Reviews

My 10 star rating is about enjoyment of this, not its cinematic quality.

This is a stage play that's been filmed on the budget of a stage play - it's barely a movie. The 3 actors in the film wrote the play, fyi.

The story is 3 kids (roughly 6 yrs old each) and their parents go into a bomb shelter in 1963...the parents die soon after...the kids raise each other in the bomb shelter. This is NOT about them getting out and seeing the world as fish out of water. It's the world and mythology and culture that they've created within their tiny fish bowl. Microcosm of our reality, and all that.

Shelf Life is commentary upon religion, ritual, entertainment, society, and all the Things. And it comments with a deft and endlessly charming hand. O to be a child forever! One would become quite mad.

It's really dang funny and loveable - provided you're up for watching a silly theatrical production with zero budget.

Director Paul Bartel's added ending is Freudian, literally 4th wall breaking, and cute - but does undercut the actual, rather dark yet meaningful ending of the play. Oh well. It's still cute and lovable!

(Most everyone I've shown this to didn't like it, fyi. Bunch of Scrooges, imao.)

The first hour of Momo is an adorable orphan and her adorable turtle are beloved by a small German town. Maybe a little more than an hour, actually.

The last act is high fantasy beyond Terry Gilliam, Kafka, and Dr Seuss. It's just stunningly beautiful with a speculative fiction (as opposed to sci-fi) plot that is wholly original. And so dang cool in every way.

1998's Dark City (which failed badly despite being quite nifty) is very much based on Momo. It's from the author of The Neverending Story, if that means anything to you. It's kinda boring for a while and then it's briefly, at it's end, one of the best things.

(There's a YouTube video titled "momo Ave Maria" if you want to skip the film and just see the tasty candy from it.)

Well...maybe not quite. First off there's more than one version of the film, i.e. there's the edited for television version and an x-rated version. The edited occult sex-parties weren't cut with quite the deft hand used for Eyes Wide Shut...although very little is done with a deft hand here.

Welles is clearly sauced to the eye-balls throughout, and who can blame him? Super-cutie Pamela Franklin is a skilled enough actor to make this film lose much of its camp appeal (yes, there are extra scenes of her in the x-rated for those of you with less than honorable watching intentions). Her husband, Sheriff Truman from Twin Peaks, is a cardboard cutout of a person just like he is in Twin Peaks.

While the plot is standard plug-and-play innocent wide-eyed girl being seduced into satanic cabal, it doesn't really do anything interesting with that and plods on clumsily throughout. There are multiple surreal hallucinatory scenes, some of which edge on the psychedelic. The satanic cult is, I will say, a more impressive representation than Rosemary's Baby has.

I enjoyed it, frankly. But then I love Orson Welles, Pamela Franklin, hallucinatory dream shots, and 70's satanic cults so if you don't...well, the movie's kind of crap at the end of the day.

Brotherhood of Satan is the same movie only campier and much much better. Legend of Hell House is a better Pamela Franklin movie and genuinely scary. Malpertuis is a better hallucinatory horror movie with a drunk Orson Welles.

Blind Beast isn't cheap to watch. The DVD is. It's pretty durned Good,and it's…important and impressive. Lighter than Irreversible. Very enjoyable at times. Interesting throughout. It made me more comfortable with material I'm not comfortable about being more comfortable with. (Not entirely comfortable watching it, really.) THAT's an ending, certainly. There's THAT. So there. –{don't watch it right before sleeping, is a fair point. XXXy dreams from it, in flavors more poisonous than oft preferred.} But you'll like it. Really. Come on. Watch it. It's Good. Double Dog…don't be a girly. But if you do…glasses, please.

{Hard to believe if you read on, but this review actually does NOT contain any plot spoilers...except that it would be much more fun to know nothing of this film and dive right in if you are the adventurous sort - in which case stop reading, buy a ticket, and take the ride. Incidentally "tickets" aren't too hard to find with a little looking.}

This film follows the adventures of a shiny jump-suited, telekinetic stranger from a strange land in his time-traveling disco chamber from where he guides the leaders of the world towards nuclear Armageddon so that mankind might be saved. Wait, no, it's about the evil Japanese corporation that has developed karate robots to demonstrate their hypno-controller with which they will dictate the fate of mankind. No, wait...what's happening? Suddenly this is a near slapstick political farce that is too broad for Woody Allen yet hinting at dark undercurrents of unpopular ideology...wait...did this just have hardcore sex in it?...um...is that an apocalyptic new-wave Israeli rock band somehow blending punk with the BeeGees for the sake of all mankind?...ow...my head hurts...

All that and more await you in Message From the Future! This film is ten pounds of movie in a five pound bag!

What's it about? What's it about indeed.

There is a brilliant film here that you're not going to get to see. This movie is rife with lost opportunities to a painful degree.

The good is only two-fold. First there are some beautiful images here. (Although they serve no real purpose) Second is that you'll get to see a whole lot of Christina Ricci naked, and she's quite lovely. (Also pointless. I guess those are actually the same reason.)

The slick filmmaking is in service of very little - it conveys nothing in the narrative. Further more, the audience is expected to be insultingly naive.

Most heretical, however, is that the Liam Neeson's character has incredibly, unbelievably good luck and even expects to have it. Serendipity for the bad guy is fine, but here it's just intensely lazy writing.

This movie brushes past many interesting ideas and characters but has no idea what to do with any of them, and ultimately does next-to-nothing with them.

Lastly, the movie is dull and bogged down in exposition. See this for naked Christina Ricci (if that's enough for you); aside from that there's nothing interesting going on here once you peel back the first layer.