SF and Fantasy Movie Reviews Starting With E
Earth Girls are Easy (1988) NR
Genres: SF Com
Watched: no
Geena Davis is sad but then three furry aliens come to live with her, which sounds like that would cheer her up, except they're played by three of the most obscenely annoying actors in Hollywood. Jim Carrey. Jeff Goldblum. An annoying black guy. Furry costumes is hardly enough to fix them unless someone invites hunters.
Eight Legged Freaks (2002) 
Genres: Act Com Hor
Relaxing entertainment. Running around in caves fighting giant spiders is like that.
Elektra (2005)
Genres: F Act
There's supernatural martial arts, but it's all slow and ridiculous and so staring at Elektra strutting like a supermodel in a skimpy red corset thing is crucial, except that she's freaky looking. These days fake boobs are not enough and you must also have big freaky fake lips. Whatever emotion she tries to convey, she has to work through this overpowering pout.
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The Element of Crime (1984 Denmark) NR
Genres: SF Det
Watched: 25 min
The future is sooo dysfunctional, oh my! Everything is flooded and everyone just stands around in puddles, and lets all their stuff sit around in puddles. The police department has degenerated into shooting people at random. Even the the teacups don't work.
It's slow, random and dumb. It tries to be arty really really hard, and I'm sure it achieves its artistic vision and the creator just loves it, but it's so bad.
Dystopian futures are popular, or used to be. It helps to be dark if you're trying to be artistic. You have to be careful about logic, though. You want your future dysfunctional in some artistic way that doesn't have to make any sense. It's better SF if it doesn't, because who cares about such technicalities except nerds. E.g.: in the future everyone suffers from headaches and bumps on the head -- that's artistic. You can show them bonking their heads on trees whenever they see them, without explanation; that's still also artistic, but you have to be careful and give no clue as to why they are all forced to bonk their heads into trees whenever they see them.
And you know a donkey was harmed in the making of this movie. Why do special effects when you can just kill a donkey?
Elf (2003)
Genres: Com F
Sweet, enjoyable fairy tale packing a surprising wallop of Christmas cheer.
Elvira's Haunted Hills (2001)
Genres: Com Hor
Good old-fashioned vaudeville spoofing those 60's Vincent Price movies based on E. A. Poe's stories. Fairly enjoyable even if not all the jokes work. The first 10 minutes are crappier than the rest; I'm glad I didn't give up on it because it got a lot better. There's some boredom throughout though, mostly from Ema Hellsubus; she's around a lot but doesn't have much to add to the story. The acting is quite good. I particularly liked the creepy doctor and the crazed Vladimere Hellsubus (Patrick O'Brien). And Elvira is a good vaudeville character, like a toned punky Mae West.
The video store clerk remarked that he knew Cassandra Peterson (Elvira) personally. He said she used to patronize a coffee shop he ran in San Francisco, and she was very different in person from her Elvira character. Specifically, according to the clerk, she was a very militant lesbian. To make conversation I remarked that this must have been a great help to her in her career. I was thinking that it must be hard to make it as an actress and militant lesbianism must lend one a fair bit of gumption. He replied that she was Really militant. It must have really been something, to impress someone who ran a coffee shop in San Francisco. Now me, someone who just hangs around in coffee shops is pretty outré to me.
Encounters of the Spooky Kind (1980 Hong Kong)
Genres: F Act Com
The Chinese are truly qualified to make ghost movies. Chinese people know all about this sort of thing, so when one says to the other, "Ghost! Run!" he runs without arguing. We in the West don't know quite what to make of ghosts. And I'm really sick of all this woebegone slow crap where we try to figure it out. It's not that complicated, people. Run; if you can't run, fight. Oh that's right, you have to know kung fu for that. Well we just suck.
Being a Chinese witch is hard work -- sweat-drenching concentration is required to will the spirits to do the witch's bidding. The young one looks quite hot doing it. Maybe this system can be leveraged into a workout program for Americans. We're always looking for that new trend in exercise because exercise is boring. There's heat yoga offered nearby, whatever that is. Chinese Wiccan workout sounds better. Well, maybe not here, it's Orange County and we don't like Wiccans, but in neighboring LA County.
Although the plot gets repetitive and a bit boring in the middle, it's a fun and funny movie. The ending is not to be missed! It's wonderful what Sammo Hung can do with his body.
End of Days (1999)
Genres: Act F
I liked this. It has such a good message: You CAN beat Satan with enough firepower and manliness. Cut out all that whiny bullshit.
Enemy Mine (1985) NR
Genres: SF
Watched: 15 min
I tried to watch this on TV several times but it was too boring.
Epoch (2002) NR!!!
