Ok, here's the deal. Periodically, I'll put a movie review on this page. My scale is as follows:
Utter crap; a total waste of 90 minutes of your existence
Possibly worth watching if you're suicidal or drunk or high or immortal

Slightly below par of standard Hollywood fare

A decent movie, worth seeing once


A good movie; a candidate for multiple viewings


An excellent piece of cinematic work; worthy of high praise and a spot on your video rack
The City of Lost Children - (1996; 114 mins.; reviewed 1/18/98) if anything, this entry should certainly convince any remaining skeptics of how broad and bizarre my taste in cinema truly is; at any rate, I should at this point issue my standard warning: what I am about to review is a *foreign film*; for those monolingual movie-viewers like myself, this means that to understand the dialogue, you will have to pay close attention to those words appearing at the bottom of the screen; if this prospect nauseates you, don't bother reading the rest of this review--hey, you're not paying me or anything!; this film is self-described as a fairy tale, and, if it's a reference to Grimm originals and not the weaselly watered-down versions we get today, I might be inclined to agree; it's a bizarre tale that centers largely on the efforts of a not-too-bright strongman called One (played by Ron Perlman--hey, who knew anyone related to Rhea Perlman could not only act but also speak French?) to rescue his adoptive little brother from the clutches of evil genius Krank, who has been kidnapping the city's children in an effort to steal their dreams; it seems that Krank, his four "brothers" (a group of identical quadruplets who are none-too-bright themselves), their "mom" (a dwarfish woman), and his "Uncle Irwin" (a disembodied brain prone to migranes kept in a tank of cerebrospinal (just guessing) fluid were all created by a slightly-deranged inventor; Krank's tragic flaw is his inability to dream; unfortunately, the children he kidnaps, being frightened of him, only dream nightmares during their captivity; one of his henchmen's efforts to obtain more children leads them to take Denree, One's little brother; One is joined in his quest by a little girl, Miette, who is on the run from a kind of combination orphanage/thieving-school run by a Siamese twin-woman with an unpleasant disposition; the visual style is intriguing, with a mix of elements that look like they were time-warped from some 18th-century inventor's lab and a da Vinci sketchbook into the twentieth century with some decidedly modern devices like a radar screen; Judith Vettet (as Miette) and Perlman turn in affecting performances, Daniel Emilfork gives some pathos to the character of Krank, and the minor characters are also interesting; I must confess the story did leave me scratching my head in a few places, but no more so than your basic pothole-filled Hollywood plot; my rating:
Dark City - (1998; 100 mins.; reviewed 3/16/98) on the recommendation of a friend, I am breaking with tradition and providing a topical movie review--discussing a film which hasn't left the theaters yet; Dark City is the kind of movie a David Lynch film should aspire to be; it's creepy and stylish without being incomprehensible; as one might surmise from the title, the style in question is dark; Rufus Sewell plays the hero, John Murdoch, a man on the run from both the police, who want him for a murder he's pretty sure he didn't commit, and from a group of exceedingly-pale, sinister guys called the Strangers, who want him for entirely different reasons; it seems that John has somehow acquired an ability previously posssessed only by the Strangers: "tuning," a way of altering reality by willing change to occur; this makes him a danger to the Strangers and their plans; moreover, he is starting to "remember" that his world isn't quite what it seems--again making him dangerous; he meets several interesting characters along the way, including a woman who thinks she's his wife (Jennifer Connelly), a police detective (William Hurt) who gradually begins to question his reality, too, and Kiefer Sutherland's spooky, but ultimately redeemed, psychiatrist, Dr. Schreber; the visuals in this movie are incredible, the story intriguing, and the characters interesting--what more can you ask?; my rating:
The films of Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell, including Darkman, Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn, and Army of Darkness [Evil Dead 3] - (1983-1992, each approx. 