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Starflight: The Plane That Couldn't Land (1983)
made for tv movie better than a lot of modern movies
Part of me watches this dead serious plot equivalent to airplane II and can't help but laugh at the ridiculous cheesiness of it. Another way i watch it is as compared to modern movies. I can't go so far as to say this movie is "good" but it does seem to understand how to sustain suspense better than most 21st century movies which rely heavily on jump scares. The acting is adequate and the special effects are about what you'd expect for an early 80s made-for-tv movie. I've definitely wasted time on far far worse movies than this. Just don't go watching airplane II before you watch this.
5 out of 10. I'm feeling generous......
The Light Touch (2021)
yikes and gadzooks!
Beautiful scenery alone does not a good movie make. Several highly telegenic leads does not a good movie make. This movie has those but there are several problems. Starting with the fact that this should honestly be a short film at best. 20 minutes seems too generous for the material. If the mouse-hair thin plot weren't bad enough the wonderfully sexy lead actresses...... well, not one of them could act their way through a light breeze. To call their acting amateurish would be a great disservice to amateur actors. Especially the big breasted lead who seems like she was cast straight out of a playboy magazine. Just painful watching her try to act. Like uncanny valley level terrible acting. It's strange that there are people on screen who seem to have less emotional range and subtlety than one of jim henson's muppets. But here we are..........
2 of 10.... greece looks like a wonderful destination.
Il mio nome è Nessuno (1973)
overstays it's welcome
Trim about 30 or 40 minutes off this comedy western and you'd have a much better movie. Establishing shots that spend four minutes establishing, jokes that go on for two... three... minutes too long. Jokes that consist of nothing but the main character doing nothing but making goofy faces, which works if you're jim carrey. Short of that most people just shamelessly mugging usually doesn't land as funny. As a side note, i'm not a huge fan of henry fonda. He can play ahighly domesticated man alright, but i just can't and don't believe him in westerns. His "aww shucks" bright eyed persona just doen't make for a good fit for the genre as a whole. Stinkfist.
Four out of ten.
Bai ma hei qi (1977)
that was weird
This kung fu comedy from 1977 seems to be taking a page from jackie chan's book but without so much a thought given to anything as quaint as a plot. Lots and lots and lots of excellently choreographed fights which seem to happen for no particularly connected reasons. There's something about bolo becoming a sheriff but past that i couldn't tell why anything that was happening on screen was happening. A bunch of fairly low brow humor abounds and that was decent, a few good laughs are in there. And in the strangest twist the soundtrack seems to consist mainly of an elevator muzak version of Blood, Sweat & Tears' song You've Made Me so Very Happy. Probably should have watched this high.
The Unforgiven (1960)
so that's how they do things round these here parts.....
Great cast firing on all cylinders a rounded story that's supposed to be the less bigoted answer to The Searchers (it's not) and plot that moves at a decent clip. Capable direction. So why only five out of ten stars then? Well much like the 1983 DePalma remake of Scarface this movie has a vaguely incestuous relationship at it's center. Maybe actually worse than Scarface because in that movie it was only a side plot, here the nuts and bolts of the movie is ostensibly the relationship between Lancaster and Hepburn as siblings/potential lovers(?) Not sure how many other viewers feel, but for me it casts an oogy pall over the whole movie. Just big time ick factor. Yucky.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)
surprise surprise
My long history of seeing sequels made long after the original or original series had me quite skittish about seeing this. SW, IJ, blues brothers, all of the terminator movies passed judgment day, etc all terrible. Coming to america, transpotting, not terrible but certainly added nothing to the originals. Considering the 36 year gap, the fact that several principles were out, and the fact that tim burton hasn't made a movie i genuinely love in a long long time, i wasn't expecting much.
But lo and behold, this actually stood up pretty well, if often uneven in some parts. I like that they didn't just ignore jeffery jones' character or write him out but instead opted for a full on claymation version of him. I thought it a bold choice and liked it a lot. Catherine o'hara's character always a flake in the first one was kind of over-the-top in nuttiness this time around to the point that there was little actual humanity in her. I think the overstuffed plot could definitely jettison the whole willem dafoe character and plot and instead give us a bit more of the ravishing monica bellucci. Likewise a little bit less time given to wino forever's suitor. Too many antagonists half thought out.
