steve.schonberger Reviews

Sword of Trust (2019)

Lynn Shelton does a good job with her first film made outside the Pacific Northwest

[7/10 · 18 May 2019]

Cynthia (Jillian Bell) and her wife Mary (Michaela Watkins) visit Alabama, and learn that Cynthia has inherited a Civil War sword from her grandfather. They try to sell it to pawn shop owner Mel (Marc Maron), while Mel's slacker employee Nathaniel (Jon Bass) observes. But there's something special about the sword, which leads them to artifact collector "Kingpin" (David Bakkedahl).

7 Good The story, by Lynn Shelton and Mike O'Brien, is a rather silly, but makes an excellent framework for comedy improvisation. A story revision based on a script note added a nice touch of respect for southerners. Shelton does a very good job of directing. The main cast all deliver excellent comedy and good dramatic performances; Shelton herself is very good in a small dramatic role. Maron provides very good music.

Overall, I rate the film good.

Languages: English.

Rating: I don't think this film has a US rating (yet), but I'd guess it would rate a "R", for language.

Better Watch Out (II) (2016)

Giant change of motives by a major character is a fatal flaw.

[2/10 · 27 June 2017]

There are no spoilers until the spoiler warning.

This film – made in Australia but set in a generic US suburb – starts like a Christmas comedy. Parents Deandra and Robert await babysitter Ashley, who will take care of their adolescent son Luke. Luke and his best friend Garrett surf the Internet, where Luke reads that the best way to seduce a woman is to watch a scary horror movie with her. Garrett insists that Ashley is much too old to be interested in Luke, but Luke wants to try anyway. When Ashley arrives, Deandra and Robert leave, confident that all will go well while they're out at a holiday party, since she's been their usual babysitter for years.

Following his ridiculous Internet-inspired plan Luke suggests watching a horror movie with Ashley. They settle in front of the television. But soon strange things start to happen. A lighted Santa Claus figure moves. There are strange phone calls. Are they just scaring themselves because they're watching a scary movie? Or are outside events starting to get even scarier than the movie? Will Ashley's boyfriend Ricky or her ex-boyfriend Jeremy save the day?

I sometimes like horror movies, including serious films like _Rosemary's Baby_ and _The Shining_, and horror comedies such as _Black Sheep_ and _Fido_. But I'm pretty picky, and I don't care for slasher movies, torture porn, and the like. But this movie aspired to be a horror comedy, so I stuck around in hopes of something like Black Sheep. No such luck.

I can't properly describe what's so bad about the story and screenplay without spoilers, except to say that a major character had at least one huge change in motives.

There are plenty of implausible elements in the story, but most fall within the range of creative license for a horror movie. However, the giant plot hole I describe in the spoilers (below) is a fatal flaw. I rate the story and screenplay poor.

The directing is somewhat better. The scenes are well staged, it makes good use of color, and sometimes the film even have a degree of suspense. But it fails on the comedy side; the only humor is in the cheerful Christmas music, a joke that wears out very quickly. I rate the directing almost good.

The acting is also pretty respectable. Madsen and Warburton are good in their small roles. DeJonge is good in her leading role. Miller is good in his leading role, in spite of what the story gives him. Oxenbould is fair as the geeky friend, and directing may be partly to blame for his shortcomings. Mikic is almost good and Montgomery good in their small roles. Bit players (carolers) are fair, but directing may be to blame for their weakness.

Overall, I rate the film poor; the faults of the story overwhelm all the things about the film that are adequate.

(This review is adapted from my own film journal.)

• - -

Lots of spoilers begin here:

At the beginning of the film, Luke is established as a horny adolescent with a ridiculously juvenile plan to seduce Ashley. But the scary events outside are an elaborate plot he has orchestrated, with the aid of Garrett. They simulate a home invasion, and get out one of Robert's poorly-secured guns to defend against the fake invader. He disables the household Internet and tricks Ashley into losing her phone. Although Ashley is justifiably terrified, she's still not interested in sex with Luke. The underage drinking they indulge in doesn't help with the seduction either.

Later, Garrett has second thoughts about the dangerous mischief, and tries to talk Luke out of it, particularly after Luke drugs Ashley and duct tapes her to an armchair. Luke persists, and threatens to reveal the champagne consumption. She still refuses to let him fondle her breasts, so he fondles her anyway.

Suddenly, Luke's motives change from sexually abusing Ashley to murder. He texts her boyfriend Ricky and ex-boyfriend Jeremy to lure them to the house, manages to subdue Ricky and tape him into another armchair, subdues Jeremy and blackmails him into writing a letter of apologies. Then the murders start: he kills Ricky with a heavy bucket of paint, hangs Jeremy from a tree in a staged suicide, kills Garrett with a shotgun, stabs Ashley in the neck, and then rubs all the murder weapons on Jeremy's hands. (He apologizes to Garrett as he kills him.) Then he slips into bed.

The only clue that Luke might have had secret murderous thoughts is that he eventually reveals that he once murdered Garrett's pet hamster. If the film had foreshadowed his dark side, such as by having the parents thank Ashley for being the only babysitter who could deal with Luke, his change in motive from sex to murder might have made sense. I still would have disliked the movie, but the giant, fatal (pun intended) plot hole would have been resolved.

Later the parents return and discover the murders. Luke, upstairs pretending to be asleep, rouses at the screams. Police and emergency crews arrive, and discover that Ashley isn't quite dead, and rush her to the hospital. Maybe Luke won't get away with it after all.

Scorchy (1976)

Not just so bad it's good, this is so bad it's _spectacular_.

[6/10 · 27 June 2017]

As a first point, don't settle for the television edit of this film, which for many years was the only way to see it. Find the restored re-release version. Much of the fun was left out of the television edit, and can only be seen in the restoration.

Although the film credits a police technical adviser, the script doesn't seem to have paid much attention to him. When plausibility comes into conflict with wild plot twists or spectacle, plausibility rarely wins. But the writer- director is considerably better as a director; the scenes flow well, and the action scenes are always either thrilling or hilariously over the top.

The acting is a mix, and sometimes it's hard to tell a badly-acted scene with one where an actor couldn't overcome the writing. But when a scene is unconvincing, it's not bland, it's funny.

A lot about the film is pretty weak, but the spectacle of the chase scenes adds a lot to the quality of the film- making. Judging it on its merits as a police thriller, it's merely a "5", fair. But the film's entertainment value is much higher than that, not just for the chase scenes, but for the laugh value of the film in scenes where it goes wrong. So for fun it's a "9", excellent.

Finally, I live in the Seattle area. The film is full of Seattle scenery, vintage 1976. Picking out scenes of Seattle, and marveling at the changes in the city over four decades, is a special pleasure for anyone familiar with Seattle.

