Reviews

One of the only reasons to bother watching this abysmal film is to see the beginning and the end of Larry Norman and Randy Stonehill's acting careers! These two godfathers of "Christian Rock" appear in this film for apparently no reason whatsoever. Their bit-parts have absolutely nothing to do with the plot, to the extent that there is any real plot at all in this sequel, which has nothing to do with the original film.

We get to see Randy Stonehill play guitar and sing while sitting in a drain-pipe at night with a girl, and smoke a joint together, before being eaten by the Blob. We get to see Larry Norman wandering around at parties, we see close-ups of him eating food in a bowling alley, and we see him standing around in random scenes while police shoot guns at the Blob to try and stop it. Why were they in this film? Who knows?

Throughout their later singing careers, both of them occasionally made vague references over the years to having once acted in a science fiction film, but they never mentioned the name of the movie. Watching this movie explains it all: They probably wished no one ever discovered their horrible secret...!

If anyone claims to be a true fan of either Larry Norman or Randy Stonehill they should be required to watch this film. And no fast-forwarding is allowed. You must sit through the entire film and ponder the depths to which low-budget science fiction films are capable of. There is nothing offensive in this film, just the total lack of any real plot!

This film is truly so bad that it's good, so keep this in mind as you sit through it, waiting for it to finally end...!

This is a decent portrayal of the Virgin Birth story, showing a young Mary and Joseph in a light that is believable for the most part. This story is so universally familiar that there are few, if any, surprises in the plot. The film is best judged for how it portrays life at the time and the possible ways in which Mary and Joseph would have related to each other at this stage of their relationship.

The film almost had the feeling that it was shot on a side-lot of the HBO "ROME" series. I almost imagined the major plot of that series taking place just over the hills, since the Roman soldiers and tax-collectors that ride into town look very much like the cast from that series, and it's filmed in a similar style.

The portrayals of the angels visiting Mary and Joseph were well-done, avoiding a lot of the glowing, winged stereotypes of earlier films. The shots of Jerusalem looked computer-generated (since the hills of Jerusalem aren't quite as large as portrayed) but the recreated temple looked pretty accurate.

My only complaint/observation is the reaction of Mary's parents when they learn she's pregnant. Their response is a bit too muted to be believable. The culture of the time would likely have seen the father, at least, enraged and threatening to kill a daughter who disgraced the family. But her father in this film reacts with disappointment, but never even raises his voice. Perhaps Mary's father was this accommodating, but it would have been unusual.

Overall, this is a good portrayal of this familiar story put to film. I give it a score of 6 out of 10.

This film is mostly about visual style. Much of it is a jumble of Jungian symbols and Freudian nightmares through which Jennifer Lopez floats around in search of the ego. All beautifully photographed, yet the story is needlessly disturbing.

I think it's revealing that when a modern film studies the inner workings of the mind, whether in the form of drama or science fiction, we are almost always presented with the severely dysfunctional mind. Never a stable, well-balanced mind. Films never analyze the mind of a happy used-car salesman in Ohio, or a contented librarian in Peoria, or a spiritually serene farmer in Kansas. Artists are much more interested in the nature of evil minds, demented psyches, broken people. Evil is a much more interesting subject that Good.

The mind through which Lopez travels - using a machine that lets her mind-meld with comatose patients in the hope of curing them - is the mind of a cruel, demented serial-killer. We are shown the inner psyche of someone that most of us would rather not see. Why do we need to see the images of sexual dysfunction in a person who thrives on death and destruction?

I really don't care why some people choose to engage in gratuitous cruelty. I know these kinds of people exist, but why dwell on the outer fringes of evil behavior? I realize that evil acts stem from complex sources, but does dwelling on such questions really do anything other than promote voyeurism?

The film tries to argue that all evil acts are basically reactions to some trauma early in life. Yet one of the characters replies that, at some point, a moral choice is made by everyone, and these kinds of people should not be objects of too much sympathy. Evil is real, and not just a moral term for a medical condition over which the patient has zero control.

So, see the film for the visuals. This director comes from a background of music videos, which shows. But you'll need to watch or do something light-hearted after the film, to cleanse yourself from the experience of swimming through a psychological sewer, regardless of its stunning visuals.

