year: 1978
cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Lawrence Olivier, Kathleen Beller, Robert Duvall
rating: **1/2
title: THE AMAZING HOWARD HUGHES
year: 1977
cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Ed Flanders, Lee Purcell
rating: **1/2
Okay so this was edited from a longer version and comes off as a
greatest hits of Howard Hughes. The story merely glosses through
different aspects of his life without much detail. Tommy Lee Jones was
good... but at the end you're not sure what made him driven, or crazy,
in the first place.
year: 1991
cast: Brad Johnson, Willem Defoe
director: John Milius
rating: *
This John Milius Vietnam flick has low-budget written all over it, especially when it counts. The talented actors are wasted, and a romantic subplot that borders on ludicrious helps waste them, and action scenes that leave the viewer wondering not only "What's going on?" but "When it gonna end?" Perhaps Milius, who wrote a good percentage of "Apocolypse Now", in trying for another Vietnam epic, ends up with a "G.I. Joe" meets "Top Gun" in the process. This isn't even corny in an endearing sense, it's just plain bad.
cast: Brad Johnson, Willem Defoe
director: John Milius
rating: *
This John Milius Vietnam flick has low-budget written all over it, especially when it counts. The talented actors are wasted, and a romantic subplot that borders on ludicrious helps waste them, and action scenes that leave the viewer wondering not only "What's going on?" but "When it gonna end?" Perhaps Milius, who wrote a good percentage of "Apocolypse Now", in trying for another Vietnam epic, ends up with a "G.I. Joe" meets "Top Gun" in the process. This isn't even corny in an endearing sense, it's just plain bad.
title: MOTORCYCLE GANG
year: 1994
year: 1994
cast: Carla Gugino, Gerald McRaney, Jake Busey, Richard Edson, Julia Mueller
rating: **
This is a bad made-for-TV film that's not so bad, at least the first half centering on a family consisting of a father, a mother, and a teenager daughter who - during the 1950s - move from Texas to California. On the way they run into the element that ruins the flow of the movie, and ironically it's the Motorcycle Gang, led by Jake Busey who resembles a flaky nineties surfer more than a fifties gang member and is about an intimidating as a housefly. This is where the movie hits a wall, and explodes. Sadly, once-great John Milius directed this.
This is a bad made-for-TV film that's not so bad, at least the first half centering on a family consisting of a father, a mother, and a teenager daughter who - during the 1950s - move from Texas to California. On the way they run into the element that ruins the flow of the movie, and ironically it's the Motorcycle Gang, led by Jake Busey who resembles a flaky nineties surfer more than a fifties gang member and is about an intimidating as a housefly. This is where the movie hits a wall, and explodes. Sadly, once-great John Milius directed this.
rating: *
year: 1951
cast: James Arness
director: Christian Nyby
rating: *1/2
The John Carpenter version has a relatively small number of men trapped in an Arctic outpost, and you get to know them all by name, personality, share their claustrophobic frenzy and follow their fates accordingly. In this movie there's two main characters, a woman who is totally misplaced, and about a dozen nameless men who walk from room to room talking about a spaceship. John Carpenter told the story in a far better fashion... where you can at least follow each character through the nightmare as opposed to watching a dated stage play with too many characters parading before a stagnate camera. And the famous line, "Watch The Skies," is uttered by a lanky scientist. Which makes sense since there's nothing to see on the ground.
director: Christian Nyby
rating: *1/2
The John Carpenter version has a relatively small number of men trapped in an Arctic outpost, and you get to know them all by name, personality, share their claustrophobic frenzy and follow their fates accordingly. In this movie there's two main characters, a woman who is totally misplaced, and about a dozen nameless men who walk from room to room talking about a spaceship. John Carpenter told the story in a far better fashion... where you can at least follow each character through the nightmare as opposed to watching a dated stage play with too many characters parading before a stagnate camera. And the famous line, "Watch The Skies," is uttered by a lanky scientist. Which makes sense since there's nothing to see on the ground.
year: 1970
cast: Shelley Winters
rating: *1/2
How
can a movie directed by Roger Corman and starring Shelley Winters as a
bank robber with sons played by Don Stroud, Robert Walden and last but
not least Robert DeNiro not be great? Judging Corman films can be
difficult since they don't aspire for much, but this is a lazy exercise
in a filmmaker pushing an envelope with nothing inside. For DeNiro fans
there's not much here. His character just stands around with a dumb look
and every once in a while says something in an over-the-top hillbilly
accent. Don Stroud is really the focal point as "Herman", the psychotic
eldest son, but his performance does nothing but grate on the nerves.
