Archives: Movie Reviews

Odd swing-and-a-miss featuring a miscast Nic Cage as a dorky college professor who begins turning up in millions of people's dreams around the world, bringing him unwanted fame. Starts out plenty entertainingly—of course Nic Cage is always fun to watch even when he's not quite a fit for the role, and certainly a unique idea for a movie.

But about two thirds of the way through, the story just kind of powers down, and the movie turns into simply an excuse to make him a punching bag for no clear reason and with no clear resolution. It's as if the writers had a great idea, but no clue about how to turn it into a story with a rewarding ending. And an odd deus ex machina right near the ending makes it look like some sort of other writing team was called in to try and quickly fix things,…

Seems like a BBC production. "Talky" doesn't cover for this sci-fi "thriller" that is literally entirely talk. Two astronauts wander through a dark fog depicting the surface of a planet they've crashed on, talking to each other, and potential rescues on their radios. And that's it. I suppose there's some sort of plot underneath all the talk, but, boy, is this one dry. Eventually you see some lights through the fog that are supposed to be the aliens, waaaaaaaay towards the end, for a minute.

I bet there's people out there who like this sort of thing. Not me, though.

This movie was listed as "College friends find themselves at the wrong place at the wrong time while visiting a vacant house on the edge of town", which is not very promising on its own, but I've given it 40 minutes and so far it's been nothing but people talking. If anything happens from here, I won't know about it, because I'm turning it off.

Rounding out the list of favorite films I haven't reviewed because I haven't watched them since I started writing capsule reviews, but nonetheless felt need a mention in any list I make of favorites... The Shining.

More has been written about this film than perhaps any other of my favorite movies. Stanley Kubrick's classic adaptation of Stephen King's great novel about a lonely hotel caretaker's descent into madness that may not be his fault. There is way too much here for me to write about, and as with Apocalypse Now, so much has already been written in the intervening nearly 50 years that is so much better than I could write. Let's just say, a huge favorite of mine, a peak moment from one of the greatest directors in history, and my go-to favorite example of how there are great horror movies, and then, very rarely, there is…

Paint-by-numbers story about a family moving into a house that was the scene of brutal slayings, and things quickly start going bump in the night. Initially, despite being one long series of clichés, it's well-made enough that it's fairly watchable, but as it goes on it sags more and more into TV Movie-Of-The-Week territory and falls below the basic "Ok to watch if there's nothing else on" standard.

Note to filmmakers: You don't actually have to make the bad guy look like Edward Scissorhands. We can tell he's the bad guy by what he does.

Technically well-made but incredibly slow and tedious Swedish "horror" art film. Something about a translator and a homeless guy and a lot of grainy video montages over discordant violin sounds. I watched the whole thing and I'm still no more clear on it than that. It looked pretty, though.