First Spaceship on Venus

1960 science fiction movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Some space taffy is found at an excavation site, and following examination, it's decided that the space taffy actually contains a message from the planet Venus. A rocket ship with an international crew is sent to figure out what the Venusians want. On the way, the crew discovers that the message is actually all about plans to invade our planet.

I really sort of liked this movie. Sure, it's choppy and has terrible acting. Sure, it is overly verbose, and, to make that verbosity worse, has really poorly written dialogue. But there's an artistic quality to this cheap science fiction movie that makes it all worth it. There's great imaginative set design with some odd special effects that give this some charm. Popcorn meteor showers, great moogy sound effects, superimposed drifting fog, syrupy lava flows, hopping spidery Venus inhabitants. Venus has a really nice texture, gnarled and weather-beaten and kinda Seussian, and the designs for the space vehicles are pretty good. There are some space craft details that push this ahead of the typical flat B-movie science fiction ships. There's also a funky little chess-playing robot that rolls around like a tank and occasionally mumbles something about the weather. I even liked the bizarre wardrobe choices--uniforms with seemingly random letters on them, odd spacesuits that looked almost like chipmunk costumes, rubbery planet-exploration suits. And even though it's a little too talky, there are some nice themes about persevering through tragedy and fear and possibly even about the importance of Earthlings uniting in order to overcome the problems we face. Good 50's sci-fi drama!

Invaders from Mars

1953 b-movie

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Body snatchers from Mars travel to earth, burrow beneath the ground, and start making mischief. Beaver Cleaver is on to them, but nobody will listen to him. Oh, snap!

Luckily for the makers of this movie, the Martians hid beneath the sand in this town that seems to have a lot of sand because it saved a lot of money that would have been used on special effects. This is a silly and boring b-movie that combines a no-fat version of The Twilight Zone's menace with the golly-gee 1950's naivety. Child actors are often annoying, and even though the kid in this isn't completely terrible, making him the focus of the movie probably isn't a great idea. This is also another really misleading poster. The tentacled thing in the dome, though pretty cool, is on the screen for less than a minute, and the Martians don't do anything but get shot, fall down, and get back up again so that they can stumble around and get shot some more. They're not in it very much either. The action scenes consist mostly of what looks to be stock footage of tanks and army activity or a little kid running around screaming. C'mon, people. If you're going to make a really cheap science fiction movie, at least make it funny!

Waltz with Bashir

2008 cartoon

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Ari can't remember much about his experiences in the 1982 Lebanon War. He finds various friends and combat peers and interviews them, gradually piecing together enough memories to complete a picture of his dark past.

This is a stunning animated documentary. The quiet, reflective narration of director Ari Folman combines with apocalyptic, hallucinatory imagery so well here. I imagine what I felt as I watched the memories unfold is close to what Ari Folman felt as he lived the experiences, and that in itself is impressive. It takes a little while to get used to the unique animation style (a conglomeration actually with mostly cut-outs), but once I did, I had no problem feeling the pictures. It's like watching a series of somebody else's nightmares. There are tiny details (shadows, slight gestures, subtle movements) that make the scenes incredibly poignant. The use of animation freeing up the director to explore his memories in such a visually unique way succeeds in making it all look exactly like dreamy, half-forgotten memories should look. There's really some unforgettable stuff throughout this; the frightening beginning and haunting ending that bookend are especially powerful. I also liked the soundtrack by Max Richter who, after hearing The Blue Notebook a few years ago, I decided would be good at just this sort of thing. Waltz with Bashir definitely isn't an easy watching experience (as a matter of fact, it's pretty devastating), but it's an artistic triumph and well worth checking out.

Recommended by Cory.

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad

1949 cartoon

Rating: 12/20 (Abbey: 5/20)

Plot: "The Wind in the Willows" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" in animated form.

File this in one of the lesser Disney tiers. Not much magic here. I'm betting it has something to do with World War II, but the animation looks much cheaper than the classics that preceded it, and the entire production looks somehow incomplete or half-assed. There are moments in Ichabod's story (the main character's movements, the use of sound effects to create the mood in during the climax) where it's almost great, but there was almost nothing at all that I liked about the Mr. Toad half of this. Bing Crosby's voice (especially when singing) for Ichabod sounds wildly inappropriate, and Basil Rathbone, whose voice I usually like, doesn't do anything for me as the narrator for Mr. Toad's adventures. The animation isn't colorful, the backgrounds are flat, and nothing moves on the screen except for the characters which makes it look like a second rate production. It's actually hard to believe that this came out nine years after Pinocchio. Worst of all, the characters aren't even likable. Mr. Toad is annoying, and Ichabod is greedy and manipulative. I'm actually happy that he (spoiler alert) got his dome busted open by a jack o' lantern at the end. The peripheral characters aren't much either. The headless horseman is menacing enough, but he sort of zips by. Brom Bones, Ichabod's antagonist, is a lot like that bully in Beauty and the Beast. What was that guy's name again? If only there was a song about him or something so that I'd remember his name.

