The Seven Year Itch

Can you really make an unforgettable movie from one memorable scene? Indeed, from one memorable image? Well, no, of course not. Yet, this film has retained a place in the cultural consciousness simply because of that shot of Marilyn Monroe having her skirt lifted by a subway train’s breeze. That really is the only explanation, because this movie isn’t worth watching but for the presence of Monroe, both her appealing performance and her iconic presence and look. Beyond her contribution, this flick has little to recommend it. The narrative is composed mostly of Tom Ewell’s monologuing, which is tedious in the extreme. He’s a real drip throughout and no match for his co-star’s charisma. The fact that this movie is as uninteresting as it is baffles this viewer, considering it comes from usually reliable director and co-writer Billy Wilder. Honestly, I don’t know what to make of such a disappointment. If you must watch this one in order to ogle Monroe, who looks dazzling throughout, go ahead and scratch that itch. But I could easily go another seven years without looking at this movie.

The Road

So let me get this straight: the world shattering event wiped out all the…bicycles? I have to imagine that this story worked better on the page than on the screen, as the depiction here simply shows too many internal story contradictions to truly give the viewer a worthwhile experience. By the tale’s own internal logic, these characters should have starved to death long before the narrative ever begins. More problematic is the movie’s core concept: things are awful, then they’re awful some more, and then, finally, they’re still awful—with perhaps the suggestion that things might get better, but maybe not. One has to wonder, what exactly is the redeeming value of telling such a story? It comes across as a simple exercise in misanthropic speculation, as virtually no one in the tale comes across very well. Even the worst curmudgeon among us must believe that, even in such dire circumstances, more people than not would choose to do right by others, rather than resort to, among other things, cannibalism. Really, this story seems like a work that pretends to offer wisdom and a deep understanding of humanity, but in fact it just indulges in an unrelentingly bleak outlook simply for the sake of bleakness. And, finally, I am biased against people who say “papa” instead of “dad”; just a quirk of mine. No amount of emotional heavy lifting from Viggo Mortenson is enough to overcome this film’s fatal, fundamental flaws. I suggest skipping this trip—and if you do find yourself forced onto this journey, maybe be sure to use that one bullet you have left sooner rather than later. 

Showgirls

No, I checked—Dante (the medieval poet) does not have a script credit here, but this sure is a vision of Hell. One can hardly imagine what would drive people to live the lives depicted in this movie, but I have little doubt that, to some extent, this story is an accurate representation of some terrible corner of society. In a certain way, Elizabeth Berkeley’s Nomi represents a typical American story: a stupid, unstable, unpleasant and ignorant person who somehow blunders her way through life achieving a modicum of success—or at least something other than complete failure—while somehow barely avoiding a fatal disaster. That results in a tale that delivers equal parts humor and horror. One can say the same for the acting performances herein, which are uneven to say the least. Regarding the musical dance numbers, I must admit that I am at a severe disadvantage, as dancing in pretty much all forms has always been a mystery to me. These pieces could be brilliant, or they could be laughably bad—I have no way of knowing. Overall, I think if you keep the most open of minds and maybe you squint really hard, you can decide that there is at least some amount of entertainment value here—hence the fact that this roundly panned flick has gained a bit of reputation rehabilitation over the years—but, plainly, this is an objectively bad movie. Only let this one take the stage if you’re in a truly indulgent mood. Otherwise, cover it up and keep it that way. 

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

Late on a Saturday night. I was just looking for some mindless entertainment…and boy did I find it. I don’t know if this flick was meant to be in 3D, but Angelina Jolie’s character certainly was: 3D x 2, to be precise. Lara’s enhanced physique is so prevalent throughout the show that it is almost like a running—and occasionally bouncing and bobbing—joke, which is ironic since one of the key missing elements of this movie is actual humor, as in humor that is a) intentional and b) something you would actually laugh at. Further conceptual follies are found in the story’s half-assed attempts at being vaguely scientific, via some humbug about a planetary alignment, not to mention various other plot missteps. Even the raw action sequences come across as bland and not particularly inventive (a real black mark considering this film was made contemporaneously with the Matrix trilogy). If I had to point to some good aspects of this work, I suppose I could say that Jolie’s performance is decent, and she gets acceptable support from a pre-Bond Daniel Craig, plus the story does provide a bare minimum of entertainment despite its many flaws. Still, you can’t be too generous towards a dunce work like this one. Instead of pulling things out of a tomb, a better idea would probably be to bury this flick in one, and leave it there for a bad long time. 

