Quantum of Solace is a sloppy action movie that uses fast-editing to compensate for poor direction — and it doesn’t work. The action scenes are disorienting and uninvolving. Even die-hard James Bond fans might have trouble caring about anything that happens this time around. After 30 minutes of car chases, explosions, knife fights, gun fights, fist fights, etc., I couldn’t tell who James Bond was after or why. I got near the end of the movie and still didn’t know what the bad guy was all about. Daniel Craig is fine as 007. The story could have been exciting in the hands of more skilled filmmakers. But it wasn’t. It isn’t. Quantum of Solace is boring and forgettable. Skip it.
The Incredible Shrinking Man is an okay B-movie, notable only because of the special effects. A guy is enveloped by an ominous cloud while out on a pleasure cruise. Six month later he slowly begins to shrink. That’s it. There’s your movie. Eventually the guy has to live in a doll house. His cat attacks him. He escapes to the basement where, even smaller, he lives in a match box, washes under a dripping hot water tank, tries to steal food from a mouse trap, runs away from a spider — that kind of thing. It’s worth a look for the cutting-edge 1957 special effects, but it’s lacking in every other regard (even for a B-movie).
The entire movie can be viewed online at guba.com (I’ve never heard of it either).
The Creature from the Black Lagoon may be the best creature-feature B-movie I’ve seen since the original King Kong. Dramatically, it’s not in the same league as King Kong, but it’s a good action movie with enough thrills and surprises so it never gets boring. The DVD Talk synopsis (edited): “Starry-eyed scientist David Reed, adventurer-investor Mark Williams and curvaceous Kay penetrate the Black Lagoon to search for a full fossil to match the skeletal claw discovered by professor Carl Maia. But what greets them is an aquatic man-fish that takes an instant liking to the way Kay fills out a contoured swimsuit. The Gill Man decimates the supporting cast while the leads argue the best way to capture it; after he blocks their exit from the Lagoon, the wily Devonian goes a step further and claims Kay as a romantic spoil of war.” The underwater scenes (impressive even by today’s standards) are exciting and especially creepy when the The Gill Man follows the “curvaceous Kay” while she’s swimming. The creature may be a guy in a rubber suit, but it’s a pretty damn affective rubber suit. (more…)
20 Million Miles to Earth comes off as an attempt recreate 1933’s King Kong but with a half-lizard man from Venus. The stop-motion animation scenes of Mr. Lizard are fun, and some of the acting is so bad it’s hilarious, but there are too many boring filler scenes. The story never takes off. Not enough attention is given to the most interesting character: the lizard man. Watching a movie like 20 Million Miles to Earth, which was made in 1957, makes me appreciate the original King Kong even more.
It Came From Outer Space is one of the few 1950s science fiction B-movies I’ve seen to-date that actually has a coherent story, one that is strong enough to maintain the momentum of the movie without having to spice it up with cheesy special effects every 5 minutes. And it’s always fun to play Spot The Star Trek Actor, or even better: Spot The Professor From Gilligan’s Island. That guy shows up all over the place in these old “sci-fi” classics. So anyhow, a spaceship crashes in the desert and the aliens need time to repair their ship. So they make copies of some guys who work for the power company and tell the one guy who knows where they’re hiding to not tell anyone. They promise to free all the original people they made copies of as soon as they’re done fixing their ship. That’s coherent, right? The aliens don’t show their true selves too much, but when they do, they look like the one-eyed alien blob from Space 1999. All said and done, It Came From Outer Space is a surprisingly half-decent and entertaining B-movie.
The Night Listener features Robin Williams as a radio storyteller who begins to receive calls from a 14-year-old boy whose depressing life story becomes material for a radio story. Williams speaks to the kid and his mother on the phone and notices they have similar voices. Is the mother pretending to be her 14-year-old son over the phone? Does her son actually exist? Does anybody care? More to the point, why should anybody care? What’s the big deal? There’s no reason for the audience to feel intrigued. Nobody with any sense would bother to hunt down the kid’s mother to see if he exists. Nobody with any sense would do half the things that go down in this movie. The filmmakers try to make it creepy and mysterious, and Williams does the best he can with the material, but the story goes nowhere. There is no story.
