Seth Green - Film Reviews

Seth Green - Film Reviews

Here you will find reviews from various sources about the films starring the actor Seth Green.

Big Buisness

"Big Business" Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin each play a set of twins who are mixed up at birth so that one twin goes with the other twin's twin and vice versa. Still with me?

Okay, Midler plays the daughters of a rich snob, and Tomlin plays the daughters of a country bumpkin. One of each goes to New York with the rich snob and her husband (who quickly bought the hospital's conglomerate where they were born when his wife went into labor forty miles from the nearest decent hospital). Coincidentally, both sets of twins are named Sadie and Rose.

About thirty or forty years later, Sadie is in charge of her father's company, and she is just as snooty and dislikable as her mother. Rose, a klutzy constant embarrassment to Sadie, dreams of a quiet life in the country. When Sadie decides to sell the small country business, Rose and Sadie from the quiet little town decide to go to New York and protest. And, as you can tell, a few hilarious problems arise.

"Big Business" cracked me up. The actors are great, the scripting is original and diverting, and the characters are crazy enough to be hysterical. I was impressed by how Tomlin and Midler each managed to play to very different characters - in the same film.

by Vivian Rose

The Day my parents ran away

Though it features some talented individuals (Blair Brown, Seth Green, Peter Michael Goetz), no movie about a teenager who is so obnoxious his parents literally run away (to some kind of therapeutic camp)... is going to be taken seriously. So since it would be futile for "The Day My Parents Ran Away" to try to aspire to greatness, it should have strived for that campy, ridiculous, so-bad-it's-good USA Up All Night quality. And while it somewhat succeeds at this, particularly in the middle, "The Day My Parents Ran Away" is a little overlong and actually does try a bit too hard to have "serious" moments... unsuccessfully. So while it's definitely a "classic", I'm afraid this one won't make the "classics" hall of fame. But it's definitely worth your time to watch and laugh at at least once.

Bobby Jacoby, brother of Billy "Jayne" and looking about 36, plays the aforementioned teenager, Matt; a Corey Haim-wannabe type of character with obviously-dyed black hair, an earring, and an attitude that leads psychologist Ben Stein (in typical flat-voiced mode) to encourage his parents (an overly hammy Matt Frewer and a June Cleaver-esque Brown) to run away. Matt and his friends, Val and Leo (Chance Quinn and Green, who have good chemistry for roles such as theirs), think this is just fine! In fact, it's party time!

They throw party after party after party. Matt still keeps in touch with his parents (Brown calls during one of their parties, in a typical scene that "never ever" happens in programs where teens throw parties when their parents are out; she hears loud music and noise and asks if things are alright, Matt replies that he "just has a few friends over"), he has a credit card, and a beautiful woman is inviting him to be on The Sam Scott Show. Life is sweet for Matt... until the talk show. For reasons unbeknownst to Matt or the viewer, he is accused of "beating" his parents (?!?!) and everything goes downhill from there. With the help of his dull girlfriend Melanie (Brigitte Conley Walsh, later to be seen in the Dana Barron/Dennis Hayden "Man in the Iron Mask") and a gratuitous character called a "parent finder", Matt vows to find his parents. Which he does. But do they want to go home with him? Watch and see!

Again, the middle is rather entertaining, and some of the "serious" scenes are unintentionally funny (like when Matt is at Melanie's house for Thanksgiving). Toward the end, you may wonder if there will ever *be* an end. Overall, it doesn't quite work as a watch-again-and-again bad-movie "classic". But at least it comes close...

by IMDb

The Double O Kid

Lance, a teenager, dreams to be a secret agent when he is suddenly in the middle of an hacker intrigue which aims at an international environmental congress. Lance gets in possession of a computer access card one of which the hackers are in urgent need of for their operation. Lance begins to play with the hackers, seeing his dream come true.

by IMDb

The Hotel New Hampshire

In an attempt to unite his rather peculiar family, a man decides to buy an old girls' school and turn it into a family-run hotel. The result is a series of wild misadventures and sexual shenanigans. Based on the novel by John Irving.

An odd, episodic, quirky film based on a book by John Irving (sorry to be redundant), The Hotel New Hampshire is the story of a family in the hotel business, and what happens to them over a period of a few years. Many things happen: a rape, a plane crash, a car bomb, and a girl who always wears a bear suit. This is not a movie for your children to watch, but it has an odd charm.

The leading characters are the teenaged children, Jodie Foster as Franny and Rob Lowe as John. Franny is a free-spirited girl, a cheerleader, very confident and self-assured. John is a confused young man, unsure of himself and attempting to find his way in the world. Beau Bridges is Win, the father and center of the plot, a free spirit with a fondness for hotel and for bears. Lisa Baines plays his wife, the least-developed character in the movie. Paul McCrane (now on E.R.) plays Frank, the younger brother. There are two pre-teen children, Lily played by Jennie Dundas and “Egg” played by Seth Green.