What was somewhat missing was the initial sweetness that touched off the first movie before it got weird. I think that sweetness balanced the first movie nicely, whereas here we just plunge headlong into the odditorium. Keaton brings a great energy to his character even if his age is showing a bit in his movements. And i enjoy that the movie comments on itself when discussing why baldwin and davis did not appear.... some such convenient reason is given to which a character baldly states "that sounds convenient"
overall nothing is subtracted from the original and a minute amount is added. Hopefully it won't take another 34 years to see Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
7/10.
Song to Song (2017)
the tragic lives of the rich and beautiful
I can kind of get what malick is up to here and in a less charitable mood i probably would have given this one or two stars. But i get it, he seems to be going for a slice of life as life is experienced through memory in which large swathes of it go unremembered but short important bursts of our lives stay close in our minds. But likewise i can understand how most audiences would react to this near plotless hundred and thirty minute ode to ennui with something less than enthusiasm. To boot the sequence of events is fairly muddled and it's impossiible often to discern what is happening when. I think he did himself no favors by casting all exceptionally beautiful actors and actresses and placing them within environs that suggest that they are all exceptionally wealthy. That makes them difficult to empathize for most people. The mouse hair thin plot itself seems to highlight the difficulties of people of different economic strata mixing, there's always going to be nefarious power differences between them that warps all interaction. With directors like malick they ought to now and again challenge themselves by seeing if they CAN make a commercially appealing movie if for no other reason than to ground them a bit more on their artistic adventures
4 of 10.
The Harrad Experiment (1973)
the children of freud
Reviewing a movie like this becomes ridiculous without addressing the subject matter. Without the subject matter being discussed what you are left with is a cynical exploitation film, shot like a made-for-tv movie or an after school special with wooden performances all around. Not much, so to speak, but not worth garnering a true zero in stars.
What makes this movie terrible is not the normal things which can lead a movie to be terrible. A good comparison is to the nearly equally awful Ted & Carol Bob & Alice which at least cast a somewhat dubious eye towards the nearly same subject matter. Here the cynicism is behind the camera not in front of it. The producers saw a book who's subject the could make a movie from that would feature plenty of nudity and they saw dollar signs
this is another in the gross handful of movies from the 60s and 70s that bought in to the free love movement. A movement that had it's origins in freudian psychobabble, blank slate theory, post structuralism, feminism, communism, and a general chauvinism against the traditions of the west. One could argue all day whether the architects of this movement intended for the destruction of society but ultimately that proved to be their legacy. I'm reminded of guys like michel foccault or alfred kinsey. Men who put their robust IQs to work building intellectually complex rationalizations for their own sexual peccadillos, homosexuality in kinsey's case, pederasty in foccault's. A waste of intellect completely dwarfed by the social damage they have wrought.
When Rimmer wrote The Harrad Experiment in the early 60s he could maybe be forgiven his naivety. By the time this movie was made in 1970 the incipient rot had already begun to set in. And from the vantage point of the 21st century having witnessed the long term and irreparable damage it just seems not merely criminal but almost intentionally evil. Broken marriages, divorce, single parent household, unfulfilling relationships, loneliness, empty hook up culture, generations single parent kids raising their own children without a partner, 50 year old adolescents, skyrocketing drug addiction, social alienation..... and on and on.
No it is impossible to separate the subject matter from the movie as a piece of art or entertainment. But to ignore it's subject matter is to further it's inherent message of irresponsibility.
State Park (1988)
who exactly did kill william mckinley?
Whole lot of fashion victims got together and filmed a movie so terrible the refused to put it in videohound books and so 1980s that it is shocking the word ozone is not mentioned. On the other hand it has some very decently looking actresses, teases us with just enough nudity to barely..... just barely hold our attention, throws in ted nugent because...... reasons, and surrounds the whole silly affair with a lunk headed dumb plot about corporations, toxic waste, and environmental concerns. There's also a heavy metal band in the spirit of KISS camping (do people like that ever feel the need to go camping?) lessons about not judging people, some sort obstacle course race at the end and you sitting in your living room having just lost half an IQ point that you'll never recover no matter how many times you read A Brief History of Time. But the tits are nice....
