Reviews

Typical 1990s macho bang bang swagger, but this time copied from the much better art house film Liquid Sky. Watch that instead. Unless you are looking for empty headed revenge porn. The problem with this database is having to fill in all five hundred required characters when there isn't that much that there is to say about the film. It isn't memorable. It isn't even Dolph Lundgren at his best. Then again, just because a guy has three doctorates doesn't mean he can act. Just look for Liquid Sky. It's a lot more interesting and will spark better conversation afterward. If you still need Kung Fu cop action, go watch a Rush Hour movie.

A pale mimeograph of the original film. Why was this picture even made? I can understand Brooks wanting to bring The Producers to the stage. It was a lifelong ambition. That he was able to find talent in this day and age to approximate the originals is surprising. But, was it necessary to remake the film? No. A resounding no. Nathan Lane is not Zero Mostel. Matthew Broderick is no Gene Wilder. This 2005 fair attempt becomes a travesty in comparison with one of the greatest films of the 20th Century. This film is but a pale mimeograph of the original, a work the likes of which I do not expect to see repeated in my lifetime. Remaking The Producers on film is like remaking Citizen Kane or 2001:A Space Odyssey. The thought almost verges on blasphemy. If this 2005 outing were better than the original it might be forgiven but it is, as someone once said of the Coburn "Flint" films, road-show James Bond (an unearned comparison; the Flint films are marvelous; oh, and Derek Flint was not a rapist). The Producers (2005) is road-show Mel Brooks. The whole production should have been left on the stage where it was intended. All admirable talent, but wasted on a Sisyfusian effort to outshine perfection that was achieved in 1967 and shall never be eclipsed. This is Brooks's moment of hubris. He thought he could outdo himself, or find a new audience in a new age. One last hurrah, I suppose. If only he had not made this film. Everything would have been all right. Now it exists forever, a mentally disabled sibling living in the shadow of the supremely accomplished elder statesman. I like the actors, I like the way they played the characters; they were the best choices anyone could make. But taking it from stage to screen is just an insult to the irreplaceable. I cannot watch the entire film. I do not want to experience another bleeding ulcer. If you like The Producers (2005) all well and good. Do not watch the original, then. That's all the warning I can give you.

I look at Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon and see a gussied up remake of Battle Bayond the Stars. There is even the same ship as the old movie in the preview video at about 1:55. Bad guys threaten peaceful farming world, plucky hero has to voyage space to find some down on their luck mercenaries to save the day. Replace Richard Thomas with a Battle Angel Alita wanna be (more plagiarism) to be gender smart and you have yourself a holiday blockbuster. Hollywood once again proclaiming how bankrupt it has been for the past fifty years. I can only wonder who keeps reinforcing the myth that Mr. Snyder has ever had an original idea in his life.

I have not laughed this hard since I first saw Mr. Gumby in Monty Python's Flying Circus. I did not know that Gerry Anderson had ever worked in stop motion animation. Dick Spanner's design seems to have been the inspiration for the first television series of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy's Marvin the Paranoid Android. Visually there are so many quiet jokes going on at once that it is easy to miss them. The opening office scene was so arresting it did not occur to me that the film noir effect of bad guy slant was in fact the office building actually swaying from side to side while the 'camera' was simply remaining vertical. It puts a whole new light on the original Batman series of the 1960s. If you can find Dick Spanner, PI, just buy it. Get it, download it, however it's available. This is worth your time, regardless of whether you are a Gerry Anderson Supermarionation fan.

A West Side Story knockoff that tries to look like Quadrophenia, and serves mainly and probably solely as a publicity platform for Bowie and Sade. Listless choreography and dull songs, even from the star man himself, do not set this up as any kind of cultural wunderkind. Absolute Beginners is closer in spirit to Bye Bye, Birdie than to any kind of anthem to social rebellion in a historical locale. Then it kind of oozes into Lord Love A Duck territory where psychopathy is a replacement for sincerity. Do real people actually act this way? Or did they, back then? Does singing and dancing make history more valid? Can a full length feature film mimic the then newly sprung MTV and get away with it? That the song is considered one of Bowie's meh contributions, and the film is mainly forgotten, is the answer.

Stand And Deliver was the last time someone made a film like this. There have been others. It won't be the last. I don't know if it will help. The corporations want prison labor. Until you accept that the corporations ARE the artificial intelligence and that we humans have already lost that war, then pie in the sky dreaming won't solve anything. Prison labor is cheap and easily controlled. Most of your tech support calls go to prison labor now. Did you know that? There is more prison labor in the United States today than there were slaves in the Antebellum South. You think the decline and fall of US education is mere neglect? No. It is very carefully, coldly, and calculatingly considered intent. Did no one listen to George Carlin? They, the corporations, want you just smart enough to press the buttons and dumb enough never to ask questions. How much of that describes you and your kids?

It appears everyone has forgotten the rather good if quirky The Long Kiss Goodnight in which Geena Davis plays not a sleeper agent but an agent who literally went comatose and forgot everything, but who remembers all her skills under great stress in order to protect her daughter in the middle of a Winter mountain forest sparsely populated with small towns while being chased by an army of men in black after whatever it is she can't remember. I wonder where they got the idea for this latest Jennifer Lopez romp? I thought she was OK in The Cell, no Sigourney Weaver but able to relay tense determination (you just have to look as if you are mentally adding up a grocery receipt for two hours). I haven't seen any of her other pictures. Life is too short.

...with an illiterate title. It should be "From Dusk 'til Dawn." "Till" is what a farmer does to soil. "'til" is the contraction of "until." If you like adventure, action, explosion, splatters, campy shock, comic rudeness, and over the edge special effects, this your Friday Night Special. The acting and writing are superb, and the ending will leave your jaw gaping. You might think you are watching a police procedural for the first half hour or so, but then it gets meaty and visceral. I won't say any more. My point originally was to dismiss the foolishly ungrammatical title, but a review in this rag requires a minimum of one hundred fifty words. I am trying the best I can, maw. I can't dance any faster. Are you kidding? This still isn't a hundred fifty words? I have turned in term reports that were less verbose than this, and this is a masterpiece in comparison. So, you get an all-star movie with everything that Quentin Tarantino could love including Salma Hayak in a bikini. If you pass up "From Dusk 'til Dawn" you are either a professional fraidy cat or you are dead from both the neck up and the waist down. Still not one hundred fifty words. No, that's got to be more. I'm outta here.