Change Your Image
jkizer
Reviews
Return to Cabin by the Lake (2001)
As good as the original, except...
I thought the original Cabin by the Lake was pretty good for a TV movie; it was easy enough to get into the characters, and Judd Nelson played a psychopath very well. The change in the sequel that I liked the best was the strange interaction between Stanley and Alison, as the circumstances surrounding it make their mind games with each other seem more sensible than those between Stanley and Mallory in the original.
However, there is one little thing that nags at me throughout the whole movie: how in the world could someone on the set of a Hollywood movie not have recognized Stanley's face from somewhere? The extent of his disguise is a pair of glasses! Other than that annoyance, I was not disappointed by this sequel.
Striptease (1996)
Surprisingly average
I first saw this movie after reading about how absolutely horrible it was. However, I found it to be nothing more and nothing less than an average Hollywood film. All of the characters (e.g. a person whose profession belies their inner character, a sleazy, womanizing politician) and plot devices have been seen before, but the characters are played well enough (especially Burt Reynolds' laughably lecherous Congressman Dilbeck) that the movie ends up being reasonably entertaining.