lwaysmith Reviews

Reel Horror (1985)

Waste of a perfectly good blank DVD

[1/10 · 28 January 2007]

Have you ever bought a movie for a buck, watched it in disgust for an hour and a half (by God, I paid for it I'm gonna watch it!), removed the DVD from your player immediately afterward and threw it in the garbage so that all traces it ever existed would be gone? If you've never had such a reaction to a "film", you haven't seen Reel Horror.

I love bad cinema- I scour the bargain bins and half-price bookstores looking for those forgotten gems (usually horror or science fiction) that are a tribute to low budgets, lousy acting, cheesy special effects, unbelievable plots, and terrible scripts. Then a movie like Reel Horror comes along and gives all those things I love a bad name.

This "film" takes a bunch of low budget horror movies, hacks them into little pieces so that none if the original "badness" of those films is allowed to shine through, and throws them randomly them into a middle school-quality production about a haunted movie studio. This is presented as high camp and uproariously bad, in a "Rocky Horror Picture Show" vein , complete with a bunch of idiots dancing at the end.

Trust me when I tell you it's almost enough to discourage me from investing my hard earned dollar the next time I run across a potential classic, but I'm going to fight through it. Don't put yourself in this position. Avoid the temptation and put down that copy of Reel Horror.

Thirteen Days (2000)

Effective drama revisits our flirtation with WWIII

[7/10 · 27 January 2001]

The Cuban Missile Crisis is the one event in our recent history that forced Americans to think about their own mortality, and the possibility that not all wars happen somewhere else. The decisions being made during those days in October, 1962 would have a profound effect on the lives of millions of people throughout the world. For the most part, THIRTEEN DAYS does an effective job of recreating the desperation felt by both the leaders and the citizens during this time of crisis.

The events leading up to the stare-down between the US and the USSR have been well documented, so there is little new ground covered in this movie. The payoff for the audience is to watch the actors in their roles as world leaders, and to hopefully get a sense of the conflict not only among the different factions of the government, but also within the mind of each individual. Most of the performances are first rate. Bruce Greenwood, as President Kennedy, is impassioned without being hammy, no small accomplishment given the emotional nature of the situation.(One aside--was it just me or did Bruce Greenwood bear an uncanny resemblance to Dan Patrick of ESPN and Sportcenter fame? For me this was a bit disconcerting, since "presidential" is not one if the adjectives I would use to describe the entertaining Mr. Patrick.) Presidential Advisor Kenny O'Donnell is played with some restraint by Kevin Costner, who allowed the other members of the cast to carry their share of the load. His accent is somewhat overpowering and forced at the beginning of the movie, but either he toned it down later, or I became used to it. Either way, it stopped being a distraction. The best performance is turned in by Steven Culp, who was totally believable as Robert Kennedy. We see Robert as a tough, intelligent man thrust into an almost no win situation--he is expected to be the voice of reason and a guiding light while surrounded by dissenting opinions as to what is "right". Steven Culp shows him as a man who accepts this responsibility because his country needs him to, even if he sometimes doubts his worthiness for the role.

The Pledge (I) (2001)

Another great performance by Nicholson, but prepare to feel cheated.

[4/10 · 21 January 2001]

A retiring cop makes a promise to the parents of a murdered child to bring the killer to justice in this disturbing drama directed by Sean Penn. Jack Nicholson, as the cop, is tormented by the brutal crime, and becomes obsessed with honoring his "pledge". The setup and atmosphere of this drama is effective and haunting, but ultimately the story walks an uneven path to its unsatisfying conclusion.

One of the first problems with the film is the very opening scene, which, it becomes obvious within minutes, is actually a scene from much later in the movie. That means the audience is given a hint as to the outcome of the story just after the movie houselights go down. And the hint is HUGE. Unlike the beginnings of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, and THE GLADIATOR, which used the same foreshadowing method, the scene chosen to begin THE PLEDGE is as subtle as a smack on the head with a shovel.

Already knowing which direction Jack Nicholson's character will be heading, the fascination for the audience is to see how he reaches that point. The range that Nicholson shows will not disappoint. From the horror he feels at the scene of the crime, to his compassion for the grieving parents, to the paranoia that makes it difficult for him to keep a grip on reality--Nicholson sells those emotions like few actors can. That being said, his journey toward instability seems to be a plot contrivance. Nothing in his history, as far as we are told, makes his downturn seem like a logical progression of his life. He's seen countless brutal crimes in his long career, presumably, and there's no mention or feeling given that he's carrying a lot of baggage from those experiences. The "pledge" itself seemed to flip a switch, but for me to buy that I needed more background on his character. We got his retirement party to start the movie and no flashbacks,no conversations about past events, no nothing to give us a sense of this guy's life up to then.

Given this, I found the ending unnecessarily cruel. If you watch this movie as a character study, and as an another example of Jack Nicholson's considerable talent, you will be rewarded. If you make an emotional investment in this movie, prepare to feel cheated.