catrandom Reviews

War (2007)

Huge disappointment

[2/10 · 27 August 2007]

When you sell a movie on the basis that "Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein," even a minimal spirit of fair play requires that Abbott & Costello and Frankenstein, you know, actually meet.

But in this turkey, sold as "Jason Statham Meets Jet Li," Statham and Li have only two scenes together and exactly one fight. That fight is only about two minutes long and ineptly photographed, and part of it takes place with Li under a big black net. He could've been anybody, and probably was.

After a reasonably lively opening scene, it takes about a year for anything else to happen, and too often what happens involves neither of the actors we came to see. When Li does materialize from time to time, he's usually shooting people. Who wants to see Jet Li shoot people? Statham, on the other hand, is generally found talking. Who wants to see Jason Statham talking?

There are other absurdities, of course -- such as Tom Lone's decision to resurrect himself as a hit man who's about four inches shorter and has a heavy Chinese accent, which he retains even when speaking with the former partner who betrayed him. (Unless we're meant to believe that his accent was surgically installed when he had his face remodeled.) But that sort of thing is expected in this kind of movie, and I could easily have put aside any amount of silliness if the payoff had been there. But it just wasn't.

Very disappointing.

MythBusters (2003–2018)

Just love it, and you learn a lot

[22 April 2005]

A fine show, co-hosted by an up-for-anything redheaded seeming goofball (who's actually quite smart and occasionally capable of startling arrogance) and a muscular, mustachioed pain in the a**.

There's obviously tension between the hosts, but it seems to make for more effort and better work on all sides. (One exchange that made it to air: "Quit whining, you big baby"/"F*** off!"/Sound of off-camera things breaking).

They do much useful debunking, but the guys being competitive is what's the most fun about MB. I kinda wish the show hadn't promoted Kari, Tori and Grant to effective co-hosts, since it means less A&J, but the hosts may have real lives to get back to, and perhaps it's been discovered that they do better if they don't spend quite so much time together.

The Black Cat (1934)

Slick, spooky fun

[18 September 2004]

There's a lot of story to tell in about 65 minutes, so this movie could be considered perhaps a bit incoherent. But the larger themes -- revenge, lust and innocents caught in the grip of forces beyond their sheltered experience -- have been central themes in horror tales for centuries.

Karloff is a delight as usual, and there are many fine details to his performance -- including a brief but outrageously lustful stare at the half-dressed young wife of the innocent couple and the strangely gentle way his brutal character handles a cat. (Nice tall, dark and handsome kitty in the title role, for the cat people.)

And this movie also shows once again that Bela Lugosi was a better actor than he ever got credit for. He handles his overwrought dialogue with taste and good cheer, and he's a marvel. And he even gets to speak a few rare lines of Hungarian here.

28 Days Later (2002)

Not a bad little horror flick

[14 July 2003]

"28 Days" didn't strike me as the life-changing experience some folks have made it out to be, but it's not bad, and not so blood-soaked as it might have been, all things considered. It's essentially a zombie movie, but when the focus shifts to the army unit, there's a twist that is both original and deeply creepy.

Cillian Murphy is just fine despite some accent troubles, and the always marvelous Brendan Gleeson charges up the whole movie. And Naomie Harrie is a delight, bringing guts and energy to the regulation pretty-girl part.

The ending isn't completely satisfactory (to me, anyway), and I do have one other gripe: The old hymn "Abide With Me," heard in the background as our hero makes a particularly ghastly discovery. You'd think the Cheap Irony shop would be sold out of that one by now.

Moulin Rouge! (2001)

Sleazy and technically inept

[8 July 2001]

The bankrupt mess that is "Moulin Rouge": A short catalog.

The nominal heroes claim that they stand for four "Bohemian principles" of "truth, beauty, freedom and love." Which of these are they illustrating when they approach a wealthy man with the stated intention of ruthlessly manipulating him to get at his money? When, late in the movie, the hero is moping about believing that his girlfriend just pretended she loved him to get what she wanted, it would perhaps have been more moving if he hadn't spent the past two hours encouraging her to do exactly the same thing to somebody else.

I've no objection to movies in which all the characters are swine, but only if the movie appears to know that. The high moral point this movie has to make: You can behave as badly as you like if it 1) gets you what you want and 2) only hurts people you don't like. While that may very well be an accurate perception of modern morality, I refuse to accept it as romantic, much less heroic.

