Change Your Image
sussmanbern
Reviews
The Silence (2010)
Ridiculous thriller
This mini-series is about a deaf girl who witnesses a police murder and then has to run for her life. The girl is played by Genivieve Barr, who is described as deaf altho not accustomed to Sign Language. In the story she manages by lip reading. And such ridiculous lip reading!
She can lip read from people who have turned their backs to her, from people who are behind her, from people in the dark. And the people who supposedly know her do stupid things like raising their voices at her. And the movie depends on stuff being communicated to her in these impossible ways, which was so off-putting that I feel the whole effect was spoiled.
Ms. Barr supposedly knew better than this, so howcome this movie didn't show authentic deafness?
The Jim Bakker Show (2003)
Changing his religion
Before his downfall, prison sentence and divorce from Tammy Faye, Jim Bakker's PTL CLUB would promote the idea of God's unconditional love. Every show (and other appearances) Jim would sign-off with "God loves you. He really does."
But hard times evidently beat that loving spirit out of Bakker. In his current program, with second wife Lori, he preaches a God who wants to punish the audience. Now Bakker preaches of a God who plans to smite the audience with a prolonged Tribulation. And the only assurance they might survive is to buy his brand of bomb shelter food; unappealing mush that even the homeless might reject.
The Hitman's Bodyguard (2017)
If you are having James Bond withdrawal pains ....
If you are addicted to those James Bond-type thrillers, the kind that make you wonder "How will they top this in the next movie?", and keep in mind that the next Daniel Craig outing is a full 15 months away, then THE Hit-man'S BODYGUARD should tide you over.
Michael Bryce (Ryan Renolds) was the gold standard in elite bodyguards to controversial celebrities - until a Japanese weapons merchant in his care was offed by a sniper. Since then his clientele has dwindled to moneyed, paranoid, possibly coked-up, riff-raff. And then Bryce gets a call from his ex-fiancé, Amelia Roussel (Elodie Yung), an Interpol security officer. She was part of an Interpol escort to get a crucial prosecution witness from one side of Amsterdam to the other, 'The Hit-man' Darius Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson), to testify at the Hague against war criminal Dukhovich (Gary Oldman) - but an entire street in Amsterdam opened up and machinegunned everyone in this caravan except Amelia and the Hit-man, and now Bryce is being asked to finish running this gantlet.
This is sort of a high-tech upgrade of the Bruce Willis movie, 16 Blocks, or Clint Eastwood's The Gauntlet, or Stallone's Cobra. This time with the latest weaponry and computers, and Interpol and Amsterdam. No nudity, but Marine drill sergeants might learn new words.
Contracted (2013)
A werewolf story for the AIDS Generation
CONTRACTED is, to be blunt, a kind of a werewolf story - but there is no wolf, not even a chihuahua. It's a metaphor for the AIDS Generation.
See, Samantha is a college-age lesbian who gets drunk at a party and is taken advantage of by a mysterious man. Within 48 hours Samantha is getting really sick - vomiting blood, hearing non-existent loud sounds, severe vaginal bleeding, deathly pallor. A doctor is baffled. One more day and Samantha's eyes are bleary and bloodshot, her fingernails are falling out. A third day and her hair is coming out. She is in a panic.
She hears that the police are asking about the man who was at the party but we never know why. She becomes too sick to work (as a waitress) and, on top of everything, she starts losing her grip - she begins to act paranoid.
So, instead of becoming furry and growing claws and fangs, Samantha manifests some of the symptoms of the last stages of AIDS - but within less than a week, and become a danger to others. It's an interesting bit of sci-fi and it is done here reasonably well - and on a slim budget without a name cast
Life Blood (2009)
It's amazing this didn't kill careers!
