Change Your Image
locoowl
Reviews
Jesse Stone: Thin Ice (2009)
The latest Jesse Stone - Crisp and Edgy
This latest Jesse Stone feature is the first one of the series which is not based on a Robert B Parker novel. Even so, it rings true to the series and is, in my opinion, one of the best written in the series.
While the interaction between Rose (Kathy Baker) and Jesse (Tom Selleck) is not as warm and caring as the relation between Jesse and Molly Crane (played by Viola Davis in previous episodes), the dialogue is crisp and taut with meaning. It is good to see Kathy Baker given some major time in one of these episodes. The same thing holds with Jesse's dealings with Suitcase. The dialogue is crisp and razor sharp with all the wit and irony that I expect from Robert Parker characters.
A previous reviewer talked about this episode being character driven. I think that is true of all of them, but definitely more so than usual in this episode. The dialogue in this one helps define and shape the characters as never before. I thought it sparkled. The back and forth between Jesse and the woman who is investigating him, Sidney Greenstreet - who saw that one coming? - is ironic, witty, urbane, and has just the right feel to it. The same is true for some of the scenes with Kathy Baker. There is a lot of irony and an attempt on Jesse's part to seem more hard-nosed than he actually is.
Some may think that the plot lines were rather weak, but they were really not as important to character development as the dialogue which builds up the growing relationships between Jesse and Rose, Jesse and Suitcase, and Jesse's new female interest, Sidney.
******** WARNING! Here may be spoilers! Read at your own risk! *******
There must be some unstated rule that Jesse will always be in conflict with the town council. While it demonstrates Jesse's desire to do the right thing, no matter what the cost, the conflict in this episode seems a bit contrived, but we do get to see Jesse push back, and it does tend to set up the forthcoming episode - where we hope, Jesse will prevail, once again.
Obviously, there are lots of loose ends to tie up with Captain Healy and the motive for the non-stakeout stakeout that opened the show. While we know who shot Healy and that Jesse got him, we still do not know what the motivation was. Hopefully that will be cleared up in the next episode.
I confess that the plot involving the kidnapped child was a bit weak, but Camryn Manheim gave the mother's character more depth and poignancy than might be expected. Her performance also gives substance to the conflict between Rose - who wants to open up the investigation - and Jesse - who is against it. Yet we see that Jesse's heart is in the right place as he allows Rose to investigate on her own time and even helps her. While the relationship between Rose and Jesse is not the same as that between Jesse and Molly, I think we can look forward to some deepening between the two in the next episodes - assuming Kathy Baker is willing to reprise her role. I hope she does. This plot line gave us a glimpse of both Jesse's and Rose's inner workings.
I really appreciated the fleshing out of Jesse's relationship with Suitcase. Again the back and forth banter between the two signal a growing intimacy which was lacking in previous episodes. I look forward to how this relationship will develop.
All in all, this was a satisfying new episode in this series. It bodes well of things to come!
Silent Venom (2009)
Snakes on a Sub!
*************** Warning may contain spoilers *******
What is not to like about this film? Cheesy effects, rather wooden acting, a silly plot line, and SNAKES! On a SUB! Why they couldn't get Luke Perry to echo Samuel L Jackson's famous line about snakes on a plane, I'll never know. I guess it just would not fit the military image - even though Perry was playing a Navy Captain! A mildly entertaining fun romp with nary a pit viper to be seen (but plenty of albino boas, corn snakes, rat snakes, and some fake overgrown diamondbacks), some very hokey special effects of Big Momma and the usual stupid plot holes.
My wife and I enjoyed it, as we are fans of this sort of ridiculous trash. It was better than some we have seen, worse than others. If you have some time to kill, it might be worth your time. At least it had sub titles, and the submarine action was pretty good.
The Case for Christ (2007)
Honest answers to honest questions
I have not read the book, although I had heard of it.
This is a documentary about one man's search for answers to the major questions in life : Is there a God; is Jesus for real; is Christianity true.
Strobel asks honest questions and lined up quite a few of the top Biblical and historical scholars to find his answers. He was also honest enough to go wherever the evidence led. That is a far cry from those who already have their mind made up and just seek to get support for their position.
