But then the set up, of a husband and wife who are famous stage performers in Poland who, when Hitler takes over, has to close up their theater, becomes an overlong skit involving Brooks and real-life wife Anne Bancroft, with the aid of a sad throwaway role by ANIMAL HOUSE star Tim Matheson as a love-struck soldier: The entire menagerie playing an elaborate scheme on the Nazis that gets way too complicated for it's own good in this remake of a Jack Benny 1940's vehicle (when ensemble comedies were the norm)... Not only do all the wires get tangled up within each other, there's way too many to begin with. And it's understandable turning the Nazis into complete buffoons, especially when spoofing them... but in doing so it takes away any valid threat, making it meaningless to have to trick or defeat them in the first place. Score: **1/2
TO BE OR NOT TO (1982)
Starts out decently enough, and surprisingly different for Mel Brooks to
direct a remake: something that isn't a parody of a serious genre or a humorous take on historical events...
But then the set up, of a husband and wife who are famous stage performers in Poland who, when Hitler takes over, has to close up their theater, becomes an overlong skit involving Brooks and real-life wife Anne Bancroft, with the aid of a sad throwaway role by ANIMAL HOUSE star Tim Matheson as a love-struck soldier: The entire menagerie playing an elaborate scheme on the Nazis that gets way too complicated for it's own good in this remake of a Jack Benny 1940's vehicle (when ensemble comedies were the norm)... Not only do all the wires get tangled up within each other, there's way too many to begin with. And it's understandable turning the Nazis into complete buffoons, especially when spoofing them... but in doing so it takes away any valid threat, making it meaningless to have to trick or defeat them in the first place. Score: **1/2
But then the set up, of a husband and wife who are famous stage performers in Poland who, when Hitler takes over, has to close up their theater, becomes an overlong skit involving Brooks and real-life wife Anne Bancroft, with the aid of a sad throwaway role by ANIMAL HOUSE star Tim Matheson as a love-struck soldier: The entire menagerie playing an elaborate scheme on the Nazis that gets way too complicated for it's own good in this remake of a Jack Benny 1940's vehicle (when ensemble comedies were the norm)... Not only do all the wires get tangled up within each other, there's way too many to begin with. And it's understandable turning the Nazis into complete buffoons, especially when spoofing them... but in doing so it takes away any valid threat, making it meaningless to have to trick or defeat them in the first place. Score: **1/2
THE RETURN
title: THE RETURN
Two children, a boy and girl, and a farmer witness a UFO in a small rural town (where else?) and then... years later... one of the kids, now a grown up played by Cybill Shepard, returns to the hick town (she was only passing through originally) where she hooks up with Jan Michael-Vincent, a local handsome cop who turns out was the other kid who saw the spaceship. This is a bad movie but it's quite a treat seeing Vincent Shavelli, as the farmer who, unlike the other two witnesses, became a psychotic killer with an atomic double-edged flashlight that mutilates cattle and people... who Jan and Cybill have to kill before he kills anyone else. And the special effects make Sid & Marty Krofft seem like George Lucas in comparison, but overall, it's somewhat entertaining.
