Posts tagged with "Review"
Thursday, 10. April 2008, 00:33:32
Love Letters, Taco Bell, Review, Beefy Cheesy Melt
The inventor of the Beefy Cheesy Melt.
While my sister and bro were here recently, me and John stopped in
to get something to eat at Taco Bell. I would put Taco Bell at #2 on my
favorite fast-food restaurants list. I might not eat there often, but it
is always a treat.
I ordered the new Beefy Cheesy Melt that they've been advertising the
hell out of on TV. I also got a traditional bean and rice burrito.
Unfortunately, the Beefy Cheesy Melt is not one of Taco Bell's best
efforts. It tasted bland. I guess that besides a cheeseburger there is
only so much you can do with some meat and some cheese. I put TBs
hottest hot-sauce on it to try to enhance it. But it didn't help much.
I was glad to have the burrito back-up. It's still only $0.99, and is a
classic. As for the Beefy Cheesy Melt, it's not exactly terrible but it
is far from being up to Taco Bell's normal standards. As such I can
only give it a 1 GU rating.
More fun was the Beefy Cheesy web site, which allows you to enter
words into predefined fields, then the site automatically generates
a love letter. So I decided just for the hell of it to write one for my
BFF Julie. I don't know how most people's letters come out on this
thing, but mine was...well, you'll just have to see it for yourself --
I think it's hilarious.
Yes, Julie, I love you more and more every patio...
And in case you are wondering, the words I chose were WINE, LAUGH,
MUSIC, HOT, PATIO, SPOKANE, MOVIES, FROLICKED, FUN, FOOD, and
SPRING.
BEEFY CHEESY MELT:
P.M.P.I. Rating (Out of 5)
JULIE'S CHEESY LOVE LETTER:
P.M.P.I. Rating (Out of 5)
Monday, 18. February 2008, 20:42:26
Charlize Theron, private detective, Edward James Olmos, Review
...
I picked up a used copy of Hollywood Confidential (1997) about six months
ago at a pawn shop. I came home one night after having had a number of
ryes and put the movie on and promptly fell asleep. So a few weeks ago
I tried it again, this time without the rye.
There don't seem to be any reviews of this movie out there. Even the
usually thorough Thrilling Detective doesn't have this P.I. listed in
the ranks. So I thought I would do a quick review and tell you a bit
about the movie.
Here's the set up. Stan Navarro (Edward James Olmos) is a former cop who
now heads his own large private investigative agency in Los Angeles. He
has a whole team of junior P.I.s working for him, all of them ex-law
enforcement people with rather troubled pasts just like Navarro. As the
movie opens we find one of Navarro's investigators, a guy named Lee,
tailing a Hollywood acting teacher and her sleazy boyfriend. Lee has
ambitions to write a P.I. novel (or perhaps a screenplay much like
Hollywood Confidential) and as he follows the acting teacher he dictates
into a little microcassette recorder. He will do this intermittently
throughout the movie, providing a bit of old-fashioned first-person
P.I. novel narrative.
Lee is following the acting teacher because it is thought that she might
be blackmailing one of her clients. There is also another of Navarro's
P.I.s, a woman named Sally (Charlize Theron of all people) who is working
undercover at a swank nightclub investigating some employee theft
that they suspect is going on. These two threads form the two subplots
and will continue on through the majority of the movie.
The main plot of the movie deals with a little matter that Navarro is
working on for one of his clients, a high-power attorney and agent named
Bliss. Bliss has a client who is a famous film director. The director is
married, but has been having an affair with a young woman on the side.
When the director wants to call it quits, the girl, Heather, just won't
go away nicely. So Bliss hires Navarro to pay the girl off and make the
problem go away. Navarro doesn't want to take the job. But when Bliss
threatens to cut off the 300K or so of work he sends him per year if he
doesn't, Navarro reluctantly goes along with it.