The fact that Henri Charriere wrote this script and acted in the film is the only reason it hasn't slipped into oblivion long ago. For anyone who has read his autobiographies, "Papillon" and "Banco", seeing Henri Charriere in the flesh is the main reason to seek this movie out. The very fact that he went from escaping Devil's Island and then reinventing his life through some death-defying adventures, all the way up to a film-actor, is a feat to be admired.

But this film is really shaky in almost every way. The story was written probably from his own experiences, dealing with diamond thieves in the South American jungles. It's really pretty standard fare, storywise, dealing basically with the theme of honor amongst thieves.

Papillon/Charriere is one of several burglars who stage a daring theft from the steaming jungles, only to experience betrayal from one of their own. They pursue their betrayers and are themselves pursued. But the film maintains an unexpectedly slow pace for this type of movie, despite being basically a "chase story". You almost get the feeling that all of the actors are waiting nervously for Charriere to do something throughout the film, but he spends a lot of time sitting and thinking and smoking before answering questions, in a heavily-accented English.

Charriere seems to have gotten a bit too comfortable by the time he made this film, looking a bit too portly to be taken seriously as a swashbuckling, fist-fighting burglar. The film also contains the typical countercultural themes of the time involving fear of aging, which was perhaps a bit of a marketing ploy to the audiences of the time. It seems a bit out of place in the overall story.

Read Henri Charriere's two autobiographies first, then perhaps watch the Steve McQueen film-version of the first book, which was released only a few months before Charriere died . Only then will you maybe acquire the curiosity to see the man behind the amazing books. Otherwise you may fall asleep before the film is over.

This is an odd film to digest. Fans of Neil Young will appreciate it for its historical value, but it's very mundane in parts. It actually has the feel of Reality TV, but of a mostly wordless variety.

The camera follows a very long-haired Neil Young and his band riding an elevator, it shows them walking around in hallways, it shows them talking with sound-engineers. You see him walking around a junk-yard. You get to see Neil park his car and sit on the front-fender with a woman smoking a cigarette and eating berries and not talking for at least 10 minutes, just staring at the countryside. For some reason you also see Richard Nixon speaking at a Billy Graham Crusade.

Then again, you also see him playing some great early live concerts with Crosby, Stills & Nash, which is reason enough to see this film. But then the film becomes sort of a music-video, showing what appear to be black-robed Klansmen riding horses on the beach, and then what looks like a red-robed Catholic Cardinal riding in a limousine, all of which apparently has zero connection with the rest of the film. It's all edited together in a sort of stream-of-consciousness, which is perhaps the whole point, as that style of narrative was common in the early 70's.

If you can find it, view it for the concert-footage plus an example of Neil's fascination with disjointed imagery which sometimes flows together like a visual non sequitur.

For die-hard fans of Pink Floyd only. This is a history-lesson into the psychedelic London underground of the mid-60's, where light-shows, "Happenings", Beat-poetry, and spacey music were all the rage. This film is mainly several pieces of concert-footage of Pink Floyd in its original incarnation, when Syd Barret was still in the band, prior to him loosing his marbles and being replaced by David Gilmour. You see Syd and the band playing some long sets of "Interstellar Overdrive" on stage under strobe-lights, a piece of music that true fans love and which the uninitiated often find meandering and boring due to the modern short-attention span. This is Space-Rock, it ain't Britney Spears.

You get to hear Allen Ginsburg recite poetry over images of the London night-life. You see John Lennon attending one of Yoko Ono's famous performance-art pieces, prior to them having met. You see Eric Burdon walking around. It's basically a slice-of-life in the heart of what's now called "the Swinging 60's". View it, if you can find it, for the history, if nothing else. For Floyd fans it's one of very few opportunities to see Syd Barret playing with the band, which is reason enough to seek it out.

There is a formula that Hollywood has been using now since around the mid-1980's, where it has learned how to re-package empty scripts and turn them into films that people will pay money to see, despite the film being about absolutely nothing.

Such as this film. Plot: guy wanders around the story with no real motivation other than periodically shooting people, running away from big explosions, taking part in a few car-chases, and looking up an old girlfriend at a high school reunion. The main character basically just wanders around for around 90 minutes, until the obligatory Big ShootOut occurs at the end of the film.

