Suddenly Moral Ambiguity. An assassination attempt on the president of the United States – by Ol’ Blue Eyes! In a bucolic American town named SUDDENLY, three men posing as FBI take a residential family hostage, using the family’s house as a vantage point to assassinate the president. Frank Sinatra (FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, 1953) is John Baron, the crazy-eyed leader … Read More
SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE
SLEEPLESS will put you to sleep. Sleepless in Seattle? Must be from all that grunge music you kids are listening to. The macro, self-aware message in SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE is in the scene where characters measure the emotional impact of 1957’s AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER against the parachuting scene in THE DIRTY DOZEN where Trini Lopez breaks his neck. It’s … Read More
THE SKYDIVERS
Never gets off the ground. If you enjoy dreary, talentless non-actors delivering lines in a bland monotone over a plot that goes from Point A to Stop Making Sense, then Coleman Francis‘s THE SKYDIVERS is your cup of tea, er, coffee. Kevin Casey is Beth Rowe, who runs an airfield whose prime attraction is coffee and skydiving. In that order. … Read More
SHOULDER ARMS
War is only as stupid as its combatants. Too soon? A comedy set during World War I – during World War I. Long before Rambo won Viet Nam, Charlie Chaplin won WWI! Writer-director-star Chaplin, the king of physical comedy, addresses the greatest comedy of all – war. Braving public disapproval, he releases SHOULDER ARMS, a breezy lark that follows a … Read More
THE SITTER 2011
Somewhere over the pain flow. Jonah Hill as the Wizard of Oz! Over the course of the unfunny road comedy, THE SITTER, where Hill finds himself babysitting three of the most annoying kids in the world, he reveals to each of them their true inner desires that are causing them to improperly channel their energies into being three of the … Read More
SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS
Too mysterious for its own smart. SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS is director Guy Ritchie’s brash, bombastic, brainy and body-shaved sequel to his 2009 SHERLOCK HOLMES. Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) takes on Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris) in a battle as much to do with wits as hits. Along with friend, confidant and eternally disgruntled crimefighting partner Dr. Watson (Jude … Read More
SHARKNADO 2: THE SECOND ONE
Just when you thought it was safe to get blown… Yeah, it sucks – but it was meant to suck. — Jon Stewart, THE DAILY SHOW. SHARKNADO 2: THE SECOND ONE is one of the stupidest movies you will ever see. Yet from a moviemaking, storytelling point of view, it is actually better than its original. My God! Does this … Read More
SON OF GODZILLA
Baby moviemaking spawns baby monster. After taking forever to get to any kind of point, SON OF GODZILLA eventually settles into insulting our intelligence with a mindlessly boring story of a “baby Godzilla” hatching, and its mother?/father? Godzilla protecting it from predators and teaching it The Way Of The Rubber Suit. Shin’ichi Sekizawa proves his utter incompetence as a writer, … Read More
STAND UP GUYS
Say goodnight to the bad guys… The KING OF NEW YORK takes SCARFACE for one last night on the town. Before he has to kill him. A comedy with heart – and imminent heart attack – as three aged wiseguys in their septs and octs wheeze about town on one last bender, partly in celebration of one of them being … Read More
SERENITY
A ‘verse not big enough for Joss Whedon’s ideas. Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane!…Well, it’s kinda both. It’s a goose-shaped spaceship called Serenity. Space cowboy and Gale Harold lookalike, Nathan Fillion, leads his hip crew of lovable space brigands, as they ricochet around the galaxy, avoiding government spooks, mutated killers and references to STAR WARS, … Read More
THE SANTA CLAUSE 2
Papa’s got a brand new bag – I mean, wife. Due to THE SANTA CLAUSE 2, Santa Claus must find a wife or he will magically stop being Santa Claus, presumably leaving one billion spoiled brats on Earth wailing in frenzy for their free toys. It’s eight years later – in real time and movie time – since THE SANTA … Read More
THE SANTA CLAUSE
Insanity Clause. Santa Claus has his own kind of occult life insurance. If he dies, the person who puts on his suit becomes him (against their will), replete with obesity genes, forceful beard that cannot be shaved off and occult powers of transmogrification; Santa Claus’s life essence preserved and transferred, the person who becomes him having no choice but to … Read More
STAR TREK: NEMESIS
Nature vs. Nurture vs. Nemesis. Jonathan Frakes is the most useless, insipid character in the STAR TREK universe. There, I said it. (Send your hate mail to 80 Vanilla Street, Who-Gives-A-Shit, CA, Stardate 2350.) Now let’s talk about useless, insipid movies… STAR TREK NEMESIS is the fourth and last The Next Generation (TNG) adventure, continuing the STAR TREK legacy with … Read More
SNOW WHITE: A TALE OF TERROR
Once Upon a Terrifying Time… SNOW WHITE: A TALE OF TERROR has the potential to be one of the great revisionist re-tellings of the original Grimm Fairy Tale, but, like BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA, suffers from inauthentic sets, TV production values and bad editing. And big dwarfs. As the title suggests, it’s the age-old German folk tale of Snow White (tabulated … Read More
SKYFALL
Bond-fall. James Bond returns in SKYFALL – and is immediately killed… Trending in movies: heroes do not just fall – everything they know is compromised; everything that makes them a hero is called into question. They fall from the greatest height possible (is this the play on words in sky fall?), to make their rise all the more sexy (as … Read More
SINISTER
Ghouls on Film. How ’bout turning on a freakin’ light?! SINISTER is a well-made and effective horror movie, so we expect a certain amount of darkness, metaphorically and literally, but has anyone heard of Thomas Alva Edison around here? Formulated the modern electric light bulb in 1879 – and I’m sure the Department of Water and Power is pumping that … Read More
SHAME
Pure sex, hold the shame. After watching SHAME, George Clooney joked to Michael Fassbender, “You could play golf with that thing!” Fassbender (X-MEN: FIRST CLASS) is Brandon: office guy, New York apartment, sex addict. He regularly hires prostitutes, masturbates at work in the toilet, picks up random flings and fucks them in alleys, owns a ton of porn magazines, and … Read More
SUDDEN IMPACT
Dirty Sondra. A vigilante tracks a group of rapists, one by one mercilessly killing them in cold blood. But this time, it’s not “Dirty” Harry Callahan doing the killing – it’s his chick! Sondra Locke (Clint Eastwood’s real life living-in-sin partner) gets Dirty in SUDDEN IMPACT, as a rape victim on a vendetta against her rapists, who were not convicted … Read More
SHARKNADO
Shark Sandwich. Recall the wisdom of the reviewer who wrote the two-word summation of Spinal Tap’s album, Shark Sandwich: “Shit sandwich.” The human race is not worth saving. I’m sure of that now. Not just because SHARKNADO was made in the first place – a non-budget TV movie on the SyFy Channel about sharks being swept up in a tornado … Read More
SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK
Couldn’t find the silver lining. SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK is a teachable moment in filmic history. They showed us how to cure bipolar disease. You just need to get laid! Two damaged people Meet Cute. They pretend to hate each other. By movie’s end, they love each other, which apparently means they’re not damaged anymore. Yay. All it took was sex. SILVER … Read More