Wait until Dark

1967 Helen Keller biopic

Rating: 13/20 (Jen: 12/20)

Plot: The Three Stooges look for a doll stuffed with packets of heroin in a blind woman's apartment.
They concoct a really complex plan

Other than a couple nifty suspense scenes, including a suffocating and intense climax which has the second best use of a refrigerator I've seen in a movie during the last couple weeks, there's not much to see here. The story's ludicrous, that aforementioned plan involving numerous telephone calls, costumes (seriously, why are costumes necessary to fool a blind woman?), signals, and a van making no sense for a criminal who apparently doesn't have problems resorting to brute violence. And why do they need to mess with the blinds in the apartment to signal to their cohorts in the van? Wouldn't a flick of the lights (you know, since the woman is blind) work well enough? Plot holes galore, plot holes big enough that Audrey Hepburn's blind character could probably see them. Speaking of Audrey, I really didn't think she was right for this role. The cutesiness didn't seem to fit her right here, and she was really awkward when interacting with the terrible child actor. Alan Arkin's character is more interesting, but there's just something unnatural about the performance, like he's working too hard at being cold and calculating. There's entertainment value here, but most of what happens here is stuff that can only happen in a movie, like it had it's very own Wait until Dark logic. It really hurt my chances to completely enjoy the movie although the suspenseful moments were really well done.

Recommended by Cory.

First Men on the Moon

1964 documentary

Rating: 15/20

Plot: International lunar landers touch down at the same exact spot on the moon where they'll find a piece of paper and a withered flag proving that people had actually already visited the moon seventy years before. Back on earth, they visit the elderly and likely cuckoo former writer/amatuer astronaut to get the scoop. The scoop turns out to be really silly!

Here's a movie featuring Ray Harryhausen's effects where the effects don't completely steal the show. The effects you'd see and say, "Oh, that's Harryhausen alright," are even more of a distraction than anything else. At times, the moon beings, anthropoids with bee features, are animated but most of the time they're costumed people. Kind of weird. You also get a skeleton and a pair of monstrous centipede things. With the latter, it's almost like Harryhausen said, "Hey, I still have some time. Let me throw another creature in there." Now, the space effects and the moon atmospherics are impressive. I really like this version of the moon, one that would no doubt annoy the type of person who looks for scientific accuracy in their sci-fi films. I really enjoyed the set design though. This is better acted and written than your typical B-picture, dialogue peppered with some humor and good characterization. Edward Judd and Martha Hyer bust out of what could have been pretty generic roles as a pair of lovers, and Lionel Jeffries is very good as a crazed scientist character, very reminiscent of Back to the Future's Dr. Brown actually. I figured I'd mention him since I'm seeing Back to the Future references everywhere these days. I like the story despite the goofiness (Jeffries' character has created an anti-gravity paste which he applies to a metallic bulb in order to travel to the moon; the characters wear diving outfits for the trip), and it's only a big moment and a much better ending away from being really good. That ending, which just sort of grabs you and jerks you out of the story before throwing a "The End" on the screen, really is a stinker. Definitely worth checking out for fans of Harryhausen, H.G. Wells, and creatively preposterous science fiction movies.

Howard the Duck

1986 box office sensation

Rating: n/r (I couldn't finish it.)

Plot: A duck named Howard and his recliner is yanked from his planet and ends up in an alley somewhere in Cleveland. He meets a punk rock girl who takes him to a janitor to help him get back home. There's probably a bad guy later on, and I'm sure Howard has to try to phone home with a mouth full of Reece's. It's just another one of those cases where somebody has ripped off the plot of E.T. and managed to make an even more disagreeable movie.

The only movie I can think of that might be worse than a trip to Cleveland, Ohio. I watched this for three reasons:

1) I didn't think it could possibly be as bad as I remembered or as everybody seems to think.

2) If it is as bad as I remember or as everybody seems to think, it might fall into "good-bad" territory, and I could point and laugh at it.

3) I wanted to use a "quacking up" pun on the blog.

Unfortunately, it's not either of the first two. It's a terrible movie--poor writing, embarrassing effects, a main character who is impossible to like, auxiliary characters who aren't any better, an incoherent plot, dozens of details that date it--but it's nowhere near entertaining. It's excruciating, so excruciating that I gave up on it after Tim Robbins' second appearance. Like the majority of decisions in my life, the decision to watch Howard the Duck was a bad one, leaving me depressed and very unlikely to quack up any time soon.

