Reviews

I saw this last night on LOGO, and I have to say that it was terrific, like a lost episode of "Square Pegs," or something.

The short film tells the story of the splendid Sissy Frenchfry, a sorta Ferris Bueller for our times (winningly played by the charming Steven Mayhew, a possible Mormon, methinks), and how an interloper tries to take over his turf at West Beach High.

The interloper, a hunky jock with the alarming name of Bodey McDodey, does his best (which is, happily, not good enough to defeat Sissy) to take over the school, but good prevails !

A really wonderful film, I'd like to buy it on DVD, and I will be keeping my eyes open for anything new from director J.C. Oliva.

UPDATE: I actually have a copy of the DVD now, and I LOVE it !!!

This is one of Amazon's "mini-movies," and, as such, it serves as an advertisement for the site, which seems to have upset some punters, but not me, since I quite enjoy adverts, especially ones as well made as this one. "Careful" has a nice little moral, and it features good work by all of the actors, notably Raymond O'Connor as a sleazy pawn shop owner, and Geoffrey Gould & Patty Lotz acquit themselves nicely as a long-married couple who still are enough in love to make out ( ! ) I checked www.IMDb.com for some information on one of the writers, Greg Hahn, and he has also worked on the BMW adverts ("The Hire"), which were also very effective pieces of marketing; I'd be curious to see what he could do working on a full feature.

This is a short,that became a music video, actually, about a guy named Roy playing air hockey with himself on a roof top in Los Angeles (I assume); as most know, air hockey is more fun when played with an actual opponent, so Roy tosses a bucket of water over the roof, in hopes of soaking up an opponent from down below. Not surprisingly, a very wet yuppie-looking chappie appears, and he would rather throttle Roy than play air hockey with him. The two principals in the video acquit themselves very well. The yuppie guy, played by Jason Cole, is very effective at showing his ire over being drenched by Roy, who is delightfully played by Geoffrey Gould, in a performance that brings to mind Harpo Marx. Very nicely done, indeed.

This is the pilot for a proposed telly version of Barry Levinson's brilliant debut film "Diner"; the pilot version aired on CBS in August of 1983, and has recently been show on the TRIO channel, also.

This version had the same clever writing and decent ensemble acting of the movie, and only Paul Reiser returned for the telly version, playing the mooch "Modell". Mike Binder played "Eddie", James Spader played "Fenwick", the late Max Cantor played "Shrevie", and the oddly not credited (on www.IMDb.com) Michael Madsen took over for Mickey Rourke as the hair-dressing tough guy "Boogie".

Oddly enough, Eddie's wife "Elyse" figures in the pilot (played by sitcom veteran Alison La Placa), while she is actually never seen completely in the film, which seemed to show Eddie's ultimate terror at getting married.

The film "Diner" is one of my "desert island" films, I have always loved the movie, and the pilot version is also worth a look.

George Romero's "Dawn of the Dead" has been a favourite of mine since I first saw it, in a heavily censored version, in Toronto in 1978/79.

I eventually saw the uncut version on video, courtesy of my older brother, who snagged the REAL version from a US video store; the frenetic pacing, cool special effects, nifty music & the STORY of the original "Dawn" all impressed me no end, and the film is easily in my Top Ten favourite films of all time.

I was dismayed when I heard about the remake, but, after seeing it this afternoon, I can say that I quite liked it, even if it is not as effective as the original, but it is a movie that reflects the time(s), and I think that it is not the travesty that I thought that it'd be.

First time director Zack Snyder does a good job, although some of his "tricks" are a bit obvious, and I think that there is perhaps too much blood, and the ghastly "thrash" metal on the soundtrack had my ears perilously close to bleeding (that said, the use of a certain Jim Carroll Band tune over the end credits is inspired).

The new "Dawn" takes the original "survivors of a zombie apocalypse holed-up in a shopping mall" (Toronto's Thorncliffe Mall), and expands upon it, adding more survivors than the original had; also, it has to be noted that the cast of the new "Dawn" is top-heavy with fabulous babes, notably the lovely & talented Sarah Polley, who plays an ass-kicking nurse with much aplomb.

