From the DVDTalk review of Charade: “Possibly the slickest and most commercial romantic thriller of the 1960s… The movie is a perfect entertainment machine for its time…” The story has Audrey Hepburn chased by some bad guys after a fortune her murdered husband stole from them. Cary Grant befriends her, but is he one of the bad guys? It’s fun to wonder what’s really going on and to take in all the witty dialogue between the two leads. Charade is somewhat dated but always entertaining because it’s impossible to take any of it seriously.
I saw Kung-Fu Panda last night and I regret not seeing it while it was still in theatres. It’s easily the most entertaining animated movie I’ve seen in 2008. My brother said something like this about it: “Kung-Fu Panda is an animated film about a panda who loves Kung-Fu and has to learn it in a hurry to save his village from his master’s nemesis. I recommend it for kids and adults. The story is simple but engaging, with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. The action scenes are incredible, intense, fast, and fun — it could make you dizzy. The animation is well done. I took my seven-year-old daughter who laughed out loud at parts, as I did (although different parts). She wasn’t scared during the intense, dark scenes. We both recommended it.”
It looks like I’m one of the few who doesn’t hate The Day the Earth Stood Still, the 2008 remake with Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly about an alien who comes to earth to delivery the message: “Stop destroying your planet or we’re going to kick your ass.” (At the moment, it’s getting 24% at Rotten Tomatoes.) The special effects look good and Keanu Reeves wooden acting style is appropriate for his character who isn’t human. The story is interesting, though overall it doesn’t gel because the filmmakers focus too much on special effects than plot. And it’s not nearly as stupid as Independence Day or anything directed by Michael Bay. So even though it doesn’t really hit the mark, it’s not a bad effort. I don’t mind it.
Kingdom of the Spiders starring William Shatner (just before the first Star Trek movie) is so incredibly bad it’s good — and then it’s bad again. Shatner is a cowboy / veterinarian who ends up fighting thousands of killer tarantulas that invade a dusty desert town where no one can run away fast enough to escape them. The first 20 minutes are hilarious. Then it’s just tedious. Words can’t describe it. Check out the opening scene from YouTube. Nuff said.
I saw Tarantula a week ago and can’t remember any of it now. Let me think… Right, a mad scientist creates a solution that makes all kinds of critters grow and grow and grow. One of the critters is a tarantula that walks slowly across the landscape and somehow manages to kill people who just stand and scream instead of run away. (I know, it both baffles and boggles the mind.) And… that’s about it. It’s pretty bad even for B-movie standards.
I watched the middle section of Mr. and Mrs. Smith on commercial TV at a friend’s house a few weeks ago and enjoyed the shoot-em-up action sequences. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have chemistry and Pitt isn’t a bad comic actor. I rented the DVD last night thinking I’d see more of the same, but I didn’t. I had to shut it off about 20 minutes before the end. The best part is when the two of them start shooting at each other and destroy their house. Otherwise, Mr. and Mrs. Smith is in the same class as Ocean’s 12.
Quantum of Solace is a sloppy action movie that uses fast-edits 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.
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.
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.
Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds is a B-movie that’s no more sophisticated or frightening than The Blob. Birds start acting funny and attack people. The movie 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.
I’ve seen most of Hitchcock’s movies. I’ll eventually post about them as I re-watch them.
I’ve watched all three incarnations of King Kong in the past two weeks: The 1933 original, the best of the bunch for my money; Peter Jackson’s 2005 CGI-heavy remake which — although bloated with nearly 90 minutes of subplots about characters no one cares about — kicks ass when Kong is on screen; and now the 1976 version that presents us with a guy running around in an ape suit. If you’re going for camp value, then okay, maybe it works. But let’s be honest: The Kong scenes are boring. There’s no drama or intensity to any of the action. If you were 9 years old watching it on TV sometime in the ’70s and loved it then, the nostalgia factor could cloud your judgement enough that you might have fun watching it again as an adult. That’s the case for me with The Poseidon Adventure, but not here.
1h 09m. Peter Jackon’s version of King Kong begins at that point in the DVD, which marks the first appearance of Kong. You can start the movie there and not miss anything important, because just like the original 1933 version, the loneliness of this scary, fierce, misunderstood giant gorilla is the drama of story. The humans are window dressing next to the pathos that pour out of that big ape. If Jackson had cut at least an hour of the running time, kept his focus on Kong, and waited about 10 years to the point where CGI technology could do justice to his vision of Kong, he would have made a great movie. Still, it’s not hard to overlook these flaws during the Kong scenes, which are pretty damn spectacular. (I didn’t see the extended edition.)
I’m talking about the original 1933 version of King Kong. It is a great movie and a hell of lot more violent and gruesome than I ever thought. It must have shocked and scared the crap out of audiences in 1933. I never realized what an incredible movie it is. There isn’t much of a story until Kong comes into the picture — and then you can watch the movie with the sound down if you feel like it because everything unfolds in broad strokes: 1) Island natives capture Fay Wray for sacrifice to Kong; 2) Kong runs into the jungle with Ms. Wray, protecting her instead of eating her; 3) A rescue party runs into the jungle and are killed off one at a time by Kong; 4) Kong is captured and brought back to the US… and so on. Although King Kong is sometimes considered a B-quality monster movie, it’s operatic and poignant as well. I’d love to see it in a theatre someday.
Journey to the Center of the Earth (3-D) is a theme park ride for kids. The 3-D effects are disorienting. It’s difficult to focus on objects in the foreground when objects in the background are flying all over the place. Great for kids. I love Jules Verne’s original novel. It was fun to see certain scenes from the book come to life — the movie is faithful to the geography of some of the main scenes from the book. But otherwise, for adults, this is a lame night at the movies.
Although it can’t help but fall into comic book territory from time to time, The Dark Knight doesn’t feel like any super hero movie I’ve ever seen. It is a mean and twisted Batman movie made for adults. It may not be an emotionally engaging film (who cares if Batman’s girlfriend gets killed?), but the storyline keeps you on edge the whole time — because of Heath Ledger as the Joker (he’s likely to get a posthumous Academy Award for his performance). Ledger establishes his character within seconds of appearing on screen — and it’s powerful. By the time his first scene is over, everybody knows who and what the Joker is all about: he’s clever, calculating and 100% homicidal, so look out. Villains don’t get much better than this. There are also plenty of explosions, chase scenes and other neat stuff. I’m not a fan of any of the previous Batman movies, but I may see this one again before it leaves the theatres.
From the DVDTalk review of Charade: “Possibly the slickest and most commercial romantic thriller of the 1960s… The movie is a perfect entertainment machine for its time…” The story has Audrey Hepburn chased by some bad guys after a fortune her murdered husband stole from them. Cary Grant befriends her, but is he one of the bad guys? It’s fun to wonder what’s really going on and to take in all the witty dialogue between the two leads. Charade is somewhat dated but always entertaining because it’s impossible to take any of it seriously.
I saw 
I saw 
