SF and Fantasy Movie Reviews Starting With B
Babe (1995 Australia) 
Genres: Dra F Kid
Nice laid-back adventure among talking farm animals. Sweet but not empty-calorie and non-nourishing as is so much of children's animal adventure fodder. It manages to raise several serious issues for the animals and the audience to handle, yet keeps everything at a level quite manageable for a young child. It's still happy country, still the bucolic ideal where a child is supposed to feel safe, and he does, ruminating on it all.
Back to the Future (1985)
Genres: SF Adv Com
Watched: 10 min
There are at least two of these. I never watched them for long when they were on TV. Boring and juvenile, yet inoffensive.
Balto (1995) NR
Genres: Ani Kid F Adv
Watched: trailer
This would have remained under my radar but it was forced upon me in an unskippable preview on another DVD. Apparently from the marketing standpoint it's advantageous to make people watch a preview that they've stated a preference for not watching. I guess people won't on average rebel as much as assimilate the information. They tend to rebel when they see that rebelling is more fun than going along -- like going to demonstrations instead of doing homework. Making a note to not rent the offending movie is too much trouble. It's like my sister's roommates. They enjoy griping about big evil corporations but won't go a few extra blocks to pick up their groceries at Trader Joe's, which treats and pays their employees fairly and has better bargains, and continue to shop at Ralph's, which reeks of evil and is overpriced as well.
Bambi (1942)
Genres: Ani F Kid
When I saw it as a kid I was mesmerized by the animation and forced my mom to go back into the theater and let me see it again. I liked the story fine too, a simplified version of the lovely
Supposedly adults look back on their childhood as their blessed time . . . that could be because they were dumb back then and easier to please. Or else because they suck now and have no imagination. Actually I don't think they do that so much these days and in the US, because life is good.
Barbarella (1968 France) NR
Genres: Adv SF
Watched: 30 min
I didn't get through all of it; too drawn-out and silly. I don't remember the part I did see too well. Jane Fonda is a hot-girl-from-the-cover-of-an-SF-paperback. She has to help save everyone from being turned into rocks or something. She picks up a lovely blind male angel and he holds her and they fly around. Then I stopped watching. Maybe they flew to North Vietnam.
Barb Wire (1996)
Genres: Act SF
B-movie post-apocalyptic adventure in a world of post-apocalyptic tough gangs. It has the big-fake-boobed blonde from Baywatch and is plenty silly.
Batman & Robin (1997)
Genres: Act F
There's several Batman movies. Here's a review of the Schwarzenegger one:
Schwarzenegger is good as Mr. Freeze, a mutated scientist supervillain who wants to destroy because the cruel world took his beloved wife away. Uma Thurman is also evil. She is a sexy evil plant lady. Clooney and some dorky-looking blond guy are Batman and Robin. They have bat nipples on their costumes. The villains are quite amusing. The heroes less so. Overall it's good fun.
Other Batman movies? I bet they're worse, they don't have Schwarzenegger.
(When I say "bat nipples" I mean nipples shaped like bats, not nipples like those of bats. I don't know what bats' nipples look like. But I can tell you that it's very easy to tell boy bats from girl bats. From many yards away. When they hang upside-down, of course; otherwise they're zooming around so it's hard to make anything out.)
Batman Begins (2005)
Genres: Act F Dra
Apparently to enjoy this movie you have to be able to disassociate yourself from my feelings about it, just go for it and not worry that I'll think less of you for enjoying it. This may be difficult, but, J says, attainable after many years. Or if that's too hard you can do what I do: disassociate yourself from the particulars and focus on the eye candy running around cutely. What really helps with that is those big drinks they sell, and laziness to get up to pee. (At least if you're a girl; J says that it doesn't work that way for him.) Because the casting is pretty good. American Psycho is a good fit here, it's basically the same role.
For men there is apparently a further snag to enjoying it -- the female lead is unattractive. This is one of the two problems J saw with this movie, the other being that Liam Neeson's character has no personality.