• - -

Here's a spoiler-rich summary of the film's events (from memory, with help on character name from AFI):

The film begins with Carl, a hardened killer, disguised as a priest, bumping off a drug courier and traveling from Rome to Seattle with ten kilos of heroin hidden inside a fake ancient sculpture, a favorite McGuffin in 1970s crime films. Also aboard the plane is police detective Jackie Parker (Connie Stevens, who the movie poster calls "Scorchy"), who is trying to track the drugs and bust the smugglers. Other police meet Jackie at the airport, and each trails one of the suspects. The sculpture goes to Mary, an (apparently not too discerning) art collector. The dead courier's boss, Philip, learning of his man's demise, decides that Jackie (who, under cover as a private pilot, had befriended his wife Claudia) would be a perfect substitute courier.

Jackie and the smuggling bosses visit Mary to retrieve the sculpture to deliver it to a restoration specialist, who is actually the Carl, to restore the statue by removing the drugs under Jackie's supervision. Carl shoots an assistant who is no longer useful, and flees, with Jackie in pursuit in an appropriated dune buggy.

Thus begins the main spectacle of the film: a well-orchestrated, many-vehicle chase scene with some impressive stunts. When faced with a choice between plausibility and spectacle, the film chooses spectacle. When faced with a choice between strong-arm robbery and homicide, Carl chooses murder. The chase concludes with a motorcycle jump toward a Washington State Ferry.

A few scenes later, smugglers press Jackie into flying the drugs to the San Juan Islands. Her plane isn't ready for a while, so she has a romantic interlude at her Lake Union home (a property so expensive that a real cop probably couldn't even afford to rent it for a weekend). The romance is violently interrupted by Carl and his goon Nick, who make off with the heroin.

Jackie gives Philip and Claudia an update, and somehow everyone converges on the home of someone named Suzi. Lots of people start shooting and another big chase ensues. With the aid of a listening device, Jackie learns that the drugs are headed to a mansion owned by kingpin "Big Boy".

Police stake out Big Boy's mansion, and Big Boy arrives by helicopter. A giant shootout ensues, and both the cops and the crooks demonstrate remarkable tactical incompetence. As villains start getting away, Jackie sets out in pursuit of Philip in a police helicopter that had arrived during the shootout. They face off at Gasworks Park, she catches him, he shoots her with her own gun, and he kills him with her back-up gun.

The Bad Batch (2016)

It wants to be an art-house send-up of exploitation films, but it's just exploitation.

[2/10 · 27 June 2017]

I generally try to avoid spoilers, and this is no exception, but there are small details from throughout the course of the story, so I checked the spoiler warning.

My wife walked out on this film about five minutes into it, offended by the exploitative abuse-of-woman scene that opened the movie. I stuck it out, and the film improved to the point that it started to look promising, like an art-house post-apocalyptic movie. Unfortunately it then turned boring, with endless scenes of the main character wandering barren desert, then being adopted into "Comfort", a seemingly benevolent community with no visible means of survival in a virtually lifeless desert, and wandering aimlessly in that community. The main character followed up with an act of revenge against someone she recognized from the exploitative opening scene, adoption of a member of the exploitative community, some more aimless wandering in Comfort, adoption of a cute animal, and more wandering in the barren desert. Finally, it then finished with an ending in the barren desert that suggested that the writer didn't quite figure out how to satisfactorily conclude the story.

I read some reviews by professional critics, many of which which were quite a bit more favorable than my reaction. Although I recognized what they praised the film for, I still didn't like it. The similarity between Comfort and a Burning Man camp are amusing. The pop-culture references in the music track, the debris in the desert and in Comfort, and so forth are amusing. The use of well-known actors in small roles is interesting. But the interesting pieces don't add up to an interesting film.

I can see that the writer (who also directed) put a lot of thought into the ideas behind the film, and aspired to something that was both an exploitation film and an art-house send-up of exploitation films -- but she only managed to succeed at making an exploitation film. Maybe if there were more hints about how Comfort was supposed to function, why the "bad batch" people had partitioned into two camps, and so forth? Maybe if there were actually an ending that made sense? Often when I see a bad movie, I ask, "How could this be made into a good movie?" Sometimes when I see a good movie, I think of ways it could be made even better. But in this case, I can't see any way to make a good movie out of this except a large-scale rewrite.

One might ask how so many notable actors ended up in a film this bad. My guess is that they were drawn in by the writer-director's previous work _A Girl Walks Home at Night_, which was well-received by IMDb voters and very well reviewed by professional critics, and didn't expect that her second feature film would be a mess.

Reprise (2006)

Tedious story, pretentious directing, admirable acting.

[4/10 · 19 May 2008]

Philip (Anders Danielsen Lie) and Erik (Espen Klouman-Høiner) are friends, both writers, both fans of elder writer Sten Egil Dahl (Sigmund Sæverud). They finish their books around the same time, and dare to submit them only by dropping them into the mailbox at the same time.

While awaiting a reply, they hang out with their guy friends, a superficial bunch of misogynists who think girlfriends are a drag on creativity, free time, and ability to be interesting. IMDb lists Henning (Henrik Elvestad), Lars (Christian Rubeck), Morten (Odd Magnus Williamson), Jan Eivind (Henrik Mestad), and Geir (Pål Stokka), but I couldn't keep them all straight.

Philip's book is accepted; Erik's is not. But while Erik suffers self-doubt and possibly, Philip suffers a nervous breakdown.

A voice-over narrator (Eindride Eidsvold) blames Philip's nervous breakdown on his obsessive love for his girlfriend Kari (Viktoria Winge), who is advised not to visit him in the mental hospital to avoid making him worse. He reminisces about the trip he took her on to Paris, where he tricked her into falling in love with him, as he remembered it.

SPOILER PARAGRAPH: Meanwhile, Erik manages to beat his book into publishable condition, and his editor Johanne (Rebekka Karijord) tries to talk him out of his title, Prosopopeia, which the editor considers too obscure. (The film doesn't ever define it; I had to look it up. It's a Greek word meaning "anthropomorphism" or "personification".) When it sells, he feels obligated to dump his girlfriend Lillian (Silje Hagen), apparently thinking himself too good for her once he's a published author. But he wimps out, and sticks with her.

When Philip has recovered enough to be released from the mental hospital, they go back to their routine with the annoying guy friends. He tries to write another book. Kari and Philip meet up again, and they go back to Paris in hopes of repeating the falling-in-love trip (apparently the "reprise" of the title, which means roughly the same thing in Norwegian).

Near the end, someone dies.

Director Joachim Trier uses a style that is distinctive, but I'm not sure it's good. In most shots with more than one person, he frames the people just a little too tightly, with backs of heads in two-shots crowded out, and people on edges of group shots only half in the frame. Every scene seems to have a desaturated blue color to it. To the film's credit, the shots are in focus, and although most or all shots are hand-held they're steady. I rate the directing fair (5).

The director and Eskil Vogt wrote the script. Although the directing isn't much good, the script is the film's worst weakness. Philip is mentally ill, which could make him an interesting subject for a film, but all the film does with his illness is show him enter and leave a mental hospital, and fail to write a decent second book. Erik struggles with his self-doubt and apparent lesser writing talent, but the film's presentation of him is so vague that his struggles aren't interesting either. Their literary idol is vaguely interesting in his brief screen time, but he's a bit part at best. Their male friends are unlikeable, but not in an interesting way – they're just a bunch of guys who hang around and complain about women.