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

This movie requires you to cast a spell of your own: [waves wand] “Explainitous!” Really, it’s hard to know what is going on in much of the first quarter to a third of this movie. The production seems to rely on the audience being so deeply invested in the wizarding world that they will instantly know who everyone is and what they are doing without any particular explanation. Alas, some of us actually have lives, and have not seen the previous installment in a few years, so a lot of the early scenes inspire head-scratching by the rest of us. The story improves in the clarity department as it unfolds, but it does not necessarily do so in terms of being interesting or clever. The overall tale is a muddle, and that’s not helped by a quantity of ham-handed metaphors for real life situations both historical and present day. Some of the magical effects are clever and entertaining, but there are also scenes where the viewer anticipates certain visuals that never come to fruition. Imagination is supposed to be the core quality of this franchise, so it’s not a good sign when the audience is out-imagining the filmmakers. I was overly harsh about the original series and its installments, so I feel uncertain about truly laying into this outing in the franchise’s adjunct storyline. Maybe I just don’t get it, or I’m too old, or who knows? But I can’t bring myself to recommend a movie that comes across as so disjointed, and poorly conceived, and—and this is the same complaint I have about the later outings in the core story—just not all that much fun. Come on, people—enough is enough. 

Kit Carson

A piece of heavy duty balderdash about the frontiersman and his supposed exploits in blazing trails to California, and in prying said chunk of real estate away from Mexico. I’m quite fuzzy on the details of that era, but then again so is this bit of fluff filmed a hundred years on (1940) from the events it purports to relate, so that's pretty much a wash. I have severe doubts that any of it happened as shown here. That’s possibly good news for actual history, as this telling is rather banal and not especially interesting, except when the proceedings are punctuated by large scale acts of violence. Jon Hall is OK as the titular frontiersman, while Dana Andrews is kind of a dishrag as John C. Fremont. Their mutual romantic interest--in the same chick, not each other--is mostly dreary and adds little to the tale. I’ve taken to Westerns as I’ve grown older; something about recapturing the past seems to be part of the appeal. But in this case, here’s proof positive that even old shoot ‘em ups can be boring. I recommend finding a path away from this one. 

Ghost in the Shell

Style and substance, yet ironically little soul. The warning about a cybernetic future is well taken, though at this point it feels both derivative and a bit too late. One can’t help but mentally compare this movie in real time to the Matrix films, with their similar themes and at least congruent visuals, but the more widely known—and successful—iteration of this vision injected touches of humor and humanity into the technological spectacle, whereas this work is largely grim and almost as mechanical as the very thing that it wants to warn us about. Even the opportunity to ogle Scarlett Johansson, in various painted-on get-ups, only provides a thin layer of extra entertainment to these proceedings. I guess cyber dystopias only have so much appeal. Who would have thought that (besides anyone with a soul)?

A Working Man

Shakespeare it ain’t. Perhaps you could glean that fact from Sylvester Stallone having a screenwriter credit here. That might lead you to believe that this story is largely nonsensical, features cartoonishly conceived villains and circumstances, and plenty of stupid dialogue, but...well, actually, yeah, you nailed it. We’re a long way from Rocky and First Blood, or for that matter The Beekeeper. Much of what gets aimlessly hurled onto the screen is patently ridiculous, and doubly so because—Jason Statham himself has proven multiple times—it’s really not that difficult to make a solid action flick that delivers clever violence while not drowning in its own idiocy. Didn’t happen here, not even in a way that could be enjoyed for camp value. Even the usually irrepressible David Harbour projects a metric ton of remorse for appearing in this turd. A working man, perhaps, but not one who appears in a movie that works. 