year: 1980
cast: Jan-Michael Vincent, Cybill Shepard
director: Greydon Clark
rating: **
THE FIRM
title: THE FIRM
year: 1993
cast: Tom Cruise, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Gene Hackman, Wilford Brimley, Hal Holbrook, Gary Busey, David Strathaim, Holly Hunter, Jerry Hardin, Steven Hill, Ed Harris, Paul Calderan, Tobin Bell, Terry Kinney, Paul Sorvino
rating: ***
STAR TREK
title: STAR TREK
year: 2009
cast: Chris Pine
rating: **
BETRAYAL
title: BETRAYAL
cast: 1987
cast: Debra Winger, Tom Berenger, John Mahoney, Ted Levine, John Hurt, Richard Libertini, Albert Hall
rating: ***1/2
THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES
title: THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES
year: 1996
cast: Jim Varney, Erika Eleniak, Deidrich Bader, Lily Tomlin, Dabney Coleman, Cloris Leachman, Lea Thompson, Rob Schneider, Mickey Jones, Dolly Parton, Buddy Ebson
director: Penelope Spheeris
rating: **
PERFECT
title: PERFECT
year: 1986
cast: John Travolta, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jann Wenner, Laraine Newman, Marilu Henner, Carly Simon, Doug Campbell
normal movie rating: ***
bad movie rating: *****
HEROES HAS RELOCATED
title: HEROES
year: 1977
cast: Henry Winkler, Sally Field, Harrison Ford, Val Avery, John Cassavetes, Ron Rifkin, Al Rubin
rating: **1/2
REAL LIFE
title: REAL LIFE
year: 1979
cast: Albert Brooks, Charles Grodin, Francis Lee McCann, J.A. Preston, David Speilberg, James L. Brooks, Johnny Haymer, Matthew Tobin
writer/director: Albert Brooks
rating: **
FALLING IN LOVE
year: 1984
Robert DeNiro and Meryl Streep are two married, successful New York suburbanites who, after seeing each other on the same train, meet in a store where they start a conversation ("Don't we ride the same train?") and accidentally take each other's gifts. On Christmas Morning, DeNiro's wife gets Streep's husbands gift (a book on boating); and Streep's husband gets DeNiro's wife's gift (a book on gardening). That's the most clever aspect of this bland romance full of mumbling dialog and uncomfortably-silent conversations between two people who, although they have perfect marriages and beautiful children, should know better: but just can't help themselves. The major love scene is as sexy as mom and dad humping on a rainy afternoon, but, at times, the snail-paced build-up has a sort of mellow voyeuristic quality liken to French cinema, only without any depth or purpose. Harvey Keitel plays DeNiro's recently-divorced buddy, and it's strange seeing the wily thugs from "Mean Streets" as upper-class Manhattan yuppies. The movie sort of happens for a while, and then it's done.
cast: Robert DeNiro, Meryl Streep, Harvey Keitel, Jane Kaczmarek
director: Ulu Grosbard
rating: **
THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT
title: THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT
year: 1940
cast: George Raft, Ida Lupino, Humphry Bogart, Ann Sheridan, Alan Hale
rating: **1/2
WALL STREET
title: WALL STREET
year: 1988
cast: Charlie Sheen, Michael Douglas, Martin Sheen, Hal Halbrook, Daryl Hannah
rating: ****
YOU'VE GOT MAIL
title: YOU'VE GOT MAIL
year: 1999
cast: Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Steve Zahn, Jean Stapleton, Dabney Coleman, John Randolph, Greg Kinnear, Parker Posey
rating: ***
LOOKING FOR COMEDY IN THE MUSLIM WORLD
title: LOOKING FOR COMEDY IN THE MUSLIM WORLD
year: 2005
cast: Albert Brooks, Fred Thompson
writer/director: Albert Brooks
rating: ***
BRUNO
title: BRUNO
year: 2009
cast: Sacha Baron Cohen
rating: ***
ORANGE COUNTY
title: ORANGE COUNTY
year: 2002
cast: Colin Hanks, Jack Black, Chevy Chase, Jane Adams
rating: *1/2
2010
title: 2010
Someone castrated HAL 9000! In this horrendous, preachy mess, Roy Schieder plays the role of "Dr. Heywood Floyd" in a cold war sequel to the Kubrick classic, and here we learn that Russians and Americans CAN get along... Pretty dated, huh? The unintentionally hilarious scenes involving astronaut "Dave Bowman" (Keir Dullea) returning to earth as a philosophical wraith, invisibly combing his mother's hair on her deathbed and speaking through a television set in place of newscaster Larry Carroll, are far more interesting than the ninety-minutes in space as the Americans and Russians "band together" above Jupiter, trying to figure out the purposely-confounding elements from the first film, that which was never intended to make sense, but rather, to imply. This turkey takes all those implications and throws them into an overlong, overblown mess that made us yearn to be wonderfully confused rather than preached at.
year: 1984
cast: Roy Scheider, Bob Balaban, John Lithgow, Keir Dullea
director: Peter Hymans
rating: *
IN THE HEAT OF PASSION
title: IN THE HEAT OF PASSION
year: 1992
cast: Sally Kirkland, Nick Corri, Michael Greene, Jack Carter
rating: ***1/2
Sure there's a lot of steamy scenes, but this early-nineties Roger Corman production has a lot more going for it. Like Oscar-nominated actress (for 1987's ANNA) Sally Kirkland playing the bored trophy wife of rich man Michael Greene. While at a gas station, she meets hunky mechanic Jsu Garcia (then billed as Nick Corri). The two hit it off and really want to connect; especially Garcia, who makes every effort to do so. And by posing as a cable TV repairman, he talks his way into the bedroom where sexy Kirkland awaits. But what really excels this to greater heights is an action sequence involving Garcia, who's an actor on the side, being chased by mobsters and using this motivation in a scene from a movie (within the movie) with a similar plot line. But back to reality: what Garcia doesn't know is Kirkland (who's a personal friend of yours truly), like any effective Film Noir moll, hides a deep dark secret fueling a hidden, and perhaps lethal, agenda. And it takes a grade-A actress and actor to provide enough intrigue and intensity to make a B-movie really work.