Navarro himself meets with Heather. He gives her 10 grand in cash and
tells her she needs to sign a confidentially agreement and leave
town. The only trouble is that Heather is young and naive and unwise to
the way things work in Hollywood, a true lamb among lions. Heather
refuses the deal. Navarro can't force her, and he backs off. The next
thing you know Heather is calling the famous director again. Which gets
an instant call from Bliss telling Navarro to increase the pressure. He
also sends Navarro more money, this time a 100K pay-off to get rid of
her. Navarro tries once again, but the girl just won't take the deal.
I can't go on any more at this point without writing in a plot spoiler.
But let's just say that there are details about Heather and the
relationship that eventually emerge when Heather attempts to commit
suicide, and which further explain the motivating factors involved.
I found the character of Heather to be too over the top. There's just
too much written into the script emphasizing her innocence -- which of
course they make sure to contrast with the narcissism of the Hollywood
types. It's not only hard to believe that anyone could be that naive
these days, but it's difficult to imagine that Heather, no matter how
innocent, wouldn't just decide to say to hell with all of it and to take
the 100K and make a new life for herself.
At the end of the movie, in the guise of one of Lee's writing classes,
we are given a reading of Yeats' "Sailing to Byzantium" pretty much in
it's entirety, which once again funtions to point out the vacuousness of
Tinseltown -- as if we haven't gotten the point by then. But in the end
Navarro plays it tough in true private-eye fashion, turns the tables on
Bliss and the famous director, and things turn out reasonably okay.
There were some really good ideas in this movie, but even good ideas
can turn out bad if you push them too far. I would say that Hollywood
Confidential is worth a viewing from the acting standpoint. Olmos is
always good, and it seems that his presence inspired both Cheron and
Richard T. Jones to the extent that both give really good performances.
And a couple of ryes might help this movie too. Just don't drink too many
of them and fall asleep.
I have to give this one a 3-1/2 GU, with at least 1 GU of that rating
being for the stars and the acting.
P.M.P.I. Rating (Out of 5)
Tuesday, 4. September 2007, 21:36:32
Review, Stardust, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert DeNiro
Michelle Pfeiffer might be the hottest
evil witch ever in Stardust.
Me and my BFF Julie got together last Sunday night. We caught some good
music at one of our local festivals here, ate some strawberry shortcake,
and then headed over to the theater to see Stardust (2007).
Julie told me that there had been a lot of comparisons between Stardust
and The Princess Bride. Having now seen both, I can tell readers that while
Stardust may not be The Princess Bride, that The Princess Bride isn't Stardust
either. The new movie has some good comedy bits in it, but in the main
it is a fairly serious fairy tale. Whereas The Princess Bride is anything but
serious from start to finish. In any case, Stardust is certainly better than
the strangely vacuous attempt that was The Brothers Grimm.
The movie stars Claire Danes, whose name was familiar to me but who I
had never seen in anything prior to this one. The lead male role is
played by Charlie Cox, who was totally unknown to me. The movie also
stars the much more familiar names of Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert
DeNiro. It has a large supporting cast, all of whom are good.
Here's the set-up. A young man named Tristan (Cox) in a village in
England is in love with a local girl who basically is just stringing him
along for her own amusement. Nevertheless he is in love with her, and so
when they witness a falling star one night he takes off in pursuit of
it hoping that it will win her over. He goes to the edge of a local
place called Wall, which features a wall that protects an enchanted land.
Crossing over the wall he then stumbles (quite literally) upon the fallen
star, who has turned into a young woman named Yvain (Danes). He binds
the woman with a magic cord to take her back to his village. But things
go awry (as things often do) and over the course of their adventures the
two fall in love with each other.
Yvain (Danes) and Tristan (Cox).
But Tristan isn't the only person who has witnessed the falling star.
When a dying king (Peter O'Toole) leaves his throne to whichever of his
four remaining sons can find the star, they go in pursuit also. Added to
this mix are three evil witches, all sisters, who want to find the star
and cut out her heart to give them back their youth. They choose amongst
themselves, and one of them, Larnia (Michelle Pfeiffer) sets out to find
the star too.