Werewolf

1996 movie

Rating: 3/20

Plot: Some archaeologists digging around in the desert sands of Arizona discover an odd half-man/half-something-else skeleton. Immediately, they start brawling. One of the men scrapes his leg on the skull of their discovery, and while recuperating in the hospital, he transforms into a werewolf. Later, other characters who already sort of look like werewolves being to show signs of lycanthropy. An evil archaeologist might be responsible.


False advertising! I was so ready to watch Joe Estevez in another award-worthy performance, but he only a minor character in the first quarter of the movie. Oh well. This still qualifies as a really good bad movie. I was really confused by the nationalities of some of these people. What I initially thought was just extremely awkward, stilted acting turned out to be the result of casting the inhabitants of some unidentifiable foreign land, most likely a land where emoting or facial expressions have been outlawed. The woman archaeologist seems either bored out of her mind or confused throughout the movie, and, like Jimmy Stewart or Vincent Price, the simplest tasks seem difficult for her to pull off in a way that makes her look like a normal person. The evil archaeologist not only has a thick accent but also has this strange intensity that makes nearly everything he says laughable. My favorite character is a Santa Claus militia man who gets all the best lines and nearly steals the movie. The wolfman special effects range from mildly humorous to uproariously abysmal. The wolves sometimes look like tiny Sasquatch, sometimes like bears, and sometimes like dollar store Halloween masks fashioned into a kind of filthy puppet. There's also a really weird soundtrack, odd cello music that never really seems to fit right. It's all awfully silly stuff. Just don't watch it expecting to see a lot of Joe Estevez.

Better Off Dead

1985 teen angst comedy

Rating: 11/20 (Jen: 7/20)

Plot: Poor Lane Meyer. His girlfriend Beth has dumped him for his skiing rival. He's left with one choice--to kill himself. Unfortunately for him, he's not very good at it. Unfortunately for us, it's not very funny. Things start turning around for him when he meets a French exchange student and gets a chance to race against his rival.

There's a lot of quirkiness here. There are crazy paperboys, Asian drag racers, stop-animated hamburgers. Although these bits actually might make the movie more entertaining, they also distract, almost as if they were thrown into the movie so that the audience won't notice how bad it is. This is definitely stuck in the mid-80's. A few clever ideas (the failed suicide attempts not really being one of them) don't add up to much here, probably because they have to peak their heads out from underneath a predictable, cliched story and predictable, cliched characters. I don't know why I watched this. I was going to give this a bonus point because Curtis "Booger" Armstrong was in it, but I had already deducted a point during the opening credits because the director's name is Savage Steve Holland. Then, I looked up Savage Steve Holland and noticed that his breakthrough was animating the Whammy on the game show Press Your Luck and gave the bonus point right back.

Chang: A Drama in the Wilderness

1927 nature documentary

Rating: 17/20 (Jen: 13/20)

Plot: A couple guys who would later go on to make a little movie called King Kong film jungle inhabitants (Kru and his family) in Siam. Their struggle for survival is threatened by leopards, tigers, and thousands of elephants. Luckily, mankind is smart and therefore always comes out on top in conflicts with nature.

Chang has a lot in common with Nanook. They're both adventure/survival documentaries taking place in lands the audiences would have no chance of visiting. They're both anthropological studies. They both contain some stunning footage of what man has to do in order to survive in the wild. However, there are some key differences. For one, Chang is made by actual filmmakers, so the shots, especially of the animals, are a lot better. There's really some excellent footage of jungle life in this, some which looks like it might have even been dangerous to capture. There are also more characters in Chang and, from the middle point on, more of a story. The way we see the animals is also completely different. In Nanook, the animals are nothing more than potential food. When the animals are on the screen, the focus is still on the human characters and what they're doing. In Chang, the animals are shown being animals, and it's amazing how some of them (monkeys mostly) even have some personality. I also think Chang is more entertaining than Nanook. Not a moment in this one drags and the scenes in which jungle folk tackle every day tasks don't get boring because not every single minute of those every day tasks are shown. I especially liked watching them construct booby traps. This probably can't be considered a true documentary because a large percentage of the scenes were obviously staged. It's almost like hours and hours of footage was shot and then reassembled as a story. But it's very well done and definitely worth seeing as both an early documentary and a prelude to King Kong.

