Hawk the Slayer (1980) – I last saw this when I was eighteen. Unlike me, it has not improved with age.
Generic good-guy prince Hawk (John Terry) inherits a magic sword from his father to fight his bad-guy older brother Voltan (Jack Palance (!), a full thirty years older than Terry). The big bad-guy affront to goodness right now is the bad-guy holding an Abbess for ransom (that’s not really on-brand for an Evil Overlord, is it?), so with the help of a blind witch, Hawk assembles a D&D party to assist him: a giant (i.e., a 6’6″ actor), a dwarf (i.e., a 5’0″ actor), and the only elf with perpetual five-o’clock shadow. (Plus a one-eyed guy with a mean crossbow). Their adventures look like they were all filmed in a single mist-filled half-acre in Buckinghamshire, plus the obligatory interiors at Pinewood Studios.
It was probably a good movie for 11-year-old D&D aficionados in the ’80s who said, “Naw, I’ve seen Dungeonmaster too many times; what else is there?”
My Mother, the Spy (2000) – Absolutely predictable but entertaining TV-movie fluff (might have been intended as a backdoor pilot). Single-but-boyfriended publishing editor Alison (Jayne Brook) has never understood why her widowed mother (Dyan Cannon, whose cosmetic surgery should get a co-starring credit) always disappears for sudden globe-trotting vacations. It’s all revealed when the vacation they take together to the Azores goes sideways: Mom works for the CIA, as did Dad before her. Allison is naturally the fish-out-of-water, but having edited several potboiler spy thrillers, she can pull off the cliche femme fatale when she has to.
The script is paint-by-numbers and probably makes actual intelligence operatives grit their teeth, but the main performers acquit themselves well being both likeable and funny (in addition to Brook and Cannon, Kevin Kiner is Mom’s partner who has to work with Allison to free Mom, and David Palffy is the crime lord Gustavo who relishes the chance to behave like a Bond villain).
The most entertaining part, though, is watching all of the ways that Vancouver attempts to disguise itself as other places — first as New York (kinda hard to pass that airport off as JFK) or the Azores (through the common trick of placing tropical ferns close to the camera so you’ll ignore the deciduous trees in the background, a trick I became familiar with through Highlander: The Series).
Back in Time (2015) – Produced for the 30 anniversary of Back to the Future, this documentary is well-intentioned, but it tries to be all things to all people, and suffers thereby.
About half of it is behind-the-scenes footage and stories, with interviews with Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Robert Zemeckis, Bob Gale, Steven Spielberg, Huey Lewis, etc. That’s what I came for: how the idea came up, the back-and-forth studio maneuvering, the replacement of Eric Stoltz as the lead, etc. (Lloyd shoulda had a cup of coffee before his interview, though.)
But interspersed with that, and dominating the second half, is fan stuff: A cosplaying band called the Flux Capacitors, hobbyists who buy DeLoreans to make their own time machines, an “immersive experience” in a pop-up Hilldale, etc. Do I really want to have less Eric Stoltz footage and comparison to make time for a Back to the Future-themed charity minigolf course? I do not.
Abandoned movies:
Eyes of the Serpent (1994) – If you’re going to hire actors and actresses chiefly for their ability to look good mostly (or wholly) unclothed, don’t give them such a talky script.