But if they have enemies, Tristan and Yvain also meet up with some
friends along the way in the persons of a rather eccentric sky-pirate
and Tristan's natural mother.
Danes and Cox are likeable in the lead roles. But it is Pfeiffer and
DeNiro who really steal this one. Pfeiffer is at the top of her craft
these days, and every little eye or hand gesture and every smile add to
her character. And DeNiro is wonderfully offbeat as the "poofy" sky-
pirate Captain Shakespeare, who discovers by the end of the movie that
your true friends are those who accept you just the way you are.
One final note. Although the special effects in this movie don't
predominate, they are what you might call "big screen" special effects.
This movie wouldn't be quite the same seen on a small television on DVD.
So unless you are lucky enough to have a big-ass plasma television in
your home, I recommend that you try to catch this one at theater while
you have the chance. And if you're in the mood, you might even want to
make it a "double feature" and stop for some strawberry shortcake before
you go. The two make a good combination.
Robert DeNiro as Captain Shakespeare.
P.M.P.I. Rating (Out of 5)
Thursday, 26. July 2007, 21:36:08
Mickey Spillane, Review, private-eye
Kevin Dobson.
I happened across a movie the other day called Margin for Murder (1981).
The info on the cable tab said that it was a Mike Hammer movie. So I
watched it.
Margin for Murder turned out to be a lot closer to Spillane than
the rather watered-down Hammer series with Stacy Keach. Wrinkled
raincoat and fedora aside, Keach just isn't Mike Hammer. Margin for
Murder gives you the real thing -- a screenplay that almost could
have been written by Spillane himself.
The teleplay was by Calvin Clements Jr., whose prior credits included a
wide range of television shows ranging from Gunsmoke to Wonder
Woman. Not very impressive, really; and so it's very surprising to
find here a script of such high quality and faithfulness to the Spillane
stories. According to an IMDB reviewer, Clements was nominated for an
Edgar Award in 1981 for this teleplay. But I wanted to confirm that, and
a database search at the Mystery Writers of America site (who give out
the Edgar's) didn't get me any result either for Clements or Margin
for Murder. So maybe he was nominated and maybe he wasn't. I hate it
when I run into research problems like this, and I apologize to my
readers.
Whether Clements was nominated or not, he certainly wrote an excellent
teleplay. The movie features Kevin Dobson as Mike and Cindy Pickett as
Velda. The more familiar face of Charles Hallahan plays Det. Pat Chambers.
All of the actors do a good job in this, but given the strength of the
teleplay they have a lot to work with and would have had to have been
pretty crappy actors indeed not to have succeeded with this one. Mike
says exactly the things and does exactly the things in this movie that
you would expect him to say or do in a Spillane novel, as do Velda and Pat.
Cindy Pickett.
It would be difficult putting Margin for Murder and Kiss Me, Deadly
side by side. Kiss Me, Deadly is not only an excellent translation
of Spillane but is an acknowledged noir classic. Margin for Murder
has none of the sophisticated production values of the former. But it does
give a very dead-on Mike Hammer tale, perhaps more so than Kiss Me, Deadly.
The earlier movie was filmed closer to Spillane's own period, a 1955 version
of a 1952 novel. Margin for Murder is Spillane translated forward three
decades. I would perhaps give an edge to Kiss Me, Deadly between the
two, but both are very good and luckily you don't have to pick one or the
other -- you can have the pleasure of watching them both.
Even though Margin for Murder came out in 1981, the producers
seem to have been a little behind the times when it came to filming
this. Most of the clothing and hairstyles are more reflective of 1978
than 1981. Which doesn't affect the story in the slightest, of course.
The set-up is right out of I, The Jury. When a good friend of Hammer's
gets murdered, Hammer swears to find the killer and get revenge. Talking
with his friend's mother, he finds that his friend has left 100K worth of
diamonds, obviously the product of some shady deal. From that point it's
just Hammer interviewing witnesses and making a lot of noise and enemies
until the bad guys jump out of the woodwork. The ending, though, is a bit
more tame than the ending of I, The Jury.