Novocaine

This is a movie built entirely around someone saying, “wouldn’t it be cool if...” Sadly, the answer is mostly, “no, it wouldn’t.” It turns out that a movie where not just the villain but also the hero, and pretty much everyone else, is an unstoppable killing machine isn’t as entertaining as some might believe. You watch this flick constantly thinking about all the holes in the concept, every little thing that makes the entire story impossible from the get-go. Rarely does anything in this film ever come as a surprise to the audience, whereas many moments and actions are entirely predictable. While this is ostensibly an action comedy, the actual laughs are few and far between. Notably, many of the elements herein—gaming, tattoos, difficult interpersonal relationships—are completely congruent with the current zeitgeist. That probably makes the story all the more representative—and makes it all the more disturbing that, ultimately, this movie boils down to an exercise in vicarious cruelty and sadism. The one redeeming feature is the performances of the cast—mostly no-names beyond the relatively established Jack Quaid—all of whom are fairly believable in their roles; that’s a bright spot, given that movies that feature a half-baked concept often compound the trouble with bad acting. In the end, the protagonist may not feel any pain, but any who watch this one will feel discomfort, frustration, and probably a bit of anger, too—at the very least. 

The Princess and the Pirate

In a way, this flick is astonishing: Bob Hope built a decades-long career out of this crap? It’s hard to believe that people back in the day were willing or able to find most of this sort of hambone shtick funny. Very few of the jokes, verbal or visual, truly hit the mark, and those that do are mostly bits and pieces (or pieces of bits) that were cribbed from funnier acts like the Marx Brothers. The only redeeming features here are a committed performance from Victor McLaglen as the villainous pirate The Hook, in which he hits all the buccaneer tropes with appropriate gusto, and the opportunity to ogle a particularly lovely Virginia Mayo, who looks like a million bucks in this two-bit comedy. You’re much better off watching a real pirate flick (Captain Blood or The Sea Hawk immediately spring to mind) or a superior contemporaneous comedy (The Court Jester would fit the bill) versus dredging your way through this drag. I’ll thank Hope for the memory of him walking the plank for this one. 

Casino Royale (1967)

Every spy movie has to have some sort of mystery in it. The mystery here: who the hell thought this was a good idea? I mean, it’s not like the legit Bond movies take themselves all that seriously, so how far can you really go in parodying them? The answer to that question is painfully evident here. Every so often this movie raises itself up and achieves a level of extraordinary stupidity; the rest of it is a mishmash of lame, incomprehensible, unwatchable, or some combination of all three. The only moment in the movie that is even within hailing distance of competence is the baccarat scene—and that’s the one part of the script that plays it straight! Otherwise, this is a bomb of staggering proportions, a film that is so bad it can’t even achieve "so bad it’s good." Seriously, I like a spoof as much as the next guy, but this...words fail. At least, as I struggle to find something good to say, I can at least report that a few of the women in the flick are great to look at. So there’s that. Otherwise, yeesh. Your mission: avoid this at all costs.

The Good Dinosaur

Oh boy. I had a bad feeling about this one going in, and the questions immediately raised by the first few minutes only affirmed that ominous impression. Why make a film that displays, rather ostentatiously, technical mastery of hyperrealistic visuals, and then have cartoonishly rendered characters? The most likely answer is, the project was targeted towards children, and their uncritical viewing habits, from the start. That decision made it inevitable that a certain laziness of thought would be baked into the entire development. The results of that trajectory show painfully in every element of the script, where every plot point can be seen coming from the entire width of a carefully designed CGI landscape away. For instance, the main crisis, when it comes, is profoundly predictable. You know almost from the opening credits that a certain character is a goner. (You may ask yourself, is this a Disney film? Well, let’s see…dead parent? Yep. Okay, that checks out.) Little else in the movie’s circuitous story comes as a surprise, either. Some scenes and characters come across as not just predictable, but tedious and out of context, too. The whole thing is ultimately banal, formulaic and even nonsensical in key moments. (The main character, though portrayed as young, weak and scared, is apparently harder to kill than a Terminator.) Not even the title makes much sense. “Good” how? How was Arlo not good in the first place? Assuming the titular adjective is aspirational, wouldn’t “brave” or “wise” or even “not so hopeless” have made more sense? At least the flawlessly rendered scenery gives the viewer his money’s worth. It seems like that was the point of this exercise, showing off the technical wizardry while assuming that they could get away with a poorly developed story because the movie would be watched mostly by children. That’s not exactly what one should expect from the ostensible lead studio in animated cinema. Whether the dinosaur deserves the label “good” or not is debatable; but you couldn’t apply that adjective to this flick in several million years.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom

There’s a reason you never hear a huckster holler “rotten fish!” Not even the most energetic and unethical salesman could sell anyone on a bucket of chum like this. Here’s a tip for your superhero movie: when the story’s villain makes his appearance, the audience should not be saying, “Wait, who is this guy?” It turns out, in this case, he’s some leftover character from the first Aquaman movie—one who apparently made so little impression that the viewer here has no idea who he is, why he does what he does, or even if he’s really a bad guy. And that’s one of the clearer aspects of this turd. This a movie that doesn’t know what it wants to be, on a grand scale. It suffers from sloppy storytelling throughout. The tone is inconsistent from one scene to the next: one moment it wants to be a buddy comedy, the next it’s a ponderously epic and ultra-serious drama, and then after that it’s all CGI-drenched action sequence—then lather, rinse, repeat. The whole piece is just a ridiculous mishmash of a film that has no guiding idea. Even in its best moments the script is clumsy and uninspired. And then, on top of all that, add in some really bad acting. Not even Jason Momoa's typically charismatic presence can redeem this fundamentally flawed exercise in brainless spectacle. Honestly, a student filmmaker with no particular knowledge of comic books could have made a better movie than this. Perhaps that hints at the real problem with these DC flicks: there’s too much focus on trying to be grandiose. A smaller story with a tighter, more human-scale focus might serve these characters better. Trying to make everything epic just leads to absurdity—and to these kinds of polluted waters. Stay out of this sea, for your own good.

Hocus Pocus 2

Silly movie? No, silly me. I thought, it’s been 30 years, there’s new blood, things have been learned, etc. etc. etc. Surely this sequel will be better than the underachieving original. Turns out, what do I know? What stands out here is what was not learned. The script is wildly scattershot, both in terms of plot and in its attention to detail. For instance, the characters of the Sanderson witches are ill-defined in time and place; that is, the writing is stupidly inconsistent in what the sisters know and understand about the present vs. what baffles them. Motivations for most of the characters are confused and nonsensical. Much of the attempts at comedy are tinny, lame, and fall flat. Originality is nowhere on the agenda; the course of the plot largely follows the same line as in the first film, even down to the staged musical performance in the movie’s middle. And finally, as befits any product created by a Disney division these days, the film wallows in relentless agenda service—it’s practically a gigantic bumper sticker of modern identitarian sloganeering. This movie may in fact be one of the strongest pieces of evidence for the devolution of this society’s creative powers. If you couldn’t polish up and improve upon that original, what exactly can you do anymore? Burn these witches with extreme prejudice.

Men in Black: International

A tired retread of a concept done much better before. The supposedly witty repartee isn’t, much of the scenes are mere excuses for displaying weird-for-the-sake-of-weird CGI characters, and little of the story, such as it is, makes much sense. It’s a movie that has no good reason for existing. Alas that I cannot flash this film from my memory!

Meet the Robinsons

Some meetings are better when they don’t happen. Here’s an example. This movie’s hyperkinetic ridiculousness is undoubtedly meant to play as tons of fun, but in reality it simply comes across as messy and tedious. The whole tone of the film makes it difficult for the viewer to feel at all invested in the story or protagonist, even where it presents what should be a sympathetic character. (Reassuring to know, by the way, that Disney’s tradition of dead and or missing parents survived well into the 21st century.) The animation, seen from this point in time, looks crude and plastic, something little better than your average Nickelodeon cartoon and not up to the standard of the studio’s earlier or later works. And then add on top of all that the rank predictability of the tale and it’s downright impossible to find any real appeal in these proceedings. Kids may dig it, given their lack of standards and predilection for enjoying the madcap and meaningless, but any viewer of discernment should not give this family the time of day.

Chicken Little

A disjointed effort. Most of the story in this movie is squarely focused on entertaining pre-10-year-old viewers, yet the music cues continually reference songs that were mostly decades old by this film’s release date--that is, they're tunes that were current long before the target audience’s dates of birth. So, these are songs for adults in a flick made mostly for kids--not exactly well-thought-out moviemaking. Where there are contemporary--that is, mid-aughts--references, they only serve to make the work seem that much more dated to today’s viewers. Add to all of that a plot that seems awfully thin, with a story that undergoes a jarring shift in tone midway through, and the end result is a film that just feels poorly constructed from beginning to end. Even a good voice cast could only produce a few good laughs out of this material. And the computer generated animation, while impressive in some respects, lacks any clear appeal for the audience beyond the basics of presentation. Bottom line: I think this movie had no real chance from birth. The sky didn’t fall on the studio with this one, but the atmosphere around Burbank was getting dicey once more right about then.

