It’s been a while since I’ve treated myself to a nice, relaxing crappy-movie marathon and I decided to, since I’d queued several, set my will against a trio of shark-themed fin-fests. Will I survive? Will I turn them off in disgust and return to “Skyrim” (they do need me there, what with all the dragons and unpludered crypts)?
Sci-fi, 103 Minutes, 2011
I’m a huge fan of John Carpenter’s 1982 classic “The Thing” [IMDB]. Thirty years later the ground-breaking practical effects are still just as creepily effective. The performances are some of the best ever seen in horror and the pacing and staging has rarely been topped.
Sci-fi/Action, 127 Minutes, 2011
This movie was completely – and I mean utterly – formulaic. It was unabashedly and aggressively manipulative – I mean Michael Moore was taking notes during the screening. The plot was full of holes a giant robot could dance through. Seriously: if you’ve seen “Rocky” or “The Champ” or “Over the Top” then you’ve seen this movie already.
Comedy, 112 Minutes, 2011
There’s no way to ignore the elephant in the room here: the premise of this movie is (to be as absolutely forgiving as possible) is as worn as the tissues your grandmother keeps stuffed up her sleeve. On the ranking of archetypical stories it falls someplace at the bottom of the list along with low-rent standards like “dog that thinks it’s people” or “stripper fights crime.”
Drama, 146 Minutes, 2011
Before getting into the movie let me say: I had no idea what this was. My wife had read the book and demanded that we see it so… we did. But I asked her, “what’s this about?” She got a gleam in her eye and started, “Well, there’s this white woman that -” and I stopped her. Basically there’s only a few kind of movies that can be described with that phrase (and my wife isn’t even remotely interested in several of them). It’s like “This guy finds out he has a kid…” or “These kids find a map…” Even if you can’t say exactly what’s going to happen you know basically what’s going to happen.
Comedy, 103 Minutes, 2011
You know how every once in a while a movie comes along that looks really bad – horribly, terribly bad – but somehow manages to end up really good? How a movie can sometimes triumph over the shortcomings of its source material and become something special? Sometimes its writing that’s smarter than it needs to be; or an oddly perfect marriage of actor and role; or even just an infectious love of something that most people consider too silly to consider?
Well – this movie ain’t none of that.
“Rise of the Planet of the Apes” on IMDB
Sci-Fi, 105 Minutes, 2011
Not to spoil things by fawning overly in the first paragraph: but this is a prime example of how hollywood should proceed through its creative drought. Comparing this to the well-produced but deeply flawed 2001 remake of the “Planet of the Apes” (IMDB) you’ll find some very educational contrasts.
Drama, 80 Minutes, 2009
(Before we begin, a warning: this film may be very hard on the ears of Americans. The accents are thick, deep and steeped in slang. Even if you’re a fan of British media, as I am, you may find things hard to follow.)
Action, 90 Minutes, 2011
Being a big fan of the Schwarzenegger version I was happily looking forward to this. Swords, magic, monsters – you really can’t screw it up that much, right? Well, it turns out that you can try pretty damn hard to screw it up but that no… you really can’t screw it up all that much.
Comedy, 90 Minutes, 2011
This strikes me as the independent film equivalent of the summer popcorn blockbuster. Take a movie like, say, “Pirates of the Caribbean.” It can be dismissed creatively as committee-generated pulp while still earning millions upon millions of dollars and a rabid fan-base. Here we have an independent movie that pushes all the right indie buttons – drama, humor and character – but simultaneously takes such a safe, predictable path that you’d swear it was pressed from a well-used mold.