Other babe-a-licious cast members include Lindy Booth, Inna Korobkina, and Kim Poirer, all of whom will probably be seen sporting bikinis in the pages of "Maxim" any day now.

The guys in the film all fair pretty well, too; Ving Rhames is as solid as ever, and Jake Weber, Mekhi Phifer, and especially Michael Kelly as the p***ed off mall security guard, are all splendid.

The fact that the zombies in the new version are considerably faster than the slow-moving ghouls of the past owes more than a little to the speedy living dead of Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later".

To sum up, the new "Dawn of the Dead" is pretty decent, and has babes to spare, but for a more thoughtful (and more fun) time, buy the original.

I remember seeing this at the Toronto Film Festival in 1996, in the then still small Varsity 1 Cinema on Bay & Bloor (the teensy Varsity 1 was a great place to see a movie, being the place where I saw "Dawn of the Dead" for the first time, y'know, the censored version) - What can I say about "Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day" ? It is very dull, not unlike watching paint dry, or attempting to summarize Proust.

I have no idea what the director Christopher Munch was getting at with this plodding, though beautifully photographed film; he has a knack for making very slowly-paced films, witness his first film, the fairly impressive "The Hours and the Times", which was about an imagined (though frequently rumoured) affair between Brian Epstein and John Lennon - That film is scarcely an hour long, but seems much longer.

"Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day" has something to do with trains, as far as I can recall (I fell asleep), and it's 87 minutes seem like an eternity; bonus points for an odd Micheal Stipe performance, where he seems to be channeling Andy Kaufman.

My wife is a former LDS, so I have been exposed to Mormon "culture" ever since I first met my wife, so I get a lot of the jokes that people not acquainted with LDS might not.

That said, writer/director Kurt Hale's follow-up film to "Singles Ward" (2002) is probably best for LDS types but I think that most others will find the humor forced, or even incomprehensible.

"The R.M." tells the tale of an unfortunate returned missionary named "Jared Phelps" who has everything go wrong for him when he returns from his two-year stay in Evanston, Wyoming, South.

His parents forget to pick him up at the airport, his long-time girl-friend dumps him, and the job promised to him no longer exists.

Kirby Heyborne, the actor who plays the spunky Jared, has a kind of Freddie Prinze, Jr look about him, but to me he doesn't really carry the film as well as Will Swenson carried "Singles Ward".

Swenson plays the best bud of Phelps in "The R.M." and he over-plays his part as a party-animal as much as he under-played the divorced comic in "Singles Ward", a much better film, with way more laughs.

Britani Bateman (which sounds like a porno star name) is lovely and endearing as Jared's dream girl, and you know as soon as they meet that they'll end up together before the film is over.

I saw the film with a small-ish audience who laughed heartily at the movie, and seemed to know all of the actors playing bit parts that were also in "Singles Ward", as well as Olympian Rulon Gardner, who has a blink and you'll miss him bit as a good samaritan.

I'd give "The R.M." a 6/10, it's cute, but I'm cuter :-)

I saw this one a few weeks ago, late one night when there was nothing on telly and I couldn't sleep, so this was my last resort.

The supposedly "true" story of Mia Farrow, starting from her early life, then her career as a willowy ingenue in the movies (and real life), then her "affair" and ultimate "betrayal" by the cad Woody Allen, played amusingly here by actor Dennis Boutsikaris, who hems and haws quite effectively.

Former Oasis wife Patsy Kensit is properly wispy as Mia Farrow, and there are numerous very funny lines that will keep you watching, assuming that you have a tolerance for hokey stuff like this.

On the positive side, Grace Una is very cute as Soon-Yi Previn, and the obvious Canadian locations will make this a treat for Canucks.

Nicole Kidman is a terrific presence in any film, and, in the very slight "Birthday Girl", she gives an arresting performance as a Russian mail-order bride who gets a mild mannered Brit (Ben Chaplin) into a world of trouble.

It strikes me that the director, Jez Butterworth, is aiming for this to be a kind of dark farce, and he occasionally succeeds, but I would have to say that the film is little more than an entertaining time-waster, but Ms Kidman is, as always, a knock-out !

This shot-on-digital-video film, that I saw on the IFC's DV Theater the other night, is hugely impressive, with some exceptional acting from a cast of actors that I had never heard of before.

