Movies seen in March but not mentioned below: Abandon (2002) C+; Adaptation (2002) A-; Amelie (2001) B+; Auto Focus (2002) B+; Big Eden (2001) B+; Blade 2 (2002) B+; Cathy's Curse (1976) D+; The Cat’s Meow (2002) B+; Chariots of Fire (1981) B; The Core (2003) B+; Deuces Wild (2002) C-; The Devil’s Backbone (2001) A-; Doctor Zhivago (1965) B; Dogtown & Z-Boys (2002) B-; Dragonfly (2002) B-; Duct Tape Forever (2002) C-; Final (2001) B; Flashdance (1983) C+; Grand Theft Auto (1977) C; A Hard Day’s Night (1964) A-; Hart’s War (2002) B; Homicidal (1961) B+; Kung Pow: Enter the Fist (2002) B; The Magnificent Seven (1960) B+; Midnight Cowboy (1969) B; The New Guy (2002) C-; The Powerpuff Girls Movie (2002) B; Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) C-; Super Troopers (2002) B; The Sweetest Thing (2002) D; The Three Caballeros (1945) C; White Christmas (1954) B; White Zombie (1932) C; Wicked (2001) C, The Wild One (1954) B; Willard (2003) A-
Movies seen in April but not mentioned below: Adam's Rib (1949) C-; An Affair to Remember (1957) B-; Big Fat Liar (2002) C; Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) B+; The Cat and the Canary (1939) B; Corridors of Blood (1959) B; Crush (2002) B; Enemy Mine (1985) C-; Far From Heaven (2002) A-; 40 Days and 40 Nights (2002) B-; High Crimes (2002) B+; The Horror of Party Beach (1964) C-; Identity (2003) A-; In the Bedroom (2001) A-; Iris (2001) B-; Jason X (2002) D; The Jewel of the Nile (1985) B-; Joe Somebody (2001) B-; Kissing Jessica Stein (2002) B+; Lady Frankenstein (1971) C-; Last Orders (2002) B; Malibu’s Most Wanted (2003) B+; The Master (1989) B; Miracle on 34th Street (1947) B+; National Lampoon’s Van Wilder (2002) D-; Outland (1981) B; Phone Booth (2003) A-; The Prime Gig (2001) B; Rocketship (1936) C-; The Rookie (2002) B-; The Salton Sea (2002) B+; The Truth About Charlie (2002) B; Vulgar (2002) D; We Were Soldiers (2002) B+; Y Tu Mama Tambien (2002) B+
April 28
Title: The Brotherhood 3: Young Demons (2002)
Director: David DeCoteau
Cast: Kristopher Turner
Thoughts: To be fair, the Brotherhood movies have never been very good, but the first one was a whole lot of fun. The second one was less fun, thanks to a lack of a properly menacing villain and an undeveloped supporting cast. This movie has the latter problem, the characters are introduced for the sole purpose of being bumped off in completely unoriginal ways. The villain (Turner) is more interesting than the one in the previous film, but he’s totally hands off, he just hides in a room and attempts to speak menacingly while his minions do his dirty work. There is also a problem in the fact that this movie is one big game of Dungeons and Dragons set in a high school. The first movie was about vampires, the second about warlocks and this one is about nerds. Not including the end credits, Young Demons runs only 77 minutes, and that’s with a whole lot of filler - people walking in slow motion, different people walking in slow motion, and the first people walking in slow motion again, you know, that sort of thing. Just as with other DeCoteau films, this one features pointless strobe lights meant to depict stormless lightening, and a lot of unexplained smoke, but this time the underwear rule (white for good guys, black for bad guys) is irrelevant. Only one guy strips down to reveal that he’s wearing black boxers over little white briefs, and then, in a scene that would be predictable only in a DeCoteau film, takes a shower for several minutes. The filler gets really annoying, the characters aren’t worth caring about and, as usual for this series, the actors aren’t any good. If there’s a fourth Brotherhood, I can only hope that it returns to the spirit and fun of the first one.
Grade: C-
April 26
Title: Vampires: Los Muertos (2002)
Director: Tommy Lee Wallace
Cast: Jon Bon Jovi, Natasha Wagner
Thoughts: This sequel to John Carpenter’s 1998 film Vampires, which itself was widely derided, will likely be dismissed by most as a combination of the original and a little seen 2001 vampire movie called The Forsaken. I suppose that’s valid - Bon Jovi, like the original’s James Woods, is a vampire hunter on the prowl for what he calls “suckers” and he even behaves just like Woods did, and Wagner, like Forsaken’s Brendan Fehr, is staving off her vampiric leanings with the help of prescription drugs. There are other details, but those are the ones that stick out in my mind. This movie is basically a road movie with Bon Jovi and his motley crew of mostly inexperienced vampire hunters searching for a female vampire who has in her possession an item that could free her to walk in the sunlight. Director Wallace, who has experience on Carpenter sets from as early as 1974’s Dark Star, keeps the spirit of the first movie alive, using similar arty camera shots and angles, and he keeps things movie along at a nice pace. The finale is a bit of a let down, but only because the head villain is done away with so simply and in a manner used earlier in the film. It’s a good enough movie that it makes me hope the series continues.
