Reviews

The problem with doing a pastiche of classic hardboiled detective noir is it's almost always a poor imitation with dialogue that is trite. This is the case here, where the constant voiceover framing is extremely irritating and the story is hackneyed. Nicholas Corea wrote much better episodes than this.

Cameron Mitchell just isn't really suited to this role, and his performance grates. By around the 30 minute mark I couldn't stand to watch any longer, and yet I stuck with it but had to concede defeat and fast forward through the last ten minutes. This makes two clunker episodes back to back with the lame Fast Lane episode preceding it.

I think the premise of this film is great, but the result was very underwhelming. Amber Midthunder gives a low-energy performance that makes Naru seem like an emo teenager. Hard to get behind her when she spends most of the movie having a big sulk. I'm not big on gore, but since it was pretty much all CGI here, the effectiveness was muted. Overall, the film chugs along in a tepid gear, and lacks a strong identity. I found myself bored for long stretches, and yet I think it's still a better film than the previous one in the franchise.

While most Seinfeld episodes are excellent, this one is so unfunny that it should not have been made, at least not without major rewrites. We start with jokes about a suicide. Then we have the unfunny pig-man story line, which even Michael Richards can't work miracles with - it just does not work as comedy. The more frantic Kramer becomes, the more it becomes forced. And then we end with the mohel character yelling and freaking out about everything. Also not funny.

The shared DNA with the Happy Death Day movies is too much for this to really work as a separate stand-alone movie. That said, it started off brightly enough, there are some legitimately funny moments, especially from Vaughan, but maybe not even half way through, it just slows to a crawl. There's not enough action and kills to maintain interest.

Also, the Halloween references come off as forced and unnecessary. Let your work stand on its own.

You could depend on British TV to produce solid dramas in the early 1980s, and this show is similar to the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes and Joan Hickson Miss Marple in terms of attention to period detail, particularly Tuppence's awesome clothes.

Francesca Annis does a very good job portraying Tuppence, even though she was about ten years too old for the role. Some of the stories are a bit weak, but I think the fault lies in the source material rather than with the show's crew.

Almost everything about this movie is off. The thin plot, the uninteresting dialog and characters, the silly, clichéd flashbacks, even Beckinsale's character's awkward last name.

It begins with a plane crash in Antarctica in the late 1950s. This action sequence is badly staged, and the idea that an out-of-control plane can land almost at a normal angle and remain relatively intact is simply unbelievable.

There's something on the plane that certain people want, but we never really know who they are, or what it is, right until the end, and we never have a reason to care much either way. Beckinsale appears to be psychic when she puts together the exact sequence of events that happened on the plane. The co-pilot MUST have gone back to kill the passengers? Why not one of the passengers ask him to come back and walk into an ambush? The movie is not worth the time and effort to watch.

Remakes are the fashion nowadays, and The Fog was a good candidate. Not because the original is bad, but because it was so good that it's strong story could likely stand the test of updating. Unfortunately, the remake turned out not to be much of a test.

To make this short, the only good things in this movie are Selma Blair and some sweeping shots across the island and surrounding water. Tom Welling is ineffectual in the lead role, and - on this evidence - Maggie Grace simply cannot act. She comes across as a Paris Hilton type - someone famous for being something else, who tries their hand at acting and fails miserably. The ineptness of her performance is such that it really detracts and takes the viewer out of the movie.

Some things get changed around from the original, not for any great benefit. With the journal in Grace's hands, we get the backstory piecemeal and in a more confusing way than in the original movie. For a horror movie, there is virtually nothing to get scared by. The ghosts are about as scary as the ones from Pirates of the Caribbean.

In all, this film is actually a testament to the skill of the makers of the original movie, which is superior in every respect. Twenty years later, with far more technology at their disposal, the result is an abject failure on every level.

