Some years after her alcoholic father dies, Sonny Blake (Rose McGowan), a psychologist with her own radio talk show, moves back into the family home on suburban Rosewood Lane. Her neighbors, she soon discovers, live in fear of the teenage lad who delivers their papers. With good reason: this kid isn't just psychotic, he's probably supernatural. And now he's after Sonny. So -- demon paperboy. Whatever possibilities were to be mined from the idea of a kid who holds an entire neighborhood hostage to his own evil, Salva, who wrote and directed, tosses out like yesterday's news. All he's interested in is how far it's possible to stretch the viewer's credulity. The story is illogical, the characters are doltish, and it all leads exactly nowhere. Yet the trailer's probably not bad. Out of context, some of the scenes have the edge of a decent thriller. But that pesky script keeps getting in the way. Like when Sonny gets tired of having her house broken into and decides to do something about it, and buys a cat. Meow. Or when she calls the cops and a couple of lunkheads with badges show up. Or when a major character vanishes and we're supposed to pretend he never existed. You know, like that. Salva has talent, just not writing talent.
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Some years after her alcoholic father dies, Sonny Blake (Rose McGowan), a psychologist with her own radio talk show, moves back into the family home on suburban Rosewood Lane. Her neighbors, she soon discovers, live in fear of the teenage lad who delivers their papers. With good reason: this kid isn't just psychotic, he's probably supernatural. And now he's after Sonny. So -- demon paperboy. Whatever possibilities were to be mined from the idea of a kid who holds an entire neighborhood hostage to his own evil, Salva, who wrote and directed, tosses out like yesterday's news. All he's interested in is how far it's possible to stretch the viewer's credulity. The story is illogical, the characters are doltish, and it all leads exactly nowhere. Yet the trailer's probably not bad. Out of context, some of the scenes have the edge of a decent thriller. But that pesky script keeps getting in the way. Like when Sonny gets tired of having her house broken into and decides to do something about it, and buys a cat. Meow. Or when she calls the cops and a couple of lunkheads with badges show up. Or when a major character vanishes and we're supposed to pretend he never existed. You know, like that. Salva has talent, just not writing talent.
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++ Mostly embarrassing horror comedy with James Lorinz as ex-medical student Jeffrey Franken, whose discovery of a new form of crack that blows users' bodies to pieces comes in handy when his fiancée is torn to bits by a lawnmower. Using parts of dead, drug-using hookers to rebuild her, however, has unintended consequences. Themeless and underwritten, but with a few funny lines, and, thankfully, despite all the exploding bodies, very little blood. Penthouse Pet Patty Mullen plays Franken's betrothed. Louise Lasser has a small part as his mother. Smart, it ain't. +++++ Stylish, top-notch thriller, adapted from Thomas Harris' Red Dragon, about a serial killer who murders whole families and the FBI profiler lured out of retirement to catch him. Beautifully directed, and also written, by Mann, who surpasses the novel in several key aspects, most notably by dumping Harris' trick ending and replacing it with an honest climax, while maintaining the suspense and breathless pacing of the book. William Petersen, as Agent Graham, grounds the film nicely, and Tom Noonan makes a formidable and menacing psycho. Brian Cox, in a role later made enormously famous by Anthony Hopkins, plays Hannibal "Lecktor," a captive cannibal with links to the killer; he's not as flashy as Hopkins, but very effective in his own right. Had to be "reappraised" by critics to get the credit it deserves. ++++ Democratic populist from California is persuaded to run for the United States Senate on the idea that because he can't possibly win, he can say whatever he wants. Then he begins rising in the polls. Written by Jeremy Larner, a former speechwriter for Eugene McCarthy, this wry, realistic portrait of high-stakes political campaigning follows the inexperienced candidate (Robert Redford) and his savvy campaign manager (Peter Boyle) from announcement to election, and offers a behind-the-scenes (and decidedly adult) look at everything in between, things like campaign stops, television advertising, and a debate. Mentions without really examining a number of key issues, which keeps the film from ever becoming terribly partisan. Larner's script, by the way, won the Academy Award for 1972. ++ Sequel starts well, picking up right where the 1978 original left off, then deteriorates into typical slasher fare as babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) gets taken to the local hospital where Michael Myers kills everyone in sight in order to get to her. Supporting characters (including the always-unpleasant Leo Rossi as a crude ambulance driver and Lance Guest as his good-guy paramedic partner with inexplicable feelings for Laurie) add nothing but the body parts Michael requires to make each killing unique. John Carpenter evidently added more gore to Rosenthal's film in post-production. He should have added more imagination to his and Debra Hill's script. Also starring Donald Pleasance. ++1/2 Demi Moore plays a pregnant woman who finds a prophecy in the room she's just rented to a strangely quiet and intense man that links her unborn child with the Biblical apocalypse. She is not amused. It might amuse the audience, though, the