Genres: SF TV
Watched: 40 min
I watched about 25 minutes and this seemed more than enough. I was impressed with the number of ways in which their vision of how the U.S. Government would react to an alien artifact is nuts. Plus there is the really dumb dialogue and the bad CGI.
So I wandered off but my boyfriend wanted to see what this thing had, special-effects-wise. We had already seen the stupid CGI of the big black mysterious alien upside down pointy rock thing that appeared one day in a Bhutanese desert, and the bad CGI of U.S. fighter planes circling it. But when you love special effects, you're willing to give them another chance. This is in general a bad attitude, because you know you're heading for disappointment, but it's part of what makes us human, I guess.
He comes upstairs after a bit and says, "You're missing quite the movie. You know how the photo of the black thing which the expert guy had showed nine holes on the thing?" "Yes." "OK, the expert guy says, 'I know what the nine holes is. It's the nine planets!' Which is pretty horrible right there. There is nothing special about Pluto; there's chunks of crap at least that big circling the Sun beyond Pluto, Pluto is just where we decided to stop counting. And then, the team drove up to the black thing in their military truck but, here's where they encountered their first difficulty: the holes were twenty feet up from the ground. But their truck was actually sitting on these big folding legs and they went bzzzzp, and raised the truck up in the air! Oh those military guys and their gadgets! But they still couldn't reach the holes, but luckily their truck also had robot arms that were eight feet long and could reach the holes! So the expert guy says to the bitchy woman, 'Can you tell me the positions of the nine planets right now?' And she says 'Yes!' And she goes type type type and apparently contacts a satellite which is the satellite of detecting the positions of the nine planets and so it tells her and she says, 'Here you go!' (It is conceivable that she was actually using the Internet to figure out the positions, but it sure didn't look like it.) And so then, the guy tells the robot-arms-handler soldier, 'Put nine fingers of the robot arms in the holes, and then push the holes so they correspond to the current positions of the planets.' The soldier says, 'Ungh ungh, I can't, I'm pushing as hard as I can.' So then the military captain says, 'Screw this, let's just blow it all up; I have all these explosives.' So then the guy says, 'No, wait! Try this: rotate it counterclockwise!' And he does, and then a door opens in the thing. But it's an alien door, so all this light comes out, and all these rocks float off and hang in the air, and then they start spinning and create some sort of worm that extends into the rock and the rocks and the light all spin into the thing and disappear, and there's an open doorway! It's so advanced! In the future we'll all have doors like that! And a society based on never having to close doors, and we'll just have these disposable doors!"
And my boyfriend adds, "The rate at which they come up with amazingly stupid stuff is accelerating. You should come watch it." So, OK. I come downstairs to watch and this is what happens: They are now having an argument about whether to send in their robot or people inside, and agree that they don't have enough time for the robot because there's two Chinese MiGs cycling overhead. (And . . . and . . . well, the MiGs might start firing, or who knows; so they just don't have time.) They go inside and it's too bad they couldn't bring their super-truck with them because all they have is crappy rifle-mounted flashlights. Luckily, the aliens have provided their own eerie indoor lighting. Then there's some dialogue that goes something like this: "OK, so, don't cut your signal to us back here in the truck for no reason, OK?" "OK!" "And, men, don't anybody wander off and get lost." And then, the MiGs do fire, and the alien thing zaps them utterly. Meanwhile, back inside the thing, a big sprightly anemone-CGI emerges from one of corridors and stops several yards from the soldiers. The captain says, "Hold your fire, men!" And so they all shoot it. I have to admit that my boyfriend was correct, it was fairly entertaining, for a while anyway. I wandered off again though.
Later we're driving to the park and he tells me some more. Apparently the Chinese ambassador came to parlay with the American government, demanding that the Chinese have access to this thing too, or there will be trouble! And he brought all this Chinese food. So they're all eating his Chinese food. The American politician says, "But, the thing blew up your MiGs; obviously you suck so what trouble can you make?" (The characters don't go in for diplomacy in this movie; their forte is insulting and shooting each other.) And the Chinese guy says, "We have learned much from the brave sacrifice of our brave pilots. And you have to learn to make sacrifices too." The American says, "What kind of sacrifices?" The Chinese guy says, "You can't finish your Chinese food!" And he makes his lackeys take it all away! Oh and also there was the thing with the fortune cookies. The American guy says, "Can I have a fortune cookie?" And so the Chinese guy signs for an underling to come over with a tray of fortune cookies (but the American never actually got to have one). I guess that when Americans think "Chinese" they mostly think "Chinese food" and fortune cookies is an important element of that.