Grade: B
April 23
Title: The Pool (2002)
Director: Boris von Sychowski
Cast: Kristen Miller, Elena Uhlig, Thorsten Grasshoff
Thoughts: I don’t know if this movie is really as bad as I think it is, or if I’m just sick of the slasher genre. The Pool concerns an international high school in Prague (all the better to explain the multi-national cast) that has just let out for the summer. About a dozen (or more, or less, I don’t remember) friends decide to throw themselves a party at a public pool, which they break into, and it isn’t long before they start getting killed off one by one by a mystery assailant dressed all in black with a skull mask. Since the killings are mostly unimaginative and without any suspense or real scares, you can jump to the conclusion that the killer is among the group of friends, since to do otherwise would require a screenwriter with talent. Made in Germany but acted, for the most part, in heavily accented English, The Pool has very little going for it. Sure there’s nudity and some blood for the casual horror fans, but for anyone who sees a lot of these movies, it’s just very repetitive. The only reason I don’t describe it as predictable is because the person revealed to be the killer was someone I had completely forgotten about, as they hadn’t been on screen for at least 20 minutes before the reveal.
Grade: D
April 20
Title: Lost Voyage (2002)
Director: Christian McIntire
Cast: Judd Nelson, Janet Gunn, Lance Henriksen, Jeff Kober, Wendie Robie
Thoughts: I haven’t seen last year’s theatrical release Ghost Ship yet, but all through Lost Voyage, I kept thinking that the two movies must be really similar. In Lost, Nelson plays the son of a man who went on a cruise with his new wife 25 years ago, the ship disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle, and now it has reappeared. Gunn is a reporter working for one of those supernatural investigation shows that wants to take a crew, along with Nelson, to the ship and look around. Nelson eventually agrees and they meet up with professional salvager Henriksen who takes them, by helicopter to the ship, which the coast guard won’t go to on account of the nasty storm. Once there, it isn’t long before people start dying due to their refusal to stay together in a group. I was actually really surprised by how much fun this movie is. There’s a particularly odd scene in which Henriksen becomes enraged and fires Kober, one of his assistant salvagers, and they both start laughing. There are other scenes where the ship’s passengers, during the post reappearance tour, are shown as ghosts that are kind of creepy, although a scene at the end with ghosts is less effective. Overall, it’s a fun haunted ship movie, but the story feels recylced (it also borrows from 1999’s House on Haunted Hill), and the movie too often sacrifices story and character for cheap thrills.
Grade: B-
April 19
Title: Wishmaster 4: The Prophecy Fulfilled (2002)
Director: Chris Angel
Cast: Michael Trucco, Tara Spencer-Nairn, Victor Webster
Thoughts: Finally, after three whole movies, someone makes the third wish that allows the Djinn (Trucco) to do some Hell on Earth or some such nonsense. Too bad for him the wish is a catch-22 and to make it come true he has to do something that all but guarantees that it won’t come true. The first Wishmaster, which got a theatrical release in 1997 and had Wes Craven Presents above it’s title, was little more than interesting special effects and a collection of slasher movie veterans, like Robert Englund and Kane Hodder. It wasn’t a good movie, but it wasn’t entirely joyless either. The sequels have all gone straight to video, limiting the special effects budgets, and none have bothered to collect any cool guest stars to delight horror fans the way the first one did. The only name I recognized in the cast for this film is that of Webster, one of the stars of a syndicated X-Men rip-off called Mutant X, a show I, admittedly, have never seen. He plays The Hunter, a character whose mission is to kill Spencer-Nairn, the young woman enlisted by the Djinn to make the three wishes he needs. The Hunter appears, runs around like a maniac, kills someone for no reason and then gets killed by the Djinn, never to return. He’s completely pointless, he’s merely a time waster to pad the running time. And for future reference, the Djinn looks really silly in broad daylight, so let’s keep in moodily lit areas for any additional sequels.
Grade: D+
April 18
Title: Shark Hunter (2001)
Director: Matt Codd
Cast: Antonio Sabato Jr., Christian Toulali, Grand L. Bush, Heather Marie Marsden
Thoughts: I guess after the minor success of 1999’s Deep Blue Sea, everyone thinks they can make a movie about a killer shark. The movie opens with home video footage of two young marrieds and their son getting ready for a boat trip. The scene goes on so long that the viewer has no choice but to jump to the conclusion that these people are about to die. They do just that when a giant shark rams their boat. The boy lives, of course, so he can grow up to be Antonio Sabato Jr. with a grudge. He finally gets a chance to kill the kind of shark that killed his parents so many years ago when he’s enlisted to join the crew of a submarine that’s investigating the mysterious destruction of some kind of underwater work station. He instantly assumes a giant shark is responsible, namely the prehistoric Megalodon, but of course nobody believes him. They eventually come around when the shark reappears, in the form of a really bad special effect. The whole movie comes off as really cheap, starting with Sabato’s hair, which looks like it hasn’t been cut or maintained in any way in at least six months. The shark wouldn’t look too bad, if it were supposed to be a still photograph, but I’ve seen too many documentaries about sharks on Animal Planet to believe this thing for a second. The screenplay, complete with cop-out ending, is really annoying, making the voyage’s sole woman (Marsden) into an irrational bitch, and the sole black man (Bush) into an insufferable jackass. Nothing surprising happens, until the end, but it’s not surprising in the good way.
