Adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's exciting novel of explorers finding prehistoric life on a South American plateau is rough going for adventure fans as Irwin Allen tosses ditzy Jill St. John into the mix, then populates his lost world with modern reptiles. We get an iguanodon played by an iguana with horns glued to its head, a stegosaurus played by a monitor lizard, and so on. When the chief scientist first catches a glimpse of the iguana, he tells his companions he thinks it might have been a brontosaurus! It's all less convincing than The Giant Gila Monster, which at least produced one of the great MST3K episodes. Oh, and there's also a giant green-glowing tarantula. (The tarantula scene does have one saving grace, however: an opportunity to look past it at Vitina Marcus, an American actress of intriguing beauty, being of Sicilian and Hungarian descent, who plays a native girl captured by the explorers.) The actors aren't bad here -- Claude Rains, Michael Rennie, David Hedison, and Fernando Llamas -- but they've got nothing to work with. Their best scenes all take place at the beginning of the film, before they ever get to the silly plateau.
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Adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's exciting novel of explorers finding prehistoric life on a South American plateau is rough going for adventure fans as Irwin Allen tosses ditzy Jill St. John into the mix, then populates his lost world with modern reptiles. We get an iguanodon played by an iguana with horns glued to its head, a stegosaurus played by a monitor lizard, and so on. When the chief scientist first catches a glimpse of the iguana, he tells his companions he thinks it might have been a brontosaurus! It's all less convincing than The Giant Gila Monster, which at least produced one of the great MST3K episodes. Oh, and there's also a giant green-glowing tarantula. (The tarantula scene does have one saving grace, however: an opportunity to look past it at Vitina Marcus, an American actress of intriguing beauty, being of Sicilian and Hungarian descent, who plays a native girl captured by the explorers.) The actors aren't bad here -- Claude Rains, Michael Rennie, David Hedison, and Fernando Llamas -- but they've got nothing to work with. Their best scenes all take place at the beginning of the film, before they ever get to the silly plateau.
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** One-time Reuters correspondent Forsyth plays to his strengths -- documentation and reportage -- in telling the story of a West German reporter attempting to track down Eduard Roschmann, a former SS officer who, as commandant of the Riga Ghetto, killed thousands. He gets crash courses in post-war Nazi hunting and the Odessa, which, he discovers, is a clandestine organization established at the end of World War II to facilitate the flight and resettlement under new identities of Nazi war criminals. All of which, including the contents of an old Jewish man's diary of his time in Riga that more than adequately establishes the evil of the SS and of Roschmann in particular, is fine and dandy. The problem is that the hero's quest, taking him from one less-than-revelatory source to another, may resonate more with other reporters than readers of thrillers. Forsyth fails even to allow the man to reflect on his real reason for pursuing Roschmann, which is the open secret of nearly the entire book. When the action finally picks up in the final quarter, it is marred by rather too much luck and coincidence, as well as some awfully stupid behavior from the bad guys. Not bad, by any means, but not nearly as exciting as you might expect. ** Rewrite of the Superman origin story has Kal-El coming to Earth, meeting his father's consciousness, and doing battle with the Kryptonian traitor General Zod and his band of genetically-engineered warriors. Director Zack Snyder and screenwriter David S. Goyer self-consciously jumble the timeline of Clark Kent's coming of age, but for them all Clark's "high points" are either action-oriented or moments when he manfully restrains himself from kicking a tormentor's butt -- which, sadly, qualifies him as the deepest character in the film. Overlong and almost humorless, though with one bit of unintended hilarity: after bemoaning the Kryptonian system of eliminating free choice with genetic engineering, Clark's dad proceeds to tell Clark everything he must do now that he's on Earth. Kids' stuff. *** Romantic comedy starring Deborah Foreman as a high school girl of the upper middle-class San Fernando Valley who falls for a punk kid (Nicolas Cage) from Hollywood, jeopardizing her social status and friendships. Sounds mundane, but is actually smartly directed, funny, and consistently entertaining, even if some of its ideas are