The most interesting characters are the three women. Kari is the best-developed character in the film, even though she gets less screen time than Philip or Erik. Johanne is interesting because she actually does something other than whine about teen-angst, which the mostly late-20s characters should have outgrown. Lillian is a small part, but she's interesting because the misogynist chorus seems to have a special dislike for her, which could be an interesting story.

One good point in the script is that there are a few scattered scenes that are funny – not great comedy work, but at least it was a break from the tedium. Overall, I rate the story lackluster (4).

The acting is all solid, most notably that of Viktoria Winge. But the good acting goes to waste on a script that is dull, and directing that obscures the performances.

One good point of the film was interesting music, featuring Norwegian bands and various punk rock.

On the basis of the lackluster story, and other elements that don't do much to elevate the film, I rate it lackluster (4) overall.

My wife and I saw this at the 2007 Seattle International Film Festival. It was even worse for my wife than for me. She had seen it in Norway, sucked in by favorable reviews. She didn't like it. Then she ended up seeing again, because of an unannounced festival schedule change. I suggested she slip out and shop, or otherwise have some fun, but I figured I'd sit through it to see if it just didn't work for her. But she decided to give it a second try, thinking maybe there was something admirable about it that she missed the first time. No such luck; it was just as boring the second time.

Offscreen (2006)

Good acting and directing are wasted on a shockingly awful story.

[1/10 · 5 May 2007]

Nicolas Bro is an obsessive actor. His marriage to Lene Maria Christensen is in trouble; she's fallen out of love with him. Instead of a normal approach, such as couples counseling, he decides to make a love story film, starring him and his wife. He borrows a camera from director Christoffer Boe (also the film's real-life director) and starts recording everything. His obsessive recording further alienates Lene, and gradually drives away all of his friends, even Boe.

MILD SPOILERS:

Eventually, Lene flees to Berlin, asking her friends to keep her new address secret. This drives Nicolas even deeper into obsessive madness. His in-laws (Karen Margrethe Bjerre and Niels Weyde) try to talk sense into him, expressing concern, but he just hassles them for her address.

A friend from his stage-theater group takes his tapes, because he's recorded stuff some of them consider private. She offers to return them on condition that he sign a statement that he won't release them in public. He wants them back unconditionally, and they argue. (I'm not sure how that argument resolved, or whether it's before or after Lene's departure to Berlin.) He recruits Trine Dyrholm to play his wife so he can finish his film project, but they have creative differences that derail that effort.

With the help of Lene's credit card bill, which arrives at their home address (presumably because she forgets to get new credit cards with a different billing address), Nicolas figures out where she is in Berlin. He goes there, and tracks her down. He spies on her, discovering she has a new boyfriend. He approaches her, and after she excuses herself from her friends she takes him to her hotel room to talk some sense into him. They talk late into the night. When Nicolas finally dozes off, she records a goodbye message with his camera, and takes it away from him in hopes that he'll finally quit filming everything.

BIG SPOILERS:

Instead of abandoning the project, Nicolas moves to a cheaper apartment, and sells his comic book collection to pay for a new hand-held camera and a set of surveillance cameras he installs in every room of the apartment. He meets a woman at a bar (I think Trine, since I assume Lene was still in Berlin) and when they go for a walk he knocks her out with a baseball bat. He drags her to the new apartment, where she regains consciousness, and fights her way free of him.

He heads for a bar and gets roaring drunk, boasting about the beating and complaining about how she fought her way free. Apparently the other idiots in the bar think he's full of crap, rather than confessing a crime, because they don't do anything.

Before word about the beating spreads, he meets another woman (I think a friend from his old stage-theater company), and invites her to another bar, where he gets even more drunk. Concerned for his safety, she escorts him back to the new apartment. She comments on the cameras, then observes the plastic all over the apartment, and speculates that he's renovating. No such luck – he beats her bloody with a broken-off table leg. She doesn't wake up. He positions her in various poses for his cameras, as if she were his long-lost wife.

Word of the first beating apparently gets around, and a bunch of guys go looking for Nicolas. He slips out of his apartment just in time, and evades them, but they discover the bloodied woman there. They track him down and start beating. Someone grabs his camera to record the beating, as if finishing his film. The film concludes as he sits unconscious, with squirts of arterial blood indicating his dwindling pulse.

END SPOILERS.

Cheerful music plays over the end credits.

Most of the cast of this film play characters with the same name as the cast members themselves. IMDb credits them as "Himself" and "Herself", and although the characters resemble the cast members in some respects they're not really playing _themselves_. For example, Nicolas is an actor in real life, and collects comic books, but as far as I'm aware he's neither insane nor married to Lene Maria Christensen. The characters would best be credited as "fictionalized himself" and "fictionalized herself".

Nicolas Bro is very good as nut-job Nicolas. Trine Dyrholm is also very good. In fact, most of the acting is solid, with the exception of Christoffer Boe, who is lackluster at acting.

The directing, by Christoffer Boe, also isn't bad. The camera work plays well with the movie's premise of an actor obsessively filming himself. The hand-held shots are shaky enough to fit the premise, but steady enough to present the story. The static-camera shots are framed imperfectly enough to fit the premise, but again well enough to present the story. The scenes are assembled in a way that gets the idea across well enough.

But the admirable acting and good directing go to waste.

The critical problem with the film is the story, written by the director and Knud Romer Jørgensen. Once we've seen Nicolas fail to revitalize his marriage to Lene, then alienate her and his friend with his obsessive recording, that plot direction runs stale and turns repetitious. His attempt to rescue his project with Trine is a decent change of direction. His trip to Berlin would have made a good conclusion, given how Lene handled him there. Had it ended at that point, I could have given the film a rating of 6.

Unfortunately, the writers didn't think that was enough for a feature film project, or maybe they just couldn't figure out a good closing scene to wrap up after Berlin. Instead, they continued in a direction that felt like it was meant more for stupid and offensive shock value, ruining an already-shaky film.

Monster House (2006)

The story is the key to the movie, and it's very good.

[8/10 · 16 June 2006]

Looking out his window, DJ (Mitchel Musso) sees a creepy-looking house (Kathleen Turner). It's owned by Mr Nebbercracker (Steve Buscemi), who really doesn't want people on his lawn. Toys that end up there disappear, taken by Nebbercracker to discourage trespassing. DJ catalogs the lost items, but his parents (Catherine O'Hara and Fred Willard) aren't interested in his observations of the house. Just before Halloween, his parents leave him home, in the care of babysitter Elizabeth (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who prefers the nickname "Z". His friend "Chowder" (Sam Lerner) visits, and joins his observation of the house. They spot Jenny (Spencer Locke, who is a girl whose parents stuck her with a boy's name) about to try to sell Halloween candy to Nebbercracker, and hurry to talk her out of approaching the house. Before long, they discover that Nebbercracker isn't the only thing that's creepy about the house. The house, it seems, has a life of its own.

