Hello Fellow Film Fans,
I hope all is well with you as we head into the summer months. Here are six movies I do not care for and I'm reviewing them for your safety. Happy Viewing Everyone.
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| Jeffrey Wright on the hunt. photo credit: rogerebert.com |
A good idea, a great location, and one excellent shootout sequence all wasted in a slog of a movie. The good idea: A baby disappears in a remote area of Alaska, possibly carried away by wolves. The baby's mother writes to an aged but noted wolf expert (Jeffrey Wright), asking him to come to Alaska to hunt and kill the wolves responsible but when he arrives something more sinister is a foot. Great location: the foreboding isolated snowy wilderness is well shot. Best scene: involves a police standoff between the local authorities and a Native American veteran. This sequence is so visceral and expertly staged it seems a shame the rest of the film is not better. After the first fifteen minutes the pace is nearly immobile. The atmosphere is ominous, and the performances are (I think purposefully) lifeless trying to make a comment on the darkness and mystical elements, but all that does is make the scenes boring. There's also a sequence featuring the baby's father in battle in Iraq that felt completely out of place to me. Too bad because it had promise.
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| Rambo ready to inflict pain. pc: IMDB |
I'm a big Sylvester Stallone fan and I like the previous four Rambo films but this one is a waste. Gruesomely violent in the extreme, it is more violent than the previous Rambo movies and feels overly violent even for a Rambo/Stallone picture (which is saying something). Please note I fast forwarded through several sequences because of the violence. John Rambo (Stallone) lives on a ranch in Arizona (as we saw him returning at the end of the previous movie). He suffers from PTSD from his Vietnam War (and other) experiences but seems to find peace raising horses, all the while he's built a giant underground tunnel system beneath the ranch. Also on the ranch are a woman who works for him and her teenaged daughter. The daughter wants to meet her estranged father living in Mexico. Against everyone's wishes the girl crosses the border, she's quickly captured by bad guys, pumped with drugs, and sold into the sex trade. Rambo goes to find her and get revenge on the big Mexican cartel. The abuse of the teenage character is also tough to watch and it becomes clear the movie will hurt/kill anyone for a shock. It's a poorly made off-putting film and all the worse if this is the end of the series. While the title indicates this may be the final film the ending leaves it open. Maybe Rambo: Final Blood, or Rambo: New Blood?
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| Tom Berenger & Melanie Griffith out in NYC. pc: IMDB |
A serial killer is attacking strippers in New York City, a detective and some mafia backed club owners band together to find the psycho. Great cast: Tom Berenger, Melanie Griffith, Billy Dee Williams, Jack Scalia (all fairly early in their careers). Directed by famed independent filmmaker Abel Ferrara with his usual mix of grime and neon. Terrible, but then again you never know with Ferrara.
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| Brad Pitt with his Doodle partner. pc: IMDB |
I've always been curious to see this movie but I should have just stayed curious and avoided it. As many have described, this is a crazy (also bad) version of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. An animated world exists in an alternate dimension but it is threatening to merge with our Earth and we need to stop it. The animation seems unfinished and when the live actors interact with the animated world everything suddenly looks like cardboard cutouts. This may be on purpose, but it was distracting and makes the film look cheap. There's an unnecessary prologue and the movie as a whole drags and drags. Only interest is the pre-fame Brad Pitt (though his performance is not great) and Kim Basinger is fun as the cartoon (or Doodle as they're called here) who comes to life. While I am not a fan, this movie does have its supporters.
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| Forger and Historian on the run. pc: IMDB |
An art forger (Jason Patric, zero charisma here) creates a fake "lost" Rembrandt painting but is double crossed by his employer and framed for murder. He goes on the run with an art historian (Irene Jacob) at his side. Beautiful European scenery/locations in a variation on a Hitchcock plot but a poor movie. Director John Badham is a decent director but he is unable to do anything here. Also despite Patric's 1990s good looks he shows no appeal and no ability to carry this type of adventure/thriller. He and co-star Jacob also have very little chemistry. There is a neat sequence showing how the forgery is created. That scene and the locations are all we have here.
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| Detective and Professor uncover the crime pc: IMDB |
A retired police detective (Jim Belushi) is studying to become a therapist. One day his professor (Linda Hamilton) hires him to follow her because she is having blackouts with no memory of what she's done. The detective quickly finds out she has multiple personalities (well two), one as the straitlaced college professor, and the other as a night owl who commits crimes. The rest of the story is not really worth your time. This film was released theatrically but looks and feels like a poor TV movie. The only interest for some might be seeing a young Elisabeth Moss (The Handmaid's Tale) playing Belushi's middle schooler daughter.