C.C. & Company (1970)
blatherskite
One of the problems with hollywood has always been that when some thing comes out of left field and makes a ton of money, you spend the next five or ten years getting cheap knock offs of it that have little to no understanding of what made the original popular in the first place. Mostly nowadays that is sublimated into a conveyor belt of endless sequels, but sequels were less of a thing until the late 70s. And so it was with the success of easy rider that literally hundreds of cheapo motorcycle movies were made. As movies go they tend to all be mildly amusing because visually speaking dudes look cool almost no matter what when they're riding around on motorcycles. Of course this also means that given the economics of shooting such visually simple stuff you get microfiber thin plots to hold everything together and this usually consists of good bikers vs bad bikers. No second place prize for guessing who wins in most of these movies. Here we have a fairly charismatic joe namath who much like elvis loses about half his charisma once the cameras start rolling and pairs him with the always gorgeous ann margaret as the virginal outsider. Just a little bit of thinking outside the box might have saved this movie. Instead chuck it on the pile with the other couple pretenders.....
Robot Wars (1993)
waste O time
First off (let me get this out of the way) this movie should be called robot war.... as in singular, not robot wars plural because during the entire course of this flick there's literally only one single battle between robots. The rest is ham handed acting, clunking dialogue, and a paint-by-numbers plot involving evil corporations, plucky reporters, hotshot pilots, and the extraneous character who only exists to turncoat. It of course recall an only slightly more well known movie robot jox from 1989, though some of the general look about thing seems to point to starship troopers 1997. Either of those movie is substantially better than this. Don't waste your time. 2/10.
Drive-Away Dolls (2024)
amateur hour
Maybe because it was shot on digital.... i'm not really sure why but the whole film looked and felt like it was done by a film student drop out with funding from a local used car salesman. The story was so not there that they had to pad out the run time with ham fisted psychedelic scenes that had no place in the movie. Most of what passed for a story was lots of obscene dialog that boiled down to "hey everybody.... lesbians!". The movie has a definitive political and world view that if you agree with it you'll probably enjoy the movie simply because you agree with it. But if you're not blinded by such self congratulatory cheerleading you'll be able to see it for what it is. Poorly filmed, poorly cast, poorly acted, poorly written. What's surprising is that this is from a Coen brother. Even the Coen Bros films i don't like are still done well from the standpoint of technique. This, not so much.
Timeline (2003)
serviceable
This movie doesn't have very high marks and nobody should be confused that it's reaching for the stars, but it held my attention and i enjoyed the story. Granted any time a movie has elements of time travel you almost certainly have to allow your brain to go on a bit of autopilot. But the battle scenes were nicely done, elements of the time travel were handled about as best as one can expect, and the acting was fine. This is a mostly undemanding movie that's just fine as entertainment. Perhaps it is just from the vantage point of the mid 2020's when movies at a schlocky low point that something from 20 years back looks so comparatively good. All the same, i'd still recommend as 6.5 or even 7 out of 10.
Babylon (2022)
brace yourself
The first 30 minutes is a garden of earthly delights nightmare scape. If you can make it past the debauchery and filth that tries to capture the earliest days of hollywood (a town founded on excess and hedonism) then you can settle in with a fairly great movie. The pedigree of influences is immediately discernible..... Boogie Nights, Moulin Rouge, Cinema Paradiso, Chaplin, BIrdman, all with pumping along with the heart of Scorsese underneath. This isn't a great movie, but it's a damned good one. The performances are all top notch (even Flea turns up!) The speechifying by the movie critic towards the late center of the movie is the perfect counter-point to Michael Keaton's rant against a theater critic in Birdman. Knowing a bit of the history of the foundations of hollywood adds to the movie. That there was a hollywood before the studio system that was entirely different from the "golden age" hollywood is a fact few know of or contemplate. When sound and then the Hays code and the studios came it washed completely away what hollywood had been. This movie does a hell of a job capturing it in all is nauseating glory. Speaking of which: best fluid scene since Team America. I'd give this higher but making it passed that harrowing opening requires a firm constitution.
Raise the Titanic (1980)
over full yet also empty
The positives about this film are it's special effects, score, acting, and direction. It's weak point are plot, pacing, and editing. On the one hand there are two subplots which needn't have been in the movie and which are never really addressed. The problem is, if you remove these subplots you also have not much more than expository dialogue and montage shots. So many montages in fact that i suspect that the script was less than half the number of minutes of the movie. The balance between minutes of movie and minutes of spoken dialogue if you subtracted the superfluous plots would probably render this movie into a nearly "silent" film broken only by dialogue explaining what it is we're about to see a montage of.
While this is often rated as one of the worst movies of the decade, i won't go that far. Plot contrivances and lack of story aside, the direction and especially the special effects are worth a look.
I might say three, but i'm feeling generous so i'll give it
4/10.
