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Home Movie (2008): C-
Re-envisioning The Bad Seed with Blair Witch POV gimmickry, Home Movie delivers a compilation of the Poe family’s titular footage, which increasingly comes to center on the psychotic pastimes of the clan’s twin boy and girl. Writer/director Christopher Dunn suggests all sorts of reasons for the pathologically silent kids’ actions, which start off as merely…
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The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973): A-
Laced with a fatalism as romantic as its Beantown milieu is damp and grungy, The Friends of Eddie Coyle (based on George V. Higgins’ best-seller) affords Robert Mitchum a world-weary role that both hews to – and yet evocatively undercuts – his legendary tough-guy persona. In a manner somewhat akin to Clint Eastwood’s reevaluation of…
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Bigger Than Life (1956): A
Nicholas Ray’s expressionistic color-coded widescreen is nothing short of revelatory in Bigger Than Life, a masterful melodrama whose aesthetic beauty works in service of a stinging social critique. Trapped in a life of ‘50s Norman Rockwell banality, full of polite bridge-playing dinner parties and talk of vacations that never materialize, elementary school teacher Ed Avery…
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Takers (2010): C
Takers’ bank robbers are clearly clueless about there being no honor among thieves, since despite some minor reservations, they’re quite comfortable reenlisting with shady former cohort Ghost (T.I.) after he gets out of jail for serving time because of a prior heist gone wrong. Then again, since John Luessenhop’s film is merely a mini-Michael Mann…
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The Holy Mountain (1973): B+
Skewering organized religion, consumerism, and both American peace-and-love hippiedom and militarism via a surreal search for spiritual enlightenment, The Holy Mountain is a rainbow-hued phantasmagoria of Dali-esque dementia. Alejandro Jodorowsky’s film is at once more lucid and batshit insane than his prior cult classic El Topo, making its social satire more overt and yet streaking…
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X-Men: First Class (2011): C
Refreshing the franchise by returning to its ‘60s genesis, X-Men: First Class details the formation of Marvel’s mutant superhero team, created under the auspices of benevolent telepath Professor Xavier (James McAvoy) and militaristic metal-controlling Erik Lehnsherr, aka Magneto (Michael Fassbender). Director Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass) dully rehashes Magneto’s concentration camp origins from the first X-Men in…
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El Topo (1970): B
A hodgepodge of hallucinatory symbolic nonsensicality, El Topo has lost little of the maddening, bewildering weirdness that made it a seminal midnight-movie phenomenon. A cult reputation seems fitting for a film made by a mind seemingly warped by religious nuttiness, with Alejandro Jodorowsky’s saga operating as a Christianity-infatuated spaghetti Western spoof that gleefully frustrates literal,…
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The Rite (2011): C-
An Exorcist-style redux about belief in the face of Satanic possession, The Rite (supposedly based on true events) parades about with a self-seriousness at odds with a second-half dominated by veiny-faced, limb-contorting special effects and screaming, screaming, screaming. Determined not to follow in the footsteps of his mortician father (Rutger Hauer), Michael (Colin O’Donoghue) flees…
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John Carpenter’s Vampires (1998): C-
John Carpenter’s track record may not be unblemished, but that still doesn’t account for the rampant cheesiness of Vampires, a suspense-free snark-fest desperate to turn its protagonist – vampire slayer Jack Crow (James Woods) – into a Snake Plisskin-style icon of supernatural-badass cool. That goal is a futile one, however, in large part because Crow’s…
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The Rocketeer (1991): C
Joe Johnston accurately replicates the look and feel of ‘30s serials with The Rocketeer – too accurately, in fact, for his film’s own good. Fidelity to period details is matched by a faithful spirit of pre-WWII aw-shucks superhero blandness in this comic book-y saga (based on Dave Stevens’ graphic novel), which finds flyboy Cliff (Bill…