way this everywoman turns into a major snoop at the drop of a hat, or, later, how she is able to gain entry to a state execution simply by walking through an unlocked door. The movie starts well enough, with mysterious and portentous happenings around the world, yet just when it should have turned inward -- to Moore and her husband Michael Biehn, who are both having to deal with Moore's previous miscarriages and her difficulty keeping the faith for this pregnancy -- it jumps the track and turns Moore's private apocalypse into a war between Christ and the meanie who smacked him one before his death 2,000 years ago. But this is a well-acted film, so it is, at least, watchable throughout -- even if it plays awfully fast and loose with Christian theology. "How can you take seriously a story in which only Demi Moore stands between us and the end of the world -- and her only ally is Hebrew scholar Avi (Manny Jacobs), who looks and talks like a teen-aged Woody Allen...?" - Michael Wilmington, The Los Angeles Times, April 01, 1988 "Basically 'The Seventh Sign' is the Book of Revelation played out as a paranoid yuppie fantasy -- 'She's Having a Baby' crossed with 'The Omen.' We could call it 'She's Having Rosemary's Baby.'" - Hal Hinson, The Washington Post, April 01, 1988 ++ This film has one very cool visual effect and a fun noir comic-book style (even though it was based on a video game), but the story is a mess. Rather than trying to find the logic in the violence, it sees the two as equivalent, so whenever the plot starts to go off the track, the filmmakers simply toss in some more mayhem. Mark Wahlberg plays Max, a cop tortured by the reality that one of the men who killed his wife and baby is still at large. Mila Kunis plays Mona Sax, the gun-toting sister of a woman hacked to pieces in an alley not far from Max’s apartment. The deaths are related, of course, and lead Max to a shadowy group of people who sport wing-like tattoos as protection against a terrible evil. Or something like that. Cue the machine guns. ++1/2 Science fiction classic, loosely based on the H. G. Wells novel, about an invasion of Earth from Mars plays better in the memory than on the screen, where we can hack it down to the select few scenes that are its bread and butter. Most of these scenes occur during the first third, when the action is localized to a small California town and the characters still seem to matter. Haskin, however, taking the title too literally, wants to tell a much broader story, evidently believing that mankind's peril will be ours. Of course, it doesn't really work that way, and as the images dance between Washington, D.C., and stock footage of calamity around the world, our titular heroes are reduced to searching for each other in churches throughout Los Angeles. But those early scenes, menacing and mysterious, are indeed good, and the Martian ships never lose their appeal: it’s fun watching them blast humanity to smithereens. With Gene Barry and Ann Robinson, and Lewis Martin as a pastor who doesn't quite make it through the valley of death. Wells' book was also adapted by Steven Spielberg in 2005. ++ Badly directed story of preposterous serial killer (Keanu Reeves) who murders women for no discernible reason other than to feed his incomprehensible obsession with his favorite detective (James Spader). To make things more interesting, Reeves begins sending Spader photos of his intended victims, giving him one day to find them before he strikes. The "time-bomb" antics occasionally work, but Charbanic is always ready with another slo-mo, herky-jerky flashback to put a stop to that. Good cast wasted all around. Also with Ernie Hudson and Marisa Tomei. ++1/2 You know that the Bond movies are all about the Bond movies when they start building stories around actors playing secondary characters. This one is a send off for Judi Dench, who took over the role of M with Goldeneye. M, of course, is James Bond's boss. M is the person who sends Bond off on all his adventures. M is not 007. Yet here she is, the target of her own government (who think maybe she's too antiquated for her job) and a maniac with a personal grudge. Add to that a plot that sees Bond (Daniel Craig) returning to his family home (a dark topic he refuses to discuss) and the (re)discovery of Q and Miss Moneypenny, and what you get is not so much a Bond movie as a Bond family soap opera. Javier Bardem plays the madman, Silva, and his performance is creepy enough, but the character's a chump. Director Mendes is convinced he is one of the great Bond villains. A great Bond villain, however, doesn't whine about doing his job or others doing theirs, and he sure as hell isn't consumed by mommy issues. Silva is supposed to be a cyberterrorist, but we must take that on faith. All we know for sure is that he's a spoiled brat who got his butt spanked long ago and isn't ever going to forget it. Some villain. The movie is best, by far, in its first half, when Bond, shot and presumed dead during the opening, later learns that MI6 has been destroyed and battles back into shape to take on the psycho responsible for that. One fight scene is imaginatively shot in a high rise office building in Shanghai against the backdrop of one of those giant Asian electronic advertising screens. Bond's big break comes when he speaks to Sévérine (Bérénice Marlohe), the maniac's mistress. It may be the best scene in the film: dark, quiet, and humming with tension. But the second half is a drag, one that plays up the film's confusion over point of view. Is the story about Bond, M, or Silva? You get to take your pick. Which isn't the way a "Bond movie" should work. |
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