Reviews

I really liked this movie as a teen. In the eighties I was a Beatles freak. I watched this, knowing all about their albums and films. I was very amused. So the years passed and I wanted to see it again. Upon seeing it the second time, I was shocked. I couldn't believe that this was the same movie I once adored. It's boring. There's too much attention on the interviewer played by Eric Idle, who also plays the Paul character. Every segment has a lame joke that falls flat. The songs aren't bad, but get annoying, especially when we have to hear the entire song play out. The guy who played the John character was good. He captured the snide, cynical Lennon quite well. But the others were badly cast. I didn't like this movie. "This is Spinal Tap", which came out a few years later, would do all things this movie failed to do, including making the audience think the band really, truly existed. Watching this spoof, you know just that: it's not real. It seems fake. And gets boring, quick.

The villain in this movie is the wind. The wind chases people. People run away from the wind. As if the wind were a person. This movie is horrendous. M. Night has completely lost touch of reality. His political beliefs are now shaping his once-great writing skills and what we have here is pretentious bile. The acting is dead-pan, as usual in his movies, but the dialog is laughable. This is an example - like Tarantino's "Death Proof" - of a writer/director imitating himself, and the result seeming like self parody. This really does seem more like if Mel Brooks was lampooning M. Night. The best parts of the film are towards the end with a crazy old lady, played by Betty Buckley (basically mimicking Piper Laurie's character in "Carrie", in which Buckley co-starred). If the entire movie centered on the heroes trying to escape her clutches, this would be a fine film. And that's exactly it. M. Night needs to make a haunted house movie, or a slasher flick, or... something simple. He needs to simplify. He's gone wacky. He's getting a bit too original for his own good, and "The Village" and "Lady in the Water" have almost sunk him. But this mess leaves him - and the audience - all wet in the end.

This was one of the worst movies ever made. Never before have I witnessed a more confusing and convoluted mess. There were about ten subplots, but there was no main plot. The Joker existed to run amok and to represent the "honest villain", that is, he didn't mess around and play games like most villains, and he didn't do it for money, he just killed and wreaked havoc for the heck of it... okay, that's fine. But in having the Joker purposely ruin all the other subplots involving other bad guys, it basically made all the energy in having to keep up with the subplots involving these other people come to nothing. It was very tiresome realizing that everything you witnessed, after two hours of non-story action and hammy performances, really didn't mean a thing, kind of like when a movie shows that "it's all a dream". It might as well have been a dream. Because in this complete mess of a film, nothing mattered. The Joker had no purpose - which was intentional. But since the rest of the movie had too much purpose, or rather, tried too hard to have all the purpose in the world - it all came together like a big explosion... then, nothing. Just ruins. And two and a half hours of my life wasted. As for Heath Ledger, he wasn't terrific. He wasn't amazing. He was horrible. Weak. Sounded like a nerd. And he claims to have studied from "A Clockwork Orange" (please!), but he seemed more like he was doing a Johnny Depp impression, being silly and androgynous. It's just such a mess of a film. Horrible, simply horrible. And the reason I haven't mentioned Batman himself, is that he was so nothing, that there isn't anything to say about him. The main character seems more like a Vin Diseal character, and not a comic book hero. I understand trying to make the franchise more serious after being ruined by Joel Schumaker, but this film doesn't resemble a comic book in any way at all. It could have been a cop film, only the main cop had pointy ears, and the main villain had really bad makeup.

Orson Welles is the standout in this film and is the only reason to see it. He sits in the "cheap seats" in an almost empty theater and spouts off some great wisdom about life and sex and movies, and just about everything. If you are an Orson Welles fan this is something to check out, to watch a few times for his final bow. Jaglom on the other hand is a bit pretentious (he tries to be very deep-cute like the sensitive guys of the seventies and eighties, Alan Alda, etc); in other words, everything else that isn't Orson Welles is sort of a navel-diving-exercise that falls flat after a while. None of the other participants (Jaglom invited a bunch of lonely people to describe why they would be alone on Valentine's day, which was a week away) have anything deep or worthy to say about why they are alone or about life, etc. Jaglom's real life brother Michael Emil plays the "villain", that is, he is an non-artistic businessman who thinks the theater full of people are just whiners, and I agreed with him most of the time. But Orson alone makes this movie worthy. Or at least, somewhat interesting.