Grade: D-
April 14
Title: Comic Book Villains (2002)
Director: James Robinson
Cast: Donal Logue, Natasha Lyonne, DJ Qualls, Michael Rapaport, Cary Elwes, Eileen Brennan, Danny Masterson, James Duval
Thoughts: Surprisingly enjoyable dark comedy about rival comic book store owners trying to obtain the prized collection of a recently deceased man. Logue doesn’t want the money he’d get from selling it, he just wants the collection for the prestige it would bring. Rapaport, and to his larger extent Lyonne as his wife, want the collection for the money and opportunities it would bring. Interestingly, the movie never makes Logue out to be the better man because of his intentions, he’s just as desperate and conniving. Brennan is the mother of the deceased, she’s not interested in selling the collection, but she’s more than happy to let Logue and Rapaport compete for her affections, washing her car, getting her groceries and so forth. Qualls is a fellow comic book enthusiast who’s just starting to realize that maybe there’s a world outside of this one and Elwes is basically a plot contrivance that allows the film to visit a strip club repeatedly and to end in a hail of gunfire. That aside, the movie is a lot of fun, the cast, especially Lyonne, is just terrific and it’s disturbingly easy to imagine collectors approaching, if not going to, these lengths for their life’s work.
Grade: B+
April 13
Title: Chasing Holden (2002)
Director: Malcolm Clarke
Cast: DJ Qualls, Rachel Blanchard, Sean Kanan, Colin Fox
Thoughts: Pity the fan of 2000’s Road Trip who takes the box’s claims that it reunites the stars of that film for this one to heart. Qualls and Blanchard were in Road Trip of course, though they were hardly the stars, and this movie is mostly a road trip, but other than that, there are no similarities. Qualls stars as Neil Lawrence, the son of New York’s Governor who was just released from, as he calls it, the nut house. He’s enrolled in a private school where, he’s told, nobody knows his recent past, which is where he meets T.J. (Blanchard) who’s a bit of a klepto and whose family has had some financial problems because of some mysterious medical bills. The title is a reference to the main character in J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, a book that Neil has obviously read several times. He makes it his goal to meet Salinger, a notorious recluse, and interview him for a class assignment. He and T.J. go on the road together to find him, having all sorts of tiresome adventures and spouting all manner of lame pop-philosophy on the way. They stop by the memorial to John Lennon and are amazed to discover that it’s the anniversary of the shooting (and viewers are amazed to discover that no Lennon fans seem to have realized this, as the site is deserted). They go to a museum and talk about how if you just remember what a painting looks like, it’s better than having it hanging on your wall, because if you remember it, it’s yours forever, or some such crap. They rescue one of those hookers who only exist in movies from getting roughed up, and then she gets them a cheap hotel room where T.J. is nearly raped. It goes on and on like that until the attempted tearful hospital room finale. Nothing new, little good.
Grade: C-
April 9
Title: Cash Crop (1999)
Director: Stuart Burkin
Cast: Wil Horneff, Jeffrey DeMunn, Mary McCormack, John Slattery, Evan Handler, James Van Der Beek
Thoughts: Don’t be fooled by the box this movie comes in, Van Der Beek has a very small role as one of Horneff’s stoner buddies. In fact, his character disappears never to return quite early in the movie. It’s at this point that the movie starts to get much better, not because Van Der Beek is gone, but because the lame teen comedy it looked like it was going to be is abandoned in favour of a drama about farmers growing marihuana to keep their farms going. Unfortunately, this movie isn’t terribly interesting either, as DEA agent McCormack wanders around from farm to farm looking for evidence to convict borderline destitute farmers desperate to keep a roof over their family’s heads. It’s easy to understand why the farmers are doing what they’re doing, except that their kids manage to get a hold of it and deal it to other kids. The whole movie is like an argument for and against legalization, with most characters refusing to take sides. The ending is a bit of a cop out, and the whole movie could have used an solid opinion one way or the other.
Grade: C+
April 1
Title: Tokyo Raiders (2001)
Director: Jingle Ma
Cast: Tony Leung, Kelly Chen, Ekin Cheng
Thoughts: Convoluted action thriller with Leung as an interior designer with mysterious fighting skills that he uses to save customer Chen from some bad guys hunting for her fiancé. The fight scenes are numerous and enjoyable to watch, but you could say that about any high end Hong Kong action movie. The only thing that really sets this one apart is how confusing it gets. Most of the characters aren’t who they say they are, and their true identities are revealed in such a way as to make you wonder why they’ve been behaving the way they have been since the beginning. Despite that, it’s a fun movie that moves along briskly, making the contrivances forgivable. At one point there’s a joke about a woman who speaks Chinese and Japanese and a guy who only speaks Chinese that loses a whole lot with subtitles. It made me wonder how much “clever” humour in English language movies is lost on foreign audiences.
Grade: B
March 30
Title: Longshot (2001)
Director: Lionel C. Martin
Cast: Tony DeCamillis, Joey Sculthorpe, Hunter Tylo, Jessica Wesson, Antonio Sabato Jr., Paul Sorvino, Zachary Ty Bryan, Danielle Fishel, Traci Bingham, Dustin Diamond, Howie Dorough, Dwayne Johnson, LFO, Lil’ Kim, *NSync, O-Town, Louis J. Pearlman, Kenny Rogers, Britney Spears, Take 5, Lark Voorhies
Thoughts: Made, for the most part, in 1999, before all of his acts started suing him, Pearlman slapped together this awful comedy/thriller and awkwardly inserted everyone who worked for him with no regard for how it would damage the story. Not that there’s much story in this movie about an idiot (DeCamillis, who also co-wrote with Pearlman) who gets roped into corporate espionage by a gangster (Sorvino, who seems intent on destroying his career). There’s a subplot about the idiot’s moron brother (Sculthorpe), who is eventually fixed up with Kirsten Dunst clone Wesson, completely abandoning the initial subplot with Fishel. The film is bookended by scenes that would have been even more embarrassing if they hadn’t starred O-Town, who have done little else but embarrass themselves in the last few years. It was filmed well after the rest of the movie wrapped, at some point between the time when the movie’s title was changed to Longshot from Jack of All Trades and the time when it was finally realized that it would never see the inside of a movie theater. It’s no surprise that not a single pop singer present is a good actor, but one gets used to the fact that none of them have anything to do with the movie quickly, which would likely run about half the time without the pointless cameos. Not a thing happens that the average viewer won’t see coming a mile away, and when the end finally arrives, you have to sit through a few minutes of outtakes, most of which are actually just extended or alternate takes of the cameo scenes. I dutifully watched, but it garnered nothing but eye rolls.