This movie started as a script that sat unproduced for years, for want of technology and the right people to make it. The technology that went into it turned out to be the same sort of animation as _The Polar Express_, digital animation based on motion capture. Like _Polar_, it has a stylized look rather than attempting photorealism, but instead of taking the look of paintings in a book, it took the look of extremely detailed dolls and doll accessories. But with motion capture driving the movements of the characters, they end up with a lot of personality, which overrides their stylized look. The animation is least effective in the climax scene at the end, where it exaggerates the action just a bit too far for my tastes, but even there it's pretty good. Most of the time the animation is excellent, with just the right degree of exaggeration to fit the stylized look. The sets are very good, particularly a construction site near the house. I'd rate the animation very good.

More important than the technology is the story. What really makes the images on the screen interesting is the way they serve the story. Comparing with _The Polar Express_ again highlights the point -- this movie had a solid story, compared with _Polar_, which expanded a very thin children's book into a feature-length story. This movie's story isn't in a class with the best of Pixar, but the film-makers are clearly aware of the fact that the strength of the story is very important. I'd rate the story very good.

The voice and motion capture performances, shot in only 34 days, are almost all excellent. My favorite was Maggie Gyllenhaal, who was wonderful in her supporting part as babysitter "Z". The least satisfying, I thought, was Jon Heder (as video-game master "Skull"), and he was good, just not great. Even Kathleen Turner, as the house, performed in the motion capture space, moving around in a neighborhood constructed of foam. I really hope that the director wasn't joking when he said he might include her motion capture video as a DVD extra. Nick Cannon, as a rookie police officer, was probably the funniest character, relative to his screen time.

Kathleen Turner's presence in the cast is a bit of a nod to executive producer Robert Zemeckis, who cast her as Jessica Rabbit in _Who Framed Roger Rabbit_. She was thrilled by the part, which gave her a grotesque role to mirror her glamorous role as Jessica Rabbit. Other Zemeckis references are more obvious. Most obvious one is in the opening, featuring a leaf. Another deals with a basketball -- originally an accident during production. Others may exist, but it's not packed with pop culture references like the _Shrek_ movies.

Directing an animated film is different in a lot of ways from directing live action, which makes it more complicated to rate. Directing this movie involved directing both the motion capture performances and the camera positioning. The director took the script, and made complete storyboards from it. From those, he made an animatic, which guided the way he directed the motion capture shoot. Because of the way character interactions affected the results, he said that he ended up throwing out all the storyboarding, but I'd guess he meant that figuratively. The character interaction looked really good, better than almost any animated movie I've seen. I'd rate the directing excellent, in a class with Pixar.

Overall, I'd rate the movie very good, mostly on the strength of the story. Kids are usually easy to please, and they'll probably find the movie excellent. Adults are harder to please. Where _Shrek_ emphasizes pop culture references for adult appeal, this movie targets adults' memories of childhood, effectively drawing adults into enjoying it like the kids in the audience.

Credits: There are a few additional scenes after the credits begin. Don't run out right away. Stick around at least until the fine-print credits roll.

Personal appearances: The director, Gil Kenan, and a couple of the producers (I don't know which ones, but not Spielberg or Zemeckis) were there. The director took questions from the audience, and answered very enthusiastically -- he seemed like he was thrilled to see his film in front of a real audience, and not burned out from hearing the same questions over and over. He was really nice to the kids in the audience, and behaved like he was new to the experience of being the center of attention. He signed lots of autographs (including one for me), and seemed genuinely pleased that people cared enough to ask. That's a reaction that one might expect for the director of something obscure, but uncommonly nice for the director of a big-budget summer movie.

The US rating is "PG", for some scary scenes and (supposedly) "crude humor and brief language". The crude humor is minimal, compared to typical movies aimed at kids. I can't think of any inappropriate language.

Sup chuk sui dik ha tin (2005)

A coming-of-age story starts out promising, but disappoints toward the end.

[5/10 · 18 May 2006]

Honey (Kong Ling) and her three best friends enjoy a summer at a sea-side resort near Hong Kong. On their way there, they stop at a video store and buy a few VCDs. Later, they return to the same resort for one last summer together, before Honey leaves for university in Beijing. TT (McChing Mak) looks like the odd one out, with her unfeminine clothing and hair. Sammi (Isis Lee) seems to be drifting away from the others, thanks to her interest in a boy. Later, Honey gets to know Bitters (Larry Chan), who she had first seen at the video store.

Meanwhile, Baby (Dolphin) spends a summer in the same town, on vacation from her Hong Kong job. There she makes friends with local brothers To (Chan Ming To) and Fu (Yin Wong Bong).

The title refers to the fact that movies on VCD are typically split into one-hour segments, sides "A" and "B", and that the setting is a sea-side resort.

All of the acting performances are at least good. The actresses who played Honey and TT stand out as very good. Scene-by-scene, the directing (by Ah Chiu) was mostly very good. Some scenes were excellent, most notably a dare involving TT, and a couple of nicely-photographed scenes that included a kitten. But the directing couldn't overcome two jarring leaps of focus in the story.

The script (by three writers) was good until the first leap in focus. After that, it never really got back on track. The middle segment didn't really have much to say, and the final segment didn't return to a point that concluded the initial story.

Overall, I thought the movie was fair -- a big disappointment after how well it started.

Language: Mostly Cantonese, with occasional English borrow-words, with English subtitles. One scene also includes Putonghua (Mandarin) and English.

The Place Promised in Our Early Days (2004)

A fine coming-of-age story with some shaky philosophical science fiction

[7/10 · 19 June 2005]

In the film's alternate history, Japan is partitioned between the US and the Union (presumably the post-WWII USSR). The Union side has built a giant tower on Hokkaido, so tall it's even visible from Tokyo. Two teen boys just across the straights from the island are fascinated with the mysterious Tower, want to build an airplane to visit it, and get jobs at a factory in the area. The rest of this paragraph has possible mild spoilers. They let a teen girl in on the secret, and she becomes fascinated with it too. That near-obsession with the Tower disrupts their lives in various ways, starting with strange dreams.

This was a pretty strange film. The relationships between the characters are very well portrayed. We get a pretty good feel for the three teens, though a change in one of them as they grow up is less clearly defined. The boys' boss is an interesting supporting character. The plot works well as an influence on the three teens' lives, but it weakens as it steps deeper into a blend of science and philosophy.

The movie works best up until the mystery of the Tower becomes fairly clearly revealed. Afterwards, the philosophical science fiction distracts from the very good character-based storytelling. However, because it's something so far from the ordinary, I recommend it quite a bit more strongly than I would a more typical movie.

I saw the movie in Japanese, subtitled in English -- with the amusing exception of about three lines of English which were subtitled in Japanese.

Fire in the Sky (1993)

One of the worst cinematic messes I've had the misfortune of viewing

[3/10 · 21 December 2004]

I saw this movie a long time ago, actually wasting money to see it in a theater. It was uncommonly terrible, as if a high school drama club had been given a film budget and a shaky _X-Files_ parody story for a screenplay -- and then tried to shoot it as serious drama instead of parody. No, that's not fair to high school drama clubs -- I think they'd do better than this.

The plot is the cliché of space aliens who abduct rednecks, do some humiliating procedures on them that vaguely resemble invasive medical examinations, and then release them back into the human world, where hardly anyone believes them because their story is ridiculous. The story claims to be based on a true story. I suppose it could be a true story in the sense that people occasionally claim to be abducted by space aliens, but it had the feel of a parody that someone was trying to take seriously.