If the movie has one weakness it is in the plot. This was a TV movie,
and like most TV movies back then the plot isn't a very sophisticated
one. It basically just takes you along to the places that you pretty
much expect to go. A real Spillane mystery would have kept you on
the edge a little more.
So taking a little off for the weak plot, I'm going to give this one a
4GU rating. If you like Spillane and want an "authentic" Mike Hammer,
you should definitely check it out.
P.M.P.I. RATING (OUT OF 5)
Thursday, 26. April 2007, 20:31:43
Charlize Theron, Monster, Movie, Review
Charlize Theron in Monster.
This is a review of a movie that is now four years old. Recent events have
made me decide to add a few comments on the movie anyway.
Monster (2003) is loosely based on the life of Aileen Wuornos, a woman
convicted of killing six people in the 1990s. And I would like to emphasize
that word "loosely." The story line of the movie differs from the actual
account in significant ways. And it is the fictionalized story that I address
here. These are just comments about a movie, not a piece of journalism on
the Wuornos case.
As the story opens, Aileen (Charlize Theron) is working as a prostitute
in Florida. She meets up with Selby (Christina Ricci), and the two find
they are attracted to each other. They go out on a date together and the
relationship quickly heats up. For Selby, her relationship with Aileen
represents the first time she has been able to openly express her
homosexuality. For Aileen, Selby is someone who cares about her and
accepts her. Selby is staying at a foster home and is due to return home
to her father. Instead, she decides to pack a suitcase and take up with
Aileen.
Aileen tries to get out of prostitution. She goes out on the job market
and does some interviews. Unfortunately, she has a rather unrealistic
view of what her options are. She also has a bad temper, and is liable
to lash out at the slightest provocation, real or imagined. Which of
course doesn't help things. Finally, she decides to go back to prostitution.
It is the only job she has ever had, and as she admits she is good at it.
Out turning a trick one night, the john takes her to a remote woods. He
quickly becomes abusive and beats her. He then ties her up and rapes
her. Aileen manages to free herself. She finds his gun. Full of pain and
rage, she empties six rounds into him. She then sets fire to his body
and takes off with his cash and his car.
Aileen and Selby have their ups and downs, just like most couples. At
the end of an argument one night, Aileen tells Selby about the killing.
Selby is shocked by her confession, but stays with Aileen anyway.
Aileen goes back to turning tricks. But things have changed since the
murder. She purposely baits her johns in order to hear what she wants to
hear. Eventually, she ends up killing six men. She saves the newspaper
clippings of their deaths in a little box. But the emotional intensity
of this movie and the centering on Theron's character are such that you
find yourself in several instances feeling there is some sort of logic
or justice behind the killings. And even where there is no justice behind
them, you find yourself sympathizing with Aileen's distress if not her
actions. That is how deeply the movie draws you in.
Theron's performance is sometimes a tad over the top, but in general is
superb. And this is coming from someone who doesn't ordinarily like
Theron in her roles. There is one scene in particular that stands out.
Aileen and Selby have gone to an amusement park. They take the ferris
wheel -- just the type of ride that frightened Aileen when she was young
(the movie is titled after an amusement park ride) -- and Aileen finds
herself enjoying the experience. Sitting with Selby, holding hands, she
smiles. And there is just so much communicated by that one smile. In my
opinion, that one smile alone justifies the Oscar that Theron received.
As I watched the movie, I kept thinking back to an English class I took
in my Junior year of high school in which my teacher tried to hammer
into us the difference between tragedy and pathos. I wish I had listened
a little bit better, because I kept going back and forth between the
two. As I remember, she taught a rather Nietzschean view of tragedy:
Tragedy occurs when unhappy events occur that are out of our control.
In other words, tragedy is of the gods or fate. Pathos, on the other hand,
is when unhappy events occur that are within our power to control or
which are the result of our own choices.