Grade: D
March 27
Title: The Frightening (2002)
Director: David DeCoteau
Cast: Matt Twining, James Foley, Jack Carlisle III, Brinke Stevens
Thoughts: Welcome once again to DeCoteau’s House of Homoeroticism. Actually, The Frightening is quite a bit less obvious than, say, DeCoteau’s The Brotherhood, but it still abides by the underwear rule - white for the good guys, black for the bad guys. It’s a minor detail but it makes me laugh every time I see it enforced. Like the Brotherhood movies, this movie features a lot of bad actors, a lot of male skin, and a female place holder to make anyone not in the know think this is just a regular slasher movie set in a high school. The villains skulk around dressed all in black, including toques and sunglasses, murdering anyone who doesn’t fit in (and anyone who gets murdered, no matter how it’s done, manages to spit up really fake looking blood). It’s made clear that the wrestling team is doing the deeds, but for some reason, they continue to hide their identities for a while longer. Our hero (Twining) has moved to this new school after accidentally killing his opponent in a wrestling match. Why he attends a wrestling meet his first day, when he’s still having nightmares of the event, is beyond me. I guess it was just to establish the preppy street gang we met a few minutes earlier as the wrestling team. The Frightening is an odd little movie that could have been a whole lot of fun if it hadn’t turned into a shameful rip-off of a popular horror film released in the last few years. I won’t say which because that would give everything away.
Grade: C
March 25
Title: Ringu (1998)
Director: Hideo Nakata
Cast: Nanako Matsushima, Miki Nakatani, Hiroyuki Sanada
Thoughts: Premiering in North America more than five years after it opened in Japanese theaters, Ringu pales a little in comparison to last year’s American remake, The Ring. The main problem is quite possibly that the remake stayed so close to the story in most regards that I knew what was coming. But I think it had more to do with the lack of good atmosphere, the least amount of suspense the terrific story could allow and, worst of all, missed opportunities. The two films open pretty much the same way, with two teenage girls talking about this weird video that kills you one week after you see it. In this version, however, it ends several minutes sooner, taking away a lot of dread that the remake created by delaying the final moment, plus this version just shows the victims face and then converts to a negative of the image. This version gets bonus points for the one week later aftermath of the video, near the end, for being way creepier than the remake. Of course the end of the scene betrays the rest of it, but that time, it’s forgivable. While not as good as The Ring, Ringu still has that terrific, fascinating mystery, plus it’s back story is different. Overall, it’s a really fun stand alone horror film.
Grade: B+
March 24
Title: Dark Descent (2002)
Director: Daniel Knauf
Cast: Dean Cain, Art Mendelson, William Zabka
Thoughts: Dean Cain has recently gotten himself trapped in straight to video hell. Aside from a bit part in 2001’s Rat Race and a supporting role in 2000’s The Broken Hearts Club, he hasn’t had any, even remotely notable film roles. And now there’s Dark Descent, a shameless ripoff of 1952’s High Noon, though I’m sure it was intended as an homage. Of course, in the original, no one had a hole punched through their torso by a powerful stream of water. Cain plays U.S. Marshal Will Murdock, whose job it is to keep the peace in an underwater mining installation. He shoots and kills the brother of a Russian criminal who, four years later, comes back for revenge. Anyone familiar with High Noon’s story will know everything that follows, from his deputy abandoning him, to his foreign girlfriend, to the scene where a guy is sliced in half by a metal door. Oh wait, that last thing wasn’t in the original story. As goofy as the idea of setting this story underwater is, I have to admire the ambition of the production. High Noon has already been remade at least twice, in 2000 with the same title and Tom Skerrit in the lead, and in 1981 as Outland with Sean Connery, and I don’t think too many people were clamouring for another version. But Dark Descent has a swift pace and a surprisingly able cast, most of which is Russian due the film’s foreign co-financing. Cain’s final act seems to be suicidal, and without that last minute plot contrivance, this movie could have been a real downer. Otherwise, good cheesy fun.