There is nothing remarkable or even close to original about this movie. Almost any scene will recall a movie that has already been done before - from Texas Chainsaw Massacre to Basket Case to Cabin Fever and a host of others. Some of this may be intentional as a homage, but when and where are we going to get original voices making original films, or at least films so startling that they make one sit up and take notice? Ones that don't have to ride on the coattails of previous movies? This movie's biggest problem is that it has as its main drawing point the presence of Paris Hilton. Although "presence" is too strong a word. She cannot act, so she stands in front of the camera and recites lines. The rest of the cast do pretty much the same, stumbling from scene to scene with nothing of real interest or significance happening. The characters are the usual cast of misfits, and seem as manufactured and unmoving as the waxworks in the titular House of Wax.

Where they came from is not significant, where they are going - some nameless "football game" - equally so. Of course, they made the horror movie faux pas of looking for a shortcut and ended up in a ghost town with a dark and deadly secret. The film-makers also took some shortcuts in churning out a made-to-order piece of work. It does enough to escape bottom-of-the-barrel status, but only just. It's a movie that's so bad it's bad, not so-bad-it's-good. Even that might have been a small victory.

Basically a vehicle for Pryor, this is a rough and somewhat ugly movie, disfigured in part by a surfeit of swearing in a film that doesn't need it and a bunch of vaguely unsympathetic characters. The central plot – a framed man who has claimed insanity has to pretend to be a doctor during a blackout at a hospital – is intriguing if somewhat convoluted. As a twist on the fish-out-of-water story, it has much potential, in the same way that Woody Allen's "Hollywood Ending" has much potential in its premise of a suddenly-blind director having to go through the entire shoot without letting anyone know he is blind. Just as with that movie, "Critical Condition" mainly fails to capitalize on its potential, and the film is oddly slow-moving and genuine laughs are hard to come by.

Pryor does well to work with the underdeveloped material, and Rachel Ticotin adds solid support in the role of the hospital administrator. There is a nice addition of a subplot involving crooks roaming the hospital to add to the tension of the staff and patients trying to survive the power outage, and the film as a whole is at least watchable, but not very memorable. It does not have widespread appeal as a comedy/thriller and should probably be best recommended for Pryor fans only.

Some films defy true objective criticism since they hold so much affection in the hearts of viewers, and this would be one such movie. The '80s is one of the foremost decades for producing movies that were "of their time" and this is no exception. For many, the enchantment is closely tied to nostalgia for their childhood, and it is certainly true that many of the markers in our lifetimes are cultural references.

However, as with "Gremlins" – which is slyly referenced in this movie – nostalgia tends to overlook the technical aspects of film-making. Objectively, "The Goonies" does not fare so well. Part of the problem is inherent in most of the cast being young children, and then asking them to all shout or scream loudly at once with their high-pitched voices, and have a murky sound mix try to cleanly catch the dialogue. Another problem is that once the gang set off on their quest down myriad tunnels and caves, with a restaurant fireplace substituting for the rabbit-hole, it is not easy to follow the trail and put together a sense of exactly where they are in each scene and how it ties to where they were in the last one. There are also times when the "this is our time" speeches by Sean Astin's character come off as being a little too heavy-handed.

Yet another problem is the cutting of a couple of filmed scenes that cause slight disjoints in the narrative. Suddenly the treasure map is significantly damaged without due explanation, and there is a reference to an octopus that is nowhere to be found in the final print. The deleted scenes which explain these plot points are available on DVD.

The film could also have used clearer elucidation in other places, including the attic scene in which the map is discovered, and perhaps a word or two of exactly why a pirate ship was off the Oregon coast pursued by the British as soon as the early 1600s. Not that the origin of the back-story makes or breaks this movie, which should be seen first and foremost as pure escapist fantasy. On that basis, the film comes through pretty well, and while it is not a particularly great movie, it does enough to merit the place it has in so many people's hearts.

"Con Air" is a film that inhabits the alternative universe where everything is highly combustible, bad guys are always larger-than-life and have a talent for quips, heroes can defy the laws of gravity and probability, and vehicles of all shapes and sizes have a tendency to crash spectacularly. There is nothing ostensibly wrong with this kind of film, but it is not for everyone, and some may be annoyed with the lack of reality as the stunts and improbable events pile up higher and higher.