The story, about a single mother & her teenage daughter, and their struggles with being homeless, has been done before, and the film is similar to the Hollywood *blockbuster* "Anywhere But Here" in many ways, but Jessica White & Sara Wilcox, as "Tessa" and her Mom "Christine" offer up performances that are so real and immediate (the fact that this is shot on video gives the film a chillingly real & voyeuristic feel) that any memory of the "Hollywood" version is wiped out right away.

Jessica White, in particular, is very effective as "Tessa" the young girl who really can't imagine why her world is being turned upside down, and why her Mom is "ruining" everything for her, as she enters her trying teenage years, with all of the angst that they bring.

Peter Hyoguchi, the writer/director, who was himself raised by his mother in Santa Barbara, the affluent city where the film was shot, is to be commended for not being afraid to show how the American Dream can become a nightmare for people in an instant, and how easy it is to become homeless, even in a rich area like Santa Barbara.

"First, Last and Deposit" has been featured at many film festivals, but I expect that it will air on IFC again, and I highly recommend it.

It's heartbreakingly, achingly real, and a true work of art.

This film, an early Summer 2001 blockbuster, has all the requisite stuff for a film of that ilk, explosions, a throbbing soundtrack, and a trio of stars to put the bums in the seats.

Well, what can I say about "Swordfish" ?

The plot is wildly confusing, with Hugh playing "Stanley Jobson", a famous computer hacker who is drafted by the luscious Halle Berry (playing a character with the unlikely name of "Ginger", queue inevitable "Gillgan" joke) to assist John Travolta, as "Gabriel Shear" (no relation to Jules, I expect), who may be (a) a villain, or (b) a patriot, or (c) an actor in dire need of a big hit to finance his fleet of airplanes, in some kind of plot to steal a wack of money from the World Bank to finance the fighting of terrorists, I think......... [ that sentence is nearly as confusing as the film's plot ]

Anyways, the film is vulgar, absurdly violent, and has a contempt for the audience that depressed me in a big way, to be honest.

The Travolta character speaks, more or less, directly to the camera at the start of the film, bemoaning the fact that Hollywood films in this day and age are crae.

It's especially upsetting to see Halle Berry doing in this film essentially what Dorothy Dandridge had to do to succeed in her career, that is to say, exploit her sexuality.

Much has been made of the fact that Ms Berry bares her breasts in this film, and that she does, and the camera also leers over her body in a fashion that would not be out of place in a porno film.

She has shown what a gifted talent she is (in the Dandridge film for HBO), but in "Swordfish" she is little more than attractive window dressing, and her character has no real depth, in my opinion.

What's really alarming is that this dreadful, contemptible film has been doing really well at the box-office, which will simply send the message to the Hollywood bigwigs that the public will pay to see this kind of crap, so they'll keep making it.

That's disturbing, really disturbing.

This is writer/director John Herzfeld's first film since the pretty decent pot-boiler "2 Days in the Valley" back in 1996, and "Fifteen Minutes" can best be described as a waste of time.

This film has been on the shelf for a while, since I recall seeing posters, as well as the trailer for it, early last year.

The basic premise sees two immigrants from the Czech Republic & the USSR, entering the US far too easily (it took me a year to get my papers, it takes these psychopaths a few minutes of screen time), and quickly becoming crazed killers,and amateur film-makers.

One of the dullards has seen "Its A Wonderful Life" back in his homeland, and proceeds to steal a video camera, all the better to film his murderous pal's exploits, and passing himself of as Frank Capra, which is a profound insult to the memory of that great director.

One wonders if Robert De Niro actually reads the scripts of his latest films, as stuff like this and the abysmal "Rocky & Bullwinkle" film would lead one to believe that the once formidable actor is now just cashing pay cheques (that said, he is quite amusing in "Meet The Parents"), rather than doing decent work.

The idea of criminals becoming media celebrities has been done to death, and, what with the glut of so-called "reality" programming on television, the whole film seems terribly tired and dated.

Huge plot holes, and sub-plots left dangling (notably bland co-star Ed Burns' romance with an eyewitness played by the gorgeous Vera Farmiga), as well as an overly melodramatic score all add up to a wasted effort.