The children all play their parts well, as does Bridges. As usual, it is impossible to keep your eyes off Foster when she is on screen. The storyline actually centers more on John, but Franny becomes the movie’s visual focus because of Foster’s ability. Lowe is good, but it is Foster that really makes the movie go.

The rest of the cast does well, too. Wilford Brimley plays Grandpa. Veteran character actor Wallace Shawn plays Freud, a showman and friend of Win. Dorsey Wright plays Junior, Franny’s boyfriend. In an odd turn, Natassja Kinski plays Susie, a rather insecure girl who dresses as a bear. That is, in a bear suit.

The movie begins as a rather light, whimsical exercise. Soon, terrible things begin happening: the kind of awful things that can happen in any family, but awful nonetheless. There is a good bit of swearing, particularly the f-word, and some very violent actions, as I stated in the opening paragraph. A number of people die, although normally off-camera and by implication. This movie is rated R, and deservedly so.

That said, it is still an enjoyable and oddly light-hearted movie. The title I used is a quote from the movie (my usual practice) and refers to passing open windows rather than jumping out of them. That typifies the spirit of the movie. This isn’t one of the all-time greats, but it is a good flick for Jodie Foster fans, or people who like bears or John Irving novels.

by Video Flicks.com

A series of murders prompts Mike Hanlon to suspect that the supernatural menace that he and a group of friends battled as children has returned. He begins to call his friends to remind them of the oath they swore: if It returned again, they would come back to Derry to do battle again.

Derry, Maine is a town plagued by a disease known as "It", that has caused a series of horrible deaths every 30 years. Only children are falling victim to "It" through his form of a manipulative clown named Pennywise and the adults act like "It" doesn't happen although ironically they know about "It". Seven kids who defeat "It" in their childhood reunite in their middle ages after learning about "It's" return. Can they defeat "It" and cure Derry of "It's" terror? Based on the Best-Selling novel by Stephen King.

by IMDb

Something Special

A teen-age girl who yearns to become a boy gets her wish with the help of some magic powder and a solar eclipse. Academy award winner Patty Duke stars as the surprised mom in this inventive comedy.

by E-Online

Stonebrook

Con games are fun and we often look at them and wonder who can be so dumb!?!! In STONEBROOK, there are a number of con games which fill the bill, and there is some tension and drama that builds in the process. Seth Green is slick and Brad Rowe does some good work. Along the way is a bit of moralizing. Is love more important than money?? STONEBROOK is a step away from being super, but it's not a bad way to while away a summer afternoon.

by IMDb

White Man's Burden

What would happen if race roles in America were reversed? What if blacks had all the power, and whites had to fight prejudice and racism at every turn? Such is the setting of writer/director Desmond Nakano's brilliant new film, WHITE MAN'S BURDEN.

The movie is a tightly constructed drama about Louis Pinnock (John Travolta), a reliable blue collar man who works in a factory owned by high-society elitist Thaddeus Thomas (Harry Belafonte). At home, Louis has to deal with a rough neighborhood, gang violence, and trying to provide for his wife (Kelly Lynch) and two kids.

Just when things are looking up for the Pinnocks, Louis is suddenly fired from his job, beaten by police after "fitting the description," and then evicted from his home. Desperate, he tries to get Thaddeus to hear his case for reinstatement. When he won't listen, Louis kidnaps him, and the story *really* starts to take off.

What follows is a compelling, thought-provoking study of racism and the frightening economic and societal realities it can create. Nakano's script is masterful at challenging every preconceived notion we have, and Oscar-deserving performances by Travolta and Belafonte really bring his words to life. The pair have an incredible chemistry on screen, as Travolta finally shakes his slick, pompous stereotyping for a much meatier part. The comic relief is very well-done, also, and the film never wallows into the hopeless despair that other "victim of circumstance" stories tend to do.

I was initially skeptical that WHITE MAN'S BURDEN would be any good, but Nakano's unique vision proved me very wrong. While he stops a little short on pushing the film to its limit, it's still a nearly flawless example of how modern cinema ought to be done, unadulterated by Hollywood glitz and driving its message home with a hammer.

I continue to think about one of Thaddeus's biting remarks early in the film, where he implies that whites are genetically inferior and "beyond being helped." I also think about the four rowdy skinhead punks (who somehow managed to get passes) sitting behind me, ashamed that the message was lost on these cretins.

by Filmcritic.com

Airborne

"Airborne" is an amiably dopey teen movie about a California dude who has a little trouble getting adjusted to the lack of sun, surf and serenity in Cincinnati. There are early warnings that it isn't going to be an easy transition when Mitchell (Shane McDermott) deplanes in a snowstorm, with surfboard in tow.

