bababear Reviews

Train to Busan (2016)

This is what World War Z should have been.

[10/10 · 30 March 2024]

Wow. This is an awesome piece of work. I watched it on cable and it had way too many commercials. I'll watch it again on Netflix.

I'm not going to give away too much about the story. But I'm going to share a couple of small things I was impressed by. It does NOT end with the pregnant lady giving birth to a monster baby. Also, it does NOT end with someone waking up and finding it was only a dream. That plot device worked in The Wizard of Oz but didn't work in Nightmare City- also released as. City of the Walking Dead.

In 2022 there was supposedly Train to Busan. IMDB had only one review of it and I'm doubtful that it really exists. There was also mention of Train to New York, and it has a poster for the movie but no other support.

Live long and prosper.

Gone in the Night (2022)

Wow. This should have been a huge hit.

[10/10 · 16 January 2023]

I'd never even heard of this movie before. Goodness only knows how many great films fell through the cracks in the covid crisis.

It's hard to talk about this for fear of giving away twists and turns in the plot. I will say that the situations seem familiar from the slashers a few decades ago. A couple goes on vacation to a cabin way, way, way deep in the woods. They agree to stay the night and then leave, but things get very complicated the next morning.

The story kept me hooked through the whole running time and the plot twists keep your sympathies involved with the very complex characters. You think you have everything figured out, then you see that you.ve misinterpreted everything.

Thanks to Hulu for showing this letterboxed so we can see it the way the director wants us to see it.

Ishtar (1987)

Elaine May! How Could You?

[3/10 · 15 November 2020]

Just calling ISHTAR "crappy" doesn't began to tell how painful it is to watch. It's wildly overproduced, costing about $55 million. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA cost $15 million to produce in 1963, Adjusted for inflation, in 1983 it would have cost $45.26 million. ISHTAR cost $55 million, about $10 million more than that multiple Academy Award winner.

The story is simplicity itself. Two middle aged men are attempting to make it in the musical world. Their songs are awful. They wind up going overseas and become involved with the CIA and attempting to be spies.

This premise would have worked for a skit running under ten minutes on Saturday Night Live. Stretched to feature length, it's almost impossible to watch. After the first three songs it began to become irritating. This is why I had to try three times before I could watch it all the way through.

Worse yet, all that money was spend and nothing gotten in exchange for it. The desert scenes could have been shot in Palm Springs and the city recreated on the back lot at Columbia and nobody would notice.

Did nobody notice how badly this was going? Wasn't there a carpenter or electrician watching this unfold who could have told Ms. May to reconsider because this was simply not working.

Hoffman and Beatty continued to have careers after this, , and Ms. May continued on as a writer. But her career as a director came to a screeching halt. Worse yet, though, this had a negative impact on each and every woman wishing to become a director.

I wasn't on the set, so I can't really tell, but I'd suspect that recreational drugs were a huge line item on the budget. I'd rather that be the case, as thinking that all these people had less than room temperature IQ'si is not at all fun to think about. If drugs clouded their brains they could go to rehab. Unfortunately, there's no treatment for being stupid.

Interiors (1978)

Fashionable Pessimism

[4/10 · 25 October 2020]

I saw this for probably the third time tonight and once again I tried as hard as I could to like it. But the farther into it I got, the more I imagined it being featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Great actors wasted on drivel, playing characters that very few of us could identify with. And the heartbreaking thing is that at every step where Allen's grip on the material slipped away I could understand just what he was trying to do. He stated that serious drama was the way he hoped to get to sit at the grownups' table. Sorry. That only applies to serious drama that's well done.

The most puzzling scene is near the film's end when one of the daughters is having a late night conversation with her mother. Or maybe she imagines this conversation: she has been drinking. Her new stepmother enters the room. Then suddenly we're outside on an overcast day and Mom is rushing to drown herself in the Atlantic Ocean.

The night/day continuity issue is bad enough, but what's worst is that the mother is such an irritating character that I felt nothing for her. If she dies, at least she can't talk any more. Worse yet, I imagined watching the film in the Central Texas college town where I live. The audience would probably be roaring with laughter and cheering her on.

