE LION IN WINTER. Well aware of the aptness of the director-as-king metaphor, O'Toole invests Cross with Henry's regal magnetism -- part warrior, part diplomat, part schemer. But in another sly stroke of insight, O'Toole draws even more heavily on his role as Jack, the paranoid schizophrenic nobleman who's certain he's Jesus Christ in THE RULING CLASS. Standing on a lofty perch above his cast and crew, Cross booms out in a voice that needs no megaphone: "We must have this shot!... I thereby order that no camera shall jam, and no cloud pass before the sun!" O'Toole grins crookedly -- he knows Cross is only half-serious -- but he plays his megalomaniacal director as a man who wants his crew to believe he is the closest thing to a deity they're likely to meet. "If God could do the tricks we can do, he'd be a happy man," Cross insists, and it's O'Toole's delivery, brimming with a crazed self-confidence, that makes this the film's tag line. O'Toole makes Cross larger than life, a screen presence whose hypnotic charm, more than his temper, reputation or title, is the true key to the manipulative power he wields. "I can't figure it out," says one character, an on-the-lam criminal whom Cross seduces into replacing the dead stunt man and risking his life on a movie set, "I can't take my eyes off the son of a bitch." It is an apt description of Cross the director, and a fitting tribute to O'Toole the actor, who roused himself from career torpor for one glorious performance which, in recalling the best moments of a bygone era, proved how compulsively watchable an old ham can be. | ||
 | The Stunt Man | |
| "A Good Film Elevated To Greatness By A Brilliant Peter O'Toole" | 2008-05-12 |
| By 1980, the year THE STUNT MAN was released, Peter O'Toole and his peers -- that infamous troupe of besotted British actors which included Richard Burton, Robert Shaw and Richard Harris -- were considered anachronisms by Hollywood. Fast living had aged them beyond their years, but more to the point, these classically trained Europeans, their mannered acting styles designed to project to the last rows of the Old Vic, seemed hopelessly dated compared with the introspective naturalism of America's latest generation of rising Method actors, led by De Niro. For the most part, this lot was best remembered by American audiences for their historical costume dramas and World War II epics of the '60s -- the kinds of films nobody was making anymore. For O'Toole in particular, the glory days of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA were long gone -- his screen work had recently included TV movies and the big-screen abomination CALIGULA. THE STUNT MAN, an ambitious black comedy about filmmaking and paranoia, resurrected O'Toole's career and garnered him his sixth Best Actor Oscar nomination. The irony in this is that O'Toole's comic performance as a half-mad movie director willing to risk everything to finish his film is quite purposely based on the same flamboyant dramatics that marked the actor as old-world and out of date. O'Toole's Eli Cross has three days to wrap his antiwar film, with both his ego and his career on the line, and so he slows for nothing, not even the accidental death of a stunt man. (Real-life directors have gone as far in pursuit of their goals.) In creating his character, O'Toole has mixed in touches of such directing legends as John Huston and David Lean, for whom he had worked. But Cross is no mere parody. Rather, Cross plays as a composite of Peter O'Toole's greatest hits: there are shades of Henry II, head of that ancient English dysfunctional family, whom O'Toole had played to perfection in both BECKET and THE LION IN WINTER. Well aware of the aptness of the director-as-king metaphor, O'Toole invests Cross with Henry's regal magnetism -- part warrior, part diplomat, part schemer. But in another sly stroke of insight, O'Toole draws even more heavily on his role as Jack, the paranoid schizophrenic nobleman who's certain he's Jesus Christ in THE RULING CLASS. Standing on a lofty perch above his cast and crew, Cross booms out in a voice that needs no megaphone: "We must have this shot!... I thereby order that no camera shall jam, and no cloud pass before the sun!" O'Toole grins crookedly -- he knows Cross is only half-serious -- but he plays his megalomaniacal director as a man who wants his crew to believe he is the closest thing to a deity they're likely to meet. "If God could do the tricks we can do, he'd be a happy man," Cross