The acting ranged from lackluster down to pitiful. Even James Garner wasn't much good -- maybe he realized he was slumming and couldn't put his heart into it. The effects were mostly cliché and cheap-looking, but one of the medical humiliation sets was pretty good. I don't remember whether the directing was any good.

Mercifully, my memory of this piece of trash has faded, but it would have been even better if I had never seen it at all.

The Hours (2002)

Hours and Hours

[6/10 · 8 February 2003]

I haven't read the book, or anything by Virginia Woolf, so my impressions may differ from viewers who have read _The Hours_ or Woolf's writings.

The movie has three parallel stories. One is set in the 1920s, and focuses on the historic Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman, difficult to recognize with the prosthetic nose and frumpy clothing), with her husband (Stephen Dillane) as the only important supporting character. Another is set in the 1950s, and focuses on a woman (Julianne Moore) who appears to have a happy life situation, but is nonetheless visibly melancholy. The third is set in modern New York City, and focuses on a woman (Meryl Streep) who is a close friend of a man (Ed Harris, also difficult to recognize) who is suffering gravely from AIDS.

I found the historic story line dull from start to end, with the exception of the opening scene, where Woolf drowns herself, hinting that the remainder of her story line will tell us more about _why_ she eventually kills herself. Her story line showed us _that_ she was miserable to the point of suicide, and indicates that she's suffering from what we'd now call clinical depression, but I never felt like the movie took us inside her suffering. Instead, it was like watching someone suffer, without ever understanding the misery or being able to do anything about it. I could feel empathy with her husband, but I felt like the movie was trying to take us inside _her_ without success, rather than trying to show us her suffering from her husband's viewpoint.

The modern story was similarly dull during the beginning of the movie, but got more involving as it progressed. In the beginning, we could see that the sick man, a noted poet, was miserable and depressed because his illness was getting worse in spite of his medicine. Streep's character was putting her life on hold emotionally in her efforts to comfort him. She was planning a big party to celebrate the poet's receipt of a major poetry award. The story became more interesting with the introduction of some supporting characters, but only really took off when Streep's character went to pick up the poet for the party. That set interesting events into motion, and brought in a very interesting supporting character.

The only part of story that had me hooked from the start was the one set in the 1950s. In that one, Moore's character was gloomy, for no obvious reason -- she didn't even appear to be clinically depressed or otherwise unhealthy, mentally or physically. Her children were the envy of a friend who visited her. Her husband seemed to be nice, and they appeared to be living a comfortable life. The story grabbed me by setting up the nature of her unhappiness a mystery, and the story stayed interesting by showing what she did as a result of her sadness.

Now that I've complained about how dull more than half of the story was, I have to praise some things that were good about the movie. The acting was outstanding, and deserves lots of award nominations, even the great acting that went to waste in the dull parts of the movie. The three female leads were amazing, and Ed Harris was impressive too. The directing was impressive in a number of ways, notably the cuts between story lines, but when the directing technique is more interesting than some of the story lines, the directing should have kept looking for a way to keep the story itself interesting.

I usually don't notice the score, but in this case I noticed it, found it a bit intrusive. It sounded like every other Phil Glass composition I have heard, which might be interesting a few times, outside the context of a movie, but didn't work for me in this case. If you like Phil Glass, you might like the score separately, but I would not have chosen it for this movie.

I left out some giant spoilers, because they would not make this review more interesting for those who aren't seeing the movie. If you think you might see the movie, be careful to avoid spoilers from other sources, because they're likely to hurt this movie more than most.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)

A pretty good special effects showcase that loses much of the book's verbal charm

[7/10 · 20 October 2002]

I liked the movie, and though it did a pretty good job of presenting a "Cliff's Notes" version of the book. (Well, not really. Real Cliff's Notes typically include analysis along with the synopsis that students sometimes use to avoid reading the whole book.) For someone who has read the book, the movie is somewhat superfluous, although it is a decent effects showcase. For someone who hasn't read the book, it's a good shortcut to the story, although it misses a lot of the verbal cleverness of the book.

Since most people who are likely to be interested in the movie have already read the book (unless they're parents there with kids who are fans), and the movie doesn't add anything to the book in terms of storytelling, the only fair way to rate it for most viewers is on the basis of the effects. In terms of technical craftsmanship, I thought the effects were very good, but they weren't so hot in terms of artistic creativity. That is, the effects were mostly stuff that we've all seen before, but it was very skillfully done collection of stuff we've seen before.

Compared to the long history of mostly-awful fantasy movies, it's an outstanding movie, near the cream of the crop. But since it was released in a year that also included the first Lord of the Rings movie, it looks pretty weak. But just think how brilliant it would have looked if its main fantasy competitor had been something like the cartoon Lord of the Rings, the Dungeons and Dragons movie or Ator the Fighting Eagle.

(I didn't actually see the D&D movie; I was warned off by critics. But I did see Ator way back when, and then saw it again by mistake when it was re-released with a different title, and even wrote an IMDB review for it.)

Cleopatra (1963)

A triumph of set design over story-telling.

[6/10 · 17 December 2000]

The good news about Cleopatra is that the sets were spectacular. Maybe Rome and Alexandria didn't look that way, but the sets do a great job of suggesting the magnificence of the capital an empire and the capital of its richest subject kingdom. Maybe the triumphal arch hadn't been built in Cleopatra's time, but it makes a great setting for her grand entrance into Rome.

The costumes were impressive too, even if they more closely resemble early 1960s fashion than the 40s and 30s B.C. Elizabeth Taylor's huge wardrobe was the highlight, but most of the costumes were interesting.

Unfortunately, great sets and costumes don't make a great movie, although they do show how the movie became the most expensive movie ever (which it remains, adjusting for inflation). The movie just doesn't remain interesting through its entire four hours. Even some of the battle scenes are dull, even though that's usually a highlight of ancient-world movies. (There are some good battle scenes too, however.) The problem is that the movie lacks focus in trying to tell a story. Sometimes it's a historical drama, sometimes it's a romance story, and sometimes it's just a showpiece for the great sets. Five writing credits are listed, and it certainly looks like a committee wrote it.

The Cleopatra-Caesar is the better portion of the movie. Caesar is an interesting character, aware of his mortality, seeking power in spite of the burden of power, and attracted to the much-younger Cleopatra. Cleopatra wanted to rule the world, and sought it in the bedroom as well as in the throne room and on the battlefield. The historic Cleopatra's allure was said to be in her voice and her words, not her appearance; with Caesar the movie often suggests her charisma, while Taylor's beauty is a very agreeable divergence from history. Had the movie raced through the events after Caesar's death, it would have been much shorter and better.

Unfortunately, the movie really drags during the Cleopatra-Antony portion, except in scenes with the delightfully unpleasant Octavian. Antony seems little more than a sucker for Cleopatra's charms, rather than a general and politician who was shrewd enough to make himself one of three co-rulers of Rome, but not shrewd enough to avoid his eventual fate as Octavian's rival. Cleopatra's goals are no longer clear, but wind down from her earlier ambition to rule the world to her scaled-down hopes to retain rule of Egypt for herself and her son. Rather than dramatizing the events, it just uses them as bridges between scenes of spectacle.