And there is a lot of talk about choices in this movie. Aileen tells
Selby at one point in the story of how she was raped as a child, and of
how she has never had any choice in what she has done since. There is
another scene in which the character Thomas, played by Bruce Dern,
perhaps the only real friend Aileen has, tells her that he had no choice
in going to Vietnam or the consequences it had upon him afterwards.
There is also a scene in which Selby's step-mother tells her that everyone
has choices, and that not everyone who had an unhappy childhood ends up as
a prostitute. Sometimes we have no choice. And sometimes we do, and -- all
consideration of not "blaming the victim" taken into account -- we simply
make bad ones. The former is tragedy; the later, pathos. That is also
the basis for our concept of conscience and of ethics.
Aileen's childhood was certainly a tragedy. And the circumstances
surrounding Aileen's first victim borders on the tragic also. But as
Heraklitus once wrote, a man's character is his fate, and as for the
rest it can be said that perhaps the best way to achieve healing for
the past or empowerment in the present is not to go around murdering
people. And the social services network that might have allowed a person
like Aileen to escape their past and move on to a better future was not
exactly absent in 1990.
Nevertheless the social contract does not work perfectly. It is obvious
that there are people in society who fall into the cracks. In the end,
Aileen's life is both tragic and pathetic. And it is not always as clear
as English teachers or philosophers would convey just where the boundary
line between the two falls.
Wednesday, 28. March 2007, 20:21:18
The Proposal, Review
Jennifer Esposito in The Proposal.
In the movie she actually carries a revolver,
not an automatic.
I picked The Proposal (2001) up a couple of weeks ago. I had
never heard of it and I didn't know any of the stars. I was thus
prepared to be disappointed. As it turned out, it is one of the best
crime/detective movies I've seen in a good while. So if you've already
seen The Departed and are asking yourself "what next?" amongst all
the lackluster fare these days, this is a movie you might be interested in.
The movie stars Jennifer Esposito and Nick Moran. I had never heard of
either of them, in spite of the fact that they both have a pretty good
number of movies or television shows on their resume. Esposito reminded
me of Jennifer Aniston's tougher older sister. I wasn't really drawn to
her in the opening minutes of the movie, but she kind of grew on me. And
I guarantee that she gives a whole new nuance to the line "You dropped
your peaches." As for Moran, he was excellent in this. There's something
about the shape of his face and especially his voice that remind me of
the young John Savage.
Here's the set-up. Detective Terry Martin has been undercover for six
months, posing as a fence and trying to get some concrete evidence
against a minor crime boss named Simon. Since he is patted down for a
wire virtually every time he comes into Simon's presence, he carries a
fake .9mm automatic in his holster which actually contains a micro-
cassette recorder. He has dozens of tapes on Simon collected, but has
yet to get that really big admission on tape that will nail the guy for
something big. He has also been using the excuse of a demanding wife to
distance himself from the operation when he needs to. Which works out
fine until he is invited to attend Simon's birthday party and is told to
bring his wife.
He needs to come up with someone to pose as his wife, and he needs to do
it quick. Working with his supervisor they call in a cop from the records
department named Susan Reese. Susan agrees to the job, but after spending
a couple of years doing Excel spreadsheets she's aching to do some real
investigative work and demands to be filled in on the details. Terry is
experienced, and cautious to the extent of paranoia. Susan has no experience
and, as it turns out, becomes kind of a loose cannon in it all.
Nick Moran
Nevertheless Susan's presence eventually gives Terry the opportunity to
get in closer to Simon than he has ever been before. Invited to a
weekend shin-dig at Simon's country home, the two have the opportunity
to finally get the goods on Simon -- either that, or get themselves
killed.
The character of Simon in this is a real dick. This is one bad guy you
want to see brought down -- no shades-of-grey noir-ish moral ground
here, you just want to see his ass nailed to the wall.