Grade: B-
March 20
Title: Dinotopia (2002)
Director: Marco Brambilla
Cast: Tyron Leitso, Wentworth Miller, Katie Carr, David Thewlis, Stuart Wilson, Alice Krige, Geraldine Chaplin, voices of Lee Evans, Terry Jones
Thoughts: While I was watching Dinotopia, my first thought was that it started kind of like The Wizard of Oz - Leitso is flying a plane that gets caught in a violent storm, crashes into the sea, and he and Miller manage to swim to the shore of Dinotopia. It’s a strange new world with odd people and creatures, but it’s these people and creatures that made me abandon my, admittedly shaky, Oz theory. Dinotopia is inhabited entirely by vegetarian hippies. All carnivores are evil, all Dinotopians (except Thewlis) are good. The entire 4-hour plus movie is basically a hard sell for the vegetarian lifestyle. As for the creatures, all dinosaurs (and some birds), are doing a whole lot of work for the humans, they’re busing people from town to town, lugging huge loads, etc. So it’s okay to work these animals to death, but eating them is morally wrong. The only thing more annoying than a preachy movie is a preachy mini-series. The whole production comes off as a PETA sponsored Flintstones episode. Add to that the lousy acting and really obvious effects, plus a predictable over-complicated story and childish screenplay, and Dinotopia has more aspirations than accomplishments. The final hour does pick things up a bit, but it’s too little, too late.
Grade: C-
March 15
Title: Gia (1998)
Director: Michael Cristofer
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Elizabeth Mitchell, Kylie Travis, Mercedes Ruehl, Faye Dunaway, Mila Kunis
Thoughts: Before Gia, Jolie was only known for supporting roles in little seen movies like Hackers and Playing God, as well as the well received cable movie George Wallace. But as doomed model Gia Marie Carangi, Jolie instantly became Hollywood’s favourite bizarro starlet, winning an Oscar for the following year’s Girl, Interrupted, in which she played a character that many seemed to think was based on Jolie herself. Gia, after years of drug addiction, died of AIDS in 1986, following a meteoric rise through the fashion industry and a very abrupt fall from the top. The movie depicts the industry just as most other movies on the subject depicts it, the only difference being that this movie chooses one participant, Gia, and paints her as a saint corrupted. The movie makes it seem as though Gia had absolutely no say whatsoever in her actions, it makes her look like a pathetic doormat. At the same time, it holds her up as the definition of a strong, independent woman, a woman who never lets anyone play with her by any rules but her own. Of course, any contradictions and inconsistencies are easy to ignore thanks to Jolie’s absorbing performance as the title character. If only the movie had been able to keep up with her.
Grade: B
March 10
Title: Dagon (2002)
Director: Stuart Gordon
Cast: Ezra Godden
Thoughts: Yet another H.P. Lovecraft adaptation from Gordon and producer Brian Yuzna, this one, apparently, being much more faithful to the original story than their previous adaptations. Having never read a single word written by Lovecraft, I don’t know for sure, but my sources say that this is true. Dagon is the name of some sort of creature, octopus like in appearance, that lives in the sea. The back story of Dagon’s control of a small coastal town is revealed late in the film, so I’ll just say that this thing helped some people out and turned them into fish people, somehow. Four idiots get into some trouble during a storm, two of them go ashore for help and are promptly targeted by the evil fish people. The others come back later in varying stages of death. Our hero (Godden) runs around aimlessly, which he can’t really help since he isn’t familiar with the town, trying to get away, but only falls deeper and deeper into the clutches of his pursuers. While not quite as fun as Gordon and Yuzna’s previous Lovecraft films, most notably 1985’s Re-animator, Dagon has a lot of bright spots. Fish people, for example, are certainly a unique type of villain. And as goofy as the subject could have been, Gordon manages to squeeze a very nice thriller out of the material. Unfortunately, the movie does veer into goofiness a few times, Dagon is a pretty obvious effect and as unique as the fish people are as villains, they’re also pretty ineffectual. If Godden hadn’t injured himself early in the chase, he would have been miles ahead of the slow moving things by the end. They’re vicious, sure, but if they don’t come up with some way of moving a little faster, they may never get this lucky again.
Grade: B-
March 7
Title: Teenage Caveman (2001)
Director: Larry Clark
Cast: Andrew Keegan
Thoughts: I don’t know why Larry Clark doesn’t just drop all pretensions and make a pornographic movie. He’s about halfway there with this made-for-Showtime movie, a remake of Roger Corman’s 1958 film of the same name but different plot. In the original, Robert Vaughn, who was 25 at the time, played a teenager in what was assumed to be prehistoric times. The twist ending revealed that it was actually post-apocalyptic America. In this new version, one of the first things we see is a “No Skateboarding” sign. Keegan, who was 22 at the time this film was made, plays a teenager in what we know from the start is post-apocalyptic America. He kills his father but is saved from execution by his friends and they all go into self-imposed exile. They end up just outside of a decimated Seattle when a storm hits. They all pass out and wake up in a mysterious living room, dressed only in underwear (not their own). The homeowners barge in, fill the gang in on what’s going on (it’s a hasty explanation involving solar power), then they all get naked and jump in the bath together. The “teenagers” are introduced to things like a baseball and a vacuum cleaner, and, eventually, sex. One of the girls doesn’t take too well to the sex and her stomach explodes. There isn’t much of note going on, even the sex and near constant nudity gets old fast. I admit it is surprising that Clark would take his favourite thing in the world, barely legal actors having sex, and use it to depict such death and destruction, but other than that, the movie is old hat. The original wasn’t a good movie either, but at least it respected it’s characters.