But, Woody Allen went on to do great work after this. Tomorrow night I may watch STARDUST MEMORIES again to see him at the top of his game.

The Dead Don't Die (2019)

I'm Sure This Looked Really Good on Paper

[4/10 · 22 March 2020]

I wanted to like this. Good grief, Bill Murray AND Adam Driver, and that's just the top billed performers.

But it was slow, disjointed, and a major disappointment. Mostly it's the director congratulating himself on being so hip. It's not funny enough (despite a few great lines) to do well as a comedy, and since there are no characters we really care about it fails as a horror movie.

The individual actors do what they can under the circumstances. The photography is nice except in scenes where it's too dark to see what's going on.

All in all, a major dud. If you're a big Adam Driver fan, watch PATERSON and see what he can do with a strong script and a fleshed out character to play.

Going in Style (2017)

This Is Why We Go to Movies

[10/10 · 6 October 2019]

There are few things that are more overrated than real life. Many people have found this film "unrealistic" because the ending has a powerful "make a wish" element to it.

The story (don't worry, no spoiler details here) is about a group of Senior Citizens with money problems. It's refreshing to see older adults as active, vital people who still have goals to achieve and manage to overcome adversity.

My only regret about the movie is that I didn't get to see it on a big screen.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Man Down (2018) Season 20, Episode 2

Jumps the Tracks 3/4 of the Way Through

[1/10 · 6 October 2018]

I'm Law and Order: SVU's biggest fan. So it pains me to see such sloppy writing drag down a lot of really great actors.

Imagine it's the day before payday and you have to pull together supper for the family with just what's in the refrigerator. Goodness knows what strange combination of foods you'll serve the family tonight.

That's what the writing in this episode is like. Unplanned pregnancy. Acting out because of the death of a sibling. Characters suddenly realizing that time is catching up with them. Adopted children who may turn into leftovers from THE OMEN. And these are the series' regular characters. The guest stars are more of a mess.

The thing is, for a while it works. A crime victim is manipulated by his awful parents- macho father, spineless mother- and won't cooperate with the PD in an awful crime that may or may not have been committed by his father. Unable to process what is happening, the boy finally breaks and takes a gun to school. At that point I was so involved in the story that I was almost in tears and my guts were tied in a knot.

Then they introduce a Negligent Homicide case against the father and manage to get a conviction based solely upon the fact that every SVU case ends with a conviction.

Yes, the environment the father created presented a toxic role model of masculinity for his boys to try to live up to. But this asks us that a jury of rational adults would actually return a guilty verdict with no motive on the father's part and no malice on his part toward the shooting victims, who he barely knew.

Yes, I can tolerate the authors getting in a sermonette in some episodes about Guns Bad, Second Amendment Even Worse. I see that online often enough that it's water off a ducks back.

Here's hoping my favorite scripted drama show manages to get its groove back, and soon.

Keep Watching (2017)

Pity the Poor Actors

[1/10 · 18 July 2018]

Because I'm very kind by nature, I'm not going to mention any of the actors in this turkey by name. They suffered enough while making it: stumbling around in the dark, running, and speaking dialog that is unrelated to human speech.

Sony Pictures sat on this for right at three years before giving it a one night very limited release. That should tell you something.

If you want to watch a home invasion movie that has real suspense I'd suggest YOU'RE NEXT. The title of this epic tells us to keep watching, but I'll confess to using the fast forward button more than once. It should have been called WATCH SOMETHING ELSE.

Night Fright (1967)

Not Much Night, Zero Fright

[3/10 · 9 June 2018]

NIGHT FRIGHT is not really an accurate title. There is very little night. Instead, the cameraman and director chose to shoot "day for night" which involves filming in broad daylight using tinted lenses on the camera to make it look like night. Shooting in black and white, this can be an effective technique. In color, though, it makes colors look dim and faded. Worse yet, there is no continuity; scenes go from day to night and back again with no rhyme or reason. This might work if some of the scenes took place in Los Angeles and others were set in Eastern Europe. But the geographic area involved is a tiny town near Dallas. And there is not a single fright anywhere to be seen.