insists, and it's O'Toole's delivery, brimming with a crazed self-confidence, that makes this the film's tag line. O'Toole makes Cross larger than life, a screen presence whose hypnotic charm, more than his temper, reputation or title, is the true key to the manipulative power he wields. "I can't figure it out," says one character, an on-the-lam criminal whom Cross seduces into replacing the dead stunt man and risking his life on a movie set, "I can't take my eyes off the son of a bitch." It is an apt description of Cross the director, and a fitting tribute to O'Toole the actor, who roused himself from career torpor for one glorious performance which, in recalling the best moments of a bygone era, proved how compulsively watchable an old ham can be. | ||
| The Stunt Man (Limited Edition) | |
| "A Good Film Elevated To Greatness By A Brilliant Peter O'Toole" | 2008-05-12 |
| By 1980, the year THE STUNT MAN was released, Peter O'Toole and his peers -- that infamous troupe of besotted British actors which included Richard Burton, Robert Shaw and Richard Harris -- were considered anachronisms by Hollywood. Fast living had aged them beyond their years, but more to the point, these classically trained Europeans, their mannered acting styles designed to project to the last rows of the Old Vic, seemed hopelessly dated compared with the introspective naturalism of America's latest generation of rising Method actors, led by De Niro. For the most part, this lot was best remembered by American audiences for their historical costume dramas and World War II epics of the '60s -- the kinds of films nobody was making anymore. For O'Toole in particular, the glory days of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA were long gone -- his screen work had recently included TV movies and the big-screen abomination CALIGULA. THE STUNT MAN, an ambitious black comedy about filmmaking and paranoia, resurrected O'Toole's career and garnered him his sixth Best Actor Oscar nomination. The irony in this is that O'Toole's comic performance as a half-mad movie director willing to risk everything to finish his film is quite purposely based on the same flamboyant dramatics that marked the actor as old-world and out of date. O'Toole's Eli Cross has three days to wrap his antiwar film, with both his ego and his career on the line, and so he slows for nothing, not even the accidental death of a stunt man. (Real-life directors have gone as far in pursuit of their goals.) In creating his character, O'Toole has mixed in touches of such directing legends as John Huston and David Lean, for whom he had worked. But Cross is no mere parody. Rather, Cross plays as a composite of Peter O'Toole's greatest hits: there are shades of Henry II, head of that ancient English dysfunctional family, whom O'Toole had played to perfection in both BECKET and THE LION IN WINTER. Well aware of the aptness of the director-as-king metaphor, O'Toole invests Cross with Henry's regal magnetism -- part warrior, part diplomat, part schemer. But in another sly stroke of insight, O'Toole draws even more heavily on his role as Jack, the paranoid schizophrenic nobleman who's certain he's Jesus Christ in THE RULING CLASS. Standing on a lofty perch above his cast and crew, Cross booms out in a voice that needs no megaphone: "We must have this shot!... I thereby order that no camera shall jam, and no cloud pass before the sun!" O'Toole grins crookedly -- he knows Cross is only half-serious -- but he plays his megalomaniacal director as a man who wants his crew to believe he is the closest thing to a deity they're likely to meet. "If God could do the tricks we can do, he'd be a happy man," Cross insists, and it's O'Toole's delivery, brimming with a crazed self-confidence, that makes this the film's tag line. O'Toole makes Cross larger than life, a screen presence whose hypnotic charm, more than his temper, reputation or title, is the true key to the manipulative power he wields. "I can't figure it out," says one character, an on-the-lam criminal whom Cross seduces into replacing the dead stunt man and risking his life on a movie set, "I can't take my eyes off the son of a bitch." It is an apt description of Cross the director, and a fitting tribute to O'Toole the actor, who roused himself from career torpor for one glorious performance which, in recalling the best moments of a bygone era, proved how compulsively watchable an old ham can be. | ||
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