ORBzine - Movie Reviews April 2002
A Knight In Camelot
Whoopee Goldberg plays a scientist who accidentally time-travels
back to Camelot.
Yes, this is yet another terrible adaption of Mark Twain's
A Connecticutt Yankee In The Court Of King Arthur,
this time filmed in Hungary.
King Arthur (Michael York - ) is a naive fool, with Camelot his ivory tower. For some reason he is supposed to be King of the Angles. Guinivere ( Amanda Donahoe ) and Merlin (Nigel Hawthorne - Demolition Man ) are cast in a somewhat villainous light, but there is no real overall villain to the film. Yes, there is a cliched eeeevil Knight of the Round Table who favours Prima Nocta, and a teenage squire who wants the man brought to justice. But beyond this soap-opera melodrama and some Whoopee slapstick there is very little to this film.
Knight Rider 2010
Futuristic Los Angeles, and evil Brion James (
Blade Runner, Enemy Mine
) is boss of a Virtual Reality company.
His top executive is Hannah - a pre-Callisto
Hudson Leick
, who does not get to display her incredible screen presence
and instead comes off as just another model-turned-actress.
She does get a couple of good lines, but is otherwise wasted.
Hannah is assigned to make a VR game based on a Han Solo wannabe, a smuggler who drives monster trucks across the desert. He is also Hannah's ex-lover, and the movie's protagonist. This leads on to the main part of the film - lots of Mad Max style car chases across a post-apocalyptic desert. The only link to the Knight Rider TV show is when one character becomes an AI that controls a fast car. Hmm.
Urban Legend
A female student drives home from Pendleton University.
Her car runs out of fuel, she has a creepy encounter with creepy Brad Dourif (
Alien: Resurrection
), and finally meets the predictable slasher-movie ending.
The action then moves to her University, attended by Tara Reid, Alicia Witt, Rebecca Gayhart , frat-boys Joshua Jackson (Dawson's Creek) and Michael Rosenbaum ( Smallville ), and journalist Jared Leto. Professor Robert Englund ( Nightmare on Elm Street ) teaches a class about Urban Legends.
Ms Witt soon works out that a serial killer is bumping off her friends in the manner of Urban Legends. Dean John Neville ( Fifth Element ) covers up the killings.
This is basically just a clone of the film Scream . However, because it shares Scream's post-modern cynicism about the slasher-horror genre it is still superior to recent films such as Cherry Falls and Valentine .
Inferno (1998)
Sanchez’s banker from
Licence To Kill
is a teacher in downtown Los Angeles.
He is also a part-time reservist in the US National Guard,
so when the Sun has a massive coronal mass ejection
that threatens to fry the planet he is called up and sent to patrol the streets.
The local African-American folk stereotypes are lucky that
an educated white male stereotype is around to save them from themselves.
Unfortunately, his superior officer (Fredric Lehne -
American Horror Story: Asylum
) is the evil version of the white male stereotype.
Elsewhere, James Remar ( Shannara Chronicles ) is a trauma surgeon whose licence was suspended. He teams up with a Baywatch-style lady lifeguard who is being stalked by her grease-monkey ex-BF, crooked mechanic Anthony LaPaglia ( Seven Days ). The ex-BF is lured into temptation by his morally lax co-worker ( Kathryn Morris from Cold Case ) and decides to make the most of the evacuated city. However, he still wants to have the lifeguard for himself.