LIFE BLOOD is a godawful movie. It's about lesbians without being titilating, it's about vampires without being scary, it's about crime without being suspenseful. The only redeeming thing about it is that it will make you feel good because you had nothing to do with the making of this stinker and none of it can be blamed on you. Two women involved in a crime are killed on the highway on New Year's Eve, in a very low-ticket Hollywood miracle God (in the person of an actress who otherwise plays a waitress later in this flick) brings them back to life on their promise to kill bad guys for her ... and also because they allow her to get to take indecent liberties with them! Next thing you know, they wake up forty years later ... as vampires - a small detail they have to discover for themselves rather awkwardly, and with the usual Hollywood vampire limitations of being helpless during daytime and so forth. In the course of pursuing their target bad guys they pause to kill a few more innocent people. Some how I think God - or a decent screenwriter - would have worked things out a bit differently. Sit through this and you'll appreciate well-written films so much more.
Trog (1970)
Possibly one of the worst movies in the English language !
This movie was Joan Crawford's last screen appearance. She was effectively banished to this ultra-cheap British indie flick after bailing out of the filming of Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte. It is a dreadful pity that her career should end on this very sour note.
SPOILER: This is a horror movie in which the real horror is that you parted with money to see it. The only suspense is how much more bad dialogue and moronic plot you'll be willing to sit through.
Simply put, the title character, Trog, is a troglodyte - a CroMagnon man frozen for a million years and defrosted and revived by scientist Joan Crawford. Her work with this missing link is opposed and sabotaged by Michael Gough, as an Anti-evolution crank so small minded that he could also be a flat earther. Crawford, who seems to have an enormous range of skills, does surgery on Trog that enables him to speak. It turns out that Trog has the hots for Crawford's teenage daughter, which leads to a sort of brief abduction, followed by miserable end for Trog.
In short, this movie is as if someone had approached me and offered me money (not a lot) and said, "Write up a sophomoric blend of Frankenstein and King Kong -- And don't make it good!"
This is a lousy movie. It was notorious for being done on a low budget, and evidently so low budget that bad takes were kept and not refilmed. Worst of all, it was Joan Crawford's swan song. It's clear that she did her best, even with this wretched material.
Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)
Now that this movie is available on DVD ....
My advice is to watch it more than once. I saw it once in a theater and was mostly baffled by it, and came away with the vague impression that the entire movie was an intro to two younger characters and a dash to find Luke Skywalker. But now that it's available on DVD and I can watch it repeatedly, and replay difficult scenes, I can appreciate the more subtle nuances of the plot and I am better prepared for the future films in the series.
I might add that the people responsible for the Star Wars franchise seem absolutely devoted to avoiding any contradictions in the plots of the various different presentations - films and TV programs (even the animated and Lego adventures) - which is a considerable distinction from the people involved in the Star Trek franchise (any explanation of Spock's marriage?). At the same time, Star Wars fans seem perhaps too devoted to the minutiae of even the trailers - I have seen long streams of e-mails devoted to conjuring elaborate interpretations out of two- second glimpses in the Rogue One trailer. If only these people paid that much attention to the Holy Scriptures!
Summer Lovers (1982)
Your Fantasy Acted Out
If you're a woman, you've probably always wanted to visit the Mediterranean islands, bask in the bright bright sunshine, swim in the blue blue water, and dance on the white sandy beaches.
And if you're a guy, you're probably always wanted to make it with two good looking babes who seem to be OK about that arrangement.
Either way, you get your wish with SUMMER LOVERS. Michael and Cathy (Peter Gallagher and Daryl Hannah), two college-age sweethearts have come to a Greek island as a sort of pre-nup romp. It's a little tough to figure out if either of them has a genuine job back in the States; Michael seems to have some slight interest in photography and Cathy has some slight interest in painting. Now you might suppose that Daryl Hannah would be more than satisfactory for any man alive, but before many days pass Michael is taking an interest in a sweet young thing in a neighboring cabin, Lena (Valerie Quennessen). Michael pursues her, chats her up, accompanies her to a nude beach, and manages to do with her what you might want to do if you didn't have Daryl Hannah waiting at home for you.
