screamin' hamster Reviews

Sin City (2005)

could steal your soul - the result of arrogant pretension

[6 April 2006]

I had written a review and left it at work. Now i have the urge to comment, so here's a short version of the review. Weirdos, but particularly Mickey Rourke, hyperkill a bunch of people.

Mickey Rourke hyperkills someone again, then, uh, Mickey Rourke hyperkills someone. Various violent sociopaths and demented victims say brainbeatingly dumb crap in hyperlurid noir-talk, which could kill your brain cells and steal your soul.

As Joe Bob Briggs would have said, it has blood,breasts, bimbo-fu, mutant-fu. So, maybe it has bad-movie charm, right? No such luck. It's not live action, which changes a lot and, much worse, it seems to have been made to be in some way, art, so instead of being able to smile at how goofy and awful it is, you're very cheesed off, then overwhelmed by the arrogant pretension of the sadists who gave us this steaming celluloid turd.

Watching this movie is like whizzing in the wind and then proclaiming "damn i love being this wet and smelly!"

You are warned.

Lord Love a Duck (1966)

When ideas are handled by those who do not trust ideas or Bad Movie!

[27 February 2005]

Bad Movie! Down, no treats for you movie! And no walkies! Bad Movie!

A lot of this has been said. Mike from Stockton had a pretty good handle on "Lord...."; even saw the TV series Batman camera angle/cutting usage, but didn't see it's true awfulness.

I vaguely knew this movie existed. Then i got the digital cable version of my movie package and now i had a zillion movie channels; and they all needed to be filled by product. So some movies will be shown again and again, etc. Guess what one of those was.

Some comments on "Lord...." and related topics:

A personal conviction or maybe even an axiom - movies that don't even have an aspiration to be "good" can be comfortably "bad"; no problem. Movies that aspire to be "good"? -- well, when they are bad, they are very, very bad. Why? farther to fall? I guess. Everyone's expectations are higher? Maybe.

Reviewers seem to slough off Roddy McDowall's age as just some quirk in a quirky movie. It's not! It's persistently distracting, along with his referring to himself in the third person by the inexplicable (but damn quirky) name of Mollymauk (hey, Eminem, right?). So, Roddy has a lot to overcome; Roddy's a hell of an actor, but he can't make Alan/Eminem fit with the rest of the movie. And who put that damn quacking in? Who let the ducks out?

That kind of thing is what i think of as "ouch factor". You're going along, trying to get along with the movie (maybe even BE THE MOVIE), and the damn movie reaches out and tugs your ear hard, like an angry immigrant grandmother. OUCH!

When it's not doing that it's like Gene Wilder in Stir Crazy trying to be bad by saying "i'm bad" and trying to do like Richard Pryor but with some goofy pale hipster bop; it says "i'm bad" alright, but doesn't seem to know that it's the wrong kind of bad.

Yes, it does attempt to go from black humor to melodrama and back with no discernible integration of the two modes. Newsflash! The jarring nature of this is not intended. It's just really distracting and puzzling.

Then there are some of the characterizations. The alcoholic/suicidal Marie, is of course, a cocktail waitress forced to wear a demeaning costume. I know it's an attempt at showing the tribulations of a working divorced mom and is of interest for that, but why couldn't the character be anything else, even given the limitations of the times.? A secretary, a retail sales clerk,a kamikaze pilot? Of course, the cocktail waitress is thought of by many to be no more than a prostitute. Gimme a break. Lola Albright tries valiantly but is subverted by someone's bad choices. I suspect studio execs who didn't know what the hell they paid for and "fixed" it.

The sweater scene is, as it's supposed to be, disturbing. the problem is that it's only perv erotic briefly; then the (Batman TV show angled and cut) reaction shots of Max Showalter (Howie baby/Howard Greene) are filled with strained eye-bugging and stagy, braying insane laughter. This appears to be bad acting choices, but i get the feeling that not only did (director George) Axelrod not reign in Showalter, he seems to have encouraged him! Or maybe some studio execs asked for extra footage with a more "comic" reaction to minimize the incestuous overtones of the scene, which probably made some of them very uncomfortable. If you look at the footage, it would have been very easy to reshoot those reactions anytime, anywhere.

Ruth Gordon; for a time in the 70's and 80's a really hot character actress. I don't know why, for i am more convinced then ever that all she ever played was ---- Ruth Gordon. How did she get away with this for so long. Maybe being married to writer/director Garson Kanin? Naaah! I think people just liked the wacky Ruth Gordon character she always played, so why mess with success.

You just can't admire, and probably not even enjoy, a movie where the "spoof" of scenes from 60's beach-party-surf-groovy-rockin'out movies are EXACTLY like the scenes that are being "parodied", only in black and white! I know; it's supposed to be "Felliniesque". Yeah, sure.

Other observations: Lola Albright is a lot sexier, even in faux tragedy, than squealy, kittenish Tuesday Weld. Weld came into her own as a woman on screen in the seventies, when she worked very little. In the ill-titled, but outstanding, "Who'll Stop the Rain", she was earthy-sexy with the squeal minimized (and down an octave or so) into a kind of fitfully emitted weary growl. This was an award-worthy performance in an award-worthy movie that almost nobody saw.

The black and white photography was mostly quite good, but i think it was done just to save money.

So, a lot of wasted talent and a kind of assaultive nature are the signal characteristics of Lord Love a Duck. It's fairly safe to watch; sure it will hurt you, but not permanently or badly, and isn't that what bad art is supposed to do?

