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japurple01
Reviews
Case Histories (2011)
Good show--bad music
Quirky but engaging with the worst closed captions you'll ever see--typed after a few drinks I suspect but sometimes funny they're so ridiculous. Multiple plots are woven together with humor and interesting personalities. Don't know why there's so much twangy American country music intruding loudly so often--really doesn't live up to the Scottish setting.
The Omega Man (1971)
Sorry, I don't see its "classic" value other than as camp
I won't spoil the ending, but the symbolism hits you over the head a bit too hard. Most of the other complaints have been listed, but a couple more that bugged me included the way the stunt driver of the motorcycle clearly had different hair--color and style--than Heston, and the rather pathetic "persecution" of the protagonist when the mutants have him in the cart and are hauling him away. I think they threw a few pieces of paper at him and even (gasp) touched his shirt--though not enough to mess it up or even "untuck" it. (Quotation marks have been added so that the spell checker of IMDb won't try to get me to replace it with "unstuck")
Overall, it's fun to see this and compare it to I am Legend, but really, there's not much comparison. Also--I don't remember anywhere in the movie addressing the issue of all the animals. In I am Legend Will Smith's character has a dog, but aside from thinking I heard a bird or two, were they all dead?
Manna from Heaven (2002)
Nepotism sucks when casting
I think they were going for "capraesque" but just came across as amateurish. Casting one of the sisters as "Ramona" who's supposed to be the grown up daughter of the character played by Faye Grant was really dumb--they look fairly close in age, not like mother and daughter.
Plus the whole romance thing with Ramona and the lawyer implying that somehow this girl is really attractive--sorry, but only when your family is producing the show will anyone lie that blatantly and expect anyone to go along with it. If she could actually act, maybe her unfortunate appearance would be easier to overlook.
There's a really long scene superimposed over a disco ball with what i assume was Shirley Jones' voice singing the whole time. Very painful to sit through--the voice hasn't aged well. (Or was it another member of the uber-talented Burton family singing there? I couldn't bring myself to bother checking the credits)
A couple of bright spots--Wendy Malick is good, and I see from her bio she has a Buffalo connection, so maybe this is a "friend of the family" or "the priest said I had to do it as penance for murdering that family" thing. Also, Cloris Leachman and the late Frank Gorshin still had their acting chops for this--Shirley Jones showed she still can't really act very well.
The casting in general, though was atrocious--unless some of the people went to some alternate universe for a while where you age at a different rate, and they forgot to mention it.
Five Corners (1987)
The most frustrating two things about this movie...
...were the couple in the convertible--really don't see what the actual point of their subplot was, and the fact that the big dramatic ending scene relies on the premise that in 1964, cops had yet to figure out how to climb stairs--leaving them helplessly watching from the street wondering "How did they get up there?"
Tim Robbins and Jodi Foster are worth a look--if for nothing more than historical interest, and I think they were going for almost a "Fargo"-like approach (yes, I know this predates Fargo) to some of the mayhem like the cop in the phone booth's fate and the mother of the psycho's final reward.