Almost immediately Michael is bringing Lena into his and Cathy's cabin, and it's sort of obvious immediately to Cathy that Michael expects her to make room in bed for Lena. Here I have to admit that my experience in such matters is very limited; I have never romanced anyone of Daryl Hannah's caliber, and if I did I am sure I would not risk it by introducing an unnecessary explosive like Valerie Quennessen. So I am somewhat astonished that Cathy doesn't require much persuasion to move over darling for Lena.
We have a brief moment of comic relief when Cathy's uptight mom (Barbara Rush) pops in for a brief visit to discover that what should have been a bonding preparatory for her daughter's wedding has turned into a three- way. Then Lena wants to get analytical and decides that the relationship is too superficial and leaves. Instead of her absence giving Michael and Cathy an opportunity to tighten up, the both of them seem to miss her keenly. What they don't know is that Lena also misses them - although, as she already pointed out, they don't even know her last name.
Spoiler: A couple of weeks later their vacation is over, Michael and Cathy are supposed to fly back to the States. But Lena rides her motorscooter over to the little airport and they all hug and kiss, and then run away from the airplane to continue their island love affair. Except, of course, Michael and Cathy have run out of money and their visas have expired and they are not permitted to get any jobs locally, and they don't speak the language, and Lena has none of those problems but how long can she sustain those two nitwits.
This is a fantasy -- nice sunny beaches, Daryl Hannah and Valerie Quennessen not wearing much. Like most of your fantasies, if this somehow became reality for you, so you'd have to live it through, it would turn into a real nightmare.
The Canyons (2013)
Life with Psychopath ..... no, not Lindsay
THE CANYONS is a film done on the cheap. Financed by rattling the tambourine on Kichstarter, soliciting actors on another website to work for scale, and mostly borrowing existing locations. The reason: Lindsay Lohan, the only "nomenclatura" in this production - and the co-producer eager to revive her movie career, was so notoriously into drugs and dodgy behavior that no investors or insurance companies would touch this project. Her co-star is Bryan M. Sevilla, who rejoices in the screen name of James Deen and has attained ephemeral fame in skin flicks ... the press kit dares to say that The Canyons is his first non- porn movie, but that's a fib; The Canyons is just pricier porn.
This movie was filmed and then re-edited ruthlessly. There were hopes that it would do well at Sundance or some other film festival, but no such luck. As far as I know, it stained only a few theater screens and then went to DVD and cable.
Originally intended as a thriller, this ends up as a noir study of life among over-indulged youthful Hollywood sociopaths. Christian (Deen) is a young Hollywood millionaire, and Tara (Lohan) is his girlfriend, and at various times Christian takes Tara out to restaurants to meet with people who would like him to throw money at their movie projects. If things seem promising, Christian invites these people to his fabulous house in the Hollywood canyons (this was actually rented from the architect who built it), where he throws a little drink-and-drug party with Tara the door prize for all participants. Tara puts up with this because she hopes that someday Christian will keep his promise to make her a star, and even so Christian is cheating on her with Cynthia (Tenille Houston), whom he treats every bit as badly as he treats Tara. There is some back and forth between Tara and her former boyfriend, Ryan (Nolan Funk), and Cynthia, about Christian's pathological behavior, but the simple fact is that Christian is the one with the money and presumably the power. Every now and then we are shown a shuttered old movie house to tell us that the movie industry (as distinct from maybe cable TV) is dying and so are Tara's hopes. Before it's over we find out that even Christian's family keeps him at a safe distance, a fact that would be significant for the others to know.
The one remarkable feature in this film is a couple of glimpses of Lindsay Dee Lohan barefoot all over. She was 27 when this was filmed - but she looks closer to 37 and that was not intentional. If this was supposed to be a mystery, the mystery is why they bothered to make this movie. I would suggest several other movies for stories about drugged up sociopaths such as TRAINSPOTTING.
Vamps (2012)
A vampire movie for people who don't like vampire movies!