Cutter's Way (1981)

not really "underrated" but more like ignored. This movie is very good.

[7 January 2003]

A friend of mine gave me the novel Cutter and Bone (AKA Cutter's Way) was based on, so that immediately creates a problem, comparing two different art forms.

Forget the novel (by the obscure Newton Thornburg) for this purpose only. The movie is a moving meditation on power, desperation, and paranoia. It is also a great love story.

I always end up writing "...you've read the other comments so you know what this is about" but Cutter and Bone is so many things, it cannot be pinned down easily.

As noted in the favorable reviews here, this is chock full of great film acting that moves the story along as well as making come alive. Who was the clueless shmoe who said "nothing happens"? What movie was he watching?

Adrift in post-Vietnam America, Cutter finally finds something in life that has meaning; the murder of a young hitchhiker.

But any meaning is too much for the damaged Cutter who becomes relentless in the pursuit of a possible killer who also is of the wealthy, powerful elite that sent OPS (other people's sons) to Vietnam. Cutter finally has a genuine target ("he's not anyone Rich, he's RESPONSIBLE" says Cutter to Richard Bone in a great line delivery by John Heard) for his unfocused righteous anger.

Bone tries to sabotage the investigation but ends up buying in at the very end. Why? He has the rage also, as did many Americans who weren't politically active, did not serve in Vietnam. It's a rage that infected a nation with guilt, self-doubt, and eventually, a new hubris, a kind of "never again" attitude toward "less developed" nations that has us yet again on the brink of yet another war in a series of wars that seem to never end and we hardly even notice anymore (remember Grenada? Bombing Tripoli and Benghazi? proxy armies in Nicaragua and El Salvador, etc.?)

The other part of Cutter and Bone is a love triangle and a very well explicated one at that. Cutter and Bone both love Mo who can't love herself. Bone is not as shallow as he appears and it scares him. Cutter is too damaged and angry to love her enough until she is gone.

I've known these people in one way or another, and that is why this movie has always meant so much to me. It is also about a great country I used to live in that began to disappear about the time this movie is set, and has since metamorphosed into a large wounded, angry monster, bereft of the tears for near-paradise lost that this excellent movie depicts.

Cruel Intentions (1999)

Oh No!!

[14 July 2002]

I've never been a fan of Renaissance "comedies of manners" or whatever you call that darn genre that gave us movies such as Valmont and Danger- ous Liasons, so guess what I think about bringing 18th century manners and mores (that's like MORAY, dude) to turn of the century US of A, where they are even more overheated and hyperbolic than they were when they made some sense to the ruling classes of Europe. In short, this movie is beyond laughable; it is jaw-droppingly awful the first time around; and yes, I tried to watch it a second time to see if it would be a little better, knowing my own prejudices. Guess what? I kept inserting Crow T, Tom Servo, and me as Mike/Joel to help me accept what was unfolding before me very own eyes. Otherwise, I may have had to be institutionalized away from all forms of visual media so that I could survive. The above is an example of hyperbole by the way. This is only a very bad movie and will not make you go insane or hysterically blind. Enjoy.

Six Feet Under (2001–2005)

HBO Comes up with another outstanding depiction of a family

[7 August 2001]

First the Sopranos, now Six Feet Under. Among its series HBO has its share of dogs (Arliss, anyone?), but SFU raises their overall standard.

The family in this case has been summed up by other commenters (commen- tators?), but with occasional inaccuracies. For example, Claire (Lauren Ambrose) is not a crackhead. There's uptight David (Michael C. Hall), who's afraid of a lot of things beyond being found out to be gay, and has a lot of repressed passion and anger, yet is very good at a business he doesn't like, and that's just one character. Believe me, there are all multi-dimensional, flawed, yet with strengths and surprise characteristics revealed through some fine exposition, no matter what anyone else says about that aspect of the show. But you need more than good characters, you have to be able to logically

weave their lives together, you have to give them good dialogue, and SFU does all this. That means executive producer Alan Ball is doing a good job hiring writers and communicating to them what he wants. Because this is a family, their relationships, familial and otherwise, are going to have funny, painful, loving and fearful events and moments. Most TV execs hate this kind of stuff because it can't be classified. So HBO doesn't classify it. Problem solved.

On a personal note, I'm thankful for the casting of Frances Conroy and

Lauren Ambrose; I just love the spectrum of redheaded women, from auburn to strawberry blonde and these are two lovely women.

It's also refreshing that Nate's mercurial and damaged lover, Brenda (Rachel Griffiths), is not a particularly pretty woman, yet she is sexy and intriguing.

Of course the show has flaws. But the important thing is it so very moving, funny, engaging you in the lives of the characters, that the occasional weaknesses are not nearly enough to take away from the enjoy- ment of SFU.

Jerry and Tom (1998)

My family hated me for renting this

[26 January 2001]

I saw this on a premium channel and thought my wife and in-laws might actually enjoy it. But even though it's become a family joke, i liked it. The one charac- ter that has a development "arc" is played by the talented Sam Rockwell. No one seems to know how to cast this actor, so we may never see him in a major role in a movie with an actual budget, but he and the others (i particularly liked Ted Danson's contribution; funny stuff) do a great job with a low-key directing style by first time feature director Saul Rubinek. Think Brian DePalma in reverse. If you're here, you know what the movie's about, so i'll just say that, though not a Hall of Fame candidate, this is an enjoyable dark comedy with some excellent visual touches in transitions from scene to scene.