only half-formed. Foreman is fine, but it's Cage who sets the tone with an Elvis-like smile that is impossible to resist. With Lee Purcell as a Mrs. Robinson-type mother whose attempted seduction of a Valley boy is a comic highlight. * An ancient virus turns out to be the triggering mechanism for a worldwide speciation event, signaling the next stage in human evolution. Against a backdrop of official denial and misinterpretation, a handful of scientists work to bring the truth to light. This literary disaster won the 2000 Nebula Award for Best Novel. Must have been the year that pretension was in. Or camp. Peopled with absurd characters whose incessant soul-searching is as shallow (and self-pitying) as it is unbelievable. Worse, it’s all chaff, spewed out by author Greg Bear in a transparent effort to conceal a severely under-written plot. Rarely have characters been so comically divorced from their circumstances. In a world in which tens of thousands of people (in America alone) have been murdered for fear of what they believe is a disease, one self-involved woman gushes that she’s never been happier. No wonder mankind is being replaced. ** Playboy's Miss August 1966 isn't actually created by Frankenstein (Peter Cushing), though she is brought back to life and used as a storehouse for the soul of her wrongly executed boyfriend -- who, oddly enough, holds a grudge against the three fops that sent him to the guillotine. Hammer horror not quite at its finest, with an unnecessary link to the Frankenstein character and the blandest sets ever to (dis)grace a "gothic" film. It has its moments, but most of them involve Susan Denberg in a dress with an attractive decolletage. At least the murders are suggestively gruesome. ** Bright colors, Tommy guns, funny-looking criminals, and retro clothing are about all this shockingly bad paean to the Dick Tracy character and comic strips has to offer. Director-star Beatty, lucky to have his yellow hat and trench coat (for without them he'd have no personality at all), takes on Al Pacino as Big Boy Caprice, a mob boss who wants to take over the city by yelling louder and more often than anyone else. Tedious, to say the least. Co-starring Madonna as sultry singer Breathless Mahoney and Glenne Headly as Tess Trueheart, the object of Tracy's passionless devotion. Young Charlie Korsmo plays the obligatory kid, a street urchin who talks about "dames" and wants to be just like Dick. With scads of other big name or well-known actors in supporting roles and a number of instantly forgettable Stephen Sondheim songs. **** Hammett's first novel, featuring the Continental Op, a detective with the San Francisco-based Continental Detective Agency. Called to the town of Personville, the Op finds his client murdered and the town, known locally as Poisonville, in the grip of rampant crime and corruption. He decides to clean it up, by pitting the various factions against each other. A labyrinthine plot and a body count that quickly rises to obscene proportion pull the reader into a nightmare world of murder and mayhem that even the Op finds difficult to resist. Hammet is "so hardboiled," Dorothy Parker wrote in The New Yorker, "you could roll him on the White House lawn.” Red Harvest is Exhibit #1. Based on four linked stories from 1927 and 1928, originally published in Black Mask. ** Odd (Anton Yelchin), a young short-order cook and closet psychic, sees visions of an impending massacre in his small town and sets out to stop it, using a wide variety of powers seemingly limited only by the dictates of the plot. Willem Defoe plays the chief of police who, despite Odd's perfect record in predicting such matters, appears to be more interested in making out with his wife than in helping Odd avert the disaster. Addision Timlin is Stormy, Odd's together-forever girlfriend, who seems to think that ignoring the advice of the guy who can see the future is her feminist birthright. Cloyingly smug and self-consciously cute, with an ending that is more about setting up future sequels than playing fair with the audience. Yelchin is good, though. Based on the book by Dean Koontz. **** Investigative reporter Irwin Fletcher, while working undercover to expose drug operations on a California beach, is approached by a wealthy man with an unusual offer: he wants Fletch to kill him. Comic mystery based (loosely) on Gregory Mcdonald's novel works on its own more obvious level, with Chevy Chase giving an ingratiatingly funny performance as Fletch. Plenty of laughs and a legitimate mystery to hold it all together. Strong supporting cast including Tim Matheson, Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, Joe Don Baker, and Geena Davis in a small role as Fletch's assistant. Forgettably followed by Fletch Lives in 1989. |
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