Cleaners is a low-grade, predictable thriller starring Samuel L. Jackson about a guy who cleans up the blood and guts left over at crime scenes and then one day gets tricked into cleaning up a murder scene before the police are called in. Stylistic touches such as inserting close-ups of inanimate objects, doorbells being pushed and coffee being poured are distracting to the narrative. What narrative does exist is conventional and ultimately melodramatic and stupid. It’s not a good movie.
James Berardineilli’s review of Hancock cuts to the case: “Hancock is a hodgepodge of intriguing ideas that, if developed further or presented as more than throw-ins to a confused production, might have made for a unique superhero film… Hancock is sometimes funny, sometimes clever, and occasionally involving, but it’s never brilliant and its edge is compromised by the neutering that accompanies the teen-friendly PG-13 rating.” Will Smith plays a homeless, alcoholic, belligerent super hero who grudgingly hires a PR man to improve his public image. So it’s a comedy, right? Or maybe an action movie? Maybe it’s a modern day Greek tragedy (I’m serious). Hancock had the potential to be a great movie in a class of its own, but it doesn’t know what it wants to be. So it’s a mess. It’s almost worth watching just to think about how good it could have been.
Destination Moon is the 1950s “sci-fi” B-movie version of 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick may have borrowed from Destination Moon; check out the review I’ve linked to). Dramatically, the story about the first rocket ship sent to the moon is irrelevant. As usual, the acting is horrible and the production values are dated — but the fun is in watching how much is achieved through 1950s special effects. Long drawn out scenes showing the g-forces on the astronauts faces as they’re blasted into space; weightlessness as they float around the cabin; looking down on the earth; walking on the moon — it’s all impressive, in a cheesy, B-movie kind of way. Zero story, but interesting and entertaining special effects.
I watched Fritz Lang’s 1931 film, M, last night. Generally, I’d say it’s not a bad movie (it’s pretty damn good in places), but it’s not likely to have much appeal to a general audience. It’s about a child-murderer and how the madness of crowds kicks in as people try to hunt him down. I had a hard time keeping my eyes open for some of it, specifically the scenes that have no sound. I made it to the end, but it felt like work. It’s the kind of film that’s probably more engaging for people who’ve studied German film history and know what to look for. I’ll have to watch it again some time when I’m more alert.
As a cheesy, “sci-fi” B-movie, This Island Earth doesn’t even approach the entertainment value of something like Forbidden Planet. (I have my doubts anything could beat Forbidden Planet. It’s impressive even outside the realm of B-movie appreciation.) There is a spaceship, an angry alien with a humongous brain and some humanoid people with big foreheads. All fine and good. The problem is boredom. The bad acting, the silly dialogue, the cardboard sets — you can only laugh your way through that for 10 or 15 minutes. Nothing cool happens until the last 20 minutes of the movie. That’s too much crap to sit through. Fast-forward to the 60-minute mark and you’ve got yourself a good time.
Forbidden Planet is the ultimate “sci-fi” B-movie. When one of the opening credits reads, “Electronic Tonalities by Louis and Bebe Barron,” you know it’s going to be a fun ride. Pick any five minutes from Forbidden Planet and you’ll see evidence of its influence on Star Wars, Star Trek and even Alien. It’s a total goofball movie full of blatant chauvinism and cheesy (yet spectacular) special effects and aliens that can read your mind, and a robot and a crazy spaceship and insane electronic tonalities — all kinds of fun stuff. Make yourself a big bowl and popcorn and dig in. Pretend you’re at a drive-in. You’ll have a blast.
A disease breaks out that causes mass blindness in an unnamed city. The blind are quarantined, left to fend for themselves in a hospital that’s surrounded by guards who shoot anyone who tries to get away. I kept expecting more from the story than Lord of the Flies in a mental institution for the blind. Written by Don McKellar, Blindness is based on the novel of the same name by José Saramago. If you’ve read the novel, you might get more out of the movie than I did because you’ll know more about each character’s motivation than what’s presented in the movie. But from what I saw on the screen, I couldn’t get into it. It fell just a little too short for me.
Flash of Genius tells the story of Bob Kearns, the guy who invented the intermittent wind shield wiper which was subsequently stolen by the Ford Motor Company. It’s a good movie for what it is, an underdog story that becomes a courtroom drama, but it’s a rental. There is no need to see it on a big screen.