And Shelley Winters collects a paycheck. Corman produced BOXCAR BERTHA
and CRAZY MAMA are much better.
title: STUNTS
year: 1977
year: 1977
cast: Robert Forster, Fiona Lewis
rating: ***1/2
Mark L. Lester rules. STUNTS involves stuntmen getting picked off by a mysterious killer. Robert Forster's little brother is one of them, and he investigates. Darrell Fetty, Joanna Cassidy, Fiona Lewis, Bruce Glover and the late Ray Sharky round out the cast. The acting is wonderful and the action is bar none. The stuntmen are killed off like campers in a slasher flick, and the tension mounts with precision. Lester is a miracle worker. He takes low budget movies and turns them into gold. Or at least, silver. And with Robert Forster at the helm: this one shines.
rating: ***1/2
Mark L. Lester rules. STUNTS involves stuntmen getting picked off by a mysterious killer. Robert Forster's little brother is one of them, and he investigates. Darrell Fetty, Joanna Cassidy, Fiona Lewis, Bruce Glover and the late Ray Sharky round out the cast. The acting is wonderful and the action is bar none. The stuntmen are killed off like campers in a slasher flick, and the tension mounts with precision. Lester is a miracle worker. He takes low budget movies and turns them into gold. Or at least, silver. And with Robert Forster at the helm: this one shines.
year: 1978
cast: Amy Irving, Kirk Douglas
rating: **1/2
This is a pretty bad movie, but oh how it delivers. Not quite sure what it
wants to be, it aspires for action/adventure, a little horror,
psychological drama, and of course tons of Hitchcockesque suspense. One
story centers on Kirk Douglas who is supposedly killed by terrorists in
front of his son, played by Andrew Stevens, a psychic boy-wonder under
the care of evil John Cassavetes, wants to use his "powers" for the
military, or something. And Douglas has to avoid the evil agents and try
finding his son again. The initial action scenes involving Douglas are
well-done. But the real star is Amy Irving as a young high school girl
with even more psychic powers than Stevens, and she ends up at a home
for "gifted children" that becomes CARRIE on the Hallmark Channel.
title: GHOST TOWNcast: Amy Irving, Kirk Douglas
rating: **1/2
year: 2007
cast: Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear
rating: ***1/2
Written
and directed by David Koepp, this gives the wry-guy Ricky Gervais a
decent showcase. Plot centers on a grumpy dentist who goes in for
surgery and then finds out later he died for six minutes, and as a
result he can see ghosts... much like that kid in "The Sixth Sense", but
this ghost-spotter is more annoyed than frightened of the pursuing
spectors. Greg Kinnear, as the most charming and most persistant of the
ghosts tailing our anti-charm hero, "hires" him to thwart his wife from
marrying "the wrong guy". It then turns into a fun love story: although it's much more funny when the good guy is sarcastic and bitter i.e. himself.
title: TROPIC THUNDER
year: 2008
cast: Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black
rating: *
"The
Three Amigos" centers on three dim-bulb actors who go to Mexico
thinking they're filming a movie and end up in a real situation battling
bad guys who want to kill them. "Tropic Thunder" centers on three
dim-bulb actors who think they're filming a movie and end up... doing
"Three Amigos" all over again, but very badly. This could have been an
at least halfway decent bad movie if there wasn't the sidestory about
Ben Stiller's character's fading career, which makes it horrificly
horribly awful. Ben Stiller goes over the top and isn't funny, Jack
Black is totally wasted, and Robert Downey Jr. as a pretentious
Australian actor playing a black army officer is somewhat impressive but
gets annoying, fast.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.