Dagon II Reviews

Payback (I) (1999)

A mad-slasher filmed tricked out as a tough gangster movie.

[2/10 · 24 December 1999]

In slasher films, a nameless killer wearing a mask uses an improbable series of coincidences to kill victims with increasingly cruel and sadistic methods. The difference between slasher flicks and Payback is (1) the killer has a name, (2) the killer doesn't wear a mask, (3) the killer dispatches hoods instead of sexy teenagers. That's it. Deadly dull unless you're entertained by cruelty and theatrical blood. Avoid this alleged enterta

Restoration (1995)

An Intelligent, Literary Film

[2 March 1999]

A beautiful & thoughtful movie about chance and caprice in human lives,and about how love and folly shape us. A unity of word, appearance, and action distill the reign of Charles II into the soul of a doctor who lives through a "new age" of human flowering. A movie aspiring to and attaining the qualities of a literary novel, powerfully combining the naturalistic and the symbolic, and equal to best adaptations of Jane Austen. Restoration will be certain disappointment for movie-goers who expect explosions instead of drama and grunts.