Only two things wrong! J is easy to please! That's convenient to be sure. But also as you can see, he can be unpredictably picky -- he'll find some perfectly OK-looking woman totally unattractive. And also sometimes a fairly yucky one hot. That's great. While he's conveniently easy to please in general sometimes he has surprising strong opinions about random stuff, so it's not boring. It's a pleasure to indulge him on these occasions. This is why I go to movie theaters.
Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)
Genres: Adv SF
Watched: 40 min
Dir: Roger Corman. Johnboy is happily farming in a lazy backwaters of a planet when the villainous outsiders land. After consulting with the elders Johnboy escapes in a prominently boobed spaceship with the mission of finding champions to help fight off the invaders. Then he flies around collecting heroes. He even manages to snag one of the original Magnificent Seven.
Battlefield Earth (2000)
Genres: Act SF
John Travolta stars as an evil alien in this adaptation of L. Ron Hubbard's eponymous novel. The book is over 1000 pages long but the movie moves right along. Not that I don't admire the multi-talented Mr. Hubbard tremendously; no criticism of him is implied in any way! I would never, ever dream of it! No, sir.
The critics were miffed because this movie doesn't lend itself to sophisticated analysis. They whined at stuff like that Travolta struts a lot on platform boots and shouts stuff like "man-animal" and "I have leverage!" A lot. But I say "feh" to that. I say, a guy should strut some. He should strut and feel free to shout out stupid guy-crap. If you have your guy trained not to do that, you suck. (If you have your man-animal trained to strut in platform boots, you get extra points.)
The Beastmaster (1982)
Genres: Adv F
Scantily-clad muscly hero goes around saving people from evil despots, succored by his team of animals with whom he can psychically communicate. At some point he picks up a scantily clad babe. It's fairly slow but fairly entertaining.
Beauty and the Beast (1946 France)
Genres: F
Watched: 40 min
I could sympathize with a masochistic ninny who bugs out her eyes super-innocently, especially seeing how it's a fairy-tale. But I can tell that Belle is faking it. Badly. Aside from the evidence of the sort of family she comes from (her sisters are spiteful and selfish -- how likely is it that she is really this innocent? She's probably playing her dad for all he's worth), she could really use some basic acting lessons.
As annoying as Belle is, the dialogue is worse. It's at best generic, and often inane and boring. But it gets worse. Once the action enters the enchanted castle, time stands still to give the audience a chance to admire the phenomenal special effects of actual human limb furnishings. That is some of the slowest and most boring footage, or rather armage, in film history.
I stopped watching soon after Belle, the ever dutiful/scheming daughter, shows up at the Beast's castle, no doubt with an assortment of handmade delicious French sauces that would complement her flesh for the Beast's eating pleasure tucked under her cape. Poisoned, no doubt.
Beetlejuice (1988)
Genres: Com F Hor
Boring and cutesy, although at some point there are some cute monsters.
Being John Malkovich (1999)
Genres: Dra MR
Watched: 30 min
I saw some of the middle of this on TV. These annoying New Yorkers (?) find a closet that when you sit inside you are John Malkovich. I did like that the woman immediately decides to cash in on it by offering rides for money, but they don't have it well organized at all. And it's slow and boring.
Bicentennial Man (1999) NR
Genres: Dra SF
Watched: trailer
Haven't seen this, not going to. Robin Williams is too annoying (although I liked Death To Smoochy) and this looks like silly sappy mainstream fodder.
The Bishop's Wife (1947)
Genres: Com F Rom
Watched: 30 min
Along with noir, gangster pics, Westerns, and musicals (yay, yay, yay, and yay) they made this kind of super-sickly-sweet boring stuff in the 40's; this one even has an angel. It is instructive to take a look at some, to learn about American culture.
Blade (1998)
Genres: Act Hor
Mindless but more or less entertaining actiony vampire slaying.
Blade II (2002)
Genres: Act Hor
Ditto. This one has more of a plot.
Blade Runner (1982)
Genres: Act SF
This is an enjoyable movie but I disliked it at first because the plot is notably dumbed down (and glitzified in dumbed-down ways) from that of the book it's based on, and I really like the book (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick).
Other than that, it certainly is pretty and glitzy, and there is enough of the original book plot to keep it interesting.