Maybe you've overdosed on the undead - vampires, zombies, cyborgs, Young Republicans, and you've sworn off any more such movies. Make an exception for this.
VAMPS is a charming comedy about two sweet girls in NYC who just happen to be nosferatu. Goody (Alicia Silverstone) was made a vampire in 1842, and Stacy (Krysten Ritter) in 1992, but because vampires don't age they both look to be in their mid-twenties (and Goody has fibbed about her true age to Stacy). It turns out that both of them were turned into vampires by, and are thus under the thrall of, Cisserus (Sigourney Weaver), a mean and self-centered psychotic vampire. But Goody and Stacy are not like her; for one thing, they have never attacked a human but have survived entirely on vermin - in fact, they support themselves with night jobs as rat exterminators, which provides them with sufficient sustenance, and then the twittering of birds warns them of the coming dawn in time for them to rush back to their apartments and their coffins.
Goody and Stacy belong to a support group of vampires who have sworn off human blood. Even Vlad Tepish (Malcolm McDowell) is a member. Vampires cannot be seen in mirrors, or in photographs or television; a great frustration to Goody, who ceased to live before photography and who hasn't seen her reflection in 170 years. Goody is also baffled by the modern preoccupation with wireless communications. They have some non- vampire friends, and both girls have accumulated hundreds of credits at night-school - their only difficulty is that the graduation ceremonies are always in daytime.
Stacy meets a nice boy in class - Joey ... van Helsing (Dan Stevens). His dad is Dr. van Helsing (Wallace Shawn), the famous vampire hunter, who thinks Stacy is a tad too pale. Stacy is able to charm (literally) Joey's mom (Kristen Johnston) but the Doctor is a tougher challenge. However, real romance blossoms with Joey. In the meantime, Goody encounters an old boyfriend (Richard Lewis) - and, yes, old. He's aged, she hasn't. He's keeping vigil over his dying wife, but there's still a spark between Goody and old flame Danny. In the meantime, there's a crisis in the local vampire ranks: Suddenly the government wants lots of the local vampires to show up for IRS audits, immigration updates, jury duty, etc., in the middle of the day. And at the same time a different and very personal crisis for Stacy and Goody.
This is, in fact, a lovely and sweet movie. A little too gruesome and perhaps too adult for children, but not the sort of thing to cause nightmares. Goody may be undead but she made my heart beat faster and I honestly wouldn't mind if she gave me a hickey.
Good News (1947)
Shows what happens when Hollywood mangles a Musical classic
GOOD NEWS was a Broadway classic of the 1920s. But most of you haven't seen a really good production of the original musical. Even threadbare amateur attempts have been seen by very few modern viewers. So you can be excused for thinking that this 1947 movie is a faithful rendering of something that your grandparents raved about.
No such luck. This musical about college romance is chockful of stars who are about a dozen years too old for college. And very little remains of the original story or script. The famous songs, such as The Best Things in Life are Free, Button Up Your Overcoat, etc. have been shuffled around, and the great dance classic, The Varsity Drag, has been moved from the middle to the finale and changed from a Charleston to something that looks like goosestepping. A soundtrack recording preserves the songs nicely but the movie distorts what was once a memorable night at the musical theater.
Poltergeist (2015)
A remake, but not the same
If POLTERGEIST (2015) had not used the title and declared itself a remake of POLTERGEIST (1982), I doubt that the people connected with the 1982 original could have successfully sued the people of the 2015 movie for plagiarism. Yes, it's the same basic story - but with so many new twists and innovations that it is also a new movie.
It's a haunted house - but not a new house. There was a previous occupant (but this aspect is not further explored, unfortunately). There's a family moving in, named Bowen, not Freeling, with a little girl, named Madison, not Carolanne. The parents do not smoke marijuana. The haunting attracts the attention of a TV exorcist, not a magical munchkin. And this new narrative includes such modern contrivances as smart phones, cellphones, laptops, and flat screens. Just so you know.