year: 1992
cast: Sally Kirkland, Nick Corri, Michael Greene, Jack Carter
rating: ***1/2
Sure there's a lot of steamy scenes, but this early-nineties Roger Corman production has a lot more going for it. Like Oscar-nominated actress (for 1987's ANNA) Sally Kirkland playing the bored trophy wife of rich man Michael Greene. While at a gas station, she meets hunky mechanic Jsu Garcia (then billed as Nick Corri). The two hit it off and really want to connect; especially Garcia, who makes every effort to do so. And by posing as a cable TV repairman, he talks his way into the bedroom where sexy Kirkland awaits. But what really excels this to greater heights is an action sequence involving Garcia, who's an actor on the side, being chased by mobsters and using this motivation in a scene from a movie (within the movie) with a similar plot line. But back to reality: what Garcia doesn't know is Kirkland (who's a personal friend of yours truly), like any effective Film Noir moll, hides a deep dark secret fueling a hidden, and perhaps lethal, agenda. And it takes a grade-A actress and actor to provide enough intrigue and intensity to make a B-movie really work.
THE GRAND CANYON
year: 1991
cast: Kevin Kline, Danny Glover, Mary McDonnell, Jeremy Sisto, Steve Martin
rating: *
For those who think the horrific MAGNOLIA is the most pretentious movie ever made; as Richard Dreyfuss tells Robert Shaw in JAWS: "I got that beat." This movie, about rich and poor people in Los Angeles whose lives intertwine, all discussing their own philosophies of life, takes the pretentious nasal-gazing gold medal. The otherwise talented Lawrence Kasdan penned this do-gooder doozy with his wife, Meg. Kevin Kline's car breaks down in Inglewood and is almost killed by gangsters; Danny Glover, as a tow truck driver, saves him (the best scene herein); they become friends and we follow each of their (and their friends and families) lives and basically learn: we're in different sized boats in the same raging sea. A Hollywood guilt movie, and godawful at that. Every sentence has a POINT; every camera angle an AGENDA: "I dare you to watch this and NOT LEARN SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR LIFE", is in parentheses throughout. As one character says: "People who excel at one thing think they know about everything." I think Lawrence and Meg might have been projecting here.
SLUMBER PARTY '57
title: SLUMBER PARTY '57
year: 1976
cast: Deborah Winger, Rainbeaux Smith, Raphael Campos
rating: *1/2
BABY BOOM
title: BABY BOOM
year: 1987
cast: Diane Keaton, Harold Ramis, Sam Shepard, James Spader, Sam Wanamaker, Victoria Jackson, Pat Hingle, Paxton Whitehead, Mary Gross
rating: ***
Classy late-eighties fare about a hard-driven business-woman played by Diane Keaton who has everything to gain in the corporate world until she inherits a baby, and then must juggle her executive life with that as a new, and quite reluctant, mother. After losing her yuppie boyfriend (Harold Ramis) and eventually her job (to an ass kissing weasel played by James Spader), she and baby move to a country home where the usual "nothing works in this house" havoc ensues, and she ends up making baby food with a plethora of apples in her spare time. Her hobby becomes a business and she's an overnight success, and then must choose between the simple life or returning to the big city. The best parts lie within the first half as she struggles with the baby, but the country story has its charm thanks to Sam Shepard as a genuinely nice Veterinarian providing a blossoming love story that never gets corny. Basically, it's a chick-flick that men won't mind being spoon-fed.
HOT DOG: THE MOVIE...
title: HOT DOG: THE MOVIE...
year: 1984
cast: Patrick Houser, David Naughton, Tracy Smith, John Patrick Reger, Shannon Tweed
rating: ***1/2
CASUAL SEX?
title: CASUAL SEX?
year: 1988
cast: Leah Thompson, Victoria Jackson, Mary Gross, Andrew "Dice" Clay, Stephen Shellen, Jerry Levine
rating: **
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