[e-mail] Reviews

Timesweep (1987 Video)

Imaginative premise fails to surmount weak script, uneven acting and more cheese than an exploding Velvetta factory

[3/10 · 13 January 2004]

TIMESWEEP is a pretty typical independently produced 80s horror film designed for the then booming direct-to-video market. The basic idea is a fun one wherein a group of people are swept up in the title phenomenon within which they encounter people, creatures and events from throughout time who have also been caught up in their own "Timesweep." There's aliens, Roman soldiers, a seriously cheesy dinosaur-like-thing along with petty infighting and lots of gore, in jokes and girls getting their clothes torn off.

The cast is very uneven, with some giving solid performances and others coming across like community theater rejects. The effects, except for the lizard man, are OK but less than special and the buns, breasts and bush on display are fairly entertaining. There's not much plot but most of it moves quickly and I liked the idea that one of the group was there deliberately- he knew about the Timesweeps and when and where they'd happen- in an attempt to find the wife he'd lost to another Timesweep years ago.

If you've watched the kind of 80s films Fred Olen Ray, Charles Band or Dave DeCoteau made and found them fun, then this one might be good for a giggle. Just don't get your hopes too high.

Militia (2000)

Yesterday's hits are today's stock footage

[8 October 2003]

I'm stunned by how many commentators here think this film features footage either mimicking scenes from bigger budget films or that the filmmakers stole these scenes and put them in their films. The studios routinely offer footage from their movies as potential stock footage for others to use. The early episodes of the JAG TV series were filled with footage from the Jack Ryan/Tom Clancy movies. It works better if the footage is from big budget flops or if only brief sequences are used rather than entire scenes as is the case in MILITIA and it helps if some attempt is made to hide anything obvious that might tip off a viewer as to the source of the footage (the Cyberdine sign being an example here)but there's nothing new about using stock footage to make your movie look bigger than it is. It's been done since the early days of film. If you want a real laugh check out RAPTOR from the same director which uses tons of footage from the 3 CARNOSAUR movies. At one point some soldiers walking (supposedly) through a warehouse pass life preservers on the wall. The reason being that this is footage from CARNOSAUR 3 which took place on a ship.

Eierdiebe (2003)

Surprisingly funny and human comedy about cancer patients, particularly a victim of testicular cancer

[9 September 2003]

Prior to catching this German language film, at its US premier showing, I would have considered `German Comedy' to be a contradiction in terms and the very idea of a comedy about testicular cancer seemed best left to the likes of idiots like Tom Green. Instead, this often hilarious, at times moving and always very human tale turned out to be one of the most enjoyable and well-realized films I've seen in this (admittedly) pretty lame year for film releases. The film deals with a promising young man who finds his well-ordered life turned topsy-turvy by a diagnosis of testicular cancer. After a surgery claims one of his `eggs' (the film's German title translates as `The Egg Thieves,' which references German slang for testicles, as well as a term for petty thieves) the main character learns that either more surgery or chemo treatments are needed to give him the best chance for no return of the cancer. He opts, against his controlling mother's and his doctor's advice, for the chemo and begins a lengthy stay in the hospital's chemo ward where he develops a bittersweet romance with a terminal patient and an odd friendship with two other male chemo patients- one an obese, somewhat childlike near-mute and the other an often hostile young man who spends most of his convalescence watching gruesome horror videos. The film takes more than a few swipes at the medical system the patients are trapped within, and the doctors and nurses who run it, but these characters never devolve into total caricature, which would likely happen in most films of this nature. While often the targets of ridicule, the hospital staff is ultimately handled with the same kind of respect the director offers the patients rather than becoming buffoons or cold-hearted monsters. Eventually the trio of patients decides to rebel against the system and, in a truly hilarious sequence, which mirrors dozens of heist films, they set out to reclaim that which has been taken from the protagonist. His testicle.

In many ways, THE FAMILY JEWELS made me think of Robert Altman's MASH. Not that director Schwentke's film has that film's anarchic nature or improvisational style, but it has a similar gift for mining very real and telling humor out of a situation one would expect to be handled with deadly seriousness. Surprisingly, for a foreign film, much of the humor is of a verbal nature but the English translation is very well done and the laughs come through quite naturally. The director also never loses track of his character's humanity, nor the sometimes raw and wrenching emotions that underlie that humanity and the film's humor. You can count on laughing a lot in the course of this film, but a few tears will roll as well, and both tears and guffaws are earned honestly and not by cheap manipulation of the audience. The film's director was in attendance at the film festival I caught this at and he explained during a post-showing Q&A that much of the film was autobiographical in nature, which makes the film all the more impressive. I really only saw this film because I had been very impressed with the directors film TATOO, which I caught at the same festival a year earlier. That film was a very dark and gruesome thriller with more than a hint of horror elements. FAMILY JEWELS could scarcely be more different, but it is every bit as well executed and the combination could mark the German born director as a major new talent. He did share that he's soon to start on a big budget, American action film. I can only hope the experience doesn't beat the freshness of Schwentke's vision out of him.

Trancers 6 (2002 Video)

Very low budget, but not bad if viewed as such

[4 July 2002]

Full Moon's budget just keep getting lower, so it's kind of sad to see one of their best series being continued on a budget lower than what Nicole Kidman spends a year on sun block. The TRANCERS films involve Jack Deth, a Bogart-ish cop from the future who keeps getting sent back in time to deal with Trancers, zombie-like former humans, whose actions virtually destroyed the time-line Deth originates from. To time travel, Deth must inhabit the body of one of his ancestors all of whom, at least until this entry, look just like actor Tim Thomerson.

This time around, Full Moon couldn't afford Thomerson, so they open with some stock footage of him, from previous films in the series, and then send him back in time to inhabit the body of the daughter he never knew he had fathered during one of his visits to the 80s. If you're a follower of the TRANCERS series, this all makes pretty good sense, as the third film did introduce just such a child.

Anyway, entry #6 takes place in a low rent version of the present and Deth's daughter is played by diminuitive (5 ft tall) Zette Sullivan, a serious little cutie who does a nice job of playing a tough "guy" in a girl's body. Sullivan is much of the show here as she effectively mimics Thomerson's style and earns a few smiles by playing the uncomfortable macho male in a woman's body role.

There's a couple of nice action sequences and some OK, bargain basement special effects and makeup. Most of the cast is fine and it all flies by enjoyably, if forgettably, enough. If Full Moon ever gets a decent budget again, they could do a lot worse than to continue this series with spunky Sullivan, maybe even team her up with Thomerson, and let this film's director, Jay Woelfel, take a shot at it. If he can do this well with next-to-no-money, I'm guessing he could make a pretty good film with a budget featuring more numbers than a zip code.

DVD owners can see this on a double-feature disc with the first TRANCERS film, which features a young Helen Hunt (who was in entries 1-3) as the woman who will eventually be the mother of Deth's daughter in this entry. Jeez, this is getting confusing.