This is a wannabe Hollywood Epic. It's boring and overrated. It centers on bashing Christians and oil tycoons - two for the price of one in Hollywood. The main character played by Daniel Day Lewis is a skeleton: no meat, all bones: and I'm not being literal. We don't get to know him at all. Lewis overacts by making up a totally fake accent, that sounds like he's doing a John Huston imitation. Although the first hour isn't bad. Things build well as we see his rise to power through - basically - hard work and a lot of trickery: the same way bigwigs in Hollywood come to power, although with movies as opposed to oil. But after the main character - Daniel Plainview - starts to run into "family problems": his son going deaf, a transient pretending to be his brother, the film starts to tread in muddy water. And I don't blame Lewis and his overacting; Paul Dano gives the most hammy performance as a "faith healer" that I've ever seen in my life. His performance made Lewis seem subtle. This is an eight foot ballerina, and watching it I felt it landing on me.

This is one of the worst films ever made. There are people defending this mess saying that "Temple of Doom" was just as bad. I agree to a certain aspect; "Temple of Doom" was a horrible, horrible film, but there was still some inkling of magic left, if merely residue from "Raiders", who knows, but I felt that I was in another place, another time, sharing in an adventure that just wasn't that good of an adventure. But this film had no magic at all. Other than the now infamous fridge being thrust from a nuclear explosion over the villain's car and onto a place that happens to be safe enough to not be affected by the blast, there are many aspects of this film that made it sub-par for the sub-mental. The "Skull" itself looked as if it were made by Toys R Us. The dialog between Karen Allen and Harrison Ford was so forced and contrived and the acting was like something from a kid's television show, or worse. The plot involving aliens was very weak, and Indy and company traveled from place to place like one would go on a scavenger hunt. There is a scene where monkeys aid Indy's son in attacking Russians that almost equal the fridge; and a host of CGI ants that look so computer animated I felt like I was playing a video game. The bottom line is magic; good or bad, there just wasn't any in this movie. It was horrible, simply horrible. It was like watching a cartoon where Indy just couldn't die, no matter what happened to him. I half expected him to pull out an "ACME" manual and to drop the skull and start searching for The Road Runner.

I have great memories of this show when I was in junior high and then I bought the DVD collection thinking that memories would then glide into sweet nostalgia, like when I watch old episodes of other great shows. But this very well might be the worst show ever made. The characters are awful, and the premise is built of sand not stone. We are supposed to believe that these girls are unpopular, meanwhile they have more confidence, and are better looking, than the popular set. Amy Linker's eyes alone would cause guys to fall down and beg her for a date, no matter that they added pillows to make her fat and braces. I remembered the Lenny and Squiggy of the show, Johnny Slash and Marshall, the geeky guy sidekicks, but what I didn't remember is that they aren't funny. If you want to go down memory lane, I would avoid this avenue altogether. The show is clumsily written, poorly acted, and just plain stinks.

I am not a heroin addict but having seen enough and read enough I know that when you really need a fix - - it's like being tortured within. Now whether or not this movie intended to be in itself like a method actor and torture the audience just as the characters are being tortured by waiting for their fix, I am not sure, but in that it works, it is torture, it is horrible, it is staged, and the acting is over-the-top and too obvious. I sought after this film because it stars Warren Finnerty who plays the "Rancher" in "Easy Rider", and I was always amazed at how he was so good in that role, it didn't even seem as if he were acting. I had to see him in something else, and that something else is this movie where he overacts and does a Brando impression that was downright silly. I also wanted to see William Redfield who played "Harding" in "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest", and in this he plays a square director filming junkies, and his acting might be worse than Finnerty. An actor named Gary Goodrow is also in the cast, and he's usually a comedic actor and he played a junkie like Paul Lynde would play a coke head. This movie needed a John Cassavetes or Vic Morrow or Dennis Hopper or Timothy Carey, and also needed to seem more real and to have dialog that mirrored real people talking, not a bunch of actors trading off monologues. It was like watching a bunch of method actors trying too hard to be real, and in doing so, it comes across contrived and totally unbelievable. It was like watching a troupe of actors rehearsing, and badly at that. Simply horrendous. The jazz music, played by real musicians, was quite good though.