The plot of the movie is interesting and has enough good twists and
turns to keep most people happy. The plot progresses smoothly and
clearly in spite of the twists -- this isn't one of those movies you
have to see five times to figure out what the hell happened. The
Proposal is also filled with those little details that give it quite
a bit of Realism.
One minor point. After having watched the movie twice I still don't
quite understand where the title came from. There isn't anything in the
plot/script that I could locate that really suggests anything like "a
proposal" being made. The French version was titled Dangereuse
Proposition, which makes a lot more sense.
I'm not going to sit here and claim that this is a classic movie like
The Big Sleep or Chinatown. But it is one of the better cop movies
I've seen lately. There being a lot of positives about the movie and
really nothing in the way of negatives, I have to give this a 4 GU rating.
P.M.P.I. Rating (Out of 5)
Monday, 12. March 2007, 02:04:57
Mickey Spillane, Review, private-eye
Velda and Mike in Kiss Me, Deadly.
Take out the background on this cover and look at the
the pose between the two. It's beautiful.
The other night I stretched out on the couch to watch some television.
There being little else on, I watched a double feature -- I think on TCM
but I'm not positive about that -- back-to-back showings of The Big
Sleep (1946) and Kiss Me, Deadly (1955). I had seen the first one
countless times; it was my third viewing of the second.
There are plenty of reviews of Kiss Me, Deadly on the internet.
All you have to do is google the title and you will find at least six of
them real easy. But I wanted to do my own slant on the thing. There's
been a lot of stuff interpreting this movie in various ways. At the very
least it is considered a film noir classic.
Some of the reviews get pretty wild. I think these stem in the main from
early French interpretations. Whereas American audiences had trouble
with this movie when it first came out -- they considered it too violent,
too sexual, too overall dark in tone -- French audiences loved it.
Interpretations about the mysterious box that figures into the plot, for
example, often end up like this:
"But it is the box itself that dominates the movie, growing from an
apparent McGuffin into an icon of menacing future, the object of worship
in an impoverished present which, by implication, yearns for the hard
white light that abolished all shadows." (Citation)
That's quite a big deal being made out of this box. Or at least I think
it is, because to be honest I don't even know what the hell they are talking
about. The trouble with those interpretations, at the very least, is that as
a viewer you don't even know the box exists until about 25 minutes shy of the
end of the movie. Which is a fact they seem to forget about. But far be it
from me to confuse them with the facts.
Anyway, more on the mysterious box later. As the movie opens we see P.I.
Mike Hammer driving down the road in his sports car. He sees a woman
hitch-hiking along the road, and he picks her up. Evidently Hammer never
paid any attention to the warnings about the bad things that can happen
if you pick up hitchhikers. But then, Hammer isn't the type of guy to
listen to anybody about much of anything. The woman he picks up is naked
except for the trench coat she is wearing and after talking with her a
few minutes he finds out that she has escaped from the mental hospital.
She says that she isn't crazy -- that they threw her in to get her out of
the way because of what she knows. She tells him that if they make the
bus stop that she can get away and everything will be okay. But if she
doesn't, she simply tells him -- "Remember me."
Mike and the hitchhiker, Christina.
If there is a strange Pandora's box in this movie, it is those two
simple words, Remember me. Mike and the woman get run off the road
and are drugged and carried off. The woman is tortured and (assumably)
killed. Mike is totally out of it and the only thing he sees about his
captors are the fancy shoes of the guy that is responsible for it all.
They take Mike and put him back in his car and send him caroming down a
hillside. But Mike is thrown clear and survives. When he wakes up, he is
in the hospital with his secretary Velda and his cop friend Pat looking
down on him. As you might suspect, as soon as he gets out of the
hospital he wants to find out what is going on with it all.
But there are a lot of other people who seem to be very curious about
it all, too. Like some pretty serious Feds. Mike begins investigating in
spite of warnings and in spite of having his P.I. license revoked. It is
basic serial-type plotting -- push your way from one informant to another
until you find the truth. And, if you are Mike Hammer, break a few jaws or
fingers along the way. And all along there are the mysterious words --
Remember me.
