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The Amityville Haunting (2011)
Back to Amityville...Well, Not Really
Where to start? How about with several huge factual errors? The real Amityville house is located on the lake front in a tony New York suburb, and NOT in a middle-class neighborhood. The real Amityville house most recently sold for upwards of $900,000 and would not be purchased as a last resort by a family who "couldn't afford anything else." And, contrary to what the movie will tell you: since the tragic DeFeo murders and subsequent occupancy by the huckster Lutzes, a number of families have lived there for years at a time and reported nothing out of the ordinary.
Having said all that: if you're looking for a cheap, no-budget (this IS The Asylum) horror movie, you could do worse. The "camcorder" plot device makes the movie seems a lot less cheap than it is, and the acting isn't too terrible (although the father is such a Grade A jerk, you begin hoping for his premature death -- James Brolin he ain't). The plot is predictable, with only one minor (and I mean minor) surprise at the end. And with all its faults, it's still a better movie than Amityville 3-D.
Atlas Shrugged II: The Strike (2012)
Who is John Galt? Who Cares?
Acting: Uniformly mediocre, with Jason Beghe's steely Hank Rearden being the only (mildly) bright spot. Teller's blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo is neat, and Robert Picardo, Paul McCrane and Michael Gross all play bureaucrat versions of their famous TV characters. Nobody else registers in the slightest. The cast is completely different from Part I, which is almost unprecedented in a sequel filmed so soon after the original (the similarly cruddy Sting II is the only other example I could think of). The only saving grace was that Part I's cast was so mediocre in itself, I couldn't remember any of the performances, so it didn't seem jarring.
Production design and special effects: Some of the most obvious CGI you'll ever see. Also, the occasionally interesting "Bioshock"- influenced architecture of the first film is gone, probably because they halved the budget for this one.
Dialogue: As with other Ayn Rand films I've seen (Atlas Shrugged Part I and The Fountainhead), completely inane. I will say that Beghe delivers the standard Rand sound bites with a straight face better than anyone before (even Gary Cooper), because he so earnestly sells what he's saying.
Plotting: Once again, Rand's inability to deal with the real world shows itself. Everyone is either a misunderstood saint or an eeeeeeeeevil bureaucratic caricature. The US government in this movie calmly delivers edicts that even Kim il-Sung and Karl Marx would find ridiculous, and anyone thinking of the public good for even an instant is derided as a misguided fool or worse. Meanwhile, Francisco d'Ancona blows up his mines, and we're supposed to admire him for this. Or something. And the revealed origin of the phrase "Who is John Galt?" makes its constant repetition even less plausible. It says a lot when Sean Hannity (!) is arguably this film's moral center.
To summarize: Who is John Galt? A complete sociopath, from the looks of it.
The Statue of Liberty (1985)
First Half is Great, Second Half is Terrible
This feature comes in two segments. The first part (10 out of 10) is a fascinating look at the conception and construction of the statue and the controversy(!) surrounding its installation in New York Harbor. I assumed the second half would be a look at its mid-1980s refurbishment, which was a remarkable engineering achievement in its own right. Alas, 'twas not to be. The second half we got (0 out of 10, if this score were available)) is an endless parade of talking heads bloviating about "liberty" and whining that the average American doesn't appreciate it, none of them saying anything different than what you'd expect. The oft- shown Mario Cuomo, in particular, sounds like the Presidential candidate he almost was, Barbara Jordan is as preachy and condescending as always, and who knows why Ken Burns thought the talented musician Ray Charles' thoroughly unremarkable political opinions deserved airing? I also "loved" (as in "was thoroughly annoyed by") Jerzy Kosinski saying nobody born in America is open-minded or smart enough to appreciate it. In short, this second half is reinforces every negative stereotype people have about Ken Burns: long-winded, preachy and sanctimonious.
Hoop Realities (2007)
You Can't Go Home Again
Sixteen years after the events chronicled in the seminal documentary "Hoop Dreams," Arthur Agee returns to his alma mater (Chicago's Marshall High School) and discovers a new prodigious talent in point guard Patrick Beverley. The documentary both catches viewers up on Arthur's life and gives us another glimpse into the world of high school basketball, as Beverley's team goes downstate to the Illinois high school tournament, just as Agee's team did all those years ago.
Grandfatherly coach Luther Bedford has passed on (the documentary shows us his open-casket wake) and been replaced by stern, profane taskmaster Lamont Bryant. Bryant's obviously a skilled coach who gets great results out of his team, but his presence also lays bare the documentary's big weakness: it makes many of the same points as its unofficial predecessor, but the subjects are less appealing. Bedford's cranky charm wears better over the course of a film than Bryant's constant hectoring, even if their points are equally valid. Similarly, Patrick Beverley does not have Agee's infectious smile or ease before the camera, even if he is the better basketball player. Of the new participants, only Patrick's tough-as-nails mother Lisa matches her earlier counterpart (the equally tough Sheila Agee, who makes a brief appearance). The film could have benefited by featuring Lisa more prominently.
Arthur's life gets an update. We learn that his father Bo Agee had cleaned up his life and become both a minister and clothing seller, only to be brutally murdered in a planned hit. The aforementioned Sheila returns to Chicago to visit her husband's gravestone (and charmingly chews out Arthur for getting the birth year wrong). Arthur never made it to the NBA, but has dedicated his life to the Hoop Dreams brand and is hoping to sell an entire clothing line based on it.
Some points are glossed over or ignored outright. Arthur is reputed to have had two children with two different women, but neither is so much as mentioned in the film. The viewer gets the sense that Arthur is holding his current life very close to the vest. In addition, the earlier film's co-protagonist William Gates is neither seen nor mentioned. William's brother Curtis was murdered in 2001, and William himself is now an inner-city minister and is happily married to his girlfriend from the first movie, but "Hoop Reality" makes no mention of any of this.
In short, "Hoop Reality" is a workmanlike update on the first film, but by no means comes close to its predecessor's excellence.