I don't understand why this movie is known for being bad. I mean, it's not that bad at all. A teenager returns to his hometown, finds out his dad, who was the mayor of the city, Blue City, was killed, and ends up blowing up stuff and shooting guns at bad guys to find some answers. A simple plot, but since it was written and produced by Walter Hill, who is one of the harbingers of modern noir, the movie glides along at a nice pace and, although the acting isn't too great in some scenes, what does it matter? When you are blowing stuff up, there is no need to be Olivier, is there? There are some fine actor in this, including Paul Winfield and one of my personal favorites, Scott Wilson from "In Cold Blood". And of course you have Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy who aren't too great this time around (like they are in "The Breakfast Club") but it's fun to watch brat packers in an action movie for a change. And David Caruso as the doomed friend of Judd's does a decent job. I also like Anita Morris because she's sexy and always a pleasure to watch. But the highlight for me was the soundtrack by "the sixth Rolling Stone", Ry Cooder, who scores many Walter Hills movies including "48 Hrs", "Crossroads", and "Southern Comfort". So you should not believe the negative hype attached to this movie; it's pretty good if you want to watch stuff blow up.

This movie is yet another in a line of films which bags on the American defense system. Not that I am opposed to this, after all, it's a free country, but they were very popular in the eighties, during the peak of the cold war, showing the F.B.I., the C.I.A., and the American military as Chaplin-like buffoons unaware of everything. This is another "Ishtar" and it came out a few years earlier. Two big stars in each film who were box office draws (Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman in "Ishtar" and Eddie Murphy and Dudley Moore in "Best Defense") and people getting tricked into thinking each film will be entertaining. "Best Defense" is based on a great book "Easy and Hard Ways Out" by Robert Grossbach. The book centers almost entirely on the defense lab and will also go back and forth to show an overseas jet pilot named "Buchfarer" about to go on a mission with a new jet plane. In the film, Eddie Murphy, as "Landry", is the "Buchfarer" character and instead of a jet, it's a tank. Like the book, the film deals with two time parallels: the present and the past; the past dealing with the defense lab technical corporation as they are rushing a component that makes the "war machine" work so that it can get out quickly - and thus putting the future unknown soldier who will one day run this machine ("Buchfarer" and then "Landry") in jeopardy. The book does it very well (and there is a very unhappy ending, unlike the movie); the movie does it horribly. And in the book, the entire plot centers on the tech fighting to fix this machine, knowing that it won't work and the corporation wanting to get it out; meanwhile, the movie has so many sup-plots that this basic premise of the book is lost. Murphy's scenes seem contrived and pasted, his talent totally wasted and it showed folks back in those days, after "48 hours", "Trading Places", and "Beverly Hills Cop", that he was a mere mortal. Dudley Moore plays the most unlikeable character I have ever seen on film. All I can say is, read the book. There are so many classic characters, like a guy who literally lives in the corporation's bathroom, because he'd been fired the year before, and other classic situations, kind of a "M*A*S*H" in America; but the movie, having to make up for time, adds a silly side-story about the Russians and a stolen floppy disc. This might be one of the worst movies ever made. It just doesn't flow, it isn't fun to watch, and there is no point at all. One day maybe they'll do a faithful remake of the Grossbach novel, which you can find on the internet (don't be tricked by the fact that the novel is now called "Best Defense"). Director Willard Huck (I can't spell the man's last name) has ruined this book like he would turn out ruining a great comic book character, "Howard the Duck", a few years later. Willard is good friends with some great filmmakers: Lucas, Spielberg, etc., and is a good writer, but as a director he, like this film, comes up very, very, very short.

Horrible film. This is a bore fest and rips off "Spinal Tap". Well, it doesn't exactly, but it tries for that funny fictional rock band thing. This movie is supposed to be taken seriously, unlike "Spinal Tap", and that's what makes it such a pretentious bore. For one thing, Tap's music is classic. It's bad, but classic. In other words it's supposed to be bad, and for bad, it's awesome. The music in this flick, that is, the original songs that we're supposed to believe were once classic tunes, are god-awful. Worse than "On the Dark Side" by "Eddie and the Cruisers", if you can believe it. I think it's very difficult to make a film that's supposed to be taken seriously (even if it's a comedy) about a (fictional) famous band, or composer, if you can't write music to back up what the story is about. You can do this with a writer; that is, make a film centering a fictional famous author, because his work doesn't have to show; just make him a brooding, somber, strange and deeply troubled guy and you're in. But with a band, you must play their music to back up why we're supposed to believe they're geniuses. I think they based the main "genius" guy, who is lost for years and presumed dead, on either Brian Jones or Syd Barrett or Jim Morrison or all three. This guy was, or rather is, supposed to be the lost Mozart of rock, and the song that he wrote, that was supposed to be of "Stairway to Heaven" or "Freebird" legacy, sounds more like something the producer or writer or director or gaffer or even best boy of the film wrote in two minutes. Anyhow, it's a horrible, horrible film, one of those "cult movies" that, while being made, was considered "a cult movie to be"... or something. Avoid it even at no costs.