Velda advises Mike.
"First you find a little thread..."
Mike's secretary Velda (Maxine Cooper) is an important part of this
movie. There is a great scene in which Mike goes over to her apartment
to discuss the case. Velda is working out on the ballet bar and pole to
keep herself slim -- a kind of early fitness thing. "First, you find a
little thread" she says to Mike as she spins around the exercise pole.
"The little thread leads you to a string. And the string leads you to a
rope. And from the rope you hang by the neck." In a later scene, Velda
tells him that he is willing to sacrifice everything in pursuit of the
"Great Whats-it." In the Hammer novels, the Great Whats-it is a euphemism
for the elusive and perhaps rather doubtful outcome at the end of the
investigative rainbow. It is hard to describe how important this stuff is
in the history of the hardboiled genre, and it is a tribute to director
Robert Aldrich that he really understood that. Weird and possibly erroneous
deconstructions aside, Aldrich understood the Realism operating here.
There are a good number of great minor characters. Especially good
is the character of Mike's friend Nick, a mechanic at a local garage.
"Va va voom!" Nick has a habit of saying. He is a well drawn, interesting
and likable character. The character of the mysterious Dr. Soberin also
is good, rising above the normal villain stereotype.
Mike and Lily
Best of all is Gaby Rogers as Lily -- it's a shame Rogers didn't make more
movies than she did. She is by turns vulnerable then tough and then possibly
crazy in this movie, with an odd kind of sexiness -- it is really the femme
fatale sexiness at its best, although she doesn't really function in that
precise role. "Kiss me, Mike" she says at the end of the movie, pointing a
gun at the detective's chest. "I want you to...kiss me." It's impossible to
describe just how threatening -- and creepy -- those lines are as delivered
by Rogers. You just have to see it.
There is some interesting background material on Rogers and Aldrich that
you can find here. It doesn't really figure into movie much, but it's there if
you want it.
And now back to the box. Some interpreters have said with regard to the
box that it had an influence in later movies such as Repo Man or Pulp Fiction.
I'm not really sure about those two. But one thing I can say is that Stephen Spielberg
MUST have known the ending of this movie when he did the end of Raiders of
the Lost Ark. I don't know that for a fact, but it seems almost impossible to
believe otherwise, the endings are just so similar. I leave it to the reader
to judge for themselves -- the "ultimate jury" as Mickey Spillane always said.
Incidently, the movie does not match the book. Aldrich and the writer
took off with the movie version, making the central mystery into a fable
of Cold-war paranoia. But it fits well, really.
Lily opens the mysterious box.
I don't even have to think about the rating for this one. Some rather
bogus science put aside, it is simply one of the best P.I. movies
ever made.
(Movie stills courtesty of Alain Silver.)
P.M.P.I. Rating (Out of 5)
Sunday, 4. March 2007, 00:21:22
Man-Eating Sabretooth Tigers, Review
The other night I watched Attack of the Sabretooth on the Sci-Fi
Channel. Attack of the Sabretooth (2005) is one of those movies that is
so bad that it is actually good. Kind of like Plan Nine From Outer
Space. Or Notes On a Scandal. Uh, wait, forget that last one -- I
must be thinking of some other movie.
The movie is one of the Sci-Fi Channel's own. And they make a lot of
them. So it only makes sense that there are going to be a good number of
turkeys in the mix. If nothing else, doing this review allowed me to create
the tag MAN-EATING SABRETOOTH TIGERS. Which is not something you
get to do on most days.
Attack of the Sabretooth is an obvious rip-off of Jurassic
Park and seems to make no apologies for it. The theme park is
smaller, and they've reintroduced sabretooth tigers instead of
dinosaurs. As the movie opens a guy named Niles, who is the entrepeneur
responsible for building the park, is having a shindig for potential
investors to try to raise more capital to finish and expand the park.