With so much time to tell about Cleopatra and Antony, the movie should have been able to show more about the characters. Cleopatra makes the blunder of seducing the number-two man in a Triumvirate that couldn't last long before the number-one man seized sole power. The movie fails to tell us how someone so astute would make the mistake of choosing the wrong ally, or standing aside until she could ally with the winner. Was Antony the one who seemed likely to prevail at the time she committed herself? Did she feel the need to take a side before a victor could be predicted, and fail to charm Octavian? Or did she choose badly because she was romantically smitten with Antony? She might hide the reason from Antony, but the movie shouldn't hide the reason from viewers. The characters need motives to be interesting.

The most interesting character in the Cleopatra-Antony part of the movie is Octavian. He is a much more interesting character, and the movie shows us more about him than the leads, even though he gets much less screen time.

The Cleopatra-Caesar part of the movie is pretty good, and the spectacle is impressive throughout, but the story gets lost in the Cleopatra-Antony part. Maybe the writers got bored after Caesar's death; I certainly got bored after that.

Perseo l'invincibile (1963)

cheesy but entertaining action

[5/10 · 24 July 2000]

This movie is not a literary dramatization of classical mythology. Instead it's a melodramatic action movie. The plot takes some long divergences away from the mythological sources, and has a few bits that don't quite make sense, but it does the job of carrying the characters from one action scene to another. The introduction tells us that Perseus is an honorary Son of Hercules, for no apparent reason except maybe to link it with the many Italian Hercules movies.

The acting is only occasionally good, but it's never terrible either. The costumes are pretty basic, but set the mood well. The sets are mostly simple too, but also get the idea across. There are plenty of extras in scenes that need them. The fights are sometimes well-choreographed and performed, but sometimes look dumb.

The lighting is almost always bright sunshine; even night scenes look sunlit, just slightly underexposed. The pan-and-scan was sloppy, and sometimes shows obvious losses, like people split vertically while they're talking. The cinematography probably looks better in widescreen versions.

The worst part was the monsters. The dragon looks decent, if low-budget, but doesn't move well in scenes it shares with actors. It's also a bit on the small side, but it's big enough to threaten a warrior in leather and bronze armor. It looked like a model of some sort, rather than a person in a dragon suit. In contrast to the dragon, Medusa is terrible, even though she's the title character in some of this movie's many titles. She looks like a leafless tree walking around on exposed roots, with a single glowing eye. Myths described her as a woman with snakes for hair, and looks so hideous her gaze turned people to stone.

The music sometimes took itself too seriously, but it kept the mood going pretty well. During the Medusa scenes, the score turned squeaky, as if the musicians were laughing at what they could see were dumbest scenes in the movie. Often it sounded better-suited to a Western than an ancient myth setting.

In parts where the movie is good, it's quite entertaining. When it's bad, it's still entertaining in a "so bad it's good" sense. As long as you don't set your expectations too high, you should be satisfactorily entertained.

Lensman (1984)

Corny kiddie cartoon

[4/10 · 23 July 2000]

I rented the dubbed-English version of Lensman, hoping that since it came from well-known novels it would have some substance. While there were hints of substance in the movie, it mostly didn't rise above the level of kiddie cartoon. Maybe the movie was a bad adaptation of the book, or it lost a lot in the dubbed version. Or maybe even the source novels were lightweight. But for whatever reason, there wasn't much there.

I noticed lots of details that were derivative, sloppy, poorly dramatized, or otherwise deficient. Some examples: The opening scenes looked borrowed from the 2001 "star gate" scene and the Star Wars image of hyperspace. The robot on the harvester looked like an anthropomorphized "R2-D2".

It starts out trying to borrow its comic relief style of Star Wars, but mercifully (since the humor doesn't work) gives up on comedy and plays it serious. In that sense, it's superior to the Star Wars franchise, which started with a clever sense of humor, and eventually deteriorated to Jar-Jar's annoying silliness.

The agricultural details were apparently drawn by someone who had never seen a farm. The harvester was driving through the unharvested middle of a field, dumping silage onto unharvested crops, rather than working from one side to the other and dumping the silage onto already-harvested rows or into a truck. Corn (maize) was pouring out the grain chute, but the farm lands were drawn like a wheat field.

When it was time for Kim's father had to face his fate, there wasn't any dramatic weight to the scene. That could have been partly the fault of the English-language voice actor, but the drawings didn't show much weight either. Kim's reactions in that scene were similarly unconvincing.

Similarly, when a character named Henderson was killed, Chris showed very little reaction, even though they were apparently supposed to have been close. (Henderson's death is no spoiler; his name isn't revealed until his death scene.) She seems to promptly forget him. Someone's expression of sympathy shows more feeling than she does. I think the voice actor deserves most of the blame in that case; there's at least a hint of feeling in the drawings of Chris.

On several occasions, villains fail to accomplish their orders. A villain leader often punishes those failures with miserable deaths. I can't say whether that's lifted from Star Wars, or if that comes from an earlier source -- possibly the Lensman books.

There's a scene where a space ship crash-lands. As it plunges toward the ground, parts are break off the ship. But so many pieces are fall off that there should be nothing left of it by the time it lands.

While in most cases Chris seems like a competent, tough space hero, there's a scene where she shrieks like an incompetent damsel in distress. Someone tough enough to get over Henderson's death so quickly should at least be able to shout, "help, it's got me and I can't reach my gun!" instead of just shrieking.

The character with the most personality (almost too much at times) is D.J. Bill. He sounded like Wolfman Jack, the D.J. in American Graffiti. I wonder if he's as well-voiced in the original language.

Two planets in the movie exploded. The explosions were unimpressive, and appeared to owe a lot of inspiration to Star Wars. To its credit, however, the cause of the explosion was completely unlike the Death Star's primary weapon. The dialog had a good, interesting explanation for the cause. Many other explosions in the movie did look good, just not the planetary explosions.

Some of the sound effects are very cheesy, as if borrowed from a late 1970s video game. Some of the images look like primitive video games, and some influence from Tron is visible too. On the other hand, the sound effects are often pretty decent, although that emphasizes the cheesy-sounding parts. The art is good too, particularly when it stays away from the often cheesy-looking computer graphics.

Finally, there's the story. If a movie tells a good story, it can get away with a lot of production shortcomings. But the plot here was pretty lightweight. A naïve boy tries to help someone on a crippled space ship, and acquires a great power he doesn't understand. He and his band of very virtuous companions struggle against a powerful, unredeemably evil enemy. He makes friends, learns about his special power, and grows into a young man. If he is persistent and virtuous enough, he might even defeat the evil enemy. Details along the way can make such a story rise above the simple outline, but there's very little more than that in this movie.

In the end, it's just a kiddie cartoon. But then, since it looks like the primary intended audience is older children, maybe it doesn't need to be anything more than that.

