Reviews

I'm sorry but this movie is awful. Very surface, poorly made, badly acted- a major disappointment. Shane West is passable, but almost everyone else in the film is bad.

And the script- they have taken the seedy, turbulent life of Darby Crash and turned it into an after school special. Actually, after school specials were more interesting than this.

I am shocked that Pat Smear and the other surviving members of The Germs would have anything to do with this film. It makes them all seem one dimensional and uninteresting. Stick with Penelope Spheeris' great documentary THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION- it will have to do until a better Germs biopic comes along.

This short film by the brilliant documentarians Albert and David Maysles captures Truman Capote at the very height of his career and influence during the aftermath of the publication of IN COLD BLOOD. We see Capote taking Alvin Dewey and his wife around New York City for the first time, Capote in his Long Island home chatting with a Newsweek reporter, as well as various book signings and functions centered on the book.

There is no doubt that Phillip Seymour Hoffman used this film extensively to arrive at his Capote performance. This short (30 mins.) film would make an excellent extra in a future deluxe DVD release of CAPOTE.

We get hints of his eventual downfall- he is clearly drunk in some scenes. The most poignant moment comes as he shows the Newsweek reporter letters from Perry Smith. He reads one out loud, and clutches the letter to his chest as if he is about to cry.

This film is available to viewing at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York and Beverly Hills.

I smell studio hackery here. Anyway, here is my review from March:

I saw a screening of this in Los Angeles (3-3-05), and it was not that good. It is not so much a sequel as it is a re imagining of the series. They seem to have dropped the premise of Strangers with Candy being a parody of after school specials, and made it a just another comedy. The whole cast is back, except the original brother, who is now played by another actor who is trying to imitate the original guy, and Jeri's friend Orlando has been replaced by a similar character.

Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker bring the proceedings to a screeching halt every time they appear on screen. The original members of the cast (Sedaris, Colbert, Rush) are great, but it just doesn't hang together. The spirit of the series is not here. That said, it certainly does have it's funny moments, such as a montage of Jeri's life in prison and on the streets. Other than that, it's just a pale copy of what the TV series was with recycled gags and many jokes that just don't work. I wonder why they even did this movie since the series finale was so great.

They did a focus group afterwords, which suggests that maybe the studio thinks the movie is in trouble.

I saw this remake recently on TNT, and I didn't think it was as good as the original. But I have a question. Weren't certain lines (that are not in the book) lifted directly from the 1976 De Palma version? In fact, it seemed to me at times it was going shot for shot with the original version. I looked to see if the original screenwriter or DePalma were listed in the credits, and they are not. Obviously, this movie expands on the original film, there are more scenes and more dialouge, but at times it seemed a carbon copy. Am I right? Someone let me know.

Having said all this, this version is OK, but it ain't close to the classic original. I find the DVD box from MGM to be deceptive-- they obscure the girl's face so you cannot see that it isn't Sissy Spacek. By the way, I was one of the lucky few to see the 1987 Broadway musical version of CARRIE (with Betty Buckley playing Carrie's mother) and LeRoy from FAME playing the Travolta part. Not good. I wish they have video taped it. Carrie singing a love song while using her powers to brush her hair has to be seen to be believed.

I bought this DVD because there was a "Staff Recommends" note under it at Tower Video. They claimed "this is a very scary movie in the tradition of Rosemary's Baby. There are scenes you won't soon forget".

WRONG! The performances in the film are uniformly terrible. Ava Gardner adds a bit of class, but that's about it. These performances are much worse than you would find in a typical made for television movie.

They outright steal the set-up from Rosemary's Baby. Slightly odd people show apartments to perspective tenants, meeting very odd neighbors, and it goes downhill from there. I cannot for the life of me understand all the positive reviews this movie has gotten here in IMDb. Rosemary's Baby, or even The Tenant (another Polanski classic) are a million times better than this garbage.

Trust me. Stay away. It's one of the worst I've seen.