Mitchell, whose parents are traveling in Australia, is spending six months with nerdy relatives in what seems to him to be the American Outback. And while he isn't, like, really into it, the mellow fellow makes an effort to get along with the local hooligans. He's aided by his cousin (Seth Green), a goofy misfit.

Mitchell, played with relentless ebullience by McDermott, angers the toughs with his affability and his ability to get girls -- their girls. "Don't mess with other people's property," one warns. "Chill, let it go, man," replies the imperturbable Mitchell, who doesn't believe there's anything worth fighting for.

Or is there?

One day when the skies are looking especially gray, he notices Nikki (Brittney Powell), a pretty classmate who happens to be the sister of his chief enemy, Jack (Chris Conrad). When Jack tries to pick a fight, Mitchell declines: "Gandhi would roll over in his grave." Nikki, who apparently would like to inspire a tussle, storms out, and that night Mitchell has a dream about a big wave and a shark named Peppy.

Dreams being, like, the key, Mitchell wakes up his cousin to talk it out, which results in a wonderful bit of advice: "You find a perfect wave, you go for it. You don't worry about what the shark's got up his butt."

The next morning, Mitchell goes after his waves -- Nikki's love and her brother's respect -- by outskating a rival hockey team consisting of evil preppy scum. This leads to an all-or-nothing, no-holds-barred downhill rollerblade race between the two teams.

It would be nice to know the hero's approximate location vis-a-vis his opponents during the race, but director Rob Bowman rarely uses a close-up.

Even so, there are reasons to commend Bowman and screenwriter Bill Apablasa, who have gone out of their way to keep Mitchell's character honest. He manages to resolve his conflicts -- though not fulfill his needs exactly -- without giving up his values.

In other words, nothing happens.

by the Washington Post

Austin Powers - International Man of Mystery

Movies that spoof other movies or styles and eras are a risky venture. Usually funny at the start but weakening as they proceed, the films almost always succumb to their plots that vary from the material that's being spoofed.

That's not the case with "Austin Powers" whose plot is tied directly to the material it's poking fun at. While the James Bond series has been a target before ("Casino Royale," "Spy Hard," etc...), it's never been this clever or done this well.

For not only does it spoof Bond, but it also takes on the mod look and feel of the 1960's. At times, of course, it successfully uses bodily functions as humor, but the fact that it expertly captures and exploits the look and feel of the 60's makes this film stand out from the rest.

Using several Bond films as the basis of the plot, the film, and Myer's split performances, are extremely funny. Meyers has always been guilty of self-mugging, and this title character provides him with more than enough opportunities to ham it up.

The scenes where his or others' nudity is hidden by objects in the foreground of the shot ring of the old Benny Hill show and while considerably sophomoric, are also very funny as are the quick 60's looking "Laugh In" dance numbers that occasionally pop up.

Inside jokes abound, such as a character's name, Alotta Fagina (say it aloud to hear what it sounds like), that is a tongue-in-cheek take on an actual Bond character, "Pussy Galore." Sure, the movie's stupid and pointless, but that's half the fun of it. Never taking itself seriously, the film is filled with more than enough hilarious material to make Mike Meyers fans, and others, happy he's returned to the big screen after a four-year absence.

We fall into that group and give this very funny film an 8 out of 10. by screenit.com

Arcade

I know I usually have a knee-jerk reaction to pan and rip apart any movie directed by albert Pyun, so this time I'll start out with a mitigating statement: This movie does not suck to an incredible level.

It is, however, pretty depressing in its not-goodness.

Megan Ward is Alex, a high school senior with some serious problems, mostly stemming from the fact that her mother committed suicide a year ago and her dad has been a wreck ever since. Nevertheless, to her credit, she doesn't retreat into that whole teenage rebellion thing you would expect; instead, she finds solace in her typically varied (typical for Hollywood, that is) group of friends, including her clean-cut boyfriend Greg (Bryan Dattilo), skater Stilts (Seth Green -- hey, everyone starts somewhere), other girl Laurie (A.J. Langer, and I wish the movie were about her because she's even cuter than Megan Ward), and (hee hee hee) other clean-cut kid Nick, played by (hee hee hee) Peter Billingsley, the kid from A Christmas Story. Any and all "You'll put your eye out!" jokes are appropriate. (There's also the token nerd kid, but he disappears pretty fast.)

So what do these teenage layabouts do tonight? Well, their favorite video arcade, Dante's Inferno (that just oozes with subtlety, doesn't it?) is demoing the latest revolutionary game, simply called Arcade. The salesman, played by John de Lancie, acts just as you would expect John De Lancie to act, alternately belittling the kids and touting his product. Nick, the self-proclaimed video game king, is the first player, and he's floored by the realism; the game talks back to you, taunting and getting personal, as you're completely enveloped in a virtual-reality setting. Greg is second to try, and while the other kids file out to receive their own play-at-home consoles for play-testing, something mysterious happens -- and Greg disappears from the game in a cloud of brimstone.