Now the last thing you would want to happen if you are entertaining
investors is to have some sort of accident -- say, having your man-
eating sabretooth tigers escape from the lab. So of course that's
exactly what happens. When Savannah, the lead scientist for the project,
goes to Niles and tells him that the animals have escaped, he tells her
to deal with it. So she goes off and tries to deal with it. At this point
the big cats are fairly well contained in the jungle outside the
compound, and everyone is optimistic that it is only a matter of time
before they will be tracked down. So of course that doesn't happen,
either.
Along with the theme park people, you have a group of college students
who have come over to the island on a scavenger hunt. And let's just say
that they don't help matters very much when, after the tigers have
gotten loose, they break into the computer lab for the park and turn off
the electricity so they can get into the gift shop. Yeah, all that to
get into the gift shop. Because in a way that is never fully explained
that's where all the stuff they need for the scavenger hunt is. And
evidently they don't have the money to just buy the crap.
So that's the basic mix. You've got the theme park people, the
investors, and the dumb college kids. As for the sabretooth cats, there
are only three of them. Two are your normal, run-of-the-mill man-eating
sabretooth tigers. The third one had something gone wrong with his DNA
or something and is missing his hindquarter section. But I have to say,
he gets around pretty good for a handicapped feline. You certainly have
to give him credit for that, even if he does eat people.
This is one of those movies where you get to try to guess who gets eaten
and in what order. Amongst the stupid college kids contingent, for
example, you have the following menu:
Nerdy Oriental guy type
Popular blonde slutty babe type
Dark-haired misunderstood Goth chic type
Sweet black girl with Caucasian features type
My money was on the Goth chic for getting eaten first. I won't tell you
if I was right or not in case you want to see the movie.
But the college kids aren't the only ones being attacked. There are
plenty of theme park workers for audience to choose from...I mean the
cats to choose from.
Now the tigers in this movie don't just maul and bite and eat their
victims. They also have claws like razors. So the first thing they
usually do is use their claws to decapitate the victim and send their
head flying. So this isn't just the normal things-go-wrong-in-the-lab
movie. It's part slasher movie. The fake blood in this one was made up
in gallon jugs and freely distributed.
It took me about two minutes into the movie to realize that it was
going to be a bad one. So I went over to my desk and got my notebook
out and went back over to the couch. I fully expected that what with
already one stupid (and funny) line in the script that there would be
more. And my hypothesis on that was correct. I couldn't get all of the
funny lines down, but here is a small sample.
GRANT: Why don't we turn everything on. Lights. Music. That way if
they're hiding out in the park they will head for the lab.
[Sure. Nobody likes a party better than a sabretooth.]
********
SAVANNAH: People will get eaten!
NILES: The only thing that's going to get eaten around here are the
canapes.
[Nothing like a good canape -- before the main course of homo sapien.]
********
SACHARIAH: Some say it's superstition. Others say it's...
GRANT: What?
SACHARIAH: ...the Evil Eye.
[Much more sensible. It's good to know we can forget all that superstitious
nonsense and get right down to dealing with the problem of the Evil Eye.]
********
SACHARIAH: The cats are bulemic. They have to eat, but they can't keep
their food down. They kill, they eat, and they vomit."
[Think of a New York restaurant full of supermodels and you'll be on the
right track.]
********
NILES: This whole getting ripped apart by a tiger thing, I have to tell
you, in two weeks...the media, they have attention spans like -- that.
(snaps his fingers)
[Unfortunately, that one is true. And now back to our report on the true
father of Anna Nicole's baby.]
********
GRANT: Twenty people are dead, Niles. It's carnage. It's like Baghdad.
[There are man-eating sabretooth tigers in Baghdad? Holy...shit! I never
even noticed!]
Ordinarily I would give this movie a 1 GU rating, and even then most of
that would be for the rather wild horror-movie type slasher effects. But
the script is just so ridiculously funny that I have to add another
point or two to it.
As Pat Maginess said at one point, "The world is nuts. You gotta laugh
at it sometimes or you'll go crazy."
P.M.P.I. Rating (Out of 5)
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