The movie is one of the better specimens of the over-the-top sub-genre of action movies, mainly due to an excellent cast list and a very fluid sense of direction. The editing hardly puts a scene wrong, and the plot holds the attention for a good two-thirds before it slides into ludicrous, badly-orchestrated overdrive at the end. One of the biggest bugbears is that some major plot points are overlooked along the way, such as who helped the bad guys obtain materials like plans of the plane, etc.

Nicolas Cage does reasonably well in a role that is effectively a rewritten John McClane, but the clothes do not quite fit him right, and neither does the Deep South accent. While it would be very easy to see Bruce Willis romping around the plane if this were another "Die Hard" sequel, there is something just a little off-key with Cage's character, an Army Ranger who is being paroled after seven years of a ten-year sentence for killing a man in a bar-room fight. This may partly be due to the over-emphasis on sugary romance featuring his wife and the daughter he has never met. It's possible to get behind Cage as he takes on the bad guys, but he just isn't as likable as McClane.

On the other side of the cast, Malkovich and Buscemi both play very effective, believable psychopaths, and a scene of Buscemi's freed character stalking a little girl is among the most tension-filled in the film. The rest of the cast largely play their parts effectively.

If you are willing to delve deep enough – and you do not need to examine the movie too closely to spot them – the flaws are there, as the goofs section indicates. Depending on your tolerance for a film to deliver an entertaining story over being entirely realistic or accurate, this may or may not be a problem. Most things considered, "Con Air" has a lot going for it, the least of which being that it is neither "Air Force One" or "Executive Decision" to name but two fellow (and inferior) high-octane action movies featuring airplanes.

The only remarkable aspect of this threadbare, puerile movie is the talent level associated with it. Richard Matheson had a hand in the screenplay, and Gene Hackman and Dan Aykroyd both said yes to a film that, frankly, should never have been released in its presented form. Without knowing the history of the preproduction, the assumption would be that there had to be a major change to the script between initial conception and the final product. Otherwise, it is hard to see Hackman or Aykroyd accepting on the basic premise of making cheap laughs out of a psychiatric illness – bearing in mind this was long before the days of "Me, Myself and Irene." The darker elements of the plot certainly call for a much more serious approach, which could have worked with a better actor. In reality, it's hard to chuckle as Aykroyd goons about as Butch Cassidy, various Star Trek characters, and Road Runner, to name but a few.

These personalities manifest under severe duress, and such a plot device would be more believable if the character was a civilian caught up in the cops & robbers chase. Instead – incredibly - not only is Aykroyd a cop, he was never cut out for the rigors of police work and was given the job as a favor from his uncle, a senior police detective. Really, which career cops do that kind of thing? Worse still, Aykroyd is brought out of convalescence by the same uncle, who is apparently so desperate to crack a case that he will endanger the welfare of a family member with a very serious psychiatric illness, and risk the loss of his job for gross misconduct. Suspending disbelief even in the name of broad comedy can only go so far.

The movie sets the tone right at the beginning with a crass scene that introduces Hackman as a detective on a disturbance-of-the-peace call to an apartment building. Why a couple of detectives are sent out on a routine call is never adequately explained. Aykroyd's gooning is often plainly embarrassing – leaping around in the street during a car chase, doing a flying monkey/Wicked Witch skit from "The Wizard of Oz" comes painfully to mind. The bad guys might as well be made from cardboard, which would explain how such ruthless villains can just stand there holding their guns as Aykroyd-as-Road-Runner steamrolls over them. Beep-beep! It's all extremely low-grade stuff, and deserves to be avoided, even by fans of the main actors, especially as Hackman is only here to make up the numbers. There is an attempt at empathy for Aykroyd's character with some serious talk about his condition, but Aykroyd simply isn't a gifted-enough actor to pull this off. Dom DeLuise is along for the ride and he does what little is asked of him. In fact, his character is very easy for the audience to identify with, as he rolls his eyes and groans at Aykroyd's antics throughout the movie.