Then some Chinese soldiers arrive at the thing, and are standing around glaring, and the American captain tells his soldiers "Hold your fire," and . . .
E.T. (1982)
Genres: SF
Sappy and at-first-kinda-slow story for kids. The first part of the movie treats us to the wonder of interactions between Painfully Standard American Boy residing in Standardville, USA, and a cute alien. Then some plot happens: the alien sickens; the government is bad because they want to contain the diseased alien; upliftingly, the kid fights the stupid big bad government to keep them off his friend the diseased alien; then there's a chase and a tearjerky resolution and mercifully I could go home. I guess I was too old when I saw it (jr. high maybe?).
Eternal Evil of Asia (1995 Hong Kong)
Genres: Hor Com Act
Someone should help the cameraman! He's all woozy and keeps stumbling around. I think he later got work on Battlestar Galactica. But, man! This movie is wild! It will make you stagger around too! In a good way!
Four Chinese pals visit Thailand for good exotic times, and get 'em, but also manage to pick up some nasty consequences. Man, I knew Thailand was the land of rampant prostitution but it's also the land of rampant hexing. Exotic is as exotic does! We may call someone a "d**khead" but in Thailand, they actualize it. Well, all the magic is very handy for avoiding the X rating. E.g., they can show a guy jerking off on-screen because all he's doing is rubbing his neck!
You do have to put up with somewhat shoddy production values -- subtitles that aren't well written and that are scrunched-up white text, sometimes on white, and plot pacing like a comic with just a frame conveying important information. But hey, you have to rough it a bit if you want to experience excitement unavailable at home! It's good stuff.
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Too Afraid to Ask (1972)
Genres: Com F
Woody Allen. Inspired by an early popular sex education book. I read this book. It said that gays and lesbians were warped. It made fun of lesbian sex because neither woman has a penis and so what's all that nonsense about? But the movie doesn't address these issues. Among the issues it addresses is bestiality in its tenderest and most heart-breaking forms, dangerous monster boobs, and the private lives of sperm.
Evil Cat (1986 Hong Kong)
Genres: Hor F Com
In China, when a stranger asserts that you're in big trouble and will be dead in days unless you wear these here "treasures," you better listen. A Chinaman always does.
The silliness of this movie is magnified by the subtitles. It's often hard to tell what the characters meant to say. The cutest is "He snatched and ate a crap!"
Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (1987)
Genres: Com Hor
This movie isn't a sequel, it's a bigger budget remake. It dispenses with a lot of unnecessary boring stuff. Like, just two minutes into the movie the girl's already got her shirt off. Then comes a five-minute version of the previous movie. The rest differs in the plot specifics from The Evil Dead but the idea's the same, with more physical comedy and pricier effects. Also there's a guy with awful 80's hair -- the horror!
Excalibur (1980) NR
Genres: F
Watched: 30 min
I watched parts of it on TV but could never get through it. It must have taken black magic to take something as stirring and romantic as the Arthurian legend and make it this tedious. Dynasty is far more exciting. And Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot really suck. Lancelot looks like a dorky football player -- he's supposed to be all refined, the embodiment of chivalry. Guinevere, the regal beauty, here is a flirty little nixie. Arthur is a slackjawed dope, a butcher's son rather than a king's. Merlin, the only spark of good magic this movie has, is incongruous -- what is he doing with this bunch of yahoos?
Strangely, I am unaware of a good Arthurian movie. Since I can't recommend a movie I'll recommend John Steinbeck's The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights.
Actually I can: Monty Python and the Holy Grail. But it's lacking in the romance department.
eXistenZ (1999 Canada)
Genres: SF
Very nice. Virtual-reality game designer babe gets threatened by rabid fundamentalists and escapes, accompanied by a sexy bodyguard, through shifting layers of reality. Is this real? Are they in the game? Are they in a game within a game? The surreality and imaginative imagery are very enjoyable.
The insertion scene is priceless. But Jude Law really isn't gay! No, despite playing gay men in at least two fairly well-promoted films. Quite well. Actually it's completely his business whether he loves men. And it's not fair to whale on male actors for having male flings. I mean the osmotic pressure on them to have flings is tremendous from women and men so can you really blame them if it's so great that it occasionally makes it past the sphincter and then presses on, against the prostate? And once that happens can you really blame them for wanting more? And like I said it's completely none of my business.
The Exorcist (1973)
Genres: Hor
Way too drawn out. It's all this boring whining with the occasional action sequence of the possessed girl writhing in bed. Writhing in bed, with no matter what amount of make-up, doesn't make for an exciting movie. Well, you know what I mean.
Please note that all material on this page is Copyright © 2005 by D. Aline Lurie.
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