Best in Show

2000 mockumentary

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Eccentric show dog owners travel to compete at the Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show.

This is a really funny movie until Fred Willard pops in. Then, it gets side-splintingly hilarious! It seems like a lot of these mockumentary subjects are about things I'd never watch a real documentary about. I have no interest at all in dog shows. But I still really liked how Best in Show played the dog show part so straightly. The actors play their roles as comic caricatures, not believable in the least, but the dog show itself, other than Willard's hilarious non sequiturs and dada commentary as an unqualified announcer, isn't played for laughs much at all unless their actions/words just add a bit to the previously established quirky character traits. I think that makes the "umentary" part of this a lot more realistic. The "mock" part, as you'd expect from a Christopher Guest joint with this ensemble cast, is great. There's not a lot instantly quotable here, nothing truly classic, but all the subtle pokes and tickles add up to a great time. A lot of the funny is nonsense, verbal slapstick and easygoing visual silliness, but there's some nice subtle satire in there, too. Guest is the type of comedic writer (though a lot of this has an improvisational feel) who understands how flawed, miserable, and disturbing human beings are but who also knows that's what makes them kinda funny. I'm not sure how much the presence of these beautiful and classy doggies helps these sore thumbs of humanity stick out, but that might have something to do with it. This may have gotten a bonus point for poor ventriloquism. And in case I didn't make myself clear, everything Fred Willard says in this is hilarious.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (again)

2008 action movie

RatingPlot/: see my original thoughts here

I saw this again for a pair of reasons: 1) Abbey wanted to see it. 2) Cory promised he'd watch the brilliant comedy The Happening if I watched this again. My thoughts are about the same. I really enjoyed the first half, and completely disagree with people's complaints about Harrison Ford being too old to do this sort of thing. I think he does a remarkable job with a character that he hasn't touched in twenty years. And during the first half of the movie, I don't mind Shooby Leboof either. I think he and Ford have a nice rapport, although maybe not quite as good or as funny as Connery and Ford in the third movie. I really like how the franchise is pulled into the issues and fears of the 1950s, and the alien twist, although on the surface seeming completely out of place in an Indiana Jones movie, works as a link to B-movie sensibilities of that era just like the original movies borrowed so heavily from the ebb and flow of the action serials they were based on. One difference in my opinion is that I don't like the overall look of the film as much as I thought I did. There's an onslaught of special effects and computer graphics, at least compared to the earlier films, that just does not fit. The second half of the movie, pretty much from the beginning of the jungle chase scene on, ain't pretty. I'd say that things just keep getting dumber and dumber and dumber, but the Shooby Leboof Tarzan impression happens too early. That's definitely a low point of the franchise. No, Indy 4 is not Raiders of the Lost Ark, but I still think it serves its number one purpose--entertaining dumbasses.

Revised ratings: I should probably go ahead and give Raiders a 20 since it might be my favorite movie of all time. Temple is a 12, but that's being generous. Crusade is a 16. And this one is in the 13/14 range, right in between the other two sequels. Indy 5 needs to have either Short Round or a young Greedo in it or I'll be pissed.

Feet First

1930 talkie comedy

Rating: 15/20 (Abbey: She didn't watch enough of this to give it a rating, but she sat down and watched a little bit, declared this "the worst movie ever," and left.)

Plot: Harold (I'm guessing that's his name since that seems to be the name of every other Harold Lloyd character) is a shoe salesman with much, much loftier ambitions. He meets and falls for a girl, the daughter of a wealthy businessman, and through no fault of his own, convinces her that he is a big wig in the leather industry. Through some fault of his own, he winds up on a cruise with them and has to fight to not blow his cover.

Abbey's wrong about this being the "worst movie ever," but this probably has my vote for the "gayest movie poster ever." Look at that thing! The thing Harold Lloyders (that's the term I've come up with for his fans) will notice is that Lloyd pretty much plagiarizes his own Safety Last! with an up-the-side-of-a-tall-building stunt that takes up the last twenty or so minutes of the film. But it's different because he gets to talk in this one, so we get to hear both his fear and racial insensitivity. A dimwitted black janitor (played by Willie Best in one of the most racially-insensitive movies of all time [The Littlest Rebel, with Shirley Temple in blackface]) shows up for comic purposes, and Lloyd gives him the nickname Charcoal. Since, according to the Wikipedia page for this movie, Lloyd had parts of this redubbed to change his name from Harold to Charlie for reasons never explained, it seems like he could have redubbed it so that he said "Hey, black janitor!" instead of "Hey, Charcoal!" But it's a minor quibble, and my man Buster had more embarrassing moments in his career. Anywho, Lloyd's building hijinks, here the result of accident rather than in Safety Last! when he climbs the building intentionally, are just as entertaining, straddling a line most film makers wouldn't have even known existed between dangerous and hilarious. So I can forgive the whole "My first talkie stunk, so I'd better recycle an idea that worked well in an earlier film" thing. There's not much to see with the plot here. There are a lot of funny moments and sight gags, but you have to trudge through a lot to get there. The movie really picks up when Lloyd gets on the boat. Like Safety Last!, this is not a movie I would not recommend to my acrophobic (or homophobic, I guess, because of that poster) readers.

shane-movies trivia: This is the second movie in a row with a Samuel Taylor Coleridge reference. That beats my previous record of one.

The Most Dangerous Game

1932 adventure movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Bob, a famous big game hunter, is having a blast hanging out with his friends on a boat, drinking cognac and saying profound things like "There are two kinds of animals--the hunters and the hunted. Luckily, I'm the hunter and nothing can change that." But then his boat explodes and sinks, and all of his friends drown or are eaten by sharks. Oh, snap! Luckily for Bob, he washes ashore on the island of Count Zaroff. He's a hunter as well, so they have all kinds of things in common! Things are going along swimmingly until Count Zaroff tells Bob that he's going to send him out into the wild so that he can hunt him, ending their friendship before it even gets started.

And it's a 1930's film, so you know exactly how it's going to end. I don't feel bad about giving away too many details up there because the poor dialogue in this (and the title) makes it fairly easy to figure it all out really quickly anyway. The problem in this movie are the same problems I have with the short story, one of the worst I've ever read. The story's kind of cool although very unrealistic. All the scenes that take place on the boat are a hoot. The camera tilts at one point (you know, because the boat is sinking), and the characters all flail in different directions, some while emitting girlish screams. Then, you've got some shark stock footage and a classic line--"Oh! He got me!"--screamed by a guy who the shark just got. And Robert Armstrong's portrayal of a drunk guy, sort of a cross between Harry Caray and a low-budget W.C. Fields, is absolutely terrible. Unlike the short story, this has a lot of redeeming qualities. The second half of the film (the part with all the huntin') is exciting enough, and the jungle they're racing through (King Kong's jungle actually) and Zaroff's pad are ideal settings, creating a nice atmosphere for the adventure story. I really liked the guy who played the evil Count Zaroff, a guy named Leslie Banks, even though you could put (see Leslie Banks as Count Zaroff in The Most Dangerous Game) after a definition of "hammy performance," chewing up the scenery with teeth that could rival those of any actor. Joel McCrea and Fay Wray (I think she was in King Kong, too) are fine in typical 1930's roles, and the music, although nearly constant, is pretty good. The best thing about this is the duration. At just over an hour, this doesn't really waste any time with extraneous details. It gets to its point, has the characters run around for a bit, and then ends. The short story, if I'm remembering correctly, is just the opposite. That thing seemed endless. The world would probably be a better place if Leslie Banks would devour every last copy of that short story.

My Winnipeg

2007 "docu-fantasia"

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Canadian director Guy Maddin revisits his sleepy hometown while at the same time attempting to escape it. He combines reenactments, archival footage, and oddball imagery to construct a portrait of Winnipeg. Well, it's not Winnipeg exactly. But it's his Winnipeg.

"Docu-fantasia" is not my word, by the way, but it does manage to capture what is going on with My Winnipeg. Maddin is the director of The Saddest Music in the World, Careful, and Brand upon the Brain!, all which showcase his appreciation for all things antiquated--silent melodrama, antique cameras, title cards. It's gimmicky, but it's a gimmick I can appreciate, so I love the movies. This is a heavily-narrated documentary on Winnipeg, sentimental and at times bitter, and also on Maddin's childhood, but the director's style--and this is a melange of influences working here--and a lot of the more fantastical elements of the city's history that he creates--frequent references to a hidden pair of rivers beneath the pair of rivers that are on the surface, the story about the horses trying to run through one of the rivers and freezing with only their heads being above the ice surface, the long-running television show about a guy who threatens to jump off a ledge and is talked back into the apartment by Maddin's mother every week (see poster)--give you more of a general feeling than information. Sure, I came away from the documentary knowing a little more about Winnipeg, but more importantly, Maddin's able to use the images and his narrative text to help me feel some of the more unique aspects of Winnipeg. Maddin's Winnipeg is a Winnipeg that hits you in the gut. It's a movie about loss, ennui, regret, family, hard work, values, escaping the past, and other stuff, shared in a way that I think most people can connect with despite a lot of bizarre subject matter and the off-the-wall film techniques. The movie also has this amazing ability to make things that just shouldn't be important into things that seem really important. I laughed frequently, but there were several moments that were downright touching. I really liked the extended sequence about the hockey players and the old sports arena, and the reenactments, featuring what I assume really is Guy Maddin's actual mother, are endearingly pointless. I'd recommend this, but somebody who's already seen (and enjoyed?) some of Maddin's other films would probably appreciate it a little more.

Edit: It's not Guy Maddin's mother. It's actress Ann Savage who was most famous for playing Mrs. Thornhill on Saved by the Bell. My apologies to everyone involved.

At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul

1963 Brazilian horror film (the first)

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Coffin Joe is an evil undertaker. You can tell because he's got an evil-looking top hat and a cape, and the severed hand motif in his home decor is pretty creepy. And he eats meat when he's not supposed to! Blazenly! Anywho, Coffin Joe really wants a son. His wife is unfortunately barren, so he does what any reasonable evil undertaker would do. He kills her sadistically, then kills his best friend, and finally rapes his best friend's wife. But will his evil extracurricular activities catch up with him on the Day of the Dead? Du-du-dummm!

Marins has got a real presence, like a Brazilian Vincent Price. Now maybe that's just because everybody else in this movie looks like a farmboy, and Coffin Joe is wandering around with that cape and top hat thing, but I really like this absolutely Satanic character, and I think Marins shows some acting chops. This is a cheap movie. It starts like an Ed Wood movie with two introductions (Coffin Joe himself and a gypsy woman who paces her pad with this gigantic skull) reminiscent of Wood's The Amazing Criswell. The gypsy woman gives the audience a warning like you'd get in a William Castle horror film, and it displays the showman side of Marins, more circus barker than director. Marins is the type of director who does a lot with very little (check out the owl special effect or the especially creepy parade of souls), including what seems to be sound effects ripped off from a Disney "Sounds of Horror" record I had when I was a little kid. The violence is gruesome, especially for a grainy black and white movie, and also kind of goofy. The spider scene? Not for the arachnophobic. The bathtub scene? That doesn't even make sense. The abrupt end to a poker game? Well, ok. But you know, it all adds up to something to a well-paced, atmospheric, and at times genuinely creepy horror movie. Somehow, you get this feeling that something really evil is behind the making of this movie, and that gives it an edge.

More Jose Mojica Marin on the murky horizon.

Star Wars Uncut

2010 remake

Rating: n/r (but Dylan gave it a 16/20; he gave the original a 14/20, by the way)

Plot: See Star Wars: A New Hope.

Except this is fans from all over the world filming, contorting, or animating fifteen second segments of the sci-fi classic and submitting them to a website where they hopefully will get votes and make it into the final film. And it's completely bizarre and hilarious. This interactive approach to filmmaking is one of those things where you just have to say something like, "This is exactly why Al Gore invented the freakin' Internet!" This might be too jarring for a lot of people. You'll have a fifteen second clip with Star Wars characters colored on paper sacks butting up against people in cheap costumes swinging cheap light sabers at each other in a fenced-in backyard. A lot of these "directors" have a lot of talent. I especially enjoyed the clash of animation styles. Even more of these "directors" have a great sense of humor, taking the proverbial piss, throwing in some Kill Bill or Simpsons references, and really having good creative fun. Star Wars has been parodied and poked at so many times that something like this shouldn't work at all. But this thing works (maybe best in installments; Dylan and I watched it in chunks) on a few levels. It's surprising and hilariously awkward, it's frequently very clever, and it's often pretty dang cool looking. But it's also a weird homage to the movie, its influence and the adoration that people all over the world have for these characters and this timeless story.

You can watch it here: http://www.starwarsuncut.com/
Or watch a trailer (really, a 4 1/2 minute chunk of the movie [all a lot of you will be able to take] as the characters escape from the Death Star) here: http://io9.com/5515343/star-wars-uncut-is-finished-and-headed-to-theaters
Or you can just wait and watch it in a theater since the above article says it's heading to theaters.

No End in Sight

2007 horror movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A documentary about how our elected officials and the people they work closely with are sometimes really silly.

Quick confession: This documentary was so scary that I eventually decided to mute my television. Watching the antics of Dubya, Dick "The Man with One Face" Cheney, Booty Rice, and Donald Duck without the sound wasn't any less scary, so I ended up playing "Yakety Sax" over and over again as a soundtrack to the film. Then, I watched the documentary at twice the normal speed so that it looked more like outtakes from Benny Hill's show. It turned out to be hilarious that way! I typically avoid politics, and I didn't really need to be reminded about the goings-on of what will undoubtedly later be thought of as a Mt. Rushmore of ruination and American embarrassment. I'd be lying if I said I enjoyed this, and I'm not sure I really know enough to figure out if I'm being duped by a deluge of propaganda. I'm also not sure how much of this is new information or how much is just a rehash of stuff I would already know if I paid attention to the always-reliable American media. I did think a lot of this--image juxtaposition, the repeated "declined to be interviewed for this film" line, one-sided narration--was a little too obvious; the statistics and interviews of the people involved were effective by themselves. This is shocking, jaw-droppingly so, like a horror movie where you already know the ending but are stuck on the edge of your seat anyway. I'd love to watch this with a Bush supporter to find out how he'd justify any of this. God, I wish this was a mockumentary.

The hippie half of Cory recommended this documentary.

Brewster McCloud

1970 bird documentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: After stealing from the wardrobe of Waldo (of Where's Waldo infamy), the titular Brewster hides out in a bomb shelter deep within the Astrodome. He spends his time studying birds, developing intricate wings so that he can fly, and exercising his flying muscles to prepare for when the big day arrives. He's helped by his guardian angel, the woman in the shower in that one scene in M.A.S.H. Meanwhile, a mass murderer is apparently on the loose in the greater Houston area, and a

Whether or not you actually like this movie (and I suspect there's only a small percentage who will), you've got to at least appreciate how different it is from anything else, even other Robert Altman movies. I imagine there are a lot of Altman fans who wouldn't necessarily like anything about this movie, and a lot of fans of Brewster McCloud who might not like any other Robert Altman movies. But I don't know who those second group of people might be. Part-fantasy, part-social statement, part-murder mystery, part-nature documentary, the mash-up that is Brewster McCloud succeeds as an oddball in the oeuvre of Robert Altman and cinema in general, like a crazy aunt you forget you have until you read about a news story about how she's living in a studio apartment with more than thirty cats and piles of Popular Mechanics magazines with all the eyes cut out of the pictures. About that comedy--a lot of it's the sort of humor where you're not even sure if there's an intent to be funny. There's an odd combination of the old-timey slapstick you'd expect to see in something from the 20s (chase scene with a portly Astrodome security guard and Brewster before the latter has gotten a line), word play reminiscent of a Laurel and Hardy feature (a hilarious exchange between the detective and a guy about the height of a suspect), and really dry humor that you might miss if you blink (opening music credited to Francis Scott Key). The movie begins with a tongue completely piercing a cheek and popping out the other side and never goes back in, a big ol' middle finger of a movie after Altman's success with M.A.S.H. I really like Bud Cort in this, but Sally Kellerman as that sexy wingless guardian angel and the always-sexy Shelley Duvall are also really good. This is a fun movie that gets better with repeated viewings, and I'd definitely recommend it to three or four people, none who I have actually met yet.