This film has a cast of established actors, a renowned director at the helm and a continuance of the very believable CGI that was on display in the first film. Why then does it largely fail, and why is it so inferior to its predecessor? The answer lies in the script and its structure. After twenty minutes of set-up, most of the film involves various characters running around an island pursued by dinosaurs. We've seen this already in the first film, and the rehash here is done without spirit or wit, rendering it dull and mundane. What the paying public ought to have been clamoring for, and been shown much more of, is the paltry twenty minutes at the end featuring a T-Rex running amok in San Diego. It is extremely baffling why a movie that talks so much about the perils of man interacting with dinosaurs shows so little of that interaction in the urban setting of a big city, and even then with only one of the dinosaurs. In fact, for a blockbuster action movie – and a second go-round at that – it is bordering on criminal that they waste the viewers' time with so many ho-hum by-the-numbers sequences on the island.

A key failure in this long middle passage of the film is that, besides the always-dependable Goldblum as Ian Malcolm, the principals are playing a number of underdeveloped characters that are hard to work up any real sympathy for. Julianne Moore turns in a poor, unbelievable performance as Malcolm's roving-scientist love interest. Vince Vaughn is miscast as a hired-hand photographer, but does not have much to work with. Postlethwaite stays the right side of over-the-top as a hired hunter, but for the most part the film shows that names and money alone do not make for a successful film.

If the feeble script deserves any kind of credit, it would be for giving us a sense of empathy with the creatures, but to be truly invested in a movie, we also need to empathize with the characters, and have genuinely interesting things happen to them. For a blockbuster, it also helps to have a whiz-bang ending. This film has a hugely anti-climatic one, but the biggest transgression of all is its failure to entertain.

If "Wild Wild West" has any ultimate value as a movie, it may be by showing that star power, action sequences and a lavish effects budget won't automatically form a great movie unless there is careful thought and planning put into the production. The first ten minutes are particularly choppy, to the point of discouraging further watching. It does then settle down to be barely passable and watchable, but it cannot escape the fundamental and multiple flaws inherent in the production, and should leave the average viewer with the sense of having wasted their time. On the plus side there are a couple of nice little touches here and there, Will Smith is generally as smooth as ever and not all of the jokes fall flat, but mostly it's a muddled effort.

Firstly, the movie never settles on a consistent tone. Is it a comedy, or an action movie? Or is it a western with sci-fi aspects? It is actually a hodgepodge of all of these elements, and with due diligence and a stronger script it may well have been a success at spanning so many thematic parts. In reality the struggle for tone is exacerbated by confusion as to which audience it is intended for. It's a little too smutty for kids, and a little too clean-cut for adults. For those who like action in their action movies, there are certainly many sequences, not all of which are particularly well-choreographed, but there are also lengthy passages where not much action takes place at all.

The plot, of course, is as far-fetched as can be, which can be overlooked as it's almost the least of the film's problems. Smith brings modern-day smarts and sensibilities to his character, which comes off as a little disorientating in a film set in the 1860s. Kline's performance is nothing to write home about, but he does his best with the mundane role he has been given here. Hayek is completely wasted as the female object of desire who is strictly along for the ride. However, far and away it's the gross miscasting of Kenneth Brannagh as the supervillian that really sticks out like a sore thumb. In one particular scene between Smith and Brannagh comes the film's biggest transgression – a series of racial and disability-based insults for which there cannot be any artistic defense in what should be a basic, harmless action movie. While the film is set in turbulent times just after the Civil War, it seems the film-makers felt they had to make a point of playing up the racial aspects, and disparaging comments are made about whites and blacks throughout the film. It's actually quite bizarre to imagine how anyone thought this was a good idea as it detracts sharply from the movie and should be a big discouragement to anyone thinking of letting children watch it.

There are movies out there that have potential when you read the back of the DVD or video box cover. No matter how implausible the set-up, you imagine it's POSSIBLE that a good movie could be made of almost any plot outline.

Certainly the same could be expected here; that without resulting to rampant homophobia, an OK, if unspectacular, comedic movie could be made by a twist on the old fish-out-of-water plot of putting two straight guys on a gay cruise. To its credit, the film does not resort to homophobia, but does play a lot of its humor on blatant, and perhaps tired, stereotypes - something that is not unique to this film, as much of broad comedy plays off of stereotypes of one form or another.