Last Night is written and directed by Don McKellar. It’s about the end of the world and how various people in Toronto decide to live out their last night on earth. Some people want to have sex, or pray, or be with family, or commit suicide before the sun explodes (though we’re never told why the earth is coming to an end). Others want to be alone. The film moves along at a calm, quiet, reflective pace that allows the audience to feel for these people who are facing not just the end of their own lives, but the extinction of all life on the planet. Although the main character is too intellectual to engender much sympathy, the final scene makes up for it. Last Night is an usual but memorable end-of-the-world movie, one that might leave you thinking.
The French Connection is one of a handful of classic crime thrillers that does nothing for me because the acting is dull or the story is either non-existent or just plain dumb. (I don’t like Chinatown either. You gotta problem with that?) The French Connection is supposed to have one of the best and most influential chase scenes ever. I heard the same thing about Bullitt. They both influenced me to go to sleep.
Choke tells the story of a guy, Sam Rockwell, who goes to Sex Addicts Anonymous meetings to hook up with other sex addicts. He also visits his free-spirited but crazy mother, Angelica Huston, in a hospital where she is slowly dying from dementia. The movie starts off as a comedy and gradually eases into a more dramatic (but still entertaining) mode as we learn why this guy became a sex addict. That may not sound like a fun movie, but it made me think about all the crazy stuff people deal with as children who are then expected to grow up and be “normal” functioning adults. You might like this one if you’re a fan of an obscure 1996 movie called Box of Moon Light. Not everyone will go for it, though. It’s not exactly mainstream, which is probably the reason I like it so much. I’m beginning to think if a movie gets anywhere between 50 and 60 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s likely to be something I’ll appreciate. (This has been an extremely informative commentary. I know.)
Who Killed the Electric Car? is a documentary that tells the story of the EV1, the first modern electric car that was fast enough to drive on a highway. From Wikipedia: “The EV1 was the first modern production electric vehicle from a major automaker and also the first purpose-built electric car produced by General Motors (GM) in the United States. Introduced in 1996, The EV1 electric cars were available in California and Arizona as a lease only… and could be serviced at designated Saturn retailers. They were discontinued after 1999 and subsequently removed from the roads in 2003 by General Motors (except for a few). The car’s discontinuation was and remains a very controversial topic.” The documentary doesn’t explain much more than the Wikipedia entry, and it leans too much towards a conspiracy theory mentality at times, but it’s worth a look if you’re interested in zero-emission vehicles. I’m holding out as long as I can to buy a car. I’m hoping the Zenn electric car will be highway-worthy and affordable by the time I’m ready to buy.
Cassandra’s Dream is Woody Allen trying to get back in form as a writer-director, but not quite making it. It’s the story of two brothers, Ewan McGregor and a mis-cast Colin Farrell (he sunk Terrence Malick’s The New World for me) who get tangled up in a criminal situation where people end up getting hurt. One brother struggles with his conscience; the other brother doesn’t. Certain scenes are well directed and affective, but there are too many elements of the movie that don’t work. Still, I admire Woody Allen for the attempt to present a story with both style and substance. I might like this one more if I get around to watching it again, but I’d rather just watch Crimes and Misdemeanors, which is pretty damn close to a masterpiece; same deal with Match Point. All three films deal with a similar subject manner, only the last two do it brilliantly.
Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds is a B-movie that’s no more sophisticated or frightening than The Blob. It has a few good shots, but it’s boring and over-rated. If you bother to watch it (I don’t plan to see it again), let me know if you think the guy who plays Mitch, Rod Taylor, looks and sounds like Robin Williams’s father. I was convinced the two must be related. They’re not.
Quantum of Solace is a sloppy action movie that uses fast-editing to compensate for poor direction — and it doesn’t work. The action scenes are disorienting and uninvolving. Even die-hard James Bond fans might have trouble caring about anything that happens this time around. After 30 minutes of car chases, explosions, knife fights, gun fights, fist fights, etc., I couldn’t tell who James Bond was after or why. I got near the end of the movie and still didn’t know what the bad guy was all about. Daniel Craig is fine as 007. The story could have been exciting in the hands of more skilled filmmakers. But it wasn’t. It isn’t. Quantum of Solace is boring and forgettable. Skip it.