This one isn't even worth the price of a rental when it goes to video, and I'd even pass it by on pay-per-view.

It might have been better had the film been 105 minutes shorter.

Ten years almost to the day that "The Silence of the Lambs" was released, we get the belated, and not nearly as effective, sequel, "Hannibal", with the great Anthony Hopkins back as the twisted genius Dr Hannibal Lector, but with no Jodie Foster this time.

If you look back to "Lambs", its not really Lector that you remember, really, but Clarice Starling, the FBI agent so vividly brought to life by Foster, in what I think is her finest performance.

While I have always admired Julianne Moore, and her performance here is fine (check out the bizarre "Safe" for a spectacular Moore acting tour-de-force), her Starling is much less commanding than Foster's was in "Lambs", and her scenes with Hopkins just don't work.

I also have a problem with the lighting of the film, which is too smoky and dark, and the fact that Hannibal Lector, a disturbed, though brilliant, cannibal serial killer, is the ostensible "hero" of the film, disturbs me a lot.

The real villain is Mason Verger, as played by Gary Oldman, in a make-up that reminds me of what the mutant baby in "Eraserhead" would have looked like had he grown up to be a man <s>

Oddly, Hannibal reminds me most, in tone and mood, of Dario Argento's "Stendahl Syndrome", where his own daughter, the luscious Asia Argento, is stalked by a mad killer.

Overall, I'll give Hannibal a 6/10, and, if you wanna see the real deal, watch "Lambs", or Michael Mann's criminally under-rated "Red Dragon", in which Hannibal makes a brief appearance.

God, this film is really quite awful, and it even manages to fail as a "heart-warming" Holiday film, if you asketh me.

What we have here is yet another variation on the "Its A Wonderful Life" story, with the Cage character being shown what would have happened if he had chosen a different path in life.

So, instead of being a rich and obnoxious financial whiz, he is a tire salesman, working for his father-in-law.

He also has two children, a baby boy (cue the inevitable poop gag) and a cute girl with a speech impediment, and a luscious wife, played by Tea Leoni, who is about the only reason to see this mess of a film.

Cage seems to be coasting in his latest films, and he has even become a predictable actor, which I would never have thought possible.

Is this the same guy who gave the staggering performance in "Leaving Las Vegas", or has he been replaced by a bland clone ?

Even Don Cheadle is wasted, playing a stereo-typical "home-boy" type.

Don't waste your money on this, rent "Deadfall" instead - Its a really bizarre film directed by Christopher Coppola, Cage's cousin, and it contains one of his most inventive performances, unlike his work in "Family Man", where he seems to be asleep most of the time.

Well, after seeing his latest film, I feel that I can forgive Robert Zemeckis for his lame-ass Summer film (and inexplicably, a HIT) that aped Hitchcock in the worst way(s) "What Lies Beneath".

That film was made while production was shut down on "Cast Away", so that star Tom Hanks could recuperate.

Its about time that Hanks was declared the modern day Gary Cooper, and/or James Stewart, as he is just so memorable in everything that he does, and nobody plays the "common man" as well as he does.

The trick is, all his "common man" characters are so wonderfully complicated and fascinating to watch.

Despite that, Hanks always brings something different to each role, and, in "Cast Away" as the taskmaster "Fed Ex" dude "Chuck Noland", he invests the character with strength, pathos, and, early on, a bit of surly attitude (he seems a bit nasty barking out orders to the confused Russian "Fed Exers" at the start), but ultimatley, "Noland" is a man that we care about, and we want to see him LIVE and return to his beloved, played by an unusually restrained Helen Hunt.

I enjoyed the bejeebers out of "Cast Away", and I recommend that you rush out and see this right after you get done digesting your thirtieth dry turkey sandwich (its a Christmas release, natch), and I guarantee that the tryptophonic effects of the bird will have no effect on you as you watch Hanks offer up an acting tour-de-force.

Note to Robert Zemeckis: all is forgiven for "What Lies Beneath" :-)

Well, I've been reading about this film for most of the year, and, finally having seen it today, all I can say is that its an okay *fake* Kevin Smith film.