The plot has been done before and since. A experimental rocket is launched into space, then comes crashing back to Earth. One of the lab animals aboard survives the crash and mutates into a terrible beast that terrorizes the countryside.

To be more accurate, it terrorizes a small group of incredibly bad mannered college students, who richly deserve what happens to them, and along the way kills off a few character actors.

The town Sheriff tries to restore order. He's played by John Agar, whose brief marriage to Shirley Temple overshadowed his screen work. He's courting a pretty nurse who works at the local hospital. Neither his nor her character is developed enough to involve the viewer.

Much has been made of the "bad" acting in the film, and I feel compelled to defend the efforts of the cast. Having lived in Texas all of my life I'm used to the various dialects to be found in the state. Some people in North Texas have a flat pattern to their speech with very little inflection. Besides which, nobody here gets what one would call great dialog.

Agar does what he can with the material at hand. He says his lines clearly and stands at the right place at the right time. His career was an interesting one. He had many supporting roles in major studio productions, often in westerns starring John Wayne. IMDB shows him with ninety-six film and tv credits over a fifty-six year career. Had drinking (and arrests for drunk driving) not interfered, he could have had a major career. He figured out that if he were willing to work with Poverty Row studios he could get top billing, and would get paid for a project that would probably have a short shooting schedule.

At the end of the day, acting is a job. It's great to be directed by Allan Dwan in SANDS OF IWO JIMA, which received four Academy Award nomination. But a project like NIGHT FRIGHT, directed by James A. Sullivan, got him top billing and a paycheck and a job is a job. A carpenter would rather work on a mansion in Malibu than on a new convenience store on the freeway access road. But, a working man's got to eat and has to feed his family.

There are a couple of surprisingly good supporting actors. Bill Thurman, who would go on to play character parts in movies like THE LAST PICTURE SHOW and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, plays Deputy Ben Whitfield, the Sheriff's right hand man who unfortunately forgets that he is carrying a gun at a critical point in the story.

But the real scene stealing comes from Roger Ready as Professor Alan Clayton. To start with, he appears to be a truly gifted actor: without much screen time he establishes himself as just a nice, regular guy. He seems perfectly at ease on screen. To establish the Professor's credentials as an intellectual, the director uses one of the oldest cliches in the history of drama: in a couple of scenes, we see him smoking a pipe. This lets Ready draw attention from the main actors in the scene because he is always poking, prodding, scraping, lighting or relighting his pipe. His hands are never still. And if he is speaking and makes a gesture, it is always in his downstage hand and he can use the stem as a pointer. These scenes aren't worth stealing, but it's the thought that counts.

It's a shame that the movie looks and sounds so dreary. It just looks cheaped out, with the North Texas locations providing no sense of place. There are too many scenes of trees, sometimes with wind blowing them, in a failed attempt to create suspense.

The monster's costume isn't really all that bad. But when we see it in broad daylight, which a lens filter attempts to convince us is moonlight, it just isn't all that good either.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Remember Me Too (2018) Season 19, Episode 24

The Moral Is...Benson Is Never Wrong

[2/10 · 25 May 2018]

Let me start with saying that this is my favorite dramatic show on TV. The writing is usually excellent, the subject matter timely, and the actors at the top of their game.

That's why it's a shame that the season finale be such a complete misfire.

A bad performance by a young lady named Genesis Rodriguez is the main problem. She may be a capable actress, but nothing I saw tonight indicated that. The premise of the show is that she is at a club where she spots a man she knows from her past.. She recognizes him; he seems to have no idea who she is. She winds up kidnapping him at gunpoint and tying him up and torturing him.

The story is what I would describe as a casserole. A bunch of random ingredients- human trafficking, organized crime on both sides of the border, fear of deportation, another kidnapping, etc.- get run through a blender and half baked.

The worst thing is how predictable it is because Benson cannot be wrong. She believes the young woman and is willing to defend her in her actions, including killing a man she knocks unconscious and leaves untreated for a lengthy time, because her "Spidey sense" or whatever says that the young lady's hugely improbable story is true.

Better luck next season, Law and Order: SVU.

