ORBzine TV Movie Reviews January 2001
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Anaconda
Jennifer Lopez
is a documentary film-maker who leads her camera unit up the Amazon to
make a nature film. They include
Kari Wuhrer
, Eric Stoltz [
The Fly 2
], Ice Cube [
Ghosts of Mars
], Owen Wilson [Shanghai Noon] and Jonathan Hyde.
En route they meet the villainous Jon Voight [ Enemy of the State ], who redirects them into a remote part of the river. They are menaced by a giant snake that switches between an unconvincing rubber puppet and unconvincing CGI.
The director is Luis Lhosa , responsible for the decent Sniper and the awful The Specialist.
Legend of 7 Golden Vampires
Made in the early 1970s, this is a mix of 2 then-favoured genres:
Hammer Horror and Hong kong Chop-Socky.
To cash in on the early 1970s chop-socky craze, Hammer sent Dr Van Helsing [Peter Cushing - Star Wars: A New Hope ] to China and teamed him up with kung-fu vampire slayers! This provides an excuse for lots of kung fu fights.
Hideaway
This is based on a novel by
Dean R. Koontz
, who apparently disowned the project.
Jeff Goldblum [ The Fly, Earth Girls Are Easy, Jurassic Park ] is happily married to the babelicious Christine Lahti . However, he is involved in a hideous car crash and brought back from the dead by the experimental techniques of a doctor [Alfred Molina]. However, he has developed a psychic link with the only other person to survive the process - a serial killer!
Alicia Silverstone is Goldblum and Lahti's rebellious teenage daughter. Guess who the killer's final victim will be!
Videodrome
This is one of the first big-budget works [albeit filmed in Toronto] of
David Cronenberg
, and arguably his best. James Woods is a TV producer on the lookout for new
material to broadcast. He encounters Videodrome, violent material
broadcast from a pirate station.
Debbie Harry
is the femme fatale cum love interest.
The film makes startling predictions about the Internet society, long before the Internet as we know it existed. One character, Professor Brian O'Blivion, will only appear to other people through the medium of television. He even adopted the screen name O'Blivion to illustrate that reality is what we make it. He states the theory that man is evolving into a technological animal, and that public life on Tv has become more real than RL.
Meteor
This was made in the slew of 1970s disaster films,
and was recently imitated by the reasonably good
Deep Impact
and the utterly terrible
Armageddon
.
Meteor expert Sean Connery is called in by his boss, Karl Malden, on the orders of US President Henry Fonda. A comet passed through the asteroid belt, where it colided with a large asteroid. The resulting meteor destroyed a manned rocket on its way to Mars, and will smash into planet Earth in 5 days time. Hmm. Whoever wrote this obviously had no idea of the vast distances involved.
The planet's only defence is a nuclear missile facility in orbit, which can destroy the metor. However, it will have to be re-targetted because the nukes are currently aimed at the USSR. Cue Connery's rants about corrupt and decadent western society, the terrible Cold War, blah blah blah.
Connery's team includes
Sybill Danning has a tiny appearance as a female skier at a mountaintop resort that gets destroyed.
Contact
Jodie Foster
is a SETI scientist who discovers a signal from outer space.
It seems that intelligent alien life-forms are sending us the instructions to
build a transportation device. White House official
Angela Bassett
helps get funding to build the device. Matthew McConnaghy [Time To Kill]
plays the cuddly religious fanatic [and Foster's love interest],
while Gary Busey plays the homicidal religious fanatic.
There are several other familiar faces in supporting roles. Tom Skerritt [ Alien ] is Foster's boss, and John Hurt [also in Alien ] is a helpful billionaire. James Woods [ VideoDrome ] is a less than helpful politician.
There are also cameo appearances by a couple of politicians. Adolf Hitler's speech at the opening of the 1936 Olympic Games is shown, and while Ms Bassett's character is far from pleased one has to realise that the Olympic spirit is universal! :)
Also, News footage of Clinton's speech regarding the Mars asteroid found at Antarctica has been spliced into the movie.
Deep Red
Michael Biehn plays a stereotypical down-at-heel Private Investigator
hired by a babelicious woman [
Joanna Pacula
]. The twist?
She has an alien organism called reds in her bloodstream, and villainous scientist John De Lancie [ Star Trek: The Next Generation ] will kill her to destroy the evidence.
Hellbound
Chicago cop Chuck Norris and his sidekick [comedy relief/token black guy]
go to Jerusalem to investigate stolen relics. Christopher Neame [
Babylon 5
] is trying to resurrect Satan or something.
Sheree J. Wilson [Dallas] is the token babe. .
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