The next problem is that the jokes that are made - largely on the basis of these stereotypes - tend to be very obvious and therefore not very funny. Cuba Gooding deciding to accept a role in this will basically be one of the biggest enigmas of movie history. The humor is aimed at a basic, almost puerile level, giving no hint of genuine wit, and this detracts greatly from the film as a whole, dragging it down well below average. Another mystery is that they could not come up with a better title. It's a film about a trip taken on board a boat. This we know. They couldn't have found anything more interesting to call it?

In the great scheme of all things cinematic this is certainly not a great movie, but it is in many ways an intriguing one. Made in 1959, it is billed as and pretends to be another example of the '50s creature-features, but it largely eschews the standard formatting of those films for a deeper, character-driven narrative, more in common with subsequent films of the sixties and beyond. In that sense, it is slightly ahead of its time.

In fact, the horror elements take a back seat for much of the film, which plays more as a drama of tensions between a band of criminals and the skiing guide they have hired as part of their cover story. From this point of view, the film's real strengths come to light. The characters are written as though they could be actual people and not just devices to move the plot along, as some earlier films of the genre tended to portray their casts. The photography is very good, and there is a superb performance by Sheila Noonan as a troubled moll, one that virtually carries the movie and makes it much more interesting whenever she is on screen.

While the characterization is good for a B-movie, the writing is somewhat uneven. There are some quite deep philosophical insights offered up by the characters, such as the benefits of city life versus country living. If the writer wanted to take these musings in a more serious direction, perhaps this could have been Beast From Plato's Cave. But we can't read too much into a film where the guide's sister - Kay Jennings in a neat little performance - tries to sweet-talk a handsome stranger with the line "Did I tell you I knitted this sweater?" to which he replies "Is knitting your scene?" Some find the ending quite disturbing and scary for a film of its time. Others may find it somewhat flimsy and rushed. Either way, this film still has enough going for it to rate as a must-see for the serious fans of the genre.

It should be obvious from the outset that this is one of those one-joke movies that will struggle to stretch the laughs out to feature-length proportions. It has the same effect as watching one of those Saturday Night Live sketches that seem funny at first but get dragged out way past the point where the humor has been exhausted and what remains is a sense of embarrassment for the actors.

The biggest problem is the huge suspension of disbelief required to accept – even at a basic, unrealistic level - the preposterous central idea. Although there have been real-life academic and journalistic shams, this film never pretends to be rooted in any kind of realism, but the material is so weak that even wringing slapstick out of it is a challenge, resulting in some kind of unfunny vacuum for the most part.

It's a shame that all concerned didn't attempt to do anything a little more serious with it. Scattered here and there in the script are some telling comments on the clash of cultures and relative benefits and drawbacks of two types of civilization – the hurried lives of cosmopolitan America and the more basic, living-with-nature life in rural South America. Even those few scraps are a wealth of depth compared to the awfully shallow "Jungle 2 Jungle."

The greatest mystery may be how such a quality cast was lured to such a substandard production. Dreyfuss does his best to carry the film – and this is a good exhibit for his merits as a comic actor, for few others could coax laughs out of such patchy material. Those around him do as well as can be expected, most notably some great lines from Phil Leeds in a cameo towards the end, which is one of the very few rewards for sticking with it to the closing credits.

This movie deserves a higher IMDb rating than its current 3.4. Not THAT much higher, granted, but at least 4.5. Almost the entire cast turn in very solid performances, elevating the weak material just by taking everything entirely seriously. A good job was done on the photography, particularly the use of lighting (and, by definition, the shadows) in night scenes. The highest praise could be that the whole thing comes across as a feature-length Kolchak (the police chief even bears a vague resemblance to McGavin's character).

The script has a couple of strong points. Devane's character's past gives him an added depth and a good basis for the tension between him and the detective character played by Richard Jaeckel. Some of the night scenes are genuinely suspenseful. On the downside, the plot has very little real development, almost nothing is properly explained, and the ending is both well-choreographed and...well, silly. Also, the whispering voice on the soundtrack detracts from the movie - it's never clear if the voice is supposedly to actually be occurring within the scene or not, so it would have been better to omit it altogether.