Diabolique (1955)

outstanding thriller, with minor flaws

[7/10 · 23 July 2000]

This movie is a wonderful thriller about an abused wife and a mistreated mistress who team up to kill the brutal husband. Their plot at first seems like a perfect crime, but then complications start appearing. From the start, the wife's remorse risks revealing the crime, particularly after an inspector shows up. Then the husband's corpse disappears. The mystery and tension build up through the entire film, all the way to the conclusion.

The flaws are quite minor, because they don't detract from the suspense at all. One problem is that the ending was a bit too abrupt. An extra minute or two of denouement would have helped.

Another problem is that a few early clues in the movie were presented in a way that went a bit too far in misdirecting viewers away from the correct conclusion. A good mystery needs some red herrings, but one should have a bit more chance of recognizing them as misdirection. It would be an inexcusable spoiler to reveal the false clues, avoiding spoilers makes it difficult to explain which clue I mean to those who have seen the movie.

A nice touch at the end of the movie is that it has a request on screen asking viewers not to reveal the movie's secrets to people who haven't seen it. It is said to be the first movie to have included such a request.

I saw the Criterion DVD version. I'm pleased they selected it, because that's one thing that led me to watch the movie. In spite of the minor flaws I noted, the movie is a suspense classic.

Andrei Rublev (1966)

a mix of tedium and wonder

[6/10 · 22 July 2000]

The camera work in this movie is wonderful from start to end. Unfortunately, the beauty of the camera work sometimes gets in the way of the story-telling. In almost every scene, the camera lingers beautifully on scenes, so that I both appreciate the visual art and wish the movie would hurry up and tell the story. All of the acting is very good, but it's rarely demanding because the camera owns the scenes, not the actors.

The story is episodic, with little connection between most of the segments except the recurrence of the title character, a 15th century icon-painter. The first episode, about people flying a hot-air balloon, seems to have no connection to the rest. In another episode, Andrei wanders into the frolicking nudity of a pagan summer festival, where his monastery robes make him obviously out of place.

A few of the episodes shared another connection besides having Andrei present. The connection is a pair of twin brothers, both princes, who hate each other. In one of those, a prince guides a band of Tatar horsemen to Vladimir, a town ruled by his brother. He invites the Tatars to loot it, so that in the process they will kill or terrorize many of the other prince's subjects and ruin one of his towns.

One episode can't properly be described without a spoiler warning. Skip the rest of this paragraph unless you like spoilers. It shows a band of workers who, after building a palace for one of the twin princes, set off to work on their next construction job. But their next employer is the prince's brother, who intends to employ them to build an even grander palace. The prince sends horsemen after them, where they blind the unfortunate workers. OK, no more spoilers.

The best episodes are near the end. The main character in one of them is a woman Andrei had rescued during the attack on Vladimir. The woman was mute and somewhat disturbed, possibly as a result of the attack. Similarly, Andrei was deeply troubled by what he had done to rescue her. When Tatars appeared again, she ran to their leader. Andrei tried to rescue her again, but she resisted. Fortunately, she turned out not to need a rescue that time.

The final episode was the best of all, and features the most challenging and impressive acting performance. The teenage son of a bell-maker leads the casting of a huge church bell, because all the other bell-makers had died of the plague, and he is the only one who can be found who knows the secret of bell-making. It's a big job, requiring construction of a casting pit, a mold, melting furnaces, and a structure to lift the finished bell from the pit. He is very nervous, because he's doing an expensive, difficult, uncertain job without his father's guidance, for an employer who might kill him if he fails.

I saw the director's original 205 minute version, on the Criterion DVD. Soviet censors cut the movie, troubled by the allegorical reference to treatment of artists, including movie-makers. Later distributors cut the movie further, to make it accessible to a broader audience. While I would object to cuts for censorship, I think the movie would tell its story better if it were heavily cut for length. Any editing to improve the story-telling would unfortunately come at the cost of some wonderful cinematography, since every scene in the movie was a visual wonder. For all its beauty, I don't think there was even two hours of story-telling in this movie.

Ghost in the Shell (1995)

It's "cyberpunk", and I liked it anyway!

[8/10 · 19 July 2000]

This was one of the first animated Japanese movies I've see; the only other was the mythical adventure Mononoke Hime. I can only compare it to live-action movies with science fiction themes.

The movie is set in a future Hong Kong where cyborgs are common enough that even some of the garbage men have computers linked into their brains. The title refers to the distinction between the "ghost", the conscious mind that makes a person human, and the "shell", a person's natural or artificial body.

At the beginning, the "Section 9" internal security agency has its best agents investigating computer crimes linked to the mysterious individual known as the Puppet Master. His (or possibly her) nickname refers to the Puppet Master's criminal specialty, mind-controlling people by way of their own brain-implanted computer links.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs "Section 6" is also interested in the Puppet Master, who has apparently attempted to manipulate international diplomacy. Sections 6 and 9 soon come into conflict over how to pursue the Puppet Master, although it appears that a hostile internal rivalry already existed between those branches of government.

Section 9's top agent, "Major" Kusanagi is a cyborg who is mostly machine. Her investigative partner is Tosuga, a married man who still has almost all of his natural body. She has doubts about how human she is when she has almost nothing of her natural body left except her brain, and finds a mostly-natural partner reassuring. As she learns more about the Puppet Master, her doubts about her human "ghost" deepen.

The main plots are the pursuit of the Puppet Master, the government in-fighting, and Kusanagi's self-doubt. The interlinked plots are complicated enough to confuse an inattentive viewer. But watching closely, one can see that everything in the movie was leading toward the conclusion, although I could only managed to see that after I had seen the conclusion.

The characters all seemed to have motives that rationally explained their actions. In many movies, they would just do whatever the screenwriter needed them to do. The movie was good science fiction, with a lot of mystery and action, and a little politics and philosophy -- not just cyberpunk technobabble. Unlike so much science fiction, worst of all cyberpunk, the story isn't just a carrier for special effects, the story is the soul of the movie.

The animation was good, comparable in quality to mid-range Disney, but far short of masterpieces like Mononoke Hime. The artistic design was very good, with lots of depth and atmosphere, in the style of Blade Runner relocated to Hong Kong. The weapons and armed combat showed clear attention to realism. Overall, the movie was very good visually.

I watched the movie twice, in part to compare the Japanese and English voices. The Japanese voices were very expressive, although I couldn't understand the dialog without the subtitles. The English voices varied between competent and lackluster. The two versions are somewhat complementary -- the Japanese voices bring much more emotion to the movie, but the English sound track is often clearer on details than the somewhat-condensed English subtitles. Best of all is probably the Japanese sound track, for those who understand Japanese.

The music was excellent. The sound effects were very good. The overall sound quality was good on my modest sound system. I don't know how much better it would be in fancy surround sound.

Overall, the movie is very good.

Æon Flux (1991–1995)

numbingly tiresome eye candy

[3/10 · 19 July 2000]

I found Aeon Flux nearly unwatchable, in spite of the beautiful art and competent animation. I saw a pretty cartoon girl running around heavily armed but minimally dressed, in the devastated remains of an anonymous urban environment. She met people, and helped or killed them, apparently by whim. Other people tried to kill her for no visible reason. Of course, stopping or avenging her wonton killing would make rational motives, but I never saw any connection between the attackers and her victims were shown.