Jen laughed uproariously several times while watching this and seemed especially entertained by a monkey. She also rooted for the elephants during the climactic elephant stampede scene. She didn't seem to like this very much but told me she had to bump it up a few points because it was really good for the 1950s. I'm not sure, but she might have been drunk again.

Phantasm

1979 low-budget horror movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: An evil undertaker transforms corpses into dwarfish slaves. Brothers Mike and Jody, along with a friendly ice cream truck driver, try to unravel the mysteries surrounding the mortuary and its very tall mortician.

I wasn't aware that that many people had sex in graveyards. I like movies that can teach you stuff. I expected to laugh my way through this and then write a review similar to Troll 2's. Even though I did laugh quite a bit at some really silly dialogue and no-budget effects and it does have an ending a lot like Troll 2's, there was a style and coolness to this that I couldn't ignore. Honestly, there were times when I thought this could have been the work of Kubrick. Thing is, writer/director Don Coscarelli does a whole lot with the nothing he's got to make this movie. There are some genuinely horrifying moments, admittedly more than a few of those figures-popping-onto-the-screen shockers that became so cliched but also a lot of moments that are scary because ominous and unsettling atmospheres are created. Nightmarish imagery and some creepy, though pretty amateurish music, set quite a tone here. And the lurching, omnipresent Tall Man played by Angus Scrimm (What a name!) is just as intimidating as any Jason or Freddy. Growling robed little people, twitching disembodied fingers, flying metallic spike balls, ice cream trucks, uncontrollable urination, illogical explosions. There's so much to love here! Now I've got to see about getting my hands on a copy of Phantasms II-XVII!

Note: This blog no longer uses the words midget, midget-esque, midgety, midgetacular, midgetry, extreme midget action, midget-cinema, midgetabulous, midgetploitation, or especially midget funk as the m-word apparently offends. I will still seek out movies with midgets and be entertained by midget funk but will, from this point on, use the words little people. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

2008 documentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: All about the volatile America of the 60s and 70s and the vanguard journalist/counter-cultural voice who was at the heart of it all. This covers the Hell's Angels writings which got him on the map, his writing for Rolling Stone, his running for sheriff of Aspen, his attempts to search for the American dream in Las Vegas, his unique coverage of the 1972 presidential campaign, and his failure to complete his assignment to write about a boxing match between Ali and some guy who makes grills. Hunter does some drugs, shoots some guns (once at himself), and wreaks some serious havoc.

The title is accurate because even though the focus is on the good doctor, it does a great job of interweaving the cultural happenings that stirred his emotions and kept his fingers tapping on that typewriter. There's a ton of archival footage mixed in with famous people lovingly (though not ignoring the man's flaws) sharing anecdotes that shape Thompson as both a writer and a human being. The filmmakers also do a terrific job of using a lot of Thompson's own words, some in the doctor's own voice and some read by others, including Johnny Depp. The amount of music used in this, although it does aid in the creation of a timeline, is overwhelming and oppressive, and the large chunk of Thompson's funeral shown at the end kind of cheapens things. Hunter S. Thompson, whether you like him or agree with his lifestyle and philosophies or not, is such an intriguing personality that it's impossible not to be entertained by his story. This documentary tells that story really well. It also made me want to read some Hunter S. Thompson!

Legend of Fong Sai Yuk

1993 martial arts movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: The secret Red Lotus Flower Society want nothing more than to get rid of the evil emperor. A tough guy is sent out to locate a list of the society's members, a list that includes the name of local kung-fu hero Fong Sai Yuk's dad. Fong Sai Yuk enters a kung-fu contest in which the prize is the daughter of a rich dude. Later, his mother, disguised as a man, fights the rich dude's wife in the same contest and the latter is smitten by her. Somehow, I'm making this sound more confusing than it actually is.

Oddly, the plot of this bit of tongue-in-cheek kung-fu mayhem isn't difficult to follow at all despite a variety of madcap goings-on. The plot doesn't matter much as there is enough wall-to-wall action to make you want to turn off the old mind anyway. High-flying wire work combines with a creative use of setting and props to make some sparkling fight choreography. It's violent, but until the climax, the violence isn't serious. You've got opponents balancing on the heads of the spectators, the superhuman abilities, some wacky gravity-defying nonsense. It's fun stuff. I also like the rapport between Jet Li and the woman playing his mother. An argument could be made that there was too much comedy in the beginning or that it got too serious in the end, but changing either side would have ruined the fun. A couple good fight scenes between Jet Li and the guy hunting down the list.