90 minutes; reviewed 6/24/98) I have decided to devote a bit of my webspace to that clever filmmaking duo of Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell; Raimi pioneered some clever camera angles and his films are characterized by humor, occasional no-holds-barred gore, and intelligent scripts; Here's the breakdown: Raimi and Campbell were college buddies who made a film, Evil Dead as a film-school project; of the three in this series, it is the one I would recommend least; the plot is virtually identical to Evil Dead 2, which is essentially a remake with a bigger budget; Raimi doesn't waste the money--the effects are impressive and the horror is reminiscent of a Lovecraft or Poe tale (or what Ambrose Bierce aspired to write); that is to say, while there are some simple scare-the-pee-out-of-you moments, it's largely psychological and quite effective; Campbell stars in the three Evil Dead films as Ash, a guy who gets pretty good at killing things, but who's not the world's next Einstein; Evil Dead 2 is a certified classic of the genre--trapped in a cabin with a couple of college students and a couple of hicks, Ash must battle an ancient evil unleashed accidentally by an archaeologist investigating a mystical artifact, the Necronomicon; Armed mostly with a chainsaw and a shotgun, he takes on the many incarnations of the evil, eventually succeeding in banishing it from our world--at a price; though the cliffhanger ending seemingly made a sequel inevitable, it wasn't until five years later that Army of Darkness was released; AoD has its great moments, but Raimi clearly attempted to stress humor over action in this flick, and not at all successfully; much of the humor seems forced and much of it is not particularly funny; nonetheless, it's mostly a good film, and, while the American ending is great, the Japanese laserdisc (the original ending, changed to satisfy the studio) denouement leaves open the possibility of another sequel (and so have Campbell and Raimi); finally, Darkman represents a kind of anti-hero, a man who survives a vicious attack to extract a bloody revenge on the gangsters who scarred his body and his mind; Peyton Westlake (played by a pre-Schindler's List Liam Neeson) is a biochemist working on artificial skin; his girlfriend Frances McDormand accidentally acquires some dirt on one of the "city fathers," and leaves the incriminating evidence at Westlake's lab; some hoods on the aforementioned rich guy's payroll trigger an explosion in the lab, and leave Westlake for dead; he survives, however, and with the aid of his artificial skin, wreaks vengeance on his tormentors, one by one; part-comic book, part-science fiction, part-character study, this is a well-written film with great f/x and superb acting; don't remember Bruce Campbell in the movie? watch the end--he appears as Darkman's last disguise; here we go:
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Key Largo - (1948; 100 mins.; reviewed 9/17/98) I watched this movie again last night and was reminded anew of why I was so taken with it the first time; a few comments are in order regarding the actors and the characters: Lauren Bacall is sexy as ever, even though the role as Nora Temple is much more low-key than her characters in The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not, where she fairly oozes sultriness in a way that only she could; I have to say something about Humphrey Bogart here, as well--his character here, Frank MacLeod, is a sort of generic Bogey character, a man who has a strict policy of "mind my own business" who is reluctantly drawn into a conflict by a woman (see Casablanca, To Have and Have Not, and to a lesser extent, the private dick films, The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep); it's more of an observation than a complaint: he's eminently watchable here, as ever; MacLeod, a disillusioned WWII vet, stops at Key Largo on his way to Key West to start a new life as a fisherman; he visits the widow of an old friend and her father, who run the local hotel, only to discover that the establishment has been quietly taken over by an ex-mob boss and his thugs; the boss, Johnny Rocco, played with bone-chilling menace by Edward G. Robinson, is in Florida to sell some counterfeit money to one of his colleagues; he was deported as an undesirable, but he hopes to make a comeback; MacLeod sees through Rocco's facade, rapidly becoming aware that the man is living in the "glory days" of his past, and recognizing his naivete regarding his would-be return to power; it's entertaining to watch Bogart's MacLeod mocking the gangster in his quiet, cynical way; in a way, the Rocco character might possess some quality of pathos, if he weren't, in the end, a vicious bastard; his true nature is revealed through several incidents during the long night in the hotel (riding out a hurricane); first, he gives MacLeod an empty gun and taunts him; MacLeod, who doesn't believe in dying for causes anymore, doesn't bite; however, the local deputy does, and gets himself killed for it; second, he mocks his former mistress, a former showgirl named "Gay Dawn," forcing her to sing so she can have a drink (she's an alcoholic); third, when the sheriff comes around to investigate the aforementioned deputy's disappearance, Rocco tells him that two fugitive Seminoles are responsible for his murder, indirectly causing their deaths; in the end, the storm relents and the gangsters attempt to make their getaway to Cuba on Old Man Temple's fishing boat; however, by now, Frank has seen too much and come to realize that, while his practical side demands that he do whatever he can to keep himself safe, his heart tells him that he can't let these evil men escape; the final scenes on the boat are great stuff; the setting and the characters in this film are great, a reminder of why people mourn the passing of the old days of cinema; my rating: