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Busses Roar (1942, D. Ross Lederman)
Busses Roar is a slight propaganda film. It doesn't fully commit to any of its subplots, not even the patriotism. With the exception of the establishing the villainous Japanese, German and the gangster...
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Quicksand (1950, Irving Pichel)
Quicksand is a film noir with room for cream and about five sugars. The genre often has a morality element to it, but this entry goes way too far with it. Or it might just be how the film treats lead...
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Fear in the Night (1947, Maxwell Shane)
Fear in the Night shows just how far something can get on the gimmick. Bank teller DeForest Kelley wakes up one morning from the dream he killed someone. He then discovers evidence of his crime and, as...
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Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead (2014, Tommy Wirkola)
How do you follow up Nazi zombies? Nazi zombies fighting Russian zombies. Sort of. That aspect of Dead Snow 2 comes near the end, with director Wirkola first having to deal with the fallout from the...
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The Human Condition I: No Greater Love (1959, Kobayashi Masaki)
The Human Condition I: No Greater Love is about, you guessed it, the human condition and the problems with being a humanist when you’re working in a foreign country your country has invaded and...
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Bullets Over Broadway (1994, Woody Allen)
Bullets Over Broadway has a lot going for it. Between Chazz Palminteri, Jennifer Tilly and Dianne Wiest, there’s a lot of great acting and great moments. There are a decided lack of great scenes,...
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Where’s Marlowe? (1998, Daniel Pyne)
Where’s Marlowe? is a pseudo-documentary about a pseudo-documentary about private investigators. Miguel Ferrer is the private investigator and he seems like a good fit for the role, only director Pyne...
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Guardians of the Galaxy (2014, James Gunn)
Guardians of the Galaxy does something splendid and director Gunn never really acknowledges it, which just makes it more splendid. The Rocket Raccoon character–beautifully voice acted by Bradley...
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Shallow Grave (1994, Danny Boyle)
Shallow Grave has bold colors. The production design–by Kave Quinn–isn’t particularly good. Over ninety percent of the film takes place in a rather boring apartment. But that boring apartment has a lot...
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Birdman: Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014, Alejandro González...
The funniest thing in Birdman is, surprisingly, not when Michael Keaton and Edward Norton get into fisticuffs and Norton’s in nothing but speedos. The funniest thing in Birdman, which is about former...
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For the Emperor (2014, Park Sang-jun)
For the Emperor is a combination of bloody and pointless. Director Park is sort of impersonal about the violence–even though it’s usually very personal (knife fights)–as though giving it some distance...
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Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964, Byron Haskin)
Robinson Crusoe on Mars is silly. It’s inconsistent and silly. The film survives a weak first act–the narrative trick of opening with one character (played, poorly, by Adam West) and then transferring...
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Weekend (1967, Jean-Luc Godard)
The best part of Weekend is Jean-Pierre Léaud singing his dialogue while in a phone booth. He then gets into a fight with leads Jean Yanne and Mireille Darc as they try to get a ride from him. Weekend...
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The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942, William Keighley)
The Man Who Came to Dinner is, a little too obviously, an adaptation of a play. There are occasional moments outside the main setting–the home of Grant Mitchell and Billie Burke–but director Keighley...
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A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988, Renny Harlin)
The Dream Master has a really lame final scene, which is too bad since the second half of the film actually gets rather good. The script–from Brian Helgeland, Jim Wheat and Ken Wheat–is impressive for...
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The Watch (2012, Akiva Schaffer)
The Watch deals in caricature and stereotype. Ben Stiller’s the anal-retentive, Vince Vaughn (can anyone even remember when he tried acting) is the aging bro, Jonah Hill’s the kid in his early twenties...
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Eye of the Cat (1969, David Lowell Rich)
Eye of the Cat is what happens when you have a screenplay entirely concerned with being a thriller (by Joseph Stefano) and a director, Rich, who is completely incapable of directing thrills. There’s...
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Son of Godzilla (1967, Fukuda Jun)
Strangely enough, Son of Godzilla ends well. It’s a surprise because the film loses a lot of steam throughout. Whether it’s the human plot or the Godzilla plot, the scene inevitably fails because of...
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Rock Rock Rock! (1956, Will Price)
Some of Rock Rock Rock! is awful. Director Price goes for the most boring shot every single time–with his cast members on cheap sets, never making it into location establishing shots. Just once...
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Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964, Honda Ishirô)
I’m not sure if Mothra vs. Godzilla should be much better, but it certainly should be somewhat better. There are constant problems with the film; little things, big things, but clearly fixable things....
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