Here’s another metric crapload of capsule reviews of movies I’ve seen recently but haven’t felt motivated to write about at any length.
The Pilot: A Battle For Survival (2021) – Russian-made WWII thriller about a pilot shot down during the winter, who has to survive and make his way back to the Russian front. Not based on any specific pilot’s experience, but the closing credits include the bios of a half-dozen pilots whose experience informed the script.
Rampage (2018) – An albino ape and several other dangerous animals violate the square-cube law when an experimental pathogen makes them giant and irritable. Dwayne Johnson saves the day, but not before Chicago gets “renovated.”
Bell, Book and Candle (1958) – Fifty-year-old Jimmy Stewart falls for twenty-five-year-old Kim Novak, who’s actually a witch, which means that she’s magical as long as she doesn’t fall in love or something. Doesn’t make much sense, but one can’t fault the performers (including a young Jack Lemmon).
Hotel Artemis (2018) – In sort of a John Wick-style premise, agoraphobic Jodie Foster and unflappable Dave Bautista run a secret underworld-only hospital in Los Angeles. One night, during a city-wide riot, a whole bunch of conflicting loyalties turn violent.
They Crawl Beneath (2022) – A young cop is trapped beneath a car he was working by an earthquake — an earthquake that also releases subterranean carnivorous worms. Overall, it’s much better than its 3.3 rating on the IMdb, but it’s marred by two things:
- One pivotal expository scene is dominated by a truly execrable actress.
- The worms themselves are entirely realized by practical effects, which is a good thing, but it’s obvious that the FX hand-puppets don’t have the leverage for all the things they’re doing.
Haywire (2011) – Gina Carano’s first stab at the big time, with a supporting cast including Channing Tatum, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Bill Paxton… However, the fact that Carano needed to be dubbed by another actress portended that maybe she couldn’t carry the non-action parts of this action thriller.
Earth Girls Are Easy (1988) – Not quite as good as I thought it was 30 years ago, but it still holds up fairly well. (Due for a Broadway revival, in fact!)
Konga (1961) – Batman’s butler Alfred injects a baby chimpanzee with a nonsensical “animals with the characteristics of plants” serum, which successively turn it into an adult chimp, then into a man in a gorilla costume, and finally into a man in a gorilla costume against a bluescreen or towering over miniature sets (with wildly inconsistent scale). Come for the bad FX, stay for the monomania and self-refuting claims to scientific dispassion!
The Condemned (2007) – An innovative TV producer pioneers a livestreamed TV tournament of condemned criminals fighting to the death on a secret island. Unfortunately, he’s roped in disavowed Delta Force operator Steve Austin as a contestant. Action movies like these often have a subtext about the morality of watching violence as entertainment (which reflects on the viewers of the very movie making that point); this movie makes it explicit.
The Black Sleep (1956) – Basil Rathbone! Lon Chaney Jr.! Tor Johnson! John Carradine! Bela Lugosi! Okay, Tor Johnson and Carradine are little more than cameos (ever wanted to see a photograph of Tor in a hairpiece?)… and Lugosi is mute… And Chaney isn’t that big a draw… but Rathbone goes all Obsessive Mad Doctor, and that makes up for it.
The Arrival (1996) – Increasingly paranoid sci-fi thriller in which astronomer Charlie Sheen discovers an artificial signal beamed toward Earth, being answered from someone down here. There’s something charmingly naive, looking back from 2025, in the idea that if we only reveal an unbelievable conspiracy, the people actually do something about it.
The Assassination Bureau (1969) – Very much trying to follow in the footsteps of adventure-comedy The Great Race (1965), with Oliver Reed instead of Tony Curtis and Diana Rigg instead of Natalie Wood. Not as satisfying, at least partially because there isn’t an antagonist with the comic genius of Jack Lemmon.
Redemption (2013) – Jason Statham is Joseph Smith (no, not that one, a different one), a disgraced Special Forces soldier turned homeless drunk turned Chinese mob enforcer in London. I discovered that if you surround Statham with other Brits, his accent becomes so impenetrable that I have to turn on subtitles.
Things to Come (1936) – Based on the H.G. Wells novel The Shape of Things to Come from 1933, long after Wells had stopped writing actual novels in favor of fictionalized socialist agitprop. Trumpets lously that Golden/Silver Age trope of “If only the completely selfless and objective scientists were in charge, everything would be groovy.” Also just a really clumsy movie.
The Toxic Avenger (1984) – How shameful is it that I had never seen the movie that put Troma on the (New Jersey) map? It’s one of the first “intentionally bad” B-movies, but not nearly as diligently transgressive as later Troma output.
Aaand that catches us up. Will I return to writing longer-than-twenty-five-words movie reactions? Only time will tell!