Ooh. From here, we go into the requisite setup, as video game neophyte Alex discovers, through playing the home version, that the game's sentient, and has somehow trapped Greg inside, and is at that moment working its way through her friends. She recruits Nick, and together they try to discover the secret of Arcade before it's too late.

You may notice that my coverage of the story is sketchier than normal. Folks, that's because this movie is sketchy to begin with. Alex's trauma is briefly introduced, just so that Arcade can perfunctorily use it against her later. Her relationship with Greg is so sketchy as to approach the level of Informed Attribute. Nick's also shown to have feelings for Alex, but nothing ever comes of it.

And then there's the game itself. Alex and Nick take it upon themselves to convince one of the game designers that Arcade is alive, and of course he immediately scoffs; but once he realizes that it's true, he swallows all too quickly the rest of the unlikely scenario, i.e., that all the iterations of Arcade between the stand-up version and all of the home consoles are one big entity; that it can physically pull people into its virtual world; and that it can cause dilate time, read memories, disrupt phone lines, and blow ominous winds out of TV screens. There's also a sketched-in backstory to the game, namely that it is in some fashion based on donor brain cells; what they tell us makes no sense, and gives only minimal support to a stupid "shocker" ending.

The virtual reality effects are adequate, though unremarkable, especially today, when they are exceeded by TV commercials and ten-minute short films distributed on the Internet. They do, however, fill the need, apparently better than the originally-planned graphics (Charles Band mentions in the VideoZone afterward that the movie's release was delayed three years as he went back and got CGI he was happy with; can you imagine that kind of care going into a Full Moon movie these days?).

"Veteran director" Pyun (that's what the VideoZone calls him) must be one terrific guy to work with, because he's yet to turn out a movie that I can honestly call "good." At least this one isn't as in-your-face annoying as some (Knights and Nemesis come to mind), though that's scarcely a recommendation.

by Cold Fusion Video Reviews

Can't Hardly Wait

There really should be one of these graduation-night movies every few years, just to constantly update the genre for another generation of high schoolers grappling with the tension between anarchy and adulthood. Can't Hardly Wait is no American Graffiti or Dazed and Confused, and it is rendered cinematically anemic with its safe, often trite, underachieving script. But it does benefit greatly from a smart, highly energetic cast consisting of young actors from familiar vehicles.

At the heart of the ensemble tale is Preston (Ethan Embry of White Squall), a nice, budding writer who has largely gone unnoticed in his career as a high school student. On the night following his graduation -- which also happens to be the eve of his departure for college -- Preston grows determined to approach Amanda (Jennifer Love Hewitt of I Know What You Did Last Summer), who he has secretly loved for four years. Amanda is in the middle of a breakup with her loutish boyfriend, Mike (Peter Facinelli of Dancer, Texas, Pop.81), and she and Preston find themselves at the same wild party, where most of the film's action takes place.

While Preston gathers up his courage and Amanda sorts out her feelings over being dumped, the party brews with all the usual graduation madness: beer, sex, posturing, relationship uncertainty, relentless nostalgia, etc. Preston's best friend, Denise (Lauren Ambrose of In and Out), finds there's a downside from having spent four years remaining anti-social and determinedly invisible to her mainstream peers. Kenny (Seth Green of Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery), a wannabe make-out man, finds his white-boy hip-hop shtick is a joke among classmates. William (Charlie Korsmo of Hook), a computer whiz who has long been the target of bullies, discovers that nerddom repackaged as rock celebrity can win friends and influence people.

And so on. Writers-directors Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont are strong on fleeting, anecdotal detail (clearly a lot of personal memories from school days have been funneled into this film), but when it comes to a sense of overall shape and emotion and cinematic adventuousness, they are not in the same league as George Lucas (the aforementioned American Graffiti), Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused), Cameron Crowe (Say Anything), or even John Hughes, whose early films brought a sometimes alarming accuracy to his comic observations of adolescence. On the basis of Can't Hardly Wait, Kaplan and Elfont are obviously students of these filmmakers and the latter's various movies about young people on the cusp of growing up, and they are wise to draw influences from each of them.

But Kaplan and Elfont also tumble, all too easily, for such lazy, contemporary cliches as sledgehammer plot points. Amanda's discovery, for instance, that Preston is offering her a redeeming love is barely believable as an emotional epiphany (she is swept away by a four-year-old letter he wrote her but which she's never seen until this night). Yet because it mechanically advances the story, an audience is more or less blackmailed into buying it. Worse is a gratuitous, third-act "life lessons" scene between Preston and a cynical-but-wise stripper played by the ever-annoying Jenna Elfman. Rather than figure out an original way to nudge these leading characters along from one growth stage to the next, Kaplan and Elfont unabashedly embrace embarrassingly thin conventions.