If for no other reason, the well-publicized post-production change to the movie and Kasem's cameo are two items that make this a curio worth tracking down.

Few films can be considered flawless but many survive their weaknesses by overcoming them in other departments. "The White Buffalo" is ultimately a very poor film because of a perfect storm of mediocrity that pervades most of its principal departments, flooding so many bulkheads that there is no possibility of keeping the movie afloat. If it has any saving graces, they are very small crumbs of comfort – some good scenery, a decent job by the wardrobe department and a no-expense-spared cast, although most of the supporting talent is wasted on short cameos not worth their time and effort.

The story, such as it is, brings Wild Bill Hickok back to the west to search out and confront the mythic white buffalo of his nightmares. Hickok in reality was a tragic character, but Bronson can't do tragic, and so the film is lost almost from the get-go. He can do pistol-packing, and soon he's involved in badly-staged shootouts and a short love-interest scene with Kim Novak. Despite second billing status, it takes too long for Jack Warden to be brought into the story and when he does arrive, he turns in an uncharacteristically flat performance. With his woolly white wig and beard and his glass eye, he could have been the buffalo. His character, a racist old buzzard, is unappealing but there can be no doubt that such characters existed in those times. The two set off to track Hickok's nemesis, meeting and teaming up with a Native American along the way, not immediately realizing he is Crazy Horse.

At times the movie appears to be filmed through onion soup, at others a dense fog – and that's just the indoors scenes. While the script has some lines that sound authentic, others are vaguely banal or downright cryptic, and the cast doesn't help by often delivering them in an incomprehensible manner. The sound quality fluctuates between aiding and abetting the muffled dialogue and deafening the audience with overloud gunshots. The direction is haphazardly chaotic, and that is being polite.

Piled on top of the film's other many flaws, the final indignity is the buffalo itself. Resembling a bedraggled, malnourished Muppet, its first on-screen appearance is a close-up of the face, which looks very much like the current logo of the Buffalo Sabres. When the beast is in full rampage, the over-the-top vocal effects are not dissimilar to the foghorn that sounds when the Sabres – or any other NHL team – score. There is nothing in the beast's appearance or manner that inspires fear in the audience, and its motion resembles a harmless carousel horse rather than a marauding wild animal.

The collective failings really don't make this film worth the time, and it can't even be saved by being so bad that it's good. The plot could be intriguing material if handled correctly, and it's a shame that such resources were spent producing a very underachieving, disjointed final product.

It's hard to begin to describe how bad this movie is. While bringing great literature to the screen might not be the easiest of tasks, you would think the average production company couldn't go wrong with an action story. It's therefore remarkable - stunning, in fact - how completely this film fails on just about every level. It loses the audience from the get go, somehow managing to make a dangerous canoe trip down a roaring Niagara river as dull as ditch water.

The acting is woefully poor, with perhaps only Graham Greene approaching passable level. Most of the cast deliver their dialog so stiffly and with such tortured syntax (supposedly the writers felt it would be more authentic that way) that it's often hard to understand half of what is said, and impossible to care much anyway.

The whole production has the air of a reenactment, with none of the charm. This might even be an insult to the good folk who take pride in their amateur productions, because filming such a display would likely have resulted in a more engrossing film than this so-called professional effort. One of the very few plus points is that they used some authentic backdrops. It might have been better had they just had someone read a truncated version of the story over shots of the fort, river, lake, etc. On that point, the story is set up as being told as a bedtime story by a grandmother to two small children at a later date - a completely pointless and witless exercise, which does nothing but underline the idea that this film can lull the audience to sleep.

Added to the many technical failings are at least a couple of dubious continuity issues. The 18th century pistols sound like modern firearms when fired and the shots echo as if fired indoors while the characters are using the guns outdoors. In one scene, two characters tracking through the woods discover a shoe print that looks a little too much like a modern man's size 12.

Ultimately, this is a horrible film that should be avoided at all costs.

