-
The Mechanic (1972): C-
As slow as molasses and just as exciting, The Mechanic wants to be a Jean-Pierre Melville film, but instead proves merely a sluggish marriage of affected existentialism and brute violence. Director Michael Winner’s methodical pacing, casual references to masculine “codes,” and two scenes involving martial arts – not to mention his story’s focus on a…
-
The Housemaid (2011): B
A glossy, tawdry thriller that barely scratches the surface of its upstairs-downstairs dynamics, The Housemaid – a flamboyantly melodramatic remake of Kim Ki-young’s 1960 film of the same name – charts a household thrown into turmoil after the hiring of a new maid. That woman, Eun-yi (Secret Sunshine’s Jeon Do-yeon), is first spied blowing bubblegum…
-
Ghosts of Mars (2001): B-
Ghosts of Mars, John Carpenter’s much-maligned last feature (to date), may have fake-looking exterior sets and some one-liners that should have never left the word processer, but with propulsive momentum and surprisingly deft aesthetics, it’s a rather sturdy modernized mash-up of Assault on Precinct 13 and Escape from New York. In the distant future, Mars…
-
Buried (2010): B
A film designed to rattle claustrophobics, Buried situates itself exclusively inside an underground wooden coffin inhabited by Paul Conroy (a suitably frantic and furious Ryan Reynolds), a U.S. contractor working in Iraq. Armed only with a lighter and a cell phone, Paul tries to make sense of his predicament while not completely losing his mind,…
-
Despicable Me (2010): B
As with Megamind, Despicable Me concerns the humanity of a super-villain, in this instance lifelong baddie Gru (Steve Carell). In Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud’s inspired if slight animated saga, Gru operates in a world accustomed to his nefariousness – his neighbors hardly blanche at his malevolent-looking residence amidst their cookie-cutter planned community homes, and…
-
Escape from New York (1981): B+
John Carpenter’s widescreen compositions not only lend beauty to Escape from New York but also enhance its paranoia over (and disgust with) military-industrial complex tyranny. In a future 1997, a spike in crime leads the U.S. government to wall off Manhattan to make it a maximum-security prison for the nation’s criminals. When terrorists hijack and…
-
Terror Train (1980): C
After Halloween and Prom Night, Jamie Lee Curtis cemented her “scream queen” status with Terror Train, a run-of-the-mill slasher film whose central gimmick is setting its action on a train. In truth, however, this routine horror effort is most notable for featuring a young David Copperfield in a runtime-padding role as a magician wowing the…
-
Devil (2010): C-
“From M. Night Shyamalan” no longer portends positive results, and true to form, his producer’s credit on Devil accurately reflects the generally cruddy nature of this B-movie, in which five people get trapped in a high-rise elevator – and one of them turns out to be Satan! John Erick Dowdle’s film has a compact set-up…
-
Pieces (1982): C
A young boy works on a nude-woman jigsaw puzzle while singing “Humpty Dumpty,” and when his mother viciously chastises him for such obscenity, he hacks her into bits and pieces and then poses as a traumatized victim to the police. This 1942 prologue sets the stage for the prime narrative of Pieces, in which a…
-
Christine (1983): B
John Carpenter makes the best of a difficult situation with Christine, a faithful adaptation of one of Stephen King’s lesser (and more ridiculous) works. There are few scares lurking in this 1979-set haunted-car saga, in which nerdy high-schooler Arnie Cunningham (Keith Gordon) falls dangerously in love with a 1958 cherry-red Plymouth Fury named Christine, since…