Ordet

1955 Carl Dreyer movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Old pious Morten had a farm. E-I-E-I-O. And on this farm, he had three sons. E-I-E-I-O. Agnostic Mikkel lives on the farm with his pregnant wife Inger and two daughters. Johannes is nuts, frequently wandering to the fields and announcing that he is the Messiah. And youngest son Anders wants to marry Anne, the daughter of a tailor who Morten doesn't like very much because of differences in their religious faiths. So they cluck cluck there, and they cluck cluck here. Here a cluck cluck. There a cluck cluck. Everywhere a cluck cluck.

Ordet (The Word) is a sneakily dense, slow-moving but intense look at religion, specifically the issue of faith. I didn't completely understand it. I really wish the differences between Peter the tailor and Morten's religious ideas were made a little clearer. Morten was a happy Christian while Peter was more of a depressed worshipper, but what does that mean exactly? This builds so slowly that I initially thought I was bored out of my mind. The camera moves slowly, the characters talk and move slowly, and the backgrounds are static and too gray even for a black and white film. But gradually, I was hypnotized by the thing, drawn into the characters' lives, so that when the pair of climaxes came, they were deep and meaningful whereas they might seem trite and meaningless if I just told you what they were. There's not a lot of camera movement, but when it happens, the movements seem so important. Really, there's something seemingly important about the lack of movements too, I guess. There's a focus on the characters, no setting distractions except for maybe the occasional lamp or picture, and almost nothing that can be described as action. It's that minimal quality that give the relationships and conversations the characters have this quiet intensity. The ending is powerful, but, at least for me, thematically perplexing. I was pretty sure I knew what the film was trying to say (again, re: faith), but the more I thought about it, the more I was confused about why the movie ended like it did. That ending was very well handled, however, with the same dreamy rhythm of the rest of the film, sans music, extraneous movements, or wasted emoting. I look forward to watching this again in another format (I had a vhs copy, so a Criterion release of this would be nice upgrade) to uncover some of the mysteries and symbols (a bird cage? candles and lamps? Johannes stick? the relationship of Anders and Anne as a marriage of religious ideas?) tucked inside it.

Recommended by Cory. And if you're reading this, R.D., I'd be interesting in hearing what you think about this one.

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace

1987 sequel

Rating: 8/20

Plot: Superman tries to disarm the entire world while. At the same time, nemesis Lex Luther uses his knowledge of cloning and fission to create a nuclear man, who he names Nuclear Man, in order to get rid of the Man of Steel once and for all.

I was too old to see this when it came out. Either that or I saw Superman III, actually a worse movie, and decided that I was done. This has all kinds of signs indicating that this was just a tired franchise with nothing more to add. Except for Gene Hackman's performance as Lex Luther. That's still an inspired performance that makes him the sort of terrific villain that you really love to root against. Too bad the writers didn't help him out much. And too bad they gave him a completely useless and obnoxious side kick and had an apparently blind person handle his wardrobe. Most of Superman IV feels like attempts to construct a "Best of Superman" montage. The best example of this self-plagiarization is in that attempt to reconstruct the romantic Lois Lane and Superman flying around scene. Of course, you've got the damsel in distress motif again with Lois Lane nearly biting it in a freak subway accident. How many times can one character nearly die in freak accidents? You've also got all kinds of moments where physics/science/common sense is completely disregarded. Business suit clad women in space? Stopping a volcano with the top of a mountain? Using a giant net to hold the world's nuclear missiles? Moving the moon without negatively affecting things on the earth? Using scissors to cut a hair that is supposedly strong enough to hold one thousand pounds? Giving Superman the ability to make bricks with his eyes? Nuclear Man is goofy looking, and some of the special effects are really tacky. Add to all this the message at the heart of the film, a message that is subtly hammered into your head multiple times, and you've got a pretty terrible movie. But at least it isn't as bad as III. And at least Christopher Reeve is still pretty good.

Who's seen the new one? Is it worth my time?

Dumb and Dumber

1994 comedy

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Harry and Lloyd (Harold Lloyd?) are two idiots who dream of opening up their own pet store. Unfortunately, they can't keep jobs and are having trouble saving up the money. One day, Lloyd drops off a beautiful woman at the airport. When he sees that she forgets her briefcase, he retrieves it. The friends make plans to drive a dog van to Aspen to find the woman and give her back her briefcase. Hot on their (in this case literal) tail are a couple criminals who also want the briefcase. When they get to Aspen, a love triangle develops.