To call this 'Cliffhanger' on a budget is to insult Sly's anemic blockbuster more than deride this effort. If you are looking for Shakespearian acting and Oscar-winning scriptwriting, you won't find it here – and it wasn't to be found in the Stallone movie either. What you do have is a movie that displays its awfulness proudly on its sleeve, just as Kittie beams with pride for the moments where her scream-and-shriek band produces something sounding sublime rather than ridiculous.

While some will see nothing but fault with the movie, it is a better film for never pretending to be more than it is, which is primarily an excuse to cram in as many extreme sports scenes as possible, regardless of relevance to the plot. If you take particular enjoyment in such sports, or action sequences in general, and you can tolerate the stirring techno soundtrack, this movie is for you. On pure excitement and hi-octane action, this film certainly scores highly over more traditional Hollywood fare, notably the previously-mentioned 'Cliffhanger.' Particularly enjoyable (and inventive) is the sequence where two of the heroes are chased around the unfinished resort by a pack of vicious dogs.

Just about as old a debate as what constitutes the 'best' or 'worst' movie of all time is whether acting is 'bad' or 'good.' Here the actors seem to fit their roles perfectly if you allow for the things such characters might do and say in real life. This may result in dialog that seems boring, ridiculous, or just not your cup of tea, but it seems realistic nonetheless.

Kittie's one-tone character does tend to grate as the movie wears on, but Rufus Sewell counteracts as the solid center of the movie. Meanwhile it's unfortunate that once again a movie's bad guys seem to have been got from the same dimestore that countless other movies get their villains from. Given nothing but the typical bad-guy lines to speak and the direction, no doubt, to look menacing at every opportunity, it would be a little harsh to criticize the actors themselves for not making more out of the scraps they have to work with.

There are other faults that cannot be completely overlooked, such as the uneven pace and poor use of special effects in some scenes, notably on the cliff edge. Is the action and the occasional funny line or scene enough to compensate? That depends largely on, as they say, the eye of the beholder.

That this film fails on so many levels and still remains watchable, if not actually enjoyable, must be a credit to someone involved in the production; it's just not immediately clear who.

There are three main problems with the movie. One, the attempt to graft the noirish elements onto a hi-tech industrial-intrigue plot, which results in an uncomfortable mix of pulp culture from two generations: the hardboiled detectives of the '40s thrust into the realm of today's potboiler mystery bestsellers. Whereas the earlier style was streamlined, and relatively simple and focused, today's genre authors seemingly compete for who can make the most convoluted plot with sidetracks, red herrings and subplots galore. This contrast leaves the film trying to go in two directions at once.

Two, the relationship between the leads is never quite satisfactory. Roberts and Nolte are just not cut out for their cut-out roles, and while they try gamely, it's tough to buy them as reporters who bicker, and almost impossible to imagine them falling in love, even though its obvious from the first reel that this is where the story will take them. Three, the film is far too long, and it becomes a chore to maintain attention and interest in what happens.

On the plus side, there are some redeeming features. The plot plays its cards close enough to its chest that some elements of the ending come as an untelegraphed surprise. The comic touches are successful enough, especially in the bickering between the two as they try to out-do each other in getting the scoop for their respective newspaper. The camera work and editing employ some tricks to freshen up some scenes and the cuts between them. The only problem here is that once the same trick is employed more than once or twice it becomes a little tiresome.

We're left with a very standard piece of work, but one that works just hard enough to keep it relatively entertaining but not quite memorable, even for Nolte and Roberts fans.

Do not, under any circumstances, waste your time seeing this movie if you have not already seen "Them!" - and even then you should have second thoughts before watching this. Made some twenty years earlier, "Them!" outflanks this film on every conceivable level and is a hundred, if not thousand, times the superior movie.

Meanwhile, it's remarkable that Joan Collins' career was left anywhere near intact after this, but probably not enough people saw it to notice how terrible she is. Exhibit A might have to be the stupefyingly bad writing, acting and direction that is her line to the effect of "I'll remind you that I am still in charge here" to her right-hand man. She says this as they are escaping in a boat and not only is the delivery as wooden as their vessel, the line comes out of absolutely nowhere, with no rational connection to what has gone on before. Even though Right Hand Man is in the process of saving the day, and their lives, surely even the most scheming of control-freaks would not say something as facile and stupid in such a moment. Yet this is merely a trifle compared to the direness of the movie as a whole. We might need to create new words to describe its awfulness.