Coriolanus (2011)
democracy: the god that failed
As a movie the movie is fine, a bit jarring at the beginning hearing shakespearean language in a balkan war setting and it takes some settling into but otherwise good.
The central message seems to me to be a subtle indictment of democracy. A battle hardened warrior is pushed into a political career who doesn't seem to want. His years of fighting for his nation's liberty seems to have alienated him from the common citizens who demand liberty but are unwilling to fight for it. The common citizens both lack the clarity of purpose in their desires but even worse they can easily have their minds changed by politicians who flatter their egos and pander and seduce them to their own ways of thinking. For this reason in Dante's inferno flatterers and seducers end up in the eighth circle of hell. The politicians in the movie easily manipulate the crowd by telling how much power they have (when they are quite visibly powerless). Eventually the politicians work the common folk into such a lather that they banish he who would defend them. Not their best move. This would be a good movie to watch to compare and contrast with what's being said in the satire that is Starship Troopers. The movies almost perfectly balance each other out in their opposite philosophies. The only shame is that by couching the movie in the language of shakespeare the point is likely to be lost on the masses. And THAT my friends is irony.
6/10.
Baba Yaga (1973)
maybe i'm missing something
I'm not sure if it's the language barrier or time, but there's something in this movie i can't quite get a grip on. It's about a vampiress..... sort of...... but there's also hints here and there of some association with germany. Many references to both nazi and bismarckian era germany. I'm not sure if the point is to draw parallels between bloodsuckers and the german people, but that seems on the surface to be what their getting at. Nothing in this movie seems really nailed down and it feels as though there are half thought out side plots to pad out the time. I suppose if you're a film school person it wouldn't be a bad addition to your viewing as there are things in here that might have inspired the 70s and 80s horror genre, but otherwise this is a plodding mess.
Fatal Beauty (1987)
blah
As i see it there are a number of major flaws in this movie. The three major ones are this:
- a movie like dirty harry was reviled by critics who called it fascist (a word they use to describe anything they dislike or politically disagree with) for it's portrayal of police sidestepping or ignoring the constitutional rights of the criminals in the movie. What then are we to make of this movie which features numerous egregious violations of such perceived "rights". Did any critics refer to this as fascist? Don't be silly, of course they didn't. But you can watch this back to back with dirty harry and decide for yourself which of the two skirts the law more.
- the movie hinges on the notion of whoopi goldberg being a highly desirable woman. Even in her thinner youth, i don't think you'd find a man who's first thought about whoopi goldberg would be "attractive"
- the tone of the movie is all over the place. On one hand it's trying to cash in on beverly hills cop.... and whoopi never had quite the charisma to substitute for eddie murphy. On the other hand it's trying to be dramatic, but that is undermined by ridiculous and unbelievable stock characters like the angry police captain, the superfluous sidekick, and the evil corporate mastermind. Combine that with the convenient way that every time a character has a chance to finish off whoopi.... they inexplicably hesitate for exaggerated body movements.
A good cast is wasted in what ultimately seems like it was partially rewritten as a star vehicle for whoopi.
Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 (2024)
how the west was won
It's kind of hard to accurately assess a movie that hasn't any kind of resolution to it. Given that this is part 1 of 4, this movie mostly deals with character set up. This review could with the fullness of time go from an eight to a ten. What has been seen so far was pretty well done with a huge cast and plenty of good scene chewing. I like that for once we don't get the PC treatment of Indians that's been the standard for 55 years or so. They are treated in this movie as every bit guilty, violent, and depraved as the people who conquered them, not the rose-colored wishy washy version of indians living in peaceful and harmonious balance with nature..... a whitewash of history if there ever was one. The cinematography is quite lovely and there's plenty of handsome women to round out the softer side to a fairly violent movie. But it was all quite enjoyable. It's too bad the run time scares off most of the modern audience.
8/10.
The Expendables 2 (2012)
finally
This is what we we're all waiting for as kids. A scene in which schwarzenegger, stallone, willis, and norris join forces to mow down a million bad guys. This movie could have just been eleven minutes of that and it would have satisfied. To top it off the got JCVD in as the bad guy (did his name have to be Villain?)......
doesn't matter. Eight year old version of me absolutely loved this schlocky one hundred minute fan service to the gen x kids that grew up with classic 80s action movies. Even more so than the original expendables this movie accomplished what we'd all wanted. And now we can rest easy.
The answer is yes 9/10.