Isle of Dogs (2018)

A Racist Movie That's Thirty Minutes Too Long

[3/10 · 27 April 2018]

There's so much that's excellent about ISLE OF DOGS. The stop motion animation, the incredible voice actors, the great use of sound, and a wonderful musical score.

Unfortunately, the movie tells its very thin story at a snail's pace and then has to introduce an American teenager- an exchange student from Ohio- to set the naïve people of Japan on the right path. Maybe this is supposed to remind us of the Japanese horror movies of the 1960's where a desperate American actor like Nick Adams or Robert Horton could make a fast paycheck.

ISLE OF DOGS' greatest accomplishment is that Bill Murray no longer needs to be ashamed of GARFIELD as his worst work. He, and the other actors, certainly deserve better.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Contrapasso (2017) Season 19, Episode 3

A Conviction Based on............What?

[6/10 · 11 October 2017]

As usual on this show the dialog, acting, direction, everything else was great. Unfortunately, there seems to be a rule that every case Olivia Benson handles must end with a conviction. It's the same formula that fifty years ago had Perry Mason never take on the case of a guilty person.

Spoiler: A man winds up convicted of an aggravated rape that happened twenty years ago based on the victim's testimony and a poem the victim wrote when she was in high school. No forensic evidence. Just words.

I realize that the scenario would be more appropriate for a sketch on Monty Python than for my favorite show on the air. Even the best of writers have off days, I guess.

American Horror Story: Election Night (2017) Season 7, Episode 1

Yawn

[3/10 · 6 September 2017]

In the 1930's a reporter asked Samuel Goldwyn why MGM concentrated on musicals and romance when studios like Warner Bros. made films with social commentary about the Depression. Goldwyn said that messages were the job of Western Union; his business was entertainment.

There's very little entertainment to be had in this show. The first act was a group of self absorbed people screaming profanities to express their anguish that Trump was elected. The term Get over Yourself came to mind more than once.

The story centers on a little boy named Oz who (fashionably) has two mommies. One mommy seems to make a seven day a week job of being mentally unsound. The other works hard at a trendy restaurant the two women own.

A key point in the story is that in the 21st century two well educated upper middle class women hire a nanny without doing a background check or getting references. "I went to Vassar." Hired!

There are fine performers here working overtime to keep this leaky boat from sinking. But of all the characters introduced tonight, a homicidal clown was the only one that really caught my attention. And I consider it cheap imitation that a series that features a deadly clown just happens to crank up a couple of days before the movie IT opens.

Maybe two more episodes. Otherwise, I'd pull the plug.

Pandemic (2016)

In the Long Run, Somewhat Amazing

[8/10 · 19 April 2017]

Let me start this review with two cautionary notes.

1. Most importantly, I watched this on my computer monitor (thanks, Netflix) and it has a lot of hand held camera work. If I had seen this on a full size TV or, more especially, a theater screen, I might not have liked it as much.

2. Always remember that the word processing software used to write screenplays for movies like this does not come bundled with optimism.

That said, PANDEMIC was a very pleasant surprise thanks to a very strong script and some solid performances from a group of gifted actors. As is today's fashion it doesn't have opening titles, so I had no idea who the actors were. When I looked it up on IMDb I found that I have seen many of these performers on a regular basis for years.

The story itself doesn't have many surprises. A global epidemic wipes out most of the population. Worse yet, the infected become monsters with a hunger for human flesh.

What was a surprise was how involved I was with these characters. Lauren, the main character, is a CDC doctor working with a team looking for survivors and, ultimately, a cure for the plague. She has crossed the country to Los Angeles from New York to try to find her husband and daughter at their home in Sherman Oaks. She's a complex character with a dark secret, and Rachel Nichols's performance reminds me of Jodie Foster in films like FLIGHTPLAN and PANIC ROOM.

I will admit that I fast forwarded in the early scenes, but once the characters arrive at a high school that turns out to be a deadly trap I didn't touch any buttons again.

Silent House (2011)

As Bad as It Gets

[1/10 · 13 March 2017]

This was on cable tonight, so I didn't have to pay extra to see it or leave the house. But even under these conditions it was still such a crapfest that it was overlong at a tad under ninety minutes.

