Reviews
The Long Goodbye (1973)
It stinks!
That's right, stinks. It makes "Heaven's Gate" smell like roses. I hold Raymond Chandler in high esteem as an author, and "The Long Goodbye" is arguably his masterpiece --a heartbreaking tale of loss and loneliness. Altman's smirking revisionism was not appreciated by me. Unctuous, weaselly Eliott Gould as Marlowe? Give me a break! If Altman and company wanted to do a seventies take on noir crime sagas, they should have created an original character, as Towne did in "Chinatown." To play fast and loose with the source material, especially such esteemed literary source material, is inexcusable. Leigh Brackett should have known better and been ashamed of herself. Instead she and Altman chose to mock and sully an artistic achievement the likes of which they could only aspire to in their best work. Chandler deserved better.
Stitches (2001)
The last good Full Moon
This is the last thing from Full Moon that I thought was worth a damn. Previously, "Vampire Journals" stood out,not so much because of its run-of-the-mill story, but for its beautiful location settings, photography and fine Gothic atmosphere. I also enjoyed the better entries in the Subspecies series. But "Stitches" surpasses them and is arguably the finest feature ever from Full Moon. An omnipresent atmosphere of lurking doom and dread hovers over the hapless characters like a dark storm cloud. Mrs. Albright is a truly sinister harbinger of evil who preys on people's weaknesses, exploits their inner longings, and strips away their surface vaneer of moral rectitude. Setting the story in some undefined point in the early 20th century, when people were more repressed, was a masterstroke. This is a taut psychological chiller, subtly crafted, and not for those in search of cheap thrills, gore, or manic action.
Somewhere in Time (1980)
A throwback to the fifties
I think Vincent Canby really nailed the problem with this movie when he observed that, had it been made in the forties or fifties with the likes of Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, it would have been just wonderful. But nowadays, who can buy into this? It can't help come across as mawkish and over-sentimental in our less naive era. This holds true when the movie was released, and even moreso today.
At one point Hitchcock himself was interested in adapting Matheson's novel on which this is based, and it would have made for a more interesting film. Hitchcock's misogyny would have lent a darker subtext where Seymour's character would be a hypnotic, sinister object of obsession (ala "Vertigo") that reaches out of the past to cling to, and ultimately destroy, Reeve's character.
She (1984)
The Worst Movie Ever Made
For years Ed Wood's "Plan 9 from Outer Space" has been ridiculed as the worst movie ever made. But now, thanks to innovations such as cable and home video, there have got to be dozens of movies worse than "Plan 9." "She" with Sandahl Bergman is the worst I've seen by far. Joe Bob Briggs was rendered speechless when this ran on "Monstervision." This is the TRUE "worst movie ever made."