Grade: C-
March 5
Title: Sleepless (2001)
Director: Dario Argento
Cast: Max Von Sydow
Thoughts: I will eternally be mystified by the popularity of director Dario Argento. Besides this one, I’ve seen 4 of his movies - Deep Red, Suspiria, Inferno and Creepers (a widely despised edit of Phenomena) - and none of them are even remotely good, at times they’re barely watchable. For this piece of garbage, Argento somehow tricked Von Sydow into appearing as a detective who, in 1983, promised a young boy that he’d find out who killed his mother no matter what. Fast forward 17 years and Von Sydow is retired and the presumed killer, dubbed the Killer Dwarf, is long dead by, presumably again, his own hand. Upon seeing and hearing all of this, I immediately assumed that the young boy in the first scene was the killer, since that’s the most obvious conclusion. But I dismissed that theory when it was revealed the killer is starting up again and the boy, now grown, is much too far away to be the culprit. Argento, out to cement his undeserved reputation as the king of gore, has a prostitute and her friend pointlessly stalked and killed early on. The scene is frustrating because the man who is clearly intended to be shown as the killer, is at home in bed when the prostitute gets on a train, but he somehow shows up on the train, as it’s moving, and kills her. Since the killer’s identity is hidden for the entire movie, anyone will conclude that it’s a member of the cast we’ve already met. That excludes the Killer Dwarf theory, and since there aren’t a whole lot of characters who could logically (or illogically, since this is an Argento film) be running around killing people for no reason, I managed to figure it out the instant the character appeared. Admittedly, I discarded that suspect once or twice during the course of the film, thinking it would be too obvious, but I kept going back to him, and I was eventually revealed to be correct after not one, but two of Argento’s trademark false endings. The irritating and incredibly stupid characters got on my nerves quickly, as did the plot contrivances, like the monstrously inappropriate nursery rhyme (written by Argento’s daughter and XXX star Asia), that describes a farmer casually killing several animals (he slits a pig’s throat and drowns a kitten). Having seen this movie just after seeing last year’s Adaptation, which features a subplot that mocks serial killer thrillers, I actually found it funny how many clichés this movie runs through. That’s the only reason Sleepless doesn’t get an F.
Grade: D-
February 27
Title: Happy Campers (2002)
Director: Daniel Waters
Cast: Brad Renfro, Dominique Swain, Justin Long, Keram Malicki-Sanchez, Emily Bergl, Jordan Bridges, James King, Peter Stormare
Thoughts: With it’s impressive collection of B-list young actors, Happy Campers could have been a lot more fun than it is. It no doubt lost a lot of steam due to the release of the brilliant summer camp spoof Wet Hot American Summer the previous year, but even taking that into account, this movie misses a lot of opportunities by adhering so closely to genre conventions. Director/screenwriter Waters, who wrote the screenplay for the best teen movie ever, 1989’s Heathers, goes to the trouble of pointing out exactly which summer camp movie stock character each actor is portraying in an annoying group narration sequence right at the start. Renfro is the philosophizing hunk, Long is the virginal nerd, etc. I have to be honest, Swain and Bergl look so much alike I can’t honestly be certain which character they played, even during the movie, I wasn’t sure which of them was on screen at any one time. That confused me a bit, but I let it slide, since it was probably more my fault than anyone else’s. The most interesting actor, Malicki-Sanchez, is someone I have recently developed some appreciation for, after seeing him in the equally mediocre Rock My World, somehow holding his own against Peter O’Toole. Here he plays the gay character who’s hot for Renfro, who doesn’t much mind the extra attention. Since this movie is aimed squarely at heterosexual teenagers (and immature 20-somethings like myself), he doesn’t get to do anything gay except say he’s gay, bore a hole through Renfro’s back with his bedroom eyes, and have a “romantic” picnic with the camp cook, which is really just played for laughs. Regardless, the movie has some good moments, and interesting characters, despite the clichés (which are clearly intentional), and unlike other teen comedies being made now, it’s mostly inoffensive, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Grade: B-
February 24
Title: Lover’s Prayer (2001)
Director: Reverge Anselmo
Cast: Nick Stahl, Kirsten Dunst, Julie Walters, James Fox
Thoughts: Originally titled All Forgotten, which doesn’t make any more sense than this title, Lover’s Prayer has poor princess Walters and her daughter Dunst taking a summer home next to Stahl’s extremely snooty family. The snooty family, especially Stahl’s icy bitch of a mother, is practically outraged that someone who wasn’t rich would dare be that close to them, until Walters asks for some unspecified help, then the snooty family jumps at the opportunity to help. Stahl immediately falls hard for Dunst, who delights in making a group of men play stupid games, the winner of each game gets to kiss her on the hand, which one competitor desires more than anything else. There’s a subplot involving the peasants but it’s pretty clear that it’s included just so the movie will have a B-plot. Lover’s Prayer aims for the pinnacle of the costume drama, movies like Howard’s End and The Remains of the Day, but falls short, landing well below mediocrity.
Grade: C-
February 20
Title: Infested (2003)
Director: Josh Olson
Cast: Amy Jo Johnson, Daniel Jenkins, Zach Galligan, Mark Margolis
Thoughts: I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a movie in which flies were responsible for so many deaths. Infested is basically a rip-off of The Big Chill right up until a swarm of killer flies makes itself known. Since flies are basically the most harmless and least hated type of insect that any homeowner has ever had to deal with, the movie has to give a reason to be scared of them. They come up with some kind of mystery medical research company, and the characters assume that’s where these killer flies, which seem to fly into your mouth, eat your brain and take over control of your body, have come from. It’s peculiar that all of the fly effects look so bad, since that’s the whole point of the movie. There’s a nice head removal scene, and another scene in which Galligan does a little surgery on his badly wounded leg that just looked disgusting, but the flies never look real, even when they’re just resting on a shower curtain. Aside from the cool gore effects and the downright goofy plot, this movie has nothing to recommend. The movie ends oddly, with an open door for a sequel, which I’m sure will have nothing to do with this movie.