Depends whom you ask, though. I recall reading a review of this film in some women's fashion magazine. Apparently the movie-makers are to be applauded for creating such a honey from a boring mediocre SF book. So don't bother to read it if you're fashion conscious.
The Blair Witch Project (1999) NR
Genres: Hor
A boring screw. Kind of like Stalker except people disappear from the group, which is a plus, and in the end some kind of action is implied.
Boa (2002) NR
Genres: SF
Watched: 10 min
Totally worthless and stupid in every way, but not creatively. I had to keep watching it to figure out what the title was, because the "info" feature was giving me obviously wrong information, and after commercials they usually say "now back to movie name." This feature is irritating when it does work, because the evil cable company puts a random ad in there too. When you change channels the info bar comes up, and has the ad. The info bar goes away after a few seconds, but if you're flicking through lots of channels, you get a good long look at it, and the ad is always for something annoying, like diet pills or lawyers. We are already paying all this money for cable, but they don't say no to more. And have you noticed the creep of ads on the covers of your phone books? Some years ago, the covers were just yellow or white, as appropriate for the Yellow or the White Pages respectively. Now, every surface is covered with ads and they're even attaching more ads on leaflets stuck on top of the covers with adhesive! And these ads are 95% for lawyers. These guys proudly feature photos of themselves on there and they're scary, and when they're pictured with their families, their families are scary too. How embarrassing is it to display lawyer ads on your bookcase, because they're on the phone book spine. There is a remedy, or course: stickers. Preferably with an admonition against lawsuit abuse. Or, heck, something like "Have You Killed A Lawyer Today?" because what, it's your own home or office, so you're relatively safe. Or maybe not . . . :(
Bones (2001)
Genres: Hor
It's rare for a horror movie to make as much sense as this. Especially if it's about an evil house. And when the characters die, it's in that fine groove when they're sympathetic enough so that you aren't cheering, but at the same time it's funny.
Bordello of Blood (1996)
Genres: Com Hor
Vampire adventure with nice enough vibes -- it's got humor and it's never annoying. As you might expect from the title, yes there are babes showing off their assets. It's all kind of like what you look for from a trip to the bordello -- mindless harmless fluffy entertainment with decent thrills but nothing too scary.
Brazil (1985 UK)
Genres: Com SF
Magnificent! Lovely script, visually stunning, and terrifically acted. Futuristic dark comedy doesn't get any better than this.
The Breed (2001)
Genres: Hor F Det Mys
Low-key and not bad. Entertaining and relaxing vampire detective. The guy from the Highlander TV series is a vampire! That's cute. He's cute.
Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001 France)
Genres: Act F Hor
The thing about French films, you can't trust the genre they bear. They might say they're thriller or action, but it might be any weird crap and not at all what you expect from action or whatever it is the hard-working American might be in the mood to relax with. This is supposed to be an action fantasy. Their take on this is some kind of whiny and boring monster motif that they don't actually display too much for fear of appearing crass, instead going for lots of wandering around the tasteful countryside and having drawn-out personal problems, and naked pretty men jumping around in bizarre and incongruous martial arts -- it's OK to have action if it's ridiculous and naked. OK, the Indian is really cute. But, eh, it's dumb and slow and ridiculous. So I can only give it one star despite all the cute naked guys. But I give the snacks they had on the set 5 stars! Because it's France and their snacks are superb!
Bubba Ho-tep (2002)
Genres: Com Hor
Bruce Campbell, interned in a small East-Texas old folks' home, is reconciled to everyone's ignoring him and his claims of being the real Elvis. After all, years ago he'd arranged to secretly disappear from public view by switching places with an Elvis impersonator. He quietly observes his limited world, talks to himself, and submits to certain invasive treatments of his feeble body. It's a common enough state in this place.
But nothing, including passivity, keeps things safely static. There are monsters of all sorts in the world, and one must expect that they will come, often when one is least prepared for them. Fortunately, man has great reserves of strength that he himself may be unaware of, that may help him rise to the occasion. And while one is frequently alone when facing the most difficult trials, if there's a friend to share the burden, one may face even the most grisly monster bravely.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)
Genres: Act Com F
Light-hearted vamp slayage by high-school cheerleader with special powers. By far the best thing about it is that it spawned the eponymous TV
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