No Impact Man: The Documentary

2009 documentary

Rating: 12/20 (Jen: 16/20)

Plot: Colin Beamer (That's not his name, and I'm too lazy to look up his name. That's OK though because now when he Googles himself [it's likely that he frequently does], he won't get to my blog and have his feelings hurt by my comments on what is essentially an advertisement for himself.) decides to live one year without refrigerators, toilet paper, electricity, or anything else that makes an impact on our environment.

Colin Blorpin didn't direct this movie about himself, but I have no doubt that he rounded up the posse to have it made. I'm sure he really cares about the environment and hopes that his experiment will motivate others to do something. He nudges up against some good things here--buying locally and seasonally, knowing where your food is coming from, eliminating the amount we waste as Americans--but there's not nearly enough details about the hows and whys. So No Impact Man fails to make much of an impact at all, and it seems like less of an informational piece than a big publicity stunt. Which, I suppose, makes it effective. I now know all about the Bathworth family, especially about how much he wants to sell books.

Jen added this to the list during my streak of "man" movies, a streak which, by the way, might have just as much of an impact on the environment as this movie.

Note: I might just be in a terrible mood and taking it all out on this movie and this poor guy who might be completely genuine and who I am judging unfairly. I apologize to Colin Blipper if that's the case.

Madhouse

1974 horror film

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Paul Toombes is a horror film actor, famous for playing Dr. Death. When his girlfriend is murdered, Toombes loses his mind and his career and is committed to a mental institution. He's lured to England to film a television series with his old character, and upon his arrival, people start dying. Oh, snap!

This is a really boring movie. There's nothing wrong with Vincent Price or really even his character or the fictional character his character plays. In fact, Dr. Death looks pretty cool, especially during one of the few good scenes in the movie--Dr. Death stalking one of his female victims through an elaborately landscaped yard. But a few good-looking scenes and a solid Price performance isn't enough to salvage this oft-incomprehensible borefest. It's either confusing (what the heck is with the weird spider woman?) or I got bored and lost focus. At first, I thought that some of the movies-within-the-movie were interesting, but I started to recognize them from other Vincent Price movies, and then it all just seemed cheap and lazy. Bonus points award for not only Vincent Price but Vincent Price singing, something that always makes movies a little better.

King Kong Escapes

1967 King Kong movie

Rating: 7/20

Plot: Some people with their own submarine venture to Kong Island for reasons that I can't remember, and discover that the King himself is alive and kicking. And beating his chest. Naturally, he falls in love with the only female on the submarine. Meanwhile, a guy who you know has to be evil because he's got a cape builds a King Kong robot because he wants to extract something precious from the depths of the earth. When that doesn't work, he decides to kongnap the titular hero and use him.

This is quite the ridiculous slab of Japanese funk, but I'd much rather watch this movie than either the 1976 King Kong or the Peter Jackson remake. It's worth the price of admission (free if you shove it down the front of your pants and run out of the store like I did) for the shots used to show that Kong is enamored by the girl. He wiggles, rolls his eyes, and quite frankly, looks like he's masturbating. Which begs the question--is there a movie that features King Kong jism? Is there a movie called King Kong Jism? What about a (probably pornographic) movie called King Dong? What about a band called King Kong Jism? This movie's got a little something for everybody with the exception of bodies looking for the aforementioned jism. Hey, there's another great band name--Aforementioned Jism. You get some wonderful dubbing. And by wonderful, I mean absolutely horrible. A lot of the characters sound a little like John Wayne. You get some rikongilous fight scenes with guys in goofy suits, including a T-Rex thing that does this goofy drop-kick thing. And that King Kong robot? Hell, yeah! You get some terrific dialogue. "Don't sink the ship" and the poetic "He's an oriental skeleton, a devil with eyes like a gutter rat" spoken about the bad guy whose name just happens to be Doctor Who. You get plenty of irritating sound effects if you're in to that sort of thing, and a whole bunch of shots meant to show perspective, shots designed to prove that we're not just looking at toys in a bathtub but that somehow make things worse. It's all pretty stupid, but at least it's never dull.

I just looked it up. There is a porno parody called King Dong. There's also a Chinese restaurant called King Dong. And a variety of other websites. There isn't a movie called King Kong Jism though.