Change Your Image
alexgoldfinch
1. AMERICAN SPLENDOR (2004)
2. BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935)
3. THE HORSEMAN ON THE ROOF (1996)
4. NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959)
5. WAY OUT WEST (1937)
6. ALIENS (1986)
7. END OF THE AFFAIR (2000)
8. VALMONT (1989)
9. STAR TREK:GENERATIONS (1994)
10. IMMORTAL BELOVED (1994)
11. THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933)
12. DON GIOVANNI (1979)
13. GHOST WORLD (2000)
14. AMADEUS (1984)
15. THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD(1938)
16. THE 39 STEPS (1935)
17. CAT PEOPLE (1942)
18. STARDUST MEMORIES (1980)
19. LOVE & DEATH (1975)
20. FRA DIAVOLO (1933)
HALL OF SHAME - A list of films that are appalling...oh yes they are.
-VAN HELSING (worst film ever made)
-THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN
(a very close second)
-40 DAYS & 40 NIGHTS (moronic)
-THE MUMMY RETURNS (another truly awful work from that master of the banal: Stephen Sommers)
-STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE (need I say more?)
-MOULIN ROUGE (pass the sickbags please)
-DAREDEVIL (did ANYONE like this?)
-BATMAN & ROBIN(what was Uma Thurman thinking of?)
-TOP GUN (overrated US macho garbage)
-MISSION IMPOSSIBLE II(OK, so it wasn't THAT bad, I just got sick of the endless close-ups designed to make Cruise look oh-so-cool)
-BROKEN ARROW
-FACE OFF(IMO John Woo's films suck)
-RUSH HOUR I & II
-BAD BOYS I & II
-FIERCE CREATURES (ruin the good memories of FISH CALLED WANDA why don't you?)
LOST IN SPACE (Noooooooooo!!!)
Reviews
Air Force One (1997)
Right wing propaganda
Oh no. Having just seen this film I feel like I've been watching something evil and sick, like Nazi propaganda and need to have a shower. This is Hollywood at its absolute nadir. Here are the lessons we are supposed to learn from the film:
"The USA is the greatest country in the world. All other nations are at the very least dodgy and not to be trusted because they don't have the pure family values of good old Uncle Sam."
"Anyone who might have a problem with US foreign policy must be a terrorist and/or twisted and heartless."
"Might is right, and violence is the only answer to violence."
What in the name of all that is clean and decent were good actors like Glenn Close, Gary Oldman and William H. Macy doing making this deeply upsetting piece of mindless fascistic filth?
Awful, just awful, and an insult to the intelligence on so many levels. Still, by the looks of the majority of reviews I've read so far, it looks like a lot of you disagree. Sad.
Son of Dracula (1943)
Underrated piece of Universal horror magic
Can't understand all the negative press this film has got over the years. It deserves way more praise than a lot of Universal's more overrated films(e.g. THE WOLF MAN). Chaney is fine in the lead role, and I must say I prefer him to John Carradine in the 2 "HOUSE OF..." films. For me, he's far more sinister and threatening than Carradine's "louche aristocratic seducer" version.
4 reasons why this film is great:
1. The sets. The steaming swamps and the shadowy interiors combine to create a rich Gothic landscape and atmosphere. This film is undoubtedly a hokey piece of nonsense, but it nonetheless has a flair for creating a pungent sense of the supernatural and a dark romanticism.
2. Louise Allbritton. She steals the film from everyone, and is a deliciously sinister vamp with an agenda that provides this film with interesting plot development.
3. J.Edward Blomberg. He plays Prof.Laszlo, an excellent "Van Helsing" type. Something of a shame that he's not given more to do.
4. The special effects. The best of their kind in any Universal film of the 1940's. There's a really beautiful moment when Drac's coffin rises from the swamp, and the man himself materialises from misty vapour, then floats across towards Allbritton, who awaits her husband-to-be on the bank. Why didn't more of its contemporaries have the visual invention of this movie?
