ORBzine - Movie Reviews August 2005
Forever Young
1939, California, and 32-year-old USAAF pilot Mel Gibson [
Mad Max
] is frozen in a cryogenics experiment.
Unfortunately the experiment goes wrong, and everyone who knows about it is killed.
53 years later, Gibson is accidentally defrosted by Elijah Wood [ Faculty, Lord of the Rings ]. He ends up staying at the boy's home, keeping company with the lonely mother [ Jamie Lee Curtis ].
This is a lighthearted little drama, the Fish out of water being the Thirties man in 1992. But it's also an unusual form of time-travel film.
They even shoe-horned in a lukewarm and gratuitous subplot, involving the FBI [as in Splash, ET, whatever. Joe Morton [ Terminator 2 ] is the US Govt scientist in charge.
Tommy
This is
Ken Russell
's famous rock-opera from the 1970s.
It starts in WW2, and RAF bomber pilot Robert Powell [ Jesus of Nazareth ] goes off to fight. Ann-Margaret is left alone to raise their son, Tommy. She remarries, to Oliver Reed [ Gladiator ].
By the time Tommy has grown up to be played by Roger Daltrey [ Highlander: TV series ] he is psychosomatically deaf, dumb and blind. To compensate for this he is the ultimate pinball player!
Lathe of Heaven
It's a neat-future America, in a state of medical paranoia
due to an outbreak of plague in Europe.
Lukas Haas [
Space Camp
] is trying to live without sleep,
because he thinks his dreams alter the fabric of reality.
As a result, the courts order him to see psychotherapist James Caan [
Misery
].
Caan, using technology he's developed, tries to alter reality to suit himself. Haas' lawyer-cum-love interest, Lisa Bonet , may be the one who can save him.
Amityville Horror (1979)
In a remote house in America, someone goes crazy and kills his entire family.
A year later James Brolin [
] and
Margot Kidder
decide to buy the house and live there.
Helen of Troy
1955 Technicolour swords-and-sandals epic from Warner Bros.
Paris is the protagonist.
Against the counsel of Robert Brown [M in the
Bond
films] and Cassandra [who must have geniuine clairvoyance, despite the absense of the Gods]
he goes on a peace mission to Sparta.
The Greeks want revenge. Achilles [Stanley Baker - Where's Jack? ] is selected to lead their army.
We get a great 1950s technicolour battle, with hundreds of extras instead of relying on CGI. Excellent!
How to make a monster
Computer software company executive
Colleen Camp
hires a bunch of oddballs to design a monster for her new First Person Shooter.
She offers a million-dollar bonus to the one who meets the deadline.
However, all this does is set the programmers against each other.
The only thing they co-operate on is paying
Julie Strain
to jiggle topless in the motion-capture suit.
The programmers are a geek, a biker and an angry black man. Their manager is a a suit-wearing executive type, layed by Stephen Culp [J.A.G., Desperate Housewives]. The intern, Clea DuVall , is the only average one out of the group.
Unfortunately a power surge causes the monster to come alive and hunt them all down. That's all this really is - a predictable stalk-and-slash flick. It's light-hearted and very self-knowing, as the Julie Strain scene implies. The characters are stereotypes, but ultimately we don't mind. The film isn't kept back by its cheap and cheerful roots - the monster itself is worthy of Stan Winston, who [like Ms Camp] was a Producer on the film.
Affair of the Necklace, The
Set in the France of the 1780s, this is narrated by Royal flunky Brian Cox [
Manhunter, The Ring
]. He tells of a young countess [
Hilary Swank
] who is left destitute and married to a whoremonger [Adrien Brody -
The Village
].
Our heroine, with the assistance of Illuminati leader Christopher Walken [ Batman Returns ] tries to hoodwink murderous Cardinal Jonathan Pryce [ Tomorrow Never Dies ] out of a priceless necklace destined for Queen Marie Antoinette [ Joely Richardson ].
Fairy Tale: A True Story
England, before the Second World War.
A couple of young girls claim to have seen fairies at the bottom of their garden.
Harvey Keitel [ Saturn 3 ] pops up as Harry Houdini. Ironic, since Houdini's real name was Herr Weiss ... Mister White!
Bats
Lou Diamond Philips [
Wolf Lake
] is a sheriff in small-town USA, suddenly dset by a plague of large bats.
He is helped by a lady scientist,
Dina Meyer
- who looks good when she plays a grown woman,
not a teenager like she did in her previous film [
Starship Troopers
].
The problem with this is, like all monster movies, it depends on the monsters to be scary and convincing. The Bats, the title characters, are unconvincing litle ruber-headed things. They're smaller than Gremlins and don't have claws - in other words, they're less threatening than the average house-cat.
The film is a hash of cliches and a few familiar faces. In an uncredited cameo, Brad Dourif pops up as a sleazoid Government creep responsible for creating the monsters - not entirely different from the role he played in Alien: Resurrection .
The climax fulfills all the standads of the genre. All in all ... This is the kind of film that Eight-Legged Freaks mocked so perfectly and yet also totaly out-did!
Thirteenth Floor, The
Craig Bierko [Long Kiss Goodnight] and Vincent D'Onofrio [
Men in Black, Whole Wide World
] explore a virtual reality world.
But where does VR end and reality begin?
Truman Show, The
This is a product of the late 1990s,
a sophisticated parody on a particular television phenomenon that was just emerging.
The original marketing campaign ruined the twist,
but watching the film over half a decade on, the freshness makes it quite impressive.
Truman [Jim Carey - Batman Forever, Big Fat Liar, Lemony Snickett ] lives in suburban America. He's a cheery sod with a perfect life. Too perfect. He never questions this until one day, he sees his long-dead father in a crows ...
Peter Weir has delivered some great work in the past, most notably his debut feature Picnic at Hanging Rock . With subtle references to The Prisoner and the works of Philip K. Dick , this really makes us question the nature of reality.
Natascha McElhone pops up as a well-intentioned helper who wants to show Truman
Spaceman and King Arthur, The
This is typical Disney fare from the 1970s.
Released in 1979 it feels older, but was one of the early post-
Star Wars
boom of Sci-Fi films.
It was released as Unidentified Flying Oddball in the USA -
probably an early example of dumbing down for American audiences.
Nerdy scientist Tom Trimble [Dennis Dugan - The Howling ] gets trapped on a space shuttle which gets sucked into a time-warp and goes back to the time of King Arthur [Kenneth More]. Yes, Twain's Conneticutt Yankee at the Court of King Arthur gets another revamp.
Trimble is the victin of plotting by the evil Merlin [Ron Moody] and Mordred [Jim Dale - Carry on Columbus ]. However, since they're from the Dark Ages and he's literally a Rocket Scientist, he can use materials from his space-ship to MacGuyver up some gadgets. If anything, he's too good at building things - the robot he makes develops artificial intelligence and becomes afraid. It even tries to steal the love interest from him!