Change Your Image
MST3Kfan1966
Reviews
Vanilla Sky (2001)
What the @#$%??????
(***Warning - this is one great big spoiler***)
"And then I woke up." When I was in grade school, that's how we used to end stories after we'd written ourselves into a corner. "Vanilla Sky" is two and a half hours of utter confusion leading up to just such a letdown. Tom Cruise relaxes his acting muscles, having been typecast as a vain, fickle playboy, and his supporting cast follow him through one bland, baffling, too-glitzy-to-be-surreal scene after another. Had I rented this instead of paying $9 admission, I would have given up after a half-hour and returned it. Unfortunately, my local movieplex has cracked down on cinema-switchers and has instituted a strict no-refunds policy, so I was stuck with it. The only part of this film to stir any emotion in me, other than confusion at the plot and anger at the ad industry for misrepresentation, was unintentional and very much relied upon having a theater full of moviegoers around me. I saw this film a couple of months after the September 11 terrorist attacks. At the ludicrous finale, as Tom Cruise teeters on a Manhattan rooftop, the twin towers of the World Trade Center are visible in the background. Whispers stirred the otherwise silent audience like wind through sea grass as each viewer noticed the fallen icons and made mention of them to their companions. Aside from this moment of cultural identification, I found myself wishing I'd stayed home.
Trog (1970)
Tina! Bring me the axe!
Joan Crawford's last feature film aptly demonstrates the descent into alcoholism upon which daughter Christina would later capitalize in the book and film "Mommie Dearest." Made on a shoestring budget that obviously didn't allow for elaborate make-up or costumes (the title character, a missing link living in a cave in England, is very obviously an athletic man of economical stature in a plastic mask, loincloth and one of those hairy sweaters Sonny Bono used to wear), "Trog"'s ardurous filming schedule obviously didn't allow for dialogue coaching or retakes, either. Ms. Crawford is obviously quite drunk as she slurs her way through long-shots, then startlingly bright-eyed and sober in close-up's in the same scene. This is probably most obvious when she sums up Trog's reaction to a record player by saying, in one giant breath, "Music has charms whish soothe the savage breast." The quote actually reads BEAST. Watching Joan teeter precariously on perfectly flat, stationary surfaces, fumble props, mangle lines and overact as if she's starring in the spectacle to end all spectacles adds a tone of tragedy to her last film which, unfortunately, is entirely missing from its thin, predictable plot.
The Nanny (1965)
Bette Davis is about as British as Bjork.
Bette Davis was a great actress and left an enduring legacy of American cinema. This out of the way, let me add that Ms. Davis was at her best portraying Americans from north of the Mason-Dixon line. Only in "Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte" was she able to pull off a Southern accent with anything approaching accuracy, and her attempt at Cockney English in "Of Human Bondage" was probably what lost her an Oscar nod for that performance. Well, she's back in England again for this turn as the title character, a traditional, benevolent English nanny with a frightfully disturbed young charge...or are things really as they appear? I'll admit, the story development is intriguing, the cast are talented (albeit a little over-the-top at times), and there is a moment or two of true horror in one particular flashback sequence...but a rating of SEVEN??? I love most of Bette Davis' work, but listening to her mutilate the Continental dialect for almost two hours served only to consistently jar me out of the fantasy of the film and back to reality.
Frankenhooker (1990)
Like a sneeze that wouldn't happen.
Ever have one of those sneezes that seems to build up forever? You gasp and you convulse and you grab the nearest paper product in preparation for the world's greatest hanky-blower...and then it fizzles. "Frankenhooker" was the cinematic equivalent of that lost sneeze. Now, I'm big on B-movies, and I always look the other way when a boom mike pops onscreen or an actor speaks his or her lines with all the enthusiasm of Gerald Ford, but this one really let me down. The cover of the video, for instance, IS the tag-line of the whole movie. Using parts from murdered New York prostitutes, Dr. Franken rebuilds his deceased fiancee, only to have her run amok in Manhattan as a sort of superprostitute with a bad attitude. After an hour and a half of build-up, this fairly funny ten minutes seemed a little anti-climactic.
Night of the Comet (1984)
A forgotten gem of dark comedy
The 1980's was, among other things, a period of pre-apocalyptic dread, given the escalating arms race, the endurance of the Cold War, nuclear accidents and the knowledge that someone, somewhere, might accidentally press a button and (whoops!) annihilate the entire human race. The big and small screens capitalized on this, giving us Mad Max, Dead-End Drive-In, Cherry 2000, and innumerable other B-movies that inevitably popped up at our already endangered drive-in's. "Night of the Comet", released at the peak of the Reagan Era, poked fun at all this end-of-the-world hysteria by giving us a non-nuclear end to the whole mess [a comet whose elliptical orbit was so wide it had last grazed our atmosphere at the beginning of the Ice Age], two very unlikely survivors [Valley Girls who just happen to have had arms training via their absentee military dad], a plague of half-dead cannibalistic comet victims, and a sinister government think-tank with their own uses for the survivors' untainted blood. It's the stuff drive-ins were built for, and, not so coincidentally, where I was when I first saw it. Watching our heroines argue over the last living boy and battle comet-zombies while plundering a shopping mall, for instance, actually added some realism to the picture. After all, what were white, middle-class California girls supposed to do when there was nothing on TV anymore? Unlike other drive-in fare of the time, "Night of the Comet" is remarkably lacking in plot flaws. Automated equipment on timers keep the lights working and sprinklers sprinkling, so our heroines don't have droughts or blackouts to worry about...at least, not within the timeline of the film. A refreshing change from those fast-car end-of-time epics that always left me wondering...where are they getting gas??? Great fun, especially if you were a teen in the 80s.
The Party at Kitty and Stud's (1970)
Burn the negative!!!
All right, this is an historical curiosity because it's Sylvester Stallone's first film. Aside from that, it's a Z-grade porn film celebrating misogyny, drug abuse and, of course, promiscuity. If one had to categorize the "plot", it's a character study of Kitty and Stud's relationship to each other. The director tries to elevate the film to art-house level by inserting overlong montages of Stallone's treks through Manhattan and flashes of a very warm-blooded woman wearing boots, a fur coat and a smile in a snow-covered city park. We watched most of the film on scan...and yes, there are multiple shots of Stallone's genitalia, which have proven to be the only lasting allure this film can boast.
Sunset Blvd. (1950)
The dark side of Hollywood in glorious black-and-white
This picture takes the happily-ever-after myth of Hollywood stardom and shatters it for good. When talking pictures became the standard virtually overnight, the big studios turned their collective backs on most of the silent icons that had helped build them. This film offers a frequently sympathetic view of the descent of one of these icons into despair and madness - and for silent film buffs, offers a rare opportunity to see the likes of Anna Q. Nilsson and Buster Keaton in speaking cameos. Billy Wilder's genius as a director is evident in the way that the very adult relationships among the principal characters are conveyed perfectly, under the yoke of the Hays Code, without the use of nudity or profanity