Elizabeth Olsen plays a young woman named Sarah. She's in an old dark house in the middle of nowhere. Her father and uncle, who seem to be real but may be the product of her imagination, are there with her and over the course of the evening Terrible Family Secrets will come to light. Well, into very dim light since there's no electricity and the windows are boarded up so as to create a creepy haunted house atmosphere. Strangers may or may not wander into the house. Sarah may or may not be insane. The events of the evening may or may not be taking place.

Although this movie was very successful financially, here we are six years later and neither the writer nor director has gotten another credit on IMDb. Having watched SILENT HOUSE, I'm not really surprised.

Chain Letter (2010)

So Much Fail in Just One Movie

[3/10 · 25 December 2016]

I'm presuming that the people who run the Encore Suspense channel make sure that the prints of movies they get are complete and that the reels are shown in correct order. With this, it was hard to tell.

The main characters are high school students whose lives glide along without parents. At any hour of the day or night they are always in their huge homes all by themselves or, at best, with another teenager.

There are adults in the story, two police officers who do have the best of intentions. Sergeant Hamill at least tries to solve the murders that form the core of the plot, but her part is so underwritten that her character could have been eliminated. Detective Crenshaw is more interesting because he has absolutely no common sense. He'll follow up a lead at an isolated location all by himself, never calling for backup, never taking even the most minimal precautions.

The biggest item in the film's budget was probably the rain machines which make remind the viewer of how much more effective BLADE RUNNER was on every count. It rains at night. It rains during the day. Worst of all, it continues raining during a funeral scene where the rain is in sharp contrast to the bright sunlight we see everywhere.

The plot has to do with some anti-technology nuts who hate computers and cell phones, so they kill off teenagers who use these devices. It would have made more sense had they targeted, maybe, the CEO of Apple, but that would have been some work for the writers. The plot device is based on killing anyone who fails to forward a chain letter. Fortunately for the killers, none of these teenagers forwards the chain to anyone who lives outside of Sacramento. That was nice of the kids.

Don't try too hard to guess the killer's (or killers') identity, because that's a little detail the writers forgot to include. The movie does not end, it simply stops.

For what it's worth, though, the last ninety seconds actually did make me jump and that one moment is truly shocking. It comes out of nowhere, but it is effective.

There are a few good things about the film. There's nice camera work with some well done crane shots, and the musical score is pretty well textbook but appropriate. But the writing is terrible, although I'd suspect that there were many scenes that were written and may or may not have been filmed that would have tied the story together into a cohesive whole.

Zabriskie Point (1970)

Viciously Bad, But Very Well Visualized

[3/10 · 23 November 2016]

I'd heard a lot about this movie and finally got a chance to watch it tonight. It was, well, different.

The screenplay by five writers (that's a bad sign right there) picks up themes and drops them to go on to something else. It's as the creative team collectively had AD/HD. Oh, there's something shiny. Let's walk over and pick it up.

The action starts in Los Angeles with a well realized meeting of a campus revolutionary group. Because of the film's being forty-six years old, these scenes carry their own irony: I wondered how many of those committed rebels from 1970 would turn out to be Realtors and salespeople and advertising executives ten years later.

A self-absorbed man named Mark is marginally involved with the group. He's a dropout who had rewired the university's computer system to enroll all Engineering majors in Art classes. He's on the scene of a riot where a policeman is shot and he flees, eventually stealing an airplane and heading for the desert.

In the second act he meets up with Daria, a secretary who's an Anthropology major. They meet cute: he terrorizes her on the highway as she'd driving through the California desert. She's gone there to look for a friend who's working with emotionally disturbed children (at one point I thought I was watching CHILDREN OF THE CORN) but like too many other dramatic themes that got lost too.

In the desert they drop acid, which prompts an endless scene of people covered in sand having sex. This grinds the narrative to a halt, therefore giving audiences an opportunity to get popcorn and a drink without missing anything, they same way that Mexican horror movies often have gratuitous musical numbers in the second act.

