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CaptainRoz
Reviews
Homewrecker (1992)
The people making this didn't care - why should anyone else?
I had the pleasure of watching this "jewel" at about three in the morning, which is the only time of day that one can be in the proper state of mind to sit through "Homewrecker".
The plot itself is pretty thin and you can figure out where this one's heading after about the first twenty minutes. Despite this, the movie proceeds at a tediously slow place, taking two hours to string out what could have been accomplished in about fifteen. By the time its over, you'll seriously wonder why you bothered to sit around and actually see the plot unfold exactly as you knew it would.
The acting is mediocre but not overly bad. At the end, I couldn't fault any of the actors - I wouldn't have been motivated to try hard either if I had the script in front of me. The actress playing the wife seemed to do an admirable job at the beginning, but by the middle of the film she seems to have given up just like everyone else.
"Everyone else" isn't really as grand a term as it sounds though - there's really only four major characters and you can make the argument that the wife and daughter are just cannon fodder added to up the stakes for the grand finale. In the end, this is a story of a downtrodden scientist and his super-smart, super-envious, super-desperate-to-be-in-love computer creation.
The movie never develops the sense of danger which is necessary to make the viewer care about the human characters and attacks the subject matter on a mostly superficial level. It's about what you'd expect from a made-for-TV movie that's being shown in the wee hours of the morning.
"Homewrecker" is somewhat fun to watch if you're a fan of cheesy sci-fi. It doesn't have any guys in rubber suits destroying a cardboard metropolis, but it does manage to parade out all the overdone sci-fi themes of computer-human interaction. The whole movie plays out like a Michael Crichton novel that was re-written by seventh-grader.
Lucy, the titular supercomputer, looks like a bad prop rescued from late 70's movie set. Lots of large blinking lights and a pretty bad HAL-ripoff of an "all-seeing eye" which serves as the computer's main interface with the humans. Lucy can also amazingly manipulate physical objects with which she has no physical connections - doors, water faucets, gas lines, etc... They could have at least thrown a wire somewhere in the camera shot to lend a wee bit of credibility to this amazing ability.
So, "Homewrecker" gets a 2 out of 10 in my opinion. It doesn't try to insult your intelligence, but it doesn't try to do anything else either. This is just another example of generic, off-the-shelf sci-fi thrown out there for the public. A little original thought or enthusiasm would helped a lot.
Hell Comes to Frogtown (1988)
Not exactly classic cinema.
Man, this film is two things: weird and bad. Of course, when you make a film about a post-apocalyptic "Planet of the Frogs" starring a burnt-out wrestler on a minimal budget, the end product is naturally not exactly classic cinema.
Still, this movie has its own unique, horrible charm. It's so bad, you HAVE to watch. The plot is horrible. The effects are horrible. The lines are horrible. The acting is horrible. The camera work is horrible. Nothing about this film even remotely resembles a quality production.
But where else are you going to see a big frog bent on mating with the last dozen fertile women on Earth? Where else can you hear the frog king tell one of those women, "You have aroused the three snakes"? Where else can you see a man jump off a cliff and land on a highly-visible safety mat? Where else can you see a mediocre wrestler drive off in dune buggy with a dozen fertile women?
It's just one of those films that you find when you're flipping through the channels and then can't turn away from. It's brainless and shameless. But sometimes, that's all you need in a movie.
Aleksandr Nevskiy (1938)
One of Eisenstein's best...
Like many of Eisenstein's other works, "Aleksandr Nevsky" is a beautifully made and well-written propaganda piece. Even today, it stands on its own with a solid story and incredible action scenes. No one did an epic battle better than Eisenstein ("October" and "Ivan the Terrible"), and the giant battle on the frozen lake in "Nevsky" ranks up there as one of his best.
Just as important to the film as Eisenstein's script and visuals is the masterful score by Prokofiev. Fortunately, it has been rerecorded for the most recent video release and the new soundtrack adds incalcuable depth and power to the story on the screen. In my opinion, the film's score is simply the best ever composed for a film. It fits the film perfectly, both during the film's intense action scenes and the lingering moments of reflection. If for no other reason, one should see this film to hear one of the 20th century's greatest composer's best works.
The story is true (well, as true as events from the 1200s can be accurately recreated) and simple, but powerful. Despite its heavy-handed Russian/Soviet patriotism, the film succeeds in telling a compelling story. When one looks at the events unfolding when the film was made, it becomes even more of a masterpiece.
No, "Nevsky" doesn't have the flashy visuals or super-handsome stars of a modern war epic, but it still ranks of one of the most interesting films in my book. For fans of Eisenstein or classic cinema, it is an absolute must-see. And for people who want to see the Soviet propaganda machine firing on all cylinders, check it out as well.