Grade: C-
February 18
Title: Drawing Flies (2002)
Directors: Matthew Gissing, Malcolm Ingram
Cast: Jason Lee, Jason Mewes, Joey Lauren Adams, Kevin Smith
Thoughts: Made in the mid-90s, but not released until last year, this is the lost View Askew production, and while as gratingly unfunny as Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, it certainly isn’t worth all the extra features crammed onto the disc. Kevin Smith, who had nothing to do with the production, save for a wordless cameo (Adams also appears briefly), introduces the film with some guy whose name I didn’t catch, and somehow manages to get into a discussion about circumcision. That pretty much sums up the movie - it sets out to do one thing, and turns into a stupid and pointless mess. The movie opens with a group of friends attempting to get their welfare cheques. All but one are denied, so they decide to go camping (it comes close to making sense at the time). Lee is basically the leader of the group, and the only one without a sexual partner, and he leads everyone on a search for Bigfoot without their knowledge. The movie barely runs 70 minutes, but the filmmakers are able to cram in hours worth of profanity and walking scenes (both popular tools among untalented screenwriters). It’s interesting to note that Mewes has always been hateful, it’s not just something he invented for his Jay character. Other than a delightful scene in which Mewes falls out of a tree and breaks his arm, this film would have been better off permanently lost.
Grade: D-
February 17
Title: Hard Cash (2002)
Director: Predrag (Gaga) Antonijevic
Cast: Christian Slater, Sara Downing, Val Kilmer, Daryl Hannah, Balthazar Getty, Rodney Rowland, Bokeem Woodbine, Verne Troyer, William Forsythe, Peter Jason
Thoughts: When I first saw the box for this movie, which is merely head shots of Slater and Kilmer, as well as Bokeem Woodbine, even though he has the smallest role of the main supporting cast, I thought it was pretty sad. Slater, whose last hit movie was 1996’s Broken Arrow, was a bona fide leading man just four years earlier, while Kilmer, who last had a hit movie in 1995, with the double bill of Batman Forever and Heat, had a lead role in the acclaimed indie The Salton Sea just last year. And now here they both are headlining a seemingly generic straight to video action movie. The first surprise was that cast. It’s not exactly A-list, but I would have expected Hannah to get her picture on the box ahead of Woodbine, simply because she’s more recognizable. Hard Cash, originally aired on TV about a year ago under the title Run for the Money, actually has a pretty good sense of humour. Kilmer, who has a tendency to take his characters too seriously, actually seems to have a little fun with his corrupt FBI agent, who kidnaps ex-con Slater’s daughter to force him to pull a dangerous job. There are a few criticisms I could make, all those goofy false endings for one, the incredibly awful attempts at making it look like cars and boats are moving are another (the background when Slater and Downing are on the boat actually made me laugh out loud, it looked like it was taken directly from one of those old beach party movie surfing scenes). But overall, Hard Cash, despite it’s similarities to 2001’s 3000 Miles to Graceland, which also featured Slater and Woodbine, is harmless fun.
Grade: B-
February 12
Title: Carnivore (2000)
Directors: Joseph Kurtz, Kenneth Mader
Cast: Jill Adcock, Steven W. Cromie, John Jacob
Thoughts: Utterly inept at every turn. This attempt at comic horror runs a mere 73 minutes, not including credits, and it’s still far too long. The story has a super secret government project, which is cleverly hidden in an abandoned house that a bunch of 30-something teenagers easily break in to, going horribly wrong. A hideous monster, which consists of long black gloves with fur on the wrists and claws glued to the fingers for arms, and a cheap halloween mask for a head, escapes from it’s containment unit, but is photosensitive so it can’t go outside. Said teenagers arrive, wander around aimlessly, and scare each other by jumping out from behind corners and shouting (no good movie has ever featured such a scene) until one of them gets killed by the monster. Then the cops arrive, one gets his face ripped off in a really lousy effects sequence, then some government agents arrive to clean everything up. And eventually the movie comes to an end in what is clearly supposed to be an open door for a sequel, but I can’t imagine that the filmmakers will be able to put together enough money to make one. I think the movie was supposed to be set in the 80s, for no apparent reason, but I suspect that the movie was actually shot in the 80s and the filmmakers were unable to finish it until a few years ago (I believe that happened to Ed Wood with Night of the Ghouls). It’s almost impressive how uniformly awful every single aspect of the film was. The acting, the directing, the screenplay, the effects, the lighting, the pacing - all terrible. I’m tempted to watch the movie again with the director’s commentary on, just to see if they realize how bad this movie is.
Grade: F
February 9
Title: Alien Fury (2000)
Director: Rob Hedden
Cast: Dale Midkiff, Stephen Tobolowsky, Joanie Laurer, Scott Lowell, Troy Evans, voice of Judy Geeson
Thoughts: This made for UPN film stars former WWE (or WWF, at the time) performer Joanie Laurer, who went by the name Chyna, and is credited as such in this film. In addition to Laurer, the film also includes, at two different points, footage of pro wrestling tag teams The Dudley Boys and The Hardy Boys. Clearly Vince McMahon was all over this, it’s only too bad that he was unable to make it anywhere near as fun as his prime time shows, Raw and Smackdown. The movie opens with a satellite being destroyed by a really bad special effect that emanates from the moon. Midkiff plays the head of STRAW, an acronym for words I didn’t catch, and is charged with finding out what the heck happened. Fortunately, the satellite was able to take a picture of it’s destroyer and send it back to Earth before it exploded; it turns out to be an alien space craft. Everyone panics and tries to come up with a way to destroy the aliens without anyone finding out about it. But then the information is leaked, but then it turns out the whole thing was a hoax, then it turns out the hoax was a hoax. The plot just keeps turning back on itself like that, often ignoring information already revealed in favour of going for a lame, out of nowhere plot twist, especially the last one, which completely negates much of what came before it. Laurer has a minor role as a security guard, she doesn’t impress, but she’s never given a chance to. Director Hedden wrote the screenplay for last year’s kiddie sci-fi thriller Clockstoppers, a movie that’s only good compared to this one.