Nobody (2021)
john wick but not
The title of this review should be a dead give away. The movie bears striking resemblance to the John Wick series which is little surprising considering that they share the same director. That is not to say the movie is bad as the John Wick movies have oodles of charisma to spare. Bob Odenkirk succeeds magnificently in completing his cycle from comedy to drama to action in a way few who saw him back in the 1990s could have imagined. The russian mob cliche is getting sort of stale but this movie runs well enough with it and has some basis in the reality of it's star having suffered multiple home break-ins in the real world. Choreography is great and pacing meets the needs of the story. It's shortcomings are this.... this dials down the john wick world building which is a benefit but underplays the fact that technically from a frame out way of looking at it.... nobody is not a good person. To the contrary he's a very very very bad person that ultimately we shouldn't root for. The movie throws us the bones of noticing how bad ass he is without noticing how bad he is.
Magnificent Obsession (1954)
blah
A movie can be overwrought and still have decent value. The ten commandments is a pretty good example.
A movie can be convoluted and also still be pretty good standing on it's own legs. Star wars and most light sci-fi since the genre was born.
But a movie that is both overwrought and convoluted, well there your operating in the Wiseau territory. Too much of 1950s era cinema finds itself in this mold and this two hour stomach churner is no different. A series of ridiculous coincidences lead to such self serious emotional hand wringing that the movie practically begs for the MST3K treatment. But this is light prestige, therefore humorous relief will not be forthcoming. A plot this bad should be justification for a prison sentence.
Pillow Talk (1959)
this movie has aged like a glass of milk in a death valley dumpster
I hate pretty much every character in this movie
- the polygamous cad bedding and discarding women and destroying the fabric of civil society through his actions
- the careerist feminist squandering her best reproductive years with impossibly high standards for a man
- the mincing simp who even after trying to reward his prized gal with a beautiful free car still can't take the hint
- one of the earliest examples of the frat boy that's a rapist in waiting.
The only sympathetic character in the movie is the wisened old drunk late that through a haze of booze has finally reach perceptive clarity on the nature of human beings. That lady rules, i could have watched two movie about her. Hell, i coulda watched an origin story about her and it would have been great.
On the other hand you've got doris day playing a proto feminist career gal for whom nothing less than a six foot six owner of an entire mountain will do. And even then she plays a teasing game of hot and cold.
Chasing after her are a simp who even after he discovers his lifelong "friend" is going behind his back to try to bed the woman he knows damn well he's attracted to, still doesn't resort to anything so gauche as calling out or fighting his "friend". The rival is a nation wrecker, the type of man who uses women and leaves of path emotional destruction that other men must clean up.
The movie is filmed, acted, and directed well enough but the substance is appalling. Some movie their subject matter age like wine. Some movie age like a silent fart on a windy day. And some movies....
Kicking and Screaming (1995)
make it stop
VERY 90s era psuedo intellectual upper middle class college horse dung. Tedious in the extreme. Scene after scene of dialogue that i'll bet the writer thought was clever. The actors do what they can, but the material they are working with is flatter than paper. Possibly seeing it, at it's time, as a college aged kid might have made it bearable but 30 years of hindsight has not been kind to this movie. A post 9/11 would have instantly exposed this for the trite naval gazing material it is. The subsequent descent of the college as an institution of learning puts an exclamation point on how vacuous the era..... my era truly was. For honesty sake i'll say that i'm not much of a fan oh Noah Baumbach. On occasion he rises to the level clever but never competent. This movie is 90 minutes of the kind of class based non-problems faced by people who would be right at home on episodes of Friends were they not so dour. I'll be generous an give it a 2/10 some movies are simply of their era and of an age. This is both.
Tomorrow, the World! (1944)
PROPAGANDA!!!!
Americans often like to believe that it was only nazi germany that was subject to propaganda such as Jud Süß in 1940. This movie proves that any and every nation is subject to using mass media to paint slanted political aims and demonize an entire people. One may argue that it was "during the war" so it was forgivable. Then why no such forgiveness to the other side? No this overwrought over acted garbage exist for one reason and only one reason. But it did it work? If the true measure of propaganda is whether it works, than this and 100s of other films must be given a hardy yes. Even 80 years on from them it is impossible for modern americans to disentangle the concepts of evil from nazis and germans. This is part of why to this day, nazi's often make the most compelling villains in movies. The culture at large internalized the messages of propaganda from long ago. Future generations beware.