Mark takes the stolen plane back to Los Angeles, with predictable results.

In the mercifully short third act Daria goes to her boss's house, then leaves and imagines first the house blowing up and then repeated shots of clothing, appliances, and a loaf of Wonder bread blowing up. I'm sure that those few audiences who saw the film in theaters were convulsed with laughter during this scene. Fortunately, her imagination is limited so she drives away at sunset.

Neither of the leads had acting experience, and it shows. There is no consistency to their performances. And, giving how poorly written the film is, I can't blame them. Neither had further careers in film, which surprised no one. Other characters are very uneven. Some perform naturally, others sound as if they had just that moment been handed the script and asked to read it aloud.

The director's native language is Italian. At the end of the scene if the actors didn't run into each other, fall down, or belch while facing the camera, it seems he would announce that this was a final take, "Cut and print!" What's puzzling is that the film cost $7 million in 1970 dollars, about $44 million in 2016 dollars. But it looks and sounds cheap. If you didn't see the opening titles to know it was from MGM and directed by Antonioni, a viewer would figure it was one of those low budget action/adventure movies that Roger Corman cranked out at New World Pictures.

There are the special effects at the end, of course. And performance rights to songs by the Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, Roy Orbison, and many other rock legends. But this wasn't adapted from a best seller, and there are no box office names except for Rod Taylor, who plays Daria's boss.

In defense of the film, though, it was cut and recut over and over by MGM and came very close to never being released. I suspect that somewhere in a vault at the studio is enough unused footage to assemble twenty different cuts of the film that are completely different from each other.

Antonioni's film that's known by the public is his masterpiece BLOW-UP, which had no explosions. Here he brings us Zabriskie Point, which has explosions but no point.

Hot in Cleveland: Funeral Crashers (2011) Season 3, Episode 3

Both Funny and Touching

[10/10 · 29 July 2016]

In this episode the girls crash a funeral of a complete stranger because Melanie's favorite dress has been delivered to the home of the dead woman by mistake. Melanie says it's her magic dress, and they have to have it.

So, totally uninvited, not knowing a soul there, they go to the house expecting to sneak upstairs and find said dress. Then they view the open coffin and discover that the mourners have decided that dress is perfect for the corpse to wear.

Naturally they decide to find a way to steal the dress before the coffin is sealed.

Complicating matters is one mourner (played by the great Orson Bean) who has driven a great distance to say goodbye to the woman he jilted fifty years ago.

The situation could be played for slapstick, in the manner of WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S. But there is a sadness underlying the second act that provides insight into the lives of several characters.

This is a great series. We just started watching it in reruns on cable a couple of weeks ago. As much as I love smart comedy, it's amazing that I missed this one the first time around.

I just hope the following scripts can keep up the quality of writing and acting that this one displayed.

Rosewood Lane (2011)

Falls Completely Apart at the End

[3/10 · 22 May 2016]

Up until the last few minutes, this was a very suspenseful film. Solid actors, a strong plot, and even though characters are required to do incredibly stupid things in order to advance the plot that just comes with the territory. You gotta dance with who brung you, after all.

But a major character disappears without a trace and that plot element is never truly resolved. Yes, we can figure out what probably happened. But closure would be nice.

Then comes the leading lady's final clash with the bad guy, and the whole enterprise goes off the tracks.

MAJOR SPOILERS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

The triplet plot device is probably the lamest way to resolve the plot of a mystery that I've ever seen. This "paperboy" is played by a 28 year actor and it seems that this character only delivers papers to one street in the town.

There are hints that his character is something other than human, but that's not really developed. And there was a corpse up in that tree that gets a Christian burial and there's talk in the eulogy about his family, but we don't know who they are. What is their part in the plot? Do they not know that their sons are up to no good? Is their mother so stupid that she doesn't know she has two other sons? When the policeman sees the two young men (one with wounds from the confrontation, one unscathed) I fully expected the director to walk from behind the camera and speak into the camera and tell us, "Look, writing movies is hard work. I've torn my hair out trying to come up with an ending and this is the best I can do. If somebody out there has a better idea, come to California and write the sequel." The worst part about the film is seeing such good actors (especially Ray Wise) trapped in a harebrained script. About 90% of the way into the film I'd have given this an 8 or a 9, but inept writing sinks that ship.