How much better this film would have been if it had some of the toughness of Fast Times at Ridgemont High. How much more thrilling if Kaplan and Elfont had recognized that the freedom to make a patchwork film consisting of multiple but interconnected storylines can be quite daring with a little thought and effort.

But no such luck. In the end, it is the charming actors who are having a field day in Can't Hardly Wait: Korsmo lip-synching to an Axl Rose recording, Hewitt striking a sexy balance between sophistication, vulnerability, and desire, and Green performing Kama Sutra maneuvers by himself over a bathtub. With any luck, we'll be seeing more of all of these people in better films to come.

by film.com

Enemy of the State

IN SHORT: A paranoiad conspirati wet dream.

Cranky was thoroughly convinced that producer Jerry Bruckheimer was born deaf, with an attention deficit disorder, 'cuz all of his movies are the noisiest, most insanely frenetic strips of celluloid I've ever suffered through. Which brings us to his latest opus, Enemy of the State, directed by Tony Scott. Scott's tendency to go totally overboard in his work (notably the finale of The Fan, which had Cranky giggling like a kidlet) makes him a perfect match for JB.

To be fair, I pretty much liked The Rock and I pretty much liked Enemy of the State, which is about as close to a quiet drama as Bruckheimer can manage. Timewise, it's way too long with emphasis on elaborate chase scenes. There's not nearly enough sex. There's only one major explosion. In total, Bruckheimer spent his money on a script that uses stars Will Smith and Gene Hackman as actors instead of placeholders and, while I don't for a second buy the totally paranoid fantasy that runs this hood, I had little problem suspending enough belief to buy into it. Hats off to Messrs. Bruckheimer, Scott and company.

We begin with the murder of a Congressman (Jason Robards) who is blocking a bill that would let the government legally surveil the average American citizen. The killing is inadvertently caught on video tape by Daniel Zavitz (Jason Lee), some kind of video researcher. With rogue politicians in its employ, the villain of the flick is a super-secret government agency called the NSA, National Security Administration, led by the spitting image of Jim Phelps, Thomas Brian Reynolds (Jon Voight). His traitorous team's test is to find and recover the videotape, using all the super hi-tech available at the highest levels of super secret government agency. What their machines can do is so patently absurd that, if you get by this early-in-the-film demonstration of image and sound manipulation, you'll have no trouble with the remainder of the flick.

The poor sap who shot the tape is meat, of course. Before he bites the big one, at the end of the first overly long chase sequence, he drops said tape into the bag of old college acquaintance, labor lawyer Robert Clayton Dean (Smith), whom he meets in a lingerie shop. Will Smith let loose amidst a shop filled with models in frilly underwear. Ah, the fun!

Dean lives the life of a most prosperous attorney. One wife, one kid, one affair (long in the past, but that stuff always comes back to haunt movie characters), in short, the fast track to success. Which means he's gonna get seriously derailed.

By the most tenuous of connections, the rogue NSA group comes down hard on the lawyer, skewering his rep in planted newspaper stories, canceling his credit cards, framing him for murder and forging his bank records to make it look as if he's on the payroll of a mobster.

The cast of characters in his world, all of whom are affected by the chase include a paranoid ex-NSA spook Brill (Hackman) and the go-between Rachel Banks (Lisa Bonet) who ensures that these two men never meet. They do, of course, and while the tables are turned, the chase never builds to the levels attained in The Fugitive, there is enough twist to the resolution to have you chuckling long before the whip comes down.

Yep, I finally liked a Bruckheimer flick. Which means this thing is probably doomed . . .

by Cranky Critic.com

Idle Hands

It's very frustrating. Teen movies can be good. The original Scream was good (although ruined by a sequel). What are they doing? She's All That? I Still Know? Varsity Blues? I could go on but you'll hit "close" on your browser. The newest teen movie, Idle Hands, is pretty bad.

Devon Sawa stars as Anton, a slacker who sits around his house all day, smoking weed, and watching television. When Anton's parents are killed, a mysterious force takes over Anton's hand. He unwillingly kills his two best friends (Seth Green and Eldon Henson) and doesn't seem that phased by it. I mean, he's worried what more damage he could do, but it doesn't really bother him. His friends refused to go to heaven (too far) and walk around as zombies for the rest of the film, helping Anton control the hand, and save his girlfriend (Jessica Alba, who I wouldn't mind saving).