There were some hard questions asked and some very good answers given. If the book is anything like the documentary, it will be well worth reading.
Midnight Clear (2006)
Very powerful movie
I, too, picked this up because of Jerry B. Jenkins name on it. The blurb on the back of the DVD sounded intriguing also. I must say, I was very pleasantly surprised and touched by this film.
The story is about 5 people whose lives intersect randomly on Christmas Eve and how those intersections impact the lives of the other characters.
Steven Baldwin and K Callan give the two strongest performances. They also had the most developed story lines, which, I am sure, helped their performances. Baldwin plays "Lefty", a down on his luck loser. K Callan plays "Eva Boyle," a woman whose family is nowhere to be seen and is living a life of quiet desperation and failing mental capacity. Both are at the end of their respective ropes.
Kirk B. R. Woller does a fine job as "Kirk," the lonely owner of a convenience store in a very bad location.
I felt the two weakest stories were "Mary," whose husband suffered brain damage in some sort of accident, and "Mitch", a youth pastor, who was somehow involved in that accident. The actors did the best they could with their material, but since their stories were never really fleshed out, they had a hard time with their roles, I think.
I would have liked to have had more information on "Mitch" and more insight into his feelings of guilt and inadequacy. But even so, Mitchell Jarvis did a great job of portraying a young man who is unsure that what he is doing has any meaning or significance.
The writing was very strong and showed how just random acts of kindness can have a major impact upon peoples lives. It also opens a window on why some people are not so ecstatic about the prospect of another Christmas Eve.
Overall a very thought-provoking movie which makes you wonder just what you could do to impact someone's life positively.
Supercroc (2007)
Best Comedy Monster Movie That I Have Seen!
********** Warning!!!! Here Be Spoilers!!!!! *****************
My wife and I really are into Creature movies like SuperCroc. When we also saw that this one was from Asylum films, we knew we were in for a treat! We were not disappointed. This film was so horrid it wound up being entertaining. Let's analyze this to see just how it succeeds so well in its badness.
Camera work: I swear this thing must have been filmed using a cheap video camera and the sound must have been recorded that way as well. There was the usual bouncy, jerky movement to try to stimulate some kind of excitement. When will Asylum give up that technique? It's really old.
Sound Mix/Subtitles: Asylum is one of those chintzy companies that never does subtitles. It's too bad, because the sound recording is so terrible you really need subtitles to pick up any dialogue. Just to insure that the dialogue is inaudible, the background score just blasts away as if it is being played back on a Boom Box and recorded along with everything else. Fortunately, most Creature Features don't rely on the dialogue to move the story along. That's just as well, because this flick had no dialogue worth mentioning, mainly because there was not a lot of plot to explain.
Plot: Plot, what plot? We open up with a squad of soldiers in a national park area. What are they doing there? We are never really told. The dialogue consists of plans for the upcoming wedding of two of them. This is before our Feature Creature makes her debut in one of the most badly done mixing of CGI with film that I have ever seen. Instead of rising gradually out of the water, the Croc just appears in the background as if the background is a scrim and it is being ripped open to reveal --- Crocodile!!!! Back at the Command Post, there is a character who is some kind of expert on crocodiles (although most of the factoids she blurts out are full of inaccuracies and distortions) - the real croc expert seems to be the female private introduced in the first scene. The advisor's character also seems to have an ulterior motive regarding the eggs, but it was never really explained and somehow the President seems to be involved, but that was never explained either. Fortunately she gets her just rewards. The Creature's origins are never explained it just gets killed after chewing up a lot of people, scenery and equipment. The only person with any sense, it seems, is the lowly female private, introduced in the opening shots. Somehow, she knows a lot about crocodiles from growing up wherever she grew up. She manages to help kill the critter at the end and lives to tell about it.
Acting: mostly bad, but campy.
Directing: this thing had a director? Who knew?
CGI: pretty lame. None of it blended very well with the rest of the film. Quite a bit was blurry and the effects were not very realistic.
Editing: stock footage obtained from the military was obviously used, but to little effect because it really added nothing to the story. I normally do not comment on film editing, but this was so amateurish, I could not help but notice. This added to the overall comedic effect.