Inasmuch as three of the main characters meet for Sunday brunch, and shoot the breeze about their imagined Saturday night conquests, in language that is explicitly faux "home-boy", the film plays like a beginner's version of what a Kevin Smith film is (or even Barry Levinson's brilliant "Diner", which this film in some ways echoes), and its the dialogue that annoyed me.

The fact that the three lead characters are basically unlikable made the film a tough go for me.

The plot, okay, you have these three dofus guys, all of whom fall for the lanky (and very sexy) "Mia", a character played by Amanda Peet, and they all three "play" her in their own way.

The outcome is predictable, really, and there are one or two really amusing scenes, the funniest of which involves a vibrator, but I couldn't honestly recommend the film.

Maybe by the time he makes his next film, Peter M. Cohen, who wrote & directed "Whipped" (and appears as a pizza delivery guy), will have found his own voice.

Bonus points for using Culture Club's "Karma Chameleon" in a very inventive fashion.

This is a fairly awful film, a purported "sequel" (in name only, methinks) to the Ray Liotta film "Turbulence"m made in 1997.

Well, its three years later, and Liotta is nowhere in sight, but this goofy film, about a group of "fear of flying" types who are beset on their voyage by hijackers, bad weather, and pretty much anything else that can go wrong on a flight, also goes by the name "Turbulence II", probably for video purposes.

Alas, this "Fear of Flying" ain't a film version of Erica Jong's novel, just a very silly film that uses about a half dozen sets, some really comical performances, and some not-too-great visual effects that would make Ed Wood envious.

Its really odd seeing good actors like Craig Sheffer, Jennifer Beals and Tom Berenger trying to work with this bad script.

Even more bizarre (for me, anyways) was the sight of Jeffrey Nordling, of the ABC dramedy "Once and Again", sporting an inept European accent, attempting to bonk Beals in the lavatory of the plane, which, in my experience, are hardly big enough for one, let alone two people coupling !

Oh well, what else can I say ?

The portentous music, horrible acting,bad plotting,and terrible effects make "Turbulence II:Fear of Flying" a film experience that will cause all Ed Wood fans to rejoice - He lives !

I saw this film as a fan of Wayne Wang's more than anything else, and I also admire the work that Susan Sarandon has done in the past, and Natalie Portman is more deserving of the title sometimes bestowed upon Jennifer Love Hewitt (ie: "the new Audrey Hepburn"), but, overall, the movie left me cold.

Basically the story of a Mother and Daughter,and their difficulty in relating to one another, the film is all over the place, and it appears that there has been a lot of editting done on it prior to its release, since I recall seeing trailers where the Sarandon character douses the heal character played by Hart Bochner with some kind of liquid that isn't in the film.

I'm getting a bit tired of hearing singer/songwriter music used to further the plot, and there is too much of that here, although there is a sublime use of Sarah Maclachlan's "I Will Remember You" that I really admired.

Natalie Portman is a lovely young lady, and she is wonderful in the film, but I got tired of seeing her frowning and teared up constantly, but she delivers a staggering scene where she improvises for some casting people and uses her Mom as a model.

More of that kind of honesty would have made the film better, in my opinion.

Thora Birch is in a few scenes as "Mary", and she is as effective as she is in "American Beauty" (where she is spectacular), but, for reasons unknown to me, she is uncredited.

Another stand-out scene for me features the guy who played the husband of "Marge" in "Fargo", as a sad carpet salesman who takes Sarandon on a date accompanied by Portman.

The scene is very out of place, but it works.

Overall, I would say that the film is worth the cost of a matinee (about $5 locally), but I'd venture that most will feel gypped if they pay the big bucks to see this.

On a final note, Sarandon is shot in a very unpleasant fashion, and her bizarre eye-makeup was very distracting for me.

This movie was hyped beyond belief just before it came out, with a few reviewer's going so far as to call it the "Best Film of 1998", despite it coming out in 1999 in most areas.

It kinda sneaks up on you with its sly humour, and I find that its most pleasing aspect, along with the uniformly splendid acting and a great score of odd Sixties & Seventies music.

Also, the pretty Asian girl in the film is gorgeous and gives a wonderfully grave performance.

rent it, or better yet, buy the DVD !