This movie is stupid for many reasons. It's a spoof, but it's not very funny. I laughed once. The only thing that saves this movie from being a complete disaster is the comic talents of Seth Green, and the assets of Jessica Alba. Don't go see this movie, because it's not very good.

by Film critic.com

Josie and the Pussycats

Watching this comic book come to life on celluloid is like getting a heavy dose of MTV's TRL, shameless product placements, lip-synched music, Carson Daly and all. Riverdale rockers Josie, Valerie and Melody dream of the big time from their garage until fate steps in and hands them the cat's meow of a record deal (hilarious industry spoofing provided by Parker Posey and Alan Cumming). Overnight, these sexy kittens become a success--but the fans, fame and free fashion aren't as purr-fect as expected. The humor is, like, so of-the-minute: boy bands, jabs at Carson and Tara Reid's relationship--even the AOL Moviefone guy is in on the joke. And it works, in a fast-food, guilty-pleasure kinda way. Don't believe us? We dare you to not tap your toes to the rockin' tunes on the way out (even if you're over 13 and feel a little embarrassed about it).

by E - Online.

Pump up the Volume

Pump Up the Volume falls just one small step short of delivering a powerful anti-establishment message – a step that makes the difference between a decent movie and an excellent movie. It just goes to show that Hollywood can’t stomach being revolutionary, even when it will improve a film and potentially make them some money.

Mark Hunter (Christian Slater) is the unlikely revolutionary leader. He’s a shy new-to-town Arizona high school student who’s unhappy about the move and hasn’t made a single friend. But he has a hobby that grabs the attention of his classmates and eventually the whole community. Mark has a pirate radio station in his bedroom, and every night at 10 p.m., he goes on the air using the pseudonym Hard Harry. He plays the music he wants to play and says what he thinks, without regard for the politeness that limits ‘real’ radio stations. Mark might not have a word to say during the rest of the day, but at night, Hard Harry lives by the motto, “talk hard” and builds a loyal audience of fellow disaffected youth. When Harry is blamed for the suicide of one of his listeners, and a fellow high school student sets out to discover Hard Harry’s identity, things start to unravel for Mark and for the entire high school population.

Hard Harry has hit upon something. Young people in this town are fed up with being constrained by social mores and they’re unwilling to put up with a corrupt school administration. As anarchy starts to take over the school, the authorities are called in to track down the radio station and get him off the air.

The spirit of Pump Up the Volume is great. It’s exciting to watch the students discovering that they have an alternative to conforming. Although he’s more articulate than your average high school guy, Slater is believable as the alienated and angry Mark. Samantha Mathis, in her first role on the big screen, is charismatic and spunky. The other young people in the cast also come across well.

The film’s portrayal of adult authority figures is not nearly as successful. It’s as if the filmmakers couldn’t deal with the possibility that young people might rebel against ‘the system’ as it really is, so they had to create ridiculous ‘bad guy’ adults. That way, the rebellion isn’t really against established society; it’s just against crooks. The film would have been far more daring and more meaningful if the nasty grownups had been real people. Then the kids’ revolution would have been against real authority.

Even with this weakness, Pump Up the Volume is a success. It works as a story of a young man coming out of his shell in a creative way, and its message – speak up and say what you really think – is one that people young and old could do with hearing more often. Unlike most teen movies, it’s honest in portraying teen years as less than idyllic.

by Appollo Guide

To Gillian on her 37th Birthday

Based on a play of the same name by Michael Brady, this is a gentle movie about loss and love that loses its way in the middle of a contrived plot. "While You Were Sleeping's" Peter Gallagher is intensely earnest and in bad need of a good haircut as David, a reclusive man desperately in love with his wife, Gillian, none other than a luminous Michelle Pfeiffer. They talk on the beach every night for hours. The only problem is she's been dead for two years and everyone thinks it's about time David gave up the ghost. Particularly disturbed by her father's behavior is budding Rachel ("Home for the Holidays'" Claire Danes), who is torn between supporting her father and her own need to let go of her mother and move on.

The beautiful backdrop of a weekend on Nantucket Island provides the perfect opportunity to "open up" the production, yet the film still can't escape its prosceniumbound origins. What worked on stage as magical and poetic becomes stilted and obvious in filmic waters. The onthenose dialogue hangs heavy in the air, sticky with the fingers of a clever writer trying too hard to say something important.

Director Michael Pressman (executive producer of TV's "Picket Fences") has a certain flair with actors but not a good handle on pace. Too much emotion is packed into the overwrought second half, which destroys the fine sliver of enchantment that should permeate the piece. Any film that contemplates child molestation as the courageous act of a passionate life is subject to intense scrutiny, and the film is too slight to support such thoughts.