It's understood that films like this require their own rating scale based more on kitsch value and unintentional hilarity. Even then this movie would rate a 1 in its failure to have any redeeming qualities to its terribleness. It's not enough to point to other Gordon movies, or commit the heresy of likening this to Ed Wood's work. Wood at least informed his movies with an earnestness which Gordon just cannot match. The movie meanders along from one disastrous scene to another, with little sense of coherence, tension or horror. Whereas movies like Earth vs The Spider and Plan 9 From Outer Space are entertaining in their awfulness, this one alienates and loses the audience on every level long before the ridiculous ending. Best avoided.

It's strange how some films become not just successful, but hugely successful. Revisiting this movie recently, it's apparent that not only is it obviously dated two decades later, but it's very much a film which is remembered as being better than it is.

It requires an obvious suspension of disbelief to accept the very arbitrary rules of keeping a Mogwai (WHY does feeding it after midnight turn it into a Gremlin?) That's par for the course for a blockbuster, and not a problem in itself. The Mogwai's mechanical movement can't help but make it look fake, but we can overlook that too. The real disappointment here is that the script, having crawled somewhat in the first half, falls away in the second, almost as if the Gremlins themselves had gotten to it in their chaotic manner. Sure, we see scenes of havoc, but to what ultimate purpose? The movie got a PG rating, but the Gremlins display the kind of behavior you wouldn't want kids to associate with, especially in the rowdy bar scene, during which Phobe Cates is behind the bar, inexplicably serving them drinks when most people would have high-tailed it out of there as soon as the little devils showed up.

The film also struggles to maintain a consistent tone. Yes, it's a comedy foremost, but with some horror thrown in. The comedy doesn't entirely work, even and especially in the scenes where the monsters run amok, and the film's lack of real tension undermines any attempt at a darker quality. It is not aided in the least by the totally nondescript Zach Galligan in the leading role. He is so bland that if he didn't keep moving you would lose him in the wallpaper. Hoyt Axton is also ineffective in a stiff, monotone performance as the hapless inventor father, whereas Francis Lee McCain gets to add some beef to her role as typical American Housewife with one of the movie's best scenes as she defends her house, most notably the kitchen, from the Gremlins. Cates and Reinhold are pedestrian in their supporting roles. The writing is such that the characters pretty much sidle up to an underwhelming resolution, putting the cap on a movie that, like one of Peltzer's inventions, promises much but soon goes haywire.

Seemingly there's been a rule in effect in Hollywood for a while now that anything bearing Stephen King's name must be adapted for the screen. Right now, a studio exec is probably examining King's credit card statements with view to a possible mini-series. The rule has lead to some clunkers, especially from short stories, but here it pans out - just. "Secret Window" is based on a novella-length story, which gives David Knoepp a little more of a fleshed-out basis with which to work. The story is simple enough, but King manages to keep in intriguing enough to last the course, and the ending arrives somewhat unexpectedly. This is also largely true of the adaptation.

Depp turns in a very fine, almost understated performance as a writer going through a messy divorce and taking refuge from the world at large in his lakeside cabin. The world intrudes on the relative calm in the sinister shape of John Turturro, bringing with him an accusation of plagiarism and an implied threat of impending violence if the wrong is not righted. The gist of the film is Depp's struggle to clear his name and get rid of the stranger, who in the meantime ramps up the threats.

So far, so good, and while there are subtle clues dangled for those who know the story, the majority of the film walks a steady line between maintaining the suspense and having not too much of anything actually happen. When it comes, the denouement is handled badly by Knoepp, both in the writing and direction. This detracts from the film, but there is enough in Depp's performance, and the movie in general, to warrant it as a solid, though unremarkable, piece of work. As far as King adaptations go, this would be just shy of the greatest works, but certainly above the clunkers.