BACKDRAFT

title: BACKDRAFT

year: 1991

cast: Kurt Russell, William Baldwin, Robert De Niro

director: Ron Howard

normal movie rating: *

bad movie rating: ****

Ron Howard, former child-star turned overrated film director, throws anything and everything into the pot and ends up creating the worst "blockbuster" ever made, and grandiosely so. While focusing on the lives of two brothers, seasoned fireman Kurt Russell and new-recruit William Baldwin, who lost their firefighting dad years before in an, um, fire, the story really centers on a succession of explosions that kill seemingly random victims like something from a horror movie. There are good guys and bad guys; the good guys are blue collar, the bad guys wear suits (the same as the producers of this movie, most likely). Kurt Russell's acting is so hammy it's hilarious, and every shot of William Baldwin screams: "Aren't I a cutie pie?" Scott Glenn, J.T. Walsh, Rebecca DeMorney and Jennifer Jason Leigh collect a paycheck. Robert DeNiro, as a Merlin-like arson investigator trying to "out think" the fire - treated as a living/breathing vengeful entity - gives Russell a run in the bad acting department, trumped only by Donald Sutherland as a deranged yet helpful incarcerated arsonist (liken to Hannibal Lecter). But it's Ron Howard - attempting to turn every frame into something that'd awe opening night audiences everywhere - who really deserves the blame. Although in making a completely over-the-top disaster, he does succeed, splendidly.

HOWARD THE DUCK

title: HOWARD THE DUCK

year: 1986

cast: Leah Thompson, Tim Robbins, Jeffrey Jones

rating: *

Okay, so, the first part isn't that great... it isn't even good... but it's watchable, somehow: so bad it's good as Howard the Duck is thrust from his planet onto ours. Meets a beautiful rock star and then things go downhill as they find a professor, Tim Robbins, who calls in an important scientist, Jefferey Jones. Jones is possessed by an evil alien and tears apart a diner in one of the unnecessarily longest scenes in history. The movie — based on the Marvel comic books that were a lot more risque and humorous — takes too much time centering on an actual plot: the evil scientist trying to kill the cigar chomping duck. An addictive element of the comic is that it didn't center on one particular tale but instead went berserk with various zany, wonderfully stupid adventures. But this disaster dwells too much on one element — that's very boring.

METEOR

title: METEOR
year: 1979
cast: Sean Connery, Brian Keith, Natalie Wood, Martin Landau
rating: *

This shows us how a meteor could destroy the earth... kind of. Almost every scene takes place in a stuffy underground technical room. While latter-films "Armagedden" and "Deep Impact" had astronauts blasting off to blow things up, all the actors here stand around and talk about it. A scene involving Russian and American missles flying side-by-side to attack the meteor is one of the unintenionally funniest scenes in history. Otherwise worthwhile actors like Connery, Brian Keith (as a humble Russian Czar... kind of a Soviet Teddy Rosevelt), Natalie Wood (as Connery's sorta love interest), and Karl Malden overact to the hilt... especially Martin Landau as an evil American General (aren't all American Generals evil in Hollywood films?). If you like horrendous big-budget disasters, this is just what the doctor ordered.

HEAVEN'S GATE (MICHAEL CIMINO)

year: 1980

cast: Kris Kristofferson

director: Michael Cimino

rating: *

What makes Michael Cimino's infamous "Heaven's Gate" the biggest bomb in history? What makes "Heaven's Gate" one of the worst epic films ever made? Was it the four hour running time? Was it the fact that each scene went on way too long? Was it the rollerskating scene where a guy plays a fiddle for five minutes skating around the rink (a roller rink in a Western just doesn't mesh)? Was it the love story between a dull, overly-idealist town Marhsall and a plain looking prostitute and their superlong rides in a stagecoach? Was it the prologue involving graduates of Harvard giving speeches while we get numerous cuts to beautiful women who have nothing to do with the scene other than forcing us to realize that they find Kris Kristofferson sexy? Was it the dancing scenes in the same prologue that showed people spinning around endlessly without showing where the music was coming from? Was it the dialog; most of which was almost impossible to understand? Sure, these things didn't help. But what I hated most about this film is the characters: they're either really bad or really good. The bad ones, especially Sam Waterson... are so overly bad they should be wearing thin mustaches and, upon seeing them on screen, there should be an audince booing and hissing in the background. And the good guys... well, let's just say they're the polar opposite of the villains... Too good, too perfect. The polar opposite of this muddled disaster.