Brother Bear

From the start this flick feels like a video that would be shown at a diversity training session. And it turns out that’s the good part, if you forgive the wild swings in tone. Once the movie changes--in story and character--everything plays more like a standard cartoon flick, where things gets really stupid and the tale is largely played for (nonexistent) laughs. The moose characters are a stereotypical insult to Canadians. The bear cub character who gloms onto the protagonist is one of the more odious kid personas in the whole canon. Even songs by Phil Collin--he of the hooks that can drag you down the street--can’t rescue this piece of what the bear leaves in the woods. And, oddly, the characters themselves--certainly the protagonist Kenai--openly express their own contempt for the proceedings; it’s almost like listening to a meta commentary track. The viewer hardly can hardly be expected to like a movie that its own characters don’t seem to like at all. Most of the main personae are downright unlikeable. On the bright side, the Disney obsession with dead parents remains a going thing. There’s really no way to sugarcoat it: this flick is a flop. One wonders how anyone thought this one had any chance to succeed. Today, a couple of decades on, this movie is thoroughly and deservedly forgotten. Leave it that way.

Treasure Planet

As soon as I saw the rocket propelled wind-surfboard, I knew there was trouble. That item shows up as merely one bit of hopeful patronizing toward an intended--presumably uncritical--audience of children; other aspects of the production are not just trend-chasing but actual baffling decisions. The story here is a proven winner--Stevenson’s Treasure Island has been a classic for about a century and a half at this point--so the make or break with this picture had to come from how that story was presented. The filmmakers could have gone with a straightforward retelling, hewing to the original work. Or they could have presented an updated version, one set in a future in space but otherwise recognizably the same as the source, with a spot of alien presence interwoven into a human tale. But making it story with one primary human character, and everyone else, good or bad, is a total freakshow weirdo? That decision is really hard to grasp for this viewer. It simply doesn’t work for most of the characters--even the protagonist’s allies--to be, essentially, monsters. Further, having the  story's setting happening in space, yet still giving most of the infrastructure a pronounced 18th-century look and vibe just comes across as strange and distracting, not as a particularly clever or creative bit of blandishment. (If they’re sailing through space, on a tall ship with no particular atmospheric containment going, how is everyone not immediately asphyxiating, if not actually exploding from the vacuum? Any viewer with even the mildest scientific frame of mind will have trouble setting that aside.) Finally, the kid-directed aspects of the movie--including a silly shapeshifter character--grow tedious very fast, as does the shifts in tone from high action to maudlin sentimentality. There’s just enough of positive elements in here to hold the viewer's interest--mostly that happens where the film hews to the original tale--but overall, this work has conceptual issues it just can’t overcome. Best to let this ship sail without you.

Oliver & Company

A mostly charmless exercise. This film displays what may be the first instance of gross product placements a Disney flick. That's bad enough. Worse, the animation is inconsistent; sometimes the drawings are impressive, but often they're Saturday morning cartoon quality. This movie may also stand as the first instance of familiar voice syndrome; several of the principals are more doing their schtick than creating characters. Furthermore, there's the setting that's problematic; this film displays the sort of Eighties-era admiration of New York that produced such grotesqueries as Wall Street (the movie, not just the financial crime center) and Donald Trump. All in all, it's about what you'd expect from the last of the studio’s "wilderness years" productions--this was immediately followed by The Little Mermaid, thus demonstrating that the transition from so-so (and worse) quality to the genius to come played out at something near warp speed. On this movie's own terms...I’ve never read Oliver Twist, so I cannot comment on how loosely based (or not) this film is to the source material, but I’d put my money on "not so much." At least some of the music and songs show improvement over the canon's earlier efforts (probably the product of having Billy Joel playing a big part here). All in all, this movie conveys a sense of the studio struggling to raise its vehicle off the ground--they were trying, and knew they needed to get better, but had not yet found the formula. Ultimately, to the everlasting gratitude of the film industry, the effort eventually paid off in a big way. Just not here.