Just a few of the problems with the script and its execution: A dated-50-years-ago "She has to sleep with the villain to save the show" arc is played out, in full, twice. There is no reason for the club owner to want to convert his club to a theater to help his hooker star become "a real actress" -- particularly since he knows she is dying. How does he plan to make his money back after she drops dead? Ewan McGregor never gets in the same area code as the correct pitch; he is off-key, at the top of his lungs, for two hours. Additionally, his accent wanders the British Isles, though his character is stated (for no particular reason, as it happens) to be English.

The end of the "Like a Virgin" segment leaves the queasy (and we hope unintended) impression that the club owner is about to have sex with the villain -- while not resolving the plot point (ha!) that it is intended to resolve. There is an endless, dull-witted slapstick sequence during the initial approach to the wealthy victim that seems to have dropped in from some episode of "Animaniacs," or perhaps "Looney Tunes." Before that, Nicole Kidman is made to roll about orgasmically, for a really, really long time, to McGregor's insipid (and off-key, naturally) rendering of "Your Song." Baz Luhrmann must hate actors. The much-vaunted look of the production is just an ugly, vaguely Nouveau pastiche that looks derived from old Ken Russell movies. In fact, if this movie had to be made at all, Ken Russell would have done it better. I am not a fan of Ken Russell.

A sleazy, hypocritical piece of trash, and a shameful waste of the time and talent of everyone involved except Luhrmann, who is, I suppose, doing about the best he can.

Shadow of the Vampire (2000)

Superb, but not in the ways you might expect

[1 January 2001]

First, the quibbles: Since this is about a German movie and everyone in the movie is understood to be speaking German, the erratic accents would have been well dispensed with. John Malkovich's wig has his hairline receding more in some scenes than others. The title sequence -- easily 10 full minutes of zooming in and out on vaguely creepy artwork while all the people who ever adjusted a light or passed the director a pencil are credited, two at a time -- is a serious test of patience. And there's perhaps a bit too much silliness here and there -- there is the odd cheap laugh.

Now the praise: Though it would still work if one had not seen "Nosferatu," that definitely adds to the experience. "Shadow of the Vampire" easily matches "Nosferatu" in giving a sense of Count Orlock (or Orlok; it appears both ways in the title cards) as something completely other. This count is not a courtly, distorted human. He's utterly, unpredictably alien, and his priorities and needs are entirely his own. It makes him fascinating, and raises all kinds of questions about his real moral culpability. Dafoe is superb.

There's no question about the culpability of Murnau in the story; he's rather more dangerous than the vampire. Malkovich, who, with his bored bureaucrat's voice, has a particular genius for making lunacy sound perfectly reasonable, is terrific. And when he and Dafoe are together -- well, there hasn't been so much ham on a single screen since the scene between Charles Laughton and Peter Ustinov in "Spartacus." They're a joy to watch.

I should also mention to those who haven't seen "Nosferatu" that, not only is Eddie Izzard a ringer for the pudgy young hero in the original, his portrayal of that actor's approach is not the least bit exaggerated.

The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

Great effects sunk by a dreadful script

[1/10 · 17 September 2000]

This rather alarming film stars a young Gene Hackman in as about as bad a performance as he ever gave. Of course, his character -- a self-described "renegade" preacher -- is about the most arrogant, pretentious, bullying nitwit ever passed off as an adventure hero. The preacher's bellowing hostility and vicious emotional manipulation might have been something interesting and different if the script didn't seem so unaware that the character is, well, a jerk. The other male characters are pretty much stock types, though the always-reliable Roddy McDowall as a hapless ship worker is dignified and touching.

The women do even worse than the men -- among them are a bitchy ex-hooker, a starry-eyed teenager with a crush on the boorish preacher, and a hot-pantsed halfwit of a lounge singer who frequently becomes paralyzed with terror and has to be comforted in the manly arms of Red Buttons.

The single female character with any depth at all is Shelley Winters' sweet Jewish grandma, whose swim through the flooded propellor room ultimately makes it possible for the others to be saved. A generation of unkind jokes aside, her sensible, brave performance is the best thing in this very silly movie.

Cop Rock (1990)

Deeply Silly

[2 August 2000]

This deservedly short-lived series was actually a pretty good cop show. Bochco regular Peter Onorati was suitably chilling as a corrupt detective, and Barbara Bosson was impressive as always. But someone had the ridiculous idea to have the characters continually burst into song, repeatedly destroying any dramatic momentum and making it impossible to take any of it at all seriously. It really is amazing this ever got onto network TV, even briefly.

To be fair, had the songs been spectacular, this may have had a shred of a chance of working. But they were the usual pop hackwork, and that killed any chance for "Cop Rock" to have been at least an interesting failure instead of an absurdity.