In brief then, this film is a lot of fun, and one which I always revisit with pleasure. If you don't like the old Universal horrors then you probably will not like this. However, this is superior work from a studio that consistently delighted audiences with its monster mashes in the 30's and 40's.
American Splendor (2003)
Russian doll
It's always hardest to write about what you love and I not only love, but also, to steal a joke from Woody Allen in ANNIE HALL, loaf, luff and lerve this magnificent film. Therefore this will be difficult. Here goes anyway...
No-one can possibly deny that this is innovative in its use of the real Harvey Pekar (and people from his life) frequently intruding into the fictionalised account. But this is more than just a neat trick. It works brilliantly. Instead of distancing the viewer from the narrative makes one feel more involved in the film's world. How dare this work? This kind of arty-farty stuff is usually guaranteed to annoy me - but this is nothing short of revelatory in its Russian doll-like idea of having fiction within fiction within fact...and you don't need to be some kind of high-brow film critic to appreciate it!
All the performances are gob-smackingly good, and there isn't one moment in the film that bores, irritates, patronises or rings a false note. The cast inhabit their roles like they were born to play them. and the determination not to idealise them or their situations, makes my cynical anti-Hollywood production values heart sing for joy.
Do not, I beg you, be put off by the epithet "cult" with which this film has been tarred as if it would appeal only to comic-book fans. No, the appeal here is universal - dealing with Pekar's existential worries and his search for the meaning in his life. It's criminal that American SPLENDOR with all its wit, heart and slickness isn't more highly regarded or more widely known.
Masterpiece.
Van Helsing (2004)
A lot of money and a big hat
This is simply the worst film I have ever seen. It is mind-rotting muck of the highest category, and is written and directed by a man who should at all costs be prevented from churning out any more of this dumb garbage (see also THE MUMMY, and that other polyp on the backside of film-making: THE MUMMY RETURNS).
Hugh Jackman is a fine actor and given the right script and character he can be extremely watchable, ditto Kate Beckinsale, but both are wasted here, being given cruelly awful dialogue, and characters with all the depth and interest of an episode of SCOOBY DOO.
Speaking of which I've read lots of reviews on-line by enthusiastic(presumably) 13 year olds who say how great the CGI effects in this film are. Cobblers. It just looks like a lot of money has been spent on creating a lot of very cartoon-like images designed to give the viewer sensory overload and prevent him/her from actually THINKING. Naturally this has much in common with video arcade games, and so those with a mental age of 12 or below are more likely to be impressed.
The biggest offence that this film caused me is the fact that writer/director Stephen Sommers claimed to have been "inspired" by the classic Universal horror movies of the 1930's and '40's. Aaaaarrrghhh! This film has NOTHING but the names of the characters in common with masterpieces like BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, WEREWOLF OF London etc. These films had atmosphere, great performances, characterization, a sense for romanticism and for the eeriness of the supernatural...all qualities that this excrescence of a film cries out to be blessed with. VAN HELSING has errr...a lot of money thrown at it and Hugh Jackman in a big hat.
I cannot tell you how much I hated the performances - the guy who played Dracula was about as effective a replacement for Bela Lugosi as a pencil would have been. But worse...so much worse was the bloke who played the comic sidekick monk. His barely-disguised irritating Australasian accent didn't help matters, but he just came across as an unfunny moron one just ached to see impaled on one of those silly crossbow bolts that Jackman was firing hither and yon. What did they teach him at drama school?
My abiding memory of watching this putrid rubbish,(and indeed the only happy one of the entire film-going experience)was the roar of laughter in the cinema when Kate Beckinsale's ludicrously accented gypsy got killed and Van Helsing in werewolf form let out an absurd howl of grief. It reminded me of Oscar Wilde's comment on the death of Little Nell in THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP - to paraphrase: it is impossible not to be overcome with mirth.
Terrible, just terrible.