The Bowen family, dad (Sam Rockwell), mom (Rosemarie DeWitt, of Rachel Getting Married, and United States of Tara), and teen daughter Kendra ( Saxon Sharbino, of Touch, and I Spit On Your Grave), nervous young son Griffin (Kyle Catlett, of whom we can expect much), and little girl Maddy (Kennedi Clements) move into a housing development not far from Molene, Illinois. The move was begun when dad was hired by John Deere tractors but somehow he was laid off before he even arrived, so they arrive unemployed. The house, however, is very nice, the previous occupant made sure it was wired up for cable and internet.
Near the house are high tension power lines and some anomalies hinting at static electricity are blamed on that. Then we are told that the housing development is on the site of a cemetery - and not so old that all the graves were long forgotten and neglected, no sir, families still visit the graves at their new location. Except, of course, ....
Before long, there's serious Trouble, and a professor of the supernatural (Jane Adams) is called in to help with a small crew of high-tech assistants, and soon enough a cranky TV cleanser of cursed houses (Carrigan Burke, of Mad Men) shows up to lend his expertise.
Now I would like to point out the obvious defect in both the 1982 original and this remake. Leaving the coffins in the ground and moving only the headstones is a scam so transparent that it's a wonder someone wasn't arrested the first day. Moreover these houses have basements - considerably deeper than a grave (and the 1982 movie included an outdoor swimming pool). And, finally, if building over a cemetery caused any sort of haunting, then Paris would be one big chamber of horrors.
This 2015 version has new twists, surprises, and special effects. This makes the original seem a tad pale (although I miss the musical theme of the 1982 version).
Vegas Vampires (2007)
Very possibly the worst movie of the decade ....
VEGAS VAMPIRES (also marketed as VEGAS VAMPS) has all the markings of a "project"; that some veteran (i.e., over the hill) Afro-American movie stars got together to give their own careers one last battery charge and, while they were at it, give some young Afro-American film and acting students a chance to do their thing. Evidently everything was spent on this film - except (1) time and (2) money.
Although this film is supposed to attract us by being located in Las Vegas, a city of glamour and round-the-clock action, we see none of that, apart from about 30 seconds of stock footage of the casino strip. No scenes inside casinos or nightclubs or fabulous mansions. One scene that's supposed to be in a swank neighborhood is actually in an alleyway behind the backyard walls. A scene that supposed to take place in a classy restaurant looks more like the corner of a utility room with a movable bar and a shower curtain hung from the ceiling. There are some stock glimpses of ambulances running in the light of day, but when we have a close-up scene (as we do with supposedly different ambulances on 3 different occasions) suddenly it's nighttime and then we see the ambulances drive off, again in daylight.
Young women in Las Vegas are being killed, and their bodies are found drained of blood, and the LV Police Dept officially suspects that a vampire is really on the loose. Well that's a change of pace! Another change of pace is that a majority of the LV PD, including its upper command, is black; if you lived in LV you'd realize that would be a change like the sun rising in the west. Daniel Baldwin, who may have owed someone a favor, does a one-minute walk-on as a stubborn white cop who doesn't believe in vampires. Thrown into this mix two Afro-American former LV PD cops who are now private eyes in Los Angeles who just happen to drive up to Las Vegas on a lark and take an interest in this string of killings. At the same time, for no particular reason, there's a hip-hop singing contest among Afro-American 20-somethings in Southern California and a couple of fellows win it singing as badly as I do, and immediately decide to take their girlfriends along for a celebratory trip in an RV to LV.
For reasons unknown, this RV has some sort of temporary engine trouble in the middle of the desert, and looking at it from the outside, they're in a sandy wilderness. Then they're filmed from inside the RV and we can see through the windshield that they're parked on grass alongside an active highway. The wardrobe department also went cheap and told these fellows to wear their own clothes - and then the producers got antsy about something printed on their t-shirts because the images were processed to blur the image on the shirts, giving them a shimmer as if you had walked into a 3-D movie without the special glasses.