Grade: D
February 7
Title: Creepy Crawlers (2000)
Director: Ellory Elkayem
Cast: Thomas Calabro, Dean Stockwell, John Savage
Thoughts: I don’t know how I convinced myself to watch this movie, I truly despise and/or fear bugs, and as the title implies, it’s crawling with them. Originally aired on the USA network as They Nest, Creepy Crawlers opens with a man being bound and gagged, then dumped off a ship into the ocean. He doesn’t factor in until burned out doctor Calabro takes his mandatory vacation to Maine, where he and his now estranged wife once bought a house. The mystery man washes up on shore and, although his body is never discovered, we do witness something with long antennas emerging from his mouth. It turns out to be a particularly vicious strain of meat eating African insect that really really looks like those Madagascar hissing cockroaches they use in movies as though they were no different than North American roaches (as someone who has lived with roaches, I can tell you that they are very different). Calabro chases one of these bugs through his house into his kitchen where he loses site of it, then he opens the fridge and we’re treated to the site of a raw chicken filled with the things. Very nasty. The roaches swarm and kill some people before the end, when Calabro accidentally saves the world. Directed by the same guy who made the terrific giant killer spider movie Eight Legged Freaks last year, Creepy Crawlers entertains as well as disgusts. While I did have a few unexplained itches while I watched (a sign of effective bug scenes), it was never unbearable. If reading this paragraph didn’t horrify you, you’ll probably get a kick out of the movie.
Grade: B-
February 3
Title: The Final Hit (2001)
Director: Burt Reynolds
Cast: Burt Reynolds, Sean Astin, Benjamin Bratt, Robert Costanzo, Charles Durning, Greg Germann, Robert Goulet, Erin Gray, Lauren Holly, Ann-Margret, Paul McCrane, Rod Steiger, Angie Dickinson, James Farentino, Shecky Greene, Joe Mantegna, Alex Rocco
Thoughts: For his directorial debut, Reynolds assembled a large cast of name actors (as opposed to big name), put most of them in small roles, and surrounded them with a movie that doesn’t know if it’s a drama or a comedy. Astin is a budding screenwriter who once signed a contract (on a napkin) that gave aging producer Reynolds first dibs, now he has a script that mega-producer Bratt wants, but Reynolds that his comeback is more important than Astin’s future. Costanzo is an Armenian gangster, Durning is Reynolds’ former producing partner, Germann is his no-good son-in-law and Steiger is a shady character willing to do whatever it takes to get Reynolds the money. Holly is Costanzo’s girlfriend and Ann-Margret is Reynolds wife, and the others are all single scene characters. When I saw Dickinson, who has no lines, at a poker game, at first I didn’t believe it was her. It was a pleasant surprise that she was there, and unpleasant that she didn’t have anything to say or do. I wanted to like this movie, it sure looked like it was a lot of fun, but it just wasn’t. There were interesting things happening, and fascinating characters wandering around, but the movie just has them all sitting there, it doesn’t know what to do or where to go. The end comes out of nowhere and has Reynolds do a complete turnaround for no apparent reason. It could have been good, but instead, it’s just there.
Grade: C
February 1
Title: Roswell (1994)
Director: Jeremy Paul Kagan
Cast: Kyle MacLachlan, Martin Sheen, Dwight Yoakam, Xander Berkeley, Kim Griest, Bob Gunton, Charles Hallahan, Peter MacNichol, Nick Searcy, Charles Martin Smith, Richard Fancy, Bruce Gray, Philip Baker Hall, Arthur Hiller
Thoughts: Roswell, which is sometimes subtitled The U.F.O. Cover-Up, but not in the opening credits, is told mostly in flashback as Jesse Marcel’s (MacLachlan) military unit holds it’s 30 year reunion, and everyone thinks it’s funny that they’re the ones who had to deal with the alleged alien crash that’s made the little town of Roswell, New Mexico so famous. Everyone, that is, except Marcel, whose life was ruined by it. Sheen’s character has little to do for most of the movie but shadow MacLachlan at the reunion, then he finally steps up and says his lines, but it’s never clear exactly who he is or what he’s doing. Yaokam is the rancher on whose land the crash in question happens. It’s a huge site, absolutely littered with mysterious debris and wreckage. As the story unfolds, as Marcel listens to first hand recollections, as well as second and third hand, it becomes clear that it was an alien space craft. MacLachlan’s old age makeup is terrible, as is that of most of the cast that’s aged up, and just as you’re mocking that, you’re treated to a surprisingly nice and creepy scene of an alien on it’s deathbed, it’s head pulsating with final thoughts. The script has some consistency problems, which makes it hard to believe anything in this so-called true story, but the pacing is swift and the movie never gets boring. Fire in the Sky, released the previous year, is a far superior film of a UFO encounter.
Grade: C+