Maybe it all makes sense if you watch it over and over. Maybe it's entertaining if you're extremely intoxicated. But I have no desire to see it again, intoxicated or not, even if that will allow me to understand it.

I fail to see the appeal of the show.

The House of the Spirits (1993)

It feels like it didn't all fit on the screen

[7/10 · 13 July 2000]

I liked the movie, first of all because it told an interesting story, but the story as told in the movie felt like it was condensed from a much-longer story. Since the book is over 400 pages, that makes sense. It spans a time period from the 1920s to the 1970s, in a fictional South American country, also a lot to fit into the time available. I think it would have been much better as a six-hour mini-series than it turned out as a 140-minute movie.

Even though it's rushed, the story doesn't skip so much that it gets confusing. What is told is told fairly well. One fault is that Clara's supernatural powers appear inconsistently; either they should have appeared more evenly through the course of the movie, or they should have been left out. Two more faults (which could be spoilers): Esteban's eventual return to goodness happens somewhat too suddenly, and Ferula's curse seems to wear off, even though the tone of the story suggests that it should endure forever.

The acting is excellent. Glenn Close, as the tormented spinster Ferula, is outstanding. Jeremy Irons, as the brutal self-made rich man, is also excellent. Meryl Streep, as the main character Clara, is great, although she's often even better than she was in this movie. There were many well-performed smaller roles too. The biggest fault is that the movie seemed to lack a dialect coach; each actor seemed to speak in a different sort of accent.

Kicked in the Head (1997)

funny, but somewhat aimless

[5/10 · 2 July 2000]

The dialog in the movie is clever, with amusing use of fast talking and repetition. Some of the "philosophical" speeches were good too, particularly one where the main character (Redmond) was warned about stewardesses' body rhythms. The violent scenes seemed to be parodies of action movies; lots of shots fired without hitting anyone. There were a few visually amusing images worked in too.

The plot was mostly aimless. Redmond had no job or apartment, but a girl was interested in him anyway. He had few goals other than working on his book and getting noticed by a flight attendant who interested him. Along the way, Sam got him mixed up with some criminals. Redmond's uncle, Sam, observed that Redmond was in a self-destructive period in his life.

So while the plot was pretty weak, the dialog was pretty funny.

Earthquake (1974)

even Sensurround didn't make this a good movie

[4/10 · 22 June 2000]

I saw Earthquake on the big screen, complete with the giant "Sensurround" sub-woofer installation. Everyone went, to see the spectacle and feel Sensurround, but the only good thing about the movie was that it sold lots of tickets. Walking in, we wondered how cool Sensurround would be. Half way through, we wondered when something interesting would happen. Walking out, we wondered if it was bad enough to kill the disaster genre entirely.

The Sensurround didn't feel like an earthquake (as anyone who has experienced a real one would know), it felt like a giant sub-woofer. Worse, it could rumble at only one tone and loudness -- it was either on or off. Even though I was a kid, I wondered why the Sensurround speakers couldn't make us feel the difference between the little "warning" earthquake, the Big One, and the aftershocks. The only difference between the quakes was how long they lasted. What does it say about the movie when kids in the audience are thinking about the deficiencies of the movie's big gimmick, rather than caring about what was happening in the movie?

On the small screen, without even the gimmick attraction of the flawed Sensurround, I can't imagine this movie being entertaining, except as an object of audience mockery. Unless you're in the mood to laugh at bad movie-making, see The Poseidon Adventure instead.

Selena (1997)

a very good answer to the question, "who's Selena?"

[7/10 · 7 June 2000]

When the news reported that Selena Quintanilla was murdered, I wondered, "who was Selena?" The obituary mini-biographies told me almost nothing about her, except that she was fantastically popular as a Tejano singer.

The movie was made with the Quintanilla family's backing, so it's no surprise that it portrays Selena very favorably. But there's no hint of scandal in anything I've read about her, and the movie is fairly hard on Abraham, her father, manager, and the movie's executive producer. Maybe she fully deserved the movie's praise.

The movie was centered on her childhood and rise to fame. Her murder was just the conclusion to her story. That was a good choice: Told as the story of a musician rising from obscure child star to Grammy winner, but staying close to her family and grateful to her fans, the movie is unusual and interesting. Had it been told as the story of a star betrayed by a trusted associate, or the story of a person shot dead by an estranged friend, it would have been unfortunately ordinary, and less interesting.

Jennifer Lopez was amazing. She always seems right as the dutiful daughter who also pays the family's bills with her talent. Even when she's willful, awareness of likely consequences shows in her face. She does a fine job lip-synching the musical pieces too. Finally, her physical resemblance to the real Selena is amazing.

The other Selena actress, Rebecca Lee Meza as young Selena, was also very impressive, except for occasional lip-synch lapses. She looks a lot like I'd expect Jennifer Lopez as Selena to look like at a younger age.

The movie worked as entertainment, and it worked as a sympathetic biography. I liked the Spanish language music a lot too.

Prospero's Books (1991)

a huge waste of time, beautifully photographed

[3/10 · 4 June 2000]

This movie was pretentious and tedious. The cinematography and sets were beautiful, but not enough to stare at for what seemed like many hours. The story was peripheral to the visual design, and not enough to hold our interest. The only thing that kept us watching was that we were sitting in a dark theater, with nothing else to look at, waiting for something interesting to happen. Nothing interesting happened.

I saw it as one of a party of six. We all found it wretchedly boring. We all wanted to leave early, but didn't want to insult the person who suggested it. He apologized deeply, and said he had wanted to walk out too, but thought some of us might have been enjoying it. We weren't.

Waterworld (1995)

neither terrible nor great -- fun fantasy, stupid science fiction

[5/10 · 2 June 2000]

Waterworld wasn't a terrible movie, but it wasn't a very good one either. As a special effects showcase, it's wonderful, even if much of the vast budget ended up on the bottom of the ocean. As science fiction, it's stupid: Kevin Costner's gills, the mountains covered but flooded cities accessible, paper valuable but cigarettes present in quantity, etc. As a post-world-flood fantasy story, it's a decent story. If it hadn't been a rip-off of the Mad Max movies, the story would have deserved more credit as decent light fantasy.

The best thing that could have been done with the story would have been to rewrite it into a romantic comedy in a science-fantasy setting -- that would have taken advantage of its better points, and reduced its failure to be a strong high seas remake of Road Warrior. I know co-writer David Twohy can do better work -- he wrote and directed the science fiction masterpiece The Arrival one year later. Too bad he wasn't as sharp on this one.

The character development is actually pretty decent, between Costner's blandly-acted character, beautiful Jeanne Tripplehorn, and amazing Tina Majorino. The other characters are filler, although Dennis Hopper is an amusing villain.

The best things about the movie are the cinematography and Tina Majorino's acting. The worst thing about it is the fact that its budget could have been spent to make several better movies.

My comments are based on the ABC television version, which is apparently 40 minutes longer than the theatrical release.