In his feature film debut, Freddie Prinze, Jr. gives an intriguing turn as Rachel's love interest. In just a few scenes he projects a promising presence. But, despite this being a story about the angst of men, the film is held together by the performances of its women. Pfeiffer practically glows as the painfully amused Gillian, and Danes with a grace far beyond her years has perfected adolescent stoic angst to high art. -Susan Lambert

by Box Office Magazine

Austin Powers - The spy who shagged me

Screendom's International Man of Mystery needs his mojo more than the International House of Pancakes needs its syrup, so you can imagine the Mystery Man's melancholia over loss of potency when Dr. Evil out-and-out steals his mojo in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.

But there's nothing melancholic about this follow-up to a solid box office performer that became a video smash after being embraced by teen-agers. Less consistent than its 1997 predecessor and burdened by a penchant for overdosing on sexual/scatological crudity, Shagged still serves up at least 25 guffaws and a lot more mojo than most comedies (and especially comedy sequels). If this isn't enough to make Austin enthusiasts euphoric, the sight of Heather Graham in hot pants will have a lot of them dancing The Freddy.

Though Graham replaces the original's indispensable Elizabeth Hurley (dispatched in a funny opening scene), Mike Myers' Dr. Evil, Robert Wagner's Number Two, Mindy Sterling's Frau Farbissina and Seth Green's antagonistic teen son (Scott Evil) all reunite with Myers' swinging Austin. Graham is a boon to the movie but lacks Hurley's comic flair, leaving it to a couple of new additions to fill the void. One is an uproariously combative miniature Dr. Evil clone (Verne Troyer), termed "Mini-Me" by the adoring doc. The other is an obese, less amusing villain who gives Myers (in a third role) a chance to uncork the Scottish accent he utilized to clever effect in 1993's So I Married an Axe Murderer (just out on DVD from Columbia TriStar).

Dr. Evil steals the container full of Austin's mojo, which forces our time-traveling '60s hero to go back to the '60s for its retrieval. This leads to such a flurry of good jokes - tempering some flat ones - that the film will probably improve with subsequent viewings, just as its predecessor has.

The Powers pics come closer than any to recapturing the wonderfully anarchic spirit of the Bing Crosby-Bob Hope "road" movies - with surreal gaggery and unbilled guest-star bits (starting here with Dr. Evil on The Jerry Springer Show).

Though most of today's teen comedies are less benignly crude, Shagged's sheer volume of suggestive gags may prove a little much for some parents. Otherwise, the two major flaws of this visual treat are a barrage of lily-gilding gags right at the end and an employment of fat jokes that aren't very funny. This said, there is enough mirthful good will generated to justify even another sequel. May we suggest: License to Shag, You Only Shag Twice or Thundershag.

by USA Today Movies

Ticks

How could anyone resist a movie about troubled teens on a nature retreat, menanced by drug dealers and GIANT TICKS??!!! I can't resist a movie like that!! How could you say "No" to a movie like TICKS?? But interestingly enough, the movie "Ticks" is about saying "no." That's right. This twisted tale about mutant bloodsuckers is in the same realm as "Panic in Needle Park" and "Go Ask Alice." Check this out.... Crazed, murderous pot growers in Northern California treat their weed with STEROIDS(!), which causes ticks to grow to the size of your hand. The ticks' natural pain killers, to keep the host from scratching them off, is now mega-dosed to an LSD-like hallucinogen.

In the 50s it was radiation that made killer bugs. In the 90s, drugs make the bugs. Ya gotta love it!!! And like the 1950s killer bug movies, TICKS is glorious, brainless, headbanging fun, with cute girls, awkward guys who find inner-strength in the face of danger, a kindly, pot-bellied, white-haired sherriff, a scene in a lab where the wise voice of science explains where the ticks came from, and best of all... BUGS, MAN!!! BUGS!!! How long has it been since you've seen a good old fashioned MONSTER MOVIE??? With no apologies... with no remorse... a monster movie that's PROUD to be a monster movie???

And mighty fine monsters they are, too... done by Doug Beswick, an alum of "Aliens" and "The Empire Strikes Back," with special-yucko-make-up effects by KNB studios, who do a lot of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" flicks. Not meaning to harp on the drug theme, but "Ticks" is a real shot in the arm. Sure, there's plot holes. Sure, one shot of a kid dangling by a sheet from a burning building is immediately followed by a shot of the same kid magically transported to the driver's seat of a van making his escape. I DON'T CARE!!! "Ticks" is the most fun I've had with a movie since "Tremors." On our headbanger scale of 1-4, "Ticks" gets 3 and 1/2 headbangs.

Copyright 1996 Mike Marano

by Movie Magazine International

Rat Race

Even as Warner Brothers prepares Ocean's Eleven to be a remake of a 1960 heist movie with a massive all-star cast, Paramount Pictures is also preparing their own remake with an all-star cast, except It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World is what they're doing.