Naturally this won't sell, so simply add a bunch of witty dialog and well-placed one-liners to the script. Now, instead of watching people get violently murdered and perhaps getting disturbed by it, the audience can chuckle at the silly conversations going on while people are shooting and explosions are exploding and car chases are chasing.

This plot-technique seems to have been born with Pulp Fiction. The content of a screenplay has become secondary: you can film whatever you want, no matter how boring or violent or disturbing or inane. As long as the character are exchanging funny dialog then the film is described as "great" and "hilarious" and "innovative" and "a must-see!".

I actually felt cheated out of 2 hours of my life after having watched this film. I chose to ignore the ironic dialog between the hitmen, and between Cusack and the old girlfriend, and tried to get in to the story itself, only to gradually realize that there was no story. Just some otherwise good actors trying to lift up an empty script.

If you actually enjoy this kind of cliched dialog then, by all means, rent this film. Otherwise look for something with some more meat to it, like one of the Muppet Movies.

I give this film half-a-star out of 5 stars.

This film is a fantastic example of how to smuggle subjects of intellectual depth into a film that might be seen by people not typically interested in topics like ethics and religion. Peter Filardi should be given a medal for writing a Hollywood screenplay that has some depth, as well as a cool and chilling concept.

I loved this story, specifically because of these elements in the script. Reading through some of the other reviews here I notice that several people were frustrated by the challenge of actually thinking during a horror film, and a few others did notice the ethical details but didn't like the fact that the story didn't take the easy route of posting rhetorical ethical questions and then just leaving them floating in the breeze unresolved.

The central point of this story is that all of our actions have consequences. What we do matters. Our ethical decisions actually have real effects. This is not very PC in our modern American culture that claims that no matter what you do, we all end up the same in the end. Talking about ethical consequences is so 18th century.

In this story this modern assumption is wrapped up in a horror fantasy and spit back out at the audience, who usually isn't prepared to answer the questions, since they thought they were just watching another horror film. Watch this film, think about the issues, and thank the screenwriter for believing that there are some horror fans out there who like to stretch their neurons with ideas of depth, as well as watching creepy little kids beat up on Kiefer Sutherland.

I give it 4 out of 5 start. Check it out.

Here's my purely subjective take on the latest entry into the Lynch oeuvre. Plot details are included:

OK, David Lynch is one of my favorite directors and I am a big admirer of his visual style and almost autistic obsession with rhythmic sounds and dream-like imagery. I count "Eraserhead" as one of the seminal films of the past 50 years, followed closely by "Blue Velvet".

However, many of his films have the same images and scenes that repeat themselves, and Mulholland Drive seems to collect them all into one package, in case we missed them in the last several films. Some directors virtually make the same film over and over again (Terry Gilliam, Hitchcock, Woody Allen, etc). Each one is good in its own right, but it's often the same themes wrapped up in an only slightly different packaging. Lynch seems to be succumbing to this "one more time" pattern.

Compare the images in Mulholland Drive to the images in Eraserhead, Lost Highway, and Twin Peaks: The car driving at night with the headlights illuminating the passing lines of the center divider. The empty stage with a single microphone standing in the spotlight. The old people smiling for no apparent reason. The scary deformed face lurking in the shadows. The room with the red curtains and the weird little man that seems to control events. The character of the squeaky-clean blonde singing happy songs in a bizarre environment.

We've seen most of this before. This has new elements like little tiny people crawling under the door and lesbians who travel through time and reverse characters two-thirds of the way through the plot.

But I can't help but think that I'm just watching Lynch's nightmares put to film. I know that we're not supposed to try to analyze the film rationally, but instead approach it like the images in a dream. The final line of the film by the blue-haired woman, "Silencio", is probably Lynch's statement to his rational mind: silence any questions and just succumb to the images. Very Zen.

Fair enough, and well done, but it's been done by Lynch several times by now. I think the scene with the blonde masturbating on the couch is probably a bit autobiographical, symbolizing Lynch obsessing over his own dreams.

Unlike Roger Ebert, who liked the film, I have to give the film a "thumbs down", only because I found it to be little more than a re-packaging of the same images he's portrayed so well before. Rent "Eraserhead" and "Blue Velvet" to see his nightmares in their original forms.

Just $0.02 from one of Lynch's biggest fans...