The vampires in this movie are very selectively sensitive to sunlight. One of them manages, for no particular reason, to stumble out into the middle of what appears to be an open air farmers market at high noon before settling down and bursting into flame. Others, inside the living room of the house used by the king vampire, are disco-ing in mid-day with just flimsy lace curtains on the windows to protect them from the noonday sunlight. The king vampire, as you might have guessed, is a white dude and you don't need me to tell you he's no actor; in fact, he is a very accomplished musical director for movies and he may have been recruited for this role because they had embarrassing photos of him or were keeping his kid hostage or some motivation like that. Anyway, we never actually see him kill a victim because first he has to do this very prolonged arthritic dancing around her unconscious body; no explanation for why he plays with his food.
In the end the vampire is not done in by the police, nor the private eyes, nor the hip-hip singers, but by a nun (also of African descent but since she's sent by the Vatican I don't know if I can call her American) who first appears in the full veil and wimple penguin outfit we haven't seen since Loretta Young, and then she slips into a leather bustier which I suppose is now standard Vatican issue for nun downtime.
This movie is 89 minutes of your life that you will never get back. I consider it one of the worst movies ever made ... and that's against very strong competition.
The Possession (2012)
The POSSESSION: The Exorcist .... Right to Left
If you're a bit tired of the suggestion in the various demon possession flicks that only the Roman Catholic Church has the cure, then maybe this is the film for you. In THE POSSESSION we have the basics of The Exorcist, only in a Jewish vein. If you have not seen The Exorcist, and you see this first then you might consider The Exorcist a pale imitation. A little girl acquires, at a yard sale, a mysterious box. It contains a dybbuk - a wandering soul, an angry ghost, eager to inhabit and torment a living person. (The craftsman who produced this box for the movie evidently took the matter seriously enough that he spelled dybbuk backwards on the box, in Hebrew, as if there was a risk in labelling it so the ghost could read it.) Since the box was of Judaic origin, a rabbi is approached for a solution. .... We don't have heads spinning around but it is nice to know that Hebrew prayers are just as efficacious as Latin ones.
There is a hint, at the end, of a sequel - but maybe not.
Earth II (1971)
The Sci-Fi Effects are the star
Everyone is talking about how EARTH II was ahead of its time with special effects, scientific imaginings, and the like. I was, however, a little more down to earth. The people who worked up this film did not have their feet on the ground.
Here's the premise: An international project sends up a huge space station and populates it with about a hundred people from various nations. The USSR is represented but not China - because the Chinese had a bad attitude about it. Instantly the US President (Lew Ayres) tells the inmates of this space station that they are now a new and independent nation, he (evidently without the advice and consent of Congress) is recognizing it as a new nation and he's going to have the UN make it a member state. This is absurd on a number of levels include any business about the exchange of ambassadors.
Additionally, the technology pretty much does their thinking for them. In a ship-wide video discussion of a crucial problem of international relations, the ship's computers analyze each person's argument and put subtitles on the screen with disparaging labels about their contribution -- e.g. "Appeal to authority".
Apart from this, the interesting stuff (the special effects) is about a Chinese nuclear satellite that is being used to the homelands of the inmates of this space station.
So, comic book logic, impressive special effects.
The Notorious Landlady (1962)
Trivia in The Notorious Landlady
The opening scenes of this movie have, as background music, the melody of the Gershwin song, A Foggy Day in London Town. This, despite the fact that there is no fog in those scenes. The song was introduced by Fred Astaire -- who plays a supporting role in this flick -- in his 1937 movie Damsel in Distress.
SPOILER: The concluding scenes, which include a chase on the beach at Penzance, has background music from the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, The Pirates of Penzance (which was also made into two movies in 1982 and 1983), with a coda from a melody in Gilbert & Sullivan's HMS Pinafore. One other mystery movie in which music from the Pirates of Penzance was significant was The Hand That Rocks The Cradle.