As I said, the "demon paperboy" is very effectively played by an actor who was 28 years old at the time of the film's release. Does he terrorize other neighborhoods we don't know about, or go back into a jar with his brothers the rest of the time? By the way, if this story had been set in Texas it would have been about fifteen minutes long. Probably 2/3 of the houses in a typical neighborhood here have firearms so the lad's habit of running and jumping from roof to tree would have seen him brought down like a quail.

Slasher (2016–2023)

Good Start; Falls Completely Apart at the End

[5/10 · 15 April 2016]

Tonight I watched, with much anticipation, the final episode of Slasher. If I'd written this review two hours ago, the show would have gotten eight or nine out of ten. Now, my initial feeling was to give it a three but there was some good stuff here.

First and foremost, bravo for the location scouts and the people involved in photographing the show. The town caused an "I want to go to there" response in me, even if the landscape was littered with corpses.

The actors were adequate. They may be capable of much better, but no actor can rise above bad writing. Unlike MTV's Scream, which was continually reinventing itself and kept us guessing to the end, this had the feeling of episodes of As the World Turns with gore effects and an occasional mild sex scene.

The last episode, though, was way too talky. A subplot about summer camp many years ago did nothing to raise the suspense level and a main character who survives (I'll name no names) does things in the last scenes that are completely out of character, lower that person to the level of the Executioner, and make you wonder how no criminal charges were filed on that character.

If there's going to be another season of this show I'll watch it. But hopefully they'll hire much better writers and repeat the achievement of Scream in hiring directors with solid bodies of work in horror and independent films.

The Visit (I) (2015)

Good Actors Can't Save a Sinking Ship

[3/10 · 20 September 2015]

The reason this got a 3 instead of a 1 (my initial response) was that the four main performers worked really hard to drag this dead horse across the finish line. Unfortunately, the film is so poorly written that I never believed any of the characters or situations so it was hard to really get involved with what happens. When a director devotes extensive footage to a thirteen year old White boy from the suburbs attempting to rap, you know he's desperate to stretch his story out to feature length.

This is a textbook example of what would have been a tense and exciting thirty minute TV show and stretch it to feature length. The hand-held camera business was irritating enough that it in itself cost the project several points. There should be a special rating of S added to any film that tries to induce nausea in viewers by trying to induce motion sickness.

Now, I will admit that when the Big Plot Twist came along I was surprised. Sure, variations on that twist have been used before (DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT comes immediately to mind) but it was effective.

Better luck next time, Night. It's good to see that you're still in there trying (if I had directed THE VILLAGE I'd have gone into the Witness Protection Program because it was bad enough to be considered criminal) and you can't hit a ball you don't swing at.

Wayward Pines (2015–2016)

A Show with a Beginning, Middle, and End!

[10/10 · 25 July 2015]

Tonight I watched Episode 10 and was completely blown away. They set a time frame of ten episodes, introduced characters, developed a story arc, and actually brought the story to an end. For one awful moment I thought that Ben was going to wake up and find that the whole thing was a dream, but that didn't happen.

For comparison, look at Under the Dome. I've been as faithful as an old hound dog to that show, but it's completely run off the track. King's book has been left so far behind, except for the dome itself and a few characters, that his name should be taken off the show. It's like someone playing a familiar song on the piano who decides to improvise and gets so far from the melody that he can't get back to it however hard he tries.

Bravo, Wayward Pines. Well done.

The Whispers (2015)

Oops! Has It Already Jumped the Shark?

[4/10 · 9 June 2015]

Run CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND and POLTERGEIST through a blender and you'll come up with the premise for The Whispers.

The first episode looked as if it had strong potential. Then in the second episode I started using the fast forward button. That's not a good sign.

Claire, the main character, has the dubious distinction of being the worst FBI agent in the history of films or TV. In the real world this lady would have been demoted to a part-time job as a meter maid. Her supposedly dead husband still seems to be alive, and he's involved in lots of creepy stuff. A composite drawing looks very much like him, so naturally she talks her partner into delaying the release of the drawing to the public.

