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OrcaChow
Reviews
Gods and Generals (2003)
I Want My Four Hours Back!
Too much speechifyin'. No believable dialogue. Scenes with emotional potential are rendered ridiculous when loved ones, instead of pouring out their hearts to each other, start reciting poetry and classic literature. No wonder these guys went off to war. It beat the ludicrous blather they got at home. But then these poor grunts get the classics shouted to them endlessly before battle. As much as I enjoyed Jeff Daniels' Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain in "Gettysburg," in "Gods and Generals" I was wishing some of the Union troops had heard of the term, "fragging."
There is no context given for any of the battles. Despite its many faults, "Gettysburg" at least put the battle and its various actions into context. "Gods and Generals" didn't even bother.
And nothing really comes of any of it. This movie is the epitome of anticlimax. No beliefs reaffirmed, no great lessons learned. "Gods and Generals" is a documentary without brains and a war story without heart. Save your money and your time.
But the movie wasn't a total loss. The notoriously underemployed talent Ted Turner did manage to land a speaking role and a few closeup shots. Maybe he slept with the producer.
Leprechaun 4: In Space (1996)
What a derivative and incomprehensible mess this flick is.
A brain-damaged amalgam of many other SF movies. Egregious continuity errors: in one scene, the villain is turned into a giant, but when he next appears he's his usual size, with no explanation why; he's later huge again. One troop is cornered by a leprechaun/spider mutant (think "The Fly") and gets trapped and slimed, and the next we see him he's back in action, clean as a whistle; then later he's again snared and slimed. The ship's reactors are set to self-destruct in fifteen minutes (think "Alien"); while the computer blares out the countdown on some parts of the ship, it goes unannounced elsewhere. While the unit (think "Aliens" and "Starship Troopers") goes into action with armor and helmets, Sgt. Metalhead goes in without helmet. Why? Probably so the audience won't forget his half-metal head. There's a master mad scientist whose function is even more incomprehensible than the rest of this mess. The leprechaun villain keeps getting wiped out and keeps rematerializing. (H.G. Wells once said, "If anything is possible, nothing is interesting.") I'm HOPING the channel I watched it on simply got the reels loaded out of sequence.
A Road Runner & Coyote cartoon makes more sense.
Mission to Mars (2000)
Good cast, good F/X, LOUSY writing
This movie had promise but doesn't quite deliver. It was overly ambitious for this screenwriting team. The movie is too reminiscent of other SciFi flicks, borrowing bits from 2001, Close Encounters, The Abyss, and even Marooned--and borrowed far too much from 2001. 2001 did it better. And while the dialogue was leaden all the way through, it really got irritating near the end, when the actors had to explain what was already all too clear to the audience. Technical and logical glitches abound. The effects are good; the scenery on Mars is outstanding. The cast is good, though Tim Robbins' role is possibly the worst of his career. Don Cheadle nearly steals the show, though Jerry O'Connell gets the best line of the whole movie. While it's hardly a *bad* movie, it's not very good, either.
Battle of the Bulge (1965)
Too Cheap for Snow
This movie is bad, bad, BAD. It looked like it was hashed together for TV. Cliched writing, though the Nazis did manage to pull off a nice song-and-dance number. But singing and dancing ain't enough to win a war these days. The Nazi tanks are Fifties and Sixties-vintage American tanks with Nazi insignias slapped on. The characters are flat. But what rings phoniest about this movie is that the real B.o.t.B took place in the middle of one of the harshest winters of the century. This movie looks like it was filmed in springtime Minnesota. STAY AWAY FROM THIS DOG.
Rudy (1993)
Impossible Not To Like
In short: cliched as all get-out but it works.
Little or no explanation as to why Rudy's only goal in life is to play for Notre Dame. The initial love interest goes "poof" early on. So does Rudy's quasi-love interest when he first hits campus. We have to take plenty on faith, and it doesn't quite work on that level. > But then there's the football story, and *that* works to perfection! It's impossible not to like a kid who takes on an offensive tackle twice his size and then has the nerve (not to mention naivete) to lecture the guy about not doing his best. The football practice sequences ring true, and the music is powerful. The movie is painfully predictable, yet it nonetheless draws you in.
This is the role of a lifetime for Sean Astin, though Charles Dutton almost steals the show.
Bring a hankie. No, bring two. And be prepared to stomp, jump, clap, cheer.
Rollerball (1975)
Flawed yet Prophetic and Memorable
I recall the general reaction of the audience when this first came out: the sport was simultaneously horrifying in its violence and fascinating in details bizarre and familiar. Motorcyclists and skaters team up to vie for the aircannon-launched steel rollerball. NFLish colorful helmets and jerseys, the NBA/NHL-ish air-horn signaling play, the pregame anthems. The lines between government and corporate power structures are blurred into one. Technology has made it possible to sustain life without regarding the resulting quality of that life. It's a future we'd like to avoid but it's already too familiar, and seemed so even in the 1970's.
That said, the movie lacks depth and humanity. The overview of this future society and how it came to be is just that: an overview. It's a cursory, cliched telling and it feels tacked on. James Caan plays a dull, shallow hero ("the great Jonathan E") who tries in his own thickheaded way to learn the hows and whys of his world--but largely to get back the love of his life, a woman even more shallow than him, and ultimately far less appealing. His unrequited love is tragic and pathetic, and at the same time not completely believable.
Nevertheless, it's believable when the Powers-That-Be see great danger in the heroic Jonathan's runaway cult status. In this future, individuality has no place. So they alter the rules and raise the stakes of the game in the hope that Jonathan E will either retire voluntarily or die on the field of play, and in doing so will serve their purposes one last time. It leads to a rousing, then quietly unnerving, climax...
Conan the Destroyer (1984)
Second Time is NOT the Charm
This movie is a miserable attempt to milk the well-earned success of the first movie. It compares badly on every element and fails on its own merits on most as well. Arnold is dull, dull, DULL in this one. The dialogue is wooden. The music is overwrought. The writing is BAD. Characterizations are laughable and cliched if they exist at all. The earlier movie had the earthy and admirable Sandahl Bergmann as his love interest. This movie has a whining princess, and she's plain insufferable. The cowardly thief of this movie is neither comedic nor likeable. Plugging Grace Jones in this movie didn't help. Neither did adding Wilt the Stilt. You end up wanting most of the characters to JUST GO AWAY. The special effects are either okay (the night-flight across the lake to the mystic castle is good, and so is Dagoth the demon) or downright terrible (the rubber ape-mask on the demon in the mirrored room). This movie lacks heart and character, brains and imagination. The only barbarian movies worse than this are "Red Sonia" or that Lee Horsley dog, "The Sword & the Sorcerer."