The original had such comic legends as Milton Berle, Buddy Hackett, Sid Caesar, Phil Silvers, and Jonathan Winters in starring roles (as well as plenty of other familiar faces like Don Knotts and Peter Falk in cameo appearances). Paramount isn't using the Mad Mad World name for the film itself, but Rat Race seems to get the message across just as well.

Filming is set to start in just a few weeks, and although there is already quite an ensemble cast announced, I have a feeling there will be a few more before long, because this is just the sort of movie that demands a lot of people. On the remake subject, how do I feel about this? I'm completely fine with the idea of a Mad Mad World remake because it does seem so perfect for it. The first was funny (though a bit dated), but it's not so much of a "classic" that a remake offends my sensibilities much. Besides, it's good to see Jerry Zucker back to directing a comedy again.

By Upcoming movies.com

Knockaround Guys

The four sons (Diesel, Green, Pepper, Davoli) of major Brooklyn mobsters have to team up to retrieve a bag of cash in a small Montana town ruled by a corrupt sheriff. Specifically, the plot gets started when Matty Demaret (Pepper) goes on a job to deliver the money for his mob father (Hopper) on the advice of his uncle (Malkovich). Things don't go as planned though...

By Upcoming Movies.com

Attic Expeditions

Circles within circles, metaphors for metaphors. Blood and gore. It is a joy to watch a film that dares leave things to the imagination. The Attic Expeditions refrains from explaining too clearly what is going on. The basic plot is obvious enough: magician has magic book, does bad thing, gets amnesia. Evil brain doctor wants magic book and orchestrates nefarious plot to drive magician insane.

There is more to the film that just that, and it is not always clear what is real and what is not. Cleverly revisiting plot elements and using circularity to great effect, The Attic Expeditions keeps the attention from start to finish.

Jeffrey Combs is perfectly typecast as the therapist with an interest in the arcane arts and Ted Raimi makes a very good counter-balance to him as his observer. The acting through-out is good - where it may seem occasionally woody, this turns out to be appropriate. Seth Green is great and his character gets some very good lines. Watch out for the scene in the play room, where Seth and Andras Jones walk round and round the sofa. It is one continuous shot.

By IMDb

Nunzio's Second Cousin

I saw this gothic horror on the Sundance Channel. I tuned it because it features Seth Green trying to be independent, plus I appreciate Vincent D'Onofrio's talent. "Nunzio" is rated TV-MA, and deservedly so! D'Onofrio's character, a gay man, is leaving some place with his boyfriend when Seth and three of his homophobic pals try to jump them. But D'Onofrio waves a gun and yells and swears and scares them! He kisses his boyfriend, and proudly proclaim himself a (that f word that means gay) and more or less tries to teach them not be homophobes in his violent way. The homophobes run away (Seth doesn't even get any lines of his own, and his hair is in some weird ponytail .. red hair and ponytails don't quite go together, at least not on guys) but for some reason one of them (Miles Perlich, Max's brother, I assume) goes to D'Onofrio's house.

D'Onofrio's mother (Eileen Brennan), Perlich, and D'Onofrio all eat supper and I don't think she knows her son is gay, but I had the TV turned down slightly on account of all the swearing and shouting. In the end, D'Onofrio more or less tells Perlich he is in the closet. This is a very weird short film, and not really my thing.

By IMDb

My step mother is an alien

My stepmother is an alien is a wonderful comedy packed with great jokes and great characters.Dan Arkroyd plays Steven Mills a scientist who believes there is life on other planets one night he makes an experiment that will change his life forever.Kim Basinger plays Celeste an alien from an other planet who comes to earth to try to save her planet with the help of Steve Mills.Alyson Hannigan is also great as Jessie Mills who suspects Celeste is not quite normal.9 out of 10.

Can't buy me love

"Can't Buy Me Love" is better than many other '80s teen flicks, I'll give it that, but it's no "Breakfast Club." There's not much here that would make me watch it again. The movie stars Patrick Dempsey as Ronald, a truly geeky (and not very sympathetic or charismatic) geek who hires a cheerleader to be his "girl" for a month, at the mere price of $1000. Cindi (80s name much?) obliges, and Ronald ... becomes popular, naturally. But money doesn't necessarily buy him love!

The movie starts out slowly, gets more entertaining toward the middle, then fizzles back into humdrum land. I laughed at the Paula Abdul-esque, Paula Abdul-choreographed cheerleader moves. I laughed at Seth Green's dyed brown hair (shades of the future) and "cards, chips, dips, and dorks" line, and weird totally-unlike-his-adult-voice manner of speaking. (Besides Patrick and Seth, Courtney "A Boy" Gains and Amanda Peterson have key roles.) I think there were a few other funny parts.

But the thing that struck me most about "Can't Buy Me Love" was that they actually used the Beatles song, and not some studio musician ripoff.

By IMDb