Anne McInslop is the person with whom I have been friends the longest. She likes W.C. Fields and the Marx Brothers, and when she was shocked that I had never seen her favorite movie, Dumb and Dumber, I figured it was probably worth checking out. As a result, our friendship is now over. Jim Carrey is very Jim Carrey in this role. He's good at this sort of thing even if I don't think this sort of thing is anything worth being good at. He's made a ton of money doing exactly that sort of thing, so I doubt anything he might read here will hurt his feelings. The comedy is just loudly juvenile and too obvious. Jeff Daniels completely transforms himself here and does a good enough job, but I can tell during a few scenes in this movie that he's regretting the decision to do take this part. You can see it in his eyes. I see those eyes every day when I look in a mirror at school, so I know exactly what regretful eyes look like. I had two good laughs--one during their protagonists' rendition of "Mama's Gonna Buy You a Mockingbird" and another after a line about John Denver. But there were far more moments that gave me good groans. I'm not attempting to think of this in the context of the mid-90's. Maybe diarrhea was original and funny fifteen years ago. To make matters worse, this movie also has a real pet peeve of mine--Harland Williams. I don't know what it is about him (it might be the sideburns), but whenever I see him, I want to punch the screen. A good friend, it seems, would know that. You hear that, Anne McInslop? A good friend would know that!

Ali G Indahouse

2002 comedy

Rating: 9/20

Plot: All really dumb gangsta Ali G wants is to save the rec center, but he gets caught in the Chancellor's ploy to embarrass and oust the Prime Minister. Britain ends up loving his Keepin'-It-Real attitude, and the Prime Minister ends up even more popular.

I didn't know this movie even existed or I would have not enjoyed it a long time ago. On the one hand, there are actually a lot of funny bits and Cohen's really good with physical comedy. On the other hand, there are more than a lot of fart jokes and penis jokes (there might even be a joke about a farting penis in there somewhere) and Cohen's really bad with knowing when enough's enough. I would have loved to see the Ali G character in a Borat-esque faux documentary because the stuff with the character on the HBO show is hilarious. Also, even though there is a bit of satire in this, it seems a lot dumber than the Borat movie, an excuse to make those aforementioned penis fart jokes and nothing more. This is more miss than hit, the silly narrative is flimsy, and the sketch comedy too sketchy.

Monster Zero

1965 monster movie

Rating: 14/20 (Jen: 10/20)

Plot: Earthlings discover Planet X, a new planet that seems dangerously close to Jupiter. They travel there, seemingly in a few days, to investigate and plant a goofy-looking flag. They meet the inhabitants of Planet X, underground mole people who speak in an eerie monotone that should have probably given away the fact that they were up to no good all along. They also, oddly enough, call their planet Planet X. Turns out that Planet X has a few problems. There's not enough water and a flying three-headed Ghidarah won't leave them alone. They ask the earthlings to lend them Godzilla and Rodan in exchange for a special medicine that can cure anything. But can the inhabitants of Planet X be trusted?

My expertise in Godzilla flicks is next-to-nothing, but this is definitely an enjoyable movie. I really thought about boosting the rating by five just because of that little victory dance Godzilla does on Planet X. That's one of my favorite movie moments of the year! I would have liked to see more of the monsters, just like when I watch kung-fu movies and want to see more fighting. The special effects are great for the 1950's which, since this movie was made in the mid-60's, gives this a sort of childish naivete. I saw strings attached to Ghidorah, but I still really liked the effects involved to make that monster work. He's flying, he's flapping, he's gesticulating with his tail, and he's waving all of his heads around. I had my brained turned completely off, so I didn't even try to figure out how he worked. Stop-animation? Puppetry? A three-armed man in a suit? Nick Adams has some great lines as the astronaut who is smart enough to figure out that things aren't what they seem but not smart enough to do anything about it. Aside from certain aspects of the holey story (this screenplay was obviously written by a team of scientists), I did have a couple questions: 1) Why is the rocket ship flying through clouds on its way to Planet X? 2) What's with the footprints they find on Planet X? The X-ers seem to walk normally, but those footprints look like a flamboyant drunkard's footprints. Regardless of its many flaws, you've got giant monsters pushing each other around, giant explosions, cool aliens, model destruction. And that funky dance! What's not to love?

This was watched in honor of Cory's birthday.