The show's basic problem is that it's based on a short story that's ten pages long, and anyone familiar with the source material knows the story could potentially be a strong ninety minute feature film. Instead it's being stretched thin to run fourteen episodes, with more threatened if the show is successful.

The ratings on the second episode showed The Whispers losing 25% of its audience from the premiere. Will anyone be left to watch by episode fourteen?

Aquarius (2015–2016)

Started Well, Then Quickly Began to Lose Stars

[4/10 · 4 June 2015]

I soldiered my way through the pilot, and by the time it was finished knew it was time to say goodbye to this show.

At the beginning I would have rated it a 10. The music is fantastic. But that may have an underside: the licensing fees on these songs are high. Maybe that's why there was no money left for a good script or decent actors.

Worse yet, like so many shows it's very dark. Not dark in tone: that's perfectly fine. But other than the outdoor scenes, too often there's so little light on the scenes that it's more like radio than television. Here's another cinematographer who never met a 15 watt bulb he didn't like.

The story is set in the summer of 1967, the year I turned 21. When I saw a billboard for Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign in the scenes on the Sunset Strip I thought, hmmmm, wonder if this is going to turn up in later episodes.

The worst part is the presumption that the LAPD is going to spend two years investigating Charles Manson and despite David Duchovny's best efforts Manson (played with no charisma by a young man named Gethin Anthony) is going to do terrible things over the coming episodes.

Unless, of course, the show decides to completely abandon history and let Sharon Tate and her friends, and maybe even Bobby Kennedy, go forward into the 1970's unharmed. After all, the coveted viewers between the ages of 18 and 35 have only slight awareness of modern history.

Skip this. Watch the DVD of HELTER SKELTER instead.

Camel Spiders (2011 TV Movie)

No Love in This House for CAMEL SPIDERS?

[8/10 · 17 April 2015]

What were people who watched this looking for? Oh, a low budget horror movie from Roger Corman? Do you think it might give me some new insight into religion and/or the meaning of life? Not.

While I watched CAMEL SPIDERS I munched on Peeps (leftover from Easter). For those unfamiliar with them, Peeps are candies made from marshmallows. No vitamins, no minerals, no health benefits, just empty calories from sugar. Just like this movie, and just as much harmless fun.

For absolutely no reason whatsoever a bunch of spiders from the Middle East that have wound up in the American Southwest grow to enormous size. They then begin to snack on the locals.

Let's see, what do we have here? Newlyweds. A couple on the brink of divorce and their daughter, who has no self preservation instincts. Soldiers. The nice guy local sheriff. The couple who runs the local diner. Two businessmen (they wear suits and ties throughout the entire film) who are looking to scam the people who own the diner; think Mr. Burns and Smithers without the sexual tension. Students on a field trip. Their professor who has no math skills (he insists that the spiders have six legs when anyone can see that they have eight) and when he sees a spider the size of a large collie decides that the best thing to do is walk over and get a closer look at it.

Admittedly, there a few beloved clichés that the authors could have brought in. Think how the school bus full of blind orphans enhanced the final act of CHOPPER CHICKS IN ZOMBIE TOWN. An elderly character, possibly in a wheelchair, could have raised the stakes. But you can do only so much with ninety minutes.

The special effects are decent but not spectacular, but points for the fact that most of the time the spiders cast shadows. The acting is competent for what they're given. The direction propels the action forward and keeps the actors from walking into each other.

Best yet, there are strange aspects of the story that can intrigue the viewer. Why does the hero hotwire a truck when the keys are clearly in the ignition? Why are two important secondary characters left stranded in the a car that won't start with no hint of their fate? And, better yet, why is a passage in the basement of an abandoned factory lined with brightly glowing lanterns that look to have very fresh batteries in them? Above all, where can we buy guns that almost never run out of ammunition? They can be set on automatic, firing round after round per second, and seemingly keep running for hours if necessary without overheating?

The ending sets up a sequel. Maybe someday these sweet mysteries of life will be revealed.