All in all, such an incredibly dreadful combination that it was hilarious to watch. Definitely a must for those Rotten Movie Connoisseurs out there!
Night Skies (2007)
One of the better films in this genre
This may contain a spoiler or two, but I will try to avoid that.
This movie is supposedly based on the regression-therapy records of someone who experienced the "Phoenix Lights" on March 13, 1997. If you have read the book "Communion" by Whitley Strieber then the plot will seem very familiar to you. Also if you have read the narratives from people who claim to have had encounters with aliens, the story might seem familiar to you. So much for the complaints about the story being predictable.
If the statement about where the story comes from is true, then that would also explain why the dialogue and the story don't seem all that engaging. This is a true story. Ask yourself this: If someone made a movie of 3-4 hours out of your life, how interesting would it be? How snappy would your "lines" sound to an audience? Would the people watching "your story" think the events were "predictable?" Would they think the dialogue was "unimaginative?" For my money, the dialogue was believable as was the storyline. If this is a true story, I would expect it to be mundane, with ordinary conversation instead of scintillating conversation full of artful badinage. This is supposed to be true life, folks, not some screenwriter's fantasy!
Given the above paragraph, I would say the acting was true-to-life. How many people do you know that are not all that great to be around? How many people do you meet everyday that are really engaging and you want to know more about them? Think about it. If this is a true story, then the actors managed to be come off being ordinary and uninteresting characters, just like you might expect. True life is not "Ocean's Eleven!"
I thought the special effects toward the end were very good. The aliens looked like most of the descriptions that you will find in the book "Communion," mentioned at the first part of this review. From that standpoint, they were believable. Real life just does not always look as good as Hollywood movies.
If this movie was indeed based on the source claimed, then it delivered exactly what I would have expected it to deliver: an incoherent story with a lot of holes and unanswered questions in it.
The Last Drop (2006)
This film was a joke - but it was not a funny one
This is my first comment on IMDb. I am a big fan of WWII films, so when I saw this one at Blockbuster I picked it up. The plot summary sounded interesting. Unfortunately, the plot summary on the DVD case was the best part of this production.
I can't really comment on the quality of the acting, because I think it is impossible for an actor to turn in a good performance when he/she is given nothing to work with. The plot was muddy to begin with, there was no clarity as to why Operation Matchbox was so important for the British. The viewer was left in the dark as to what was going on. The rationale of the SS goons did happen to make sense, but the characters were so stereotyped as to make them seem like cartoon characters with no believability at all. Finally the motivation for Vollner's character was never make clear. He and his friend Beck just seemed like a couple of refugees out of a Three Stooges movie out to make a score.
Have I mentioned the cartoon like aspect to the writing yet? Madsen's character ( the American Colonel ) was straight out of a comic book. What American military man did the writers have n mind - someone from Hogan's Heroes?
This is the first time I have given a 1 rating to a film. But this one was so horrid it deserved it. It also deserved it for being an insult to the intelligence of WWII genre fans. This was a real stinker of a movie. There is no excuse for this sort of amateurism.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
This is a poor remake or a great original film
While the story line in this version follows Dahl's story closer than the Willy Wonka movie, but it lacks the energy and characterization of the original film. Tim Burton's Wonka is a neurotic runaway child, not the creative and eccentric Wonka in Dahl's story. Burton apparently got wrapped up in the Wonka character, because no one else in this film has any life. The children are cardboard cutouts who either have no real energy or overact when they are not being wooden. Grandpa Joe's character suffers the same fate & Charlie's parents might as well not be in the film at all. Burton tried to make up for this with elaborate sets & all kinds of gadgets & special effects, but those cannot overcome wooden performances and lack of direction.
I said this version followed the original story more closely than the original. However the addition of the byplay being young Willy and his father (who is not in the book) is merely distracting and does not help the story at all.
I am sure Burton felt the rock 'n' roll Oompa Loompa's would be a hit, and I assume the lyrics they sing were in Dah;'s original sorry (I could not understand the lyrics since the music was so loud). But the pithy ditties created by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse in the original were much better and added much more to the story.
Bottom line: a flashy remake which does no justice to the original.