SF and Fantasy Movie Reviews Starting With M
Mad Max (1979 Australia) 
Genres: SF Act
In rural postapocalyptic Australia, cops in black leather chase a crazed biker gang . . . and then it gets personal! It isn't as exciting as it sounds. The opening chase is nice but it quickly goes downhill. It's too slow, and both sides use bizarre tactics.
Cars and their manly handling is a central theme, so you'd think they would be interested in semi-realistic portrayals of racing and chasing tricks. That a souped up car can outrun nice motorcycles seems a strange premise for such a movie. Although, it's like the most incompetent biker gang ever. It would take them half a dozen tries to take candy from a baby. And they wear mascara so of course Mel Gibson's souped up car can chase them down -- they wear mascara, and he's so manly and his car goes vvv-vvv, and they wear mascara . . .
The other theme is Mel Gibson's tight ass. The director obviously recognized this valuable asset because he repeatedly shows him walking away. Which can't make up for the slowness, boredom, and pointlessness. The cat had the right response to this movie -- go to sleep. After licking his ass so he looks cute walking away.
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981 Australia)
Genres: SF Act
They have cars! And ass! The good guy has a turbocharger; the bad guy has nitro! And ass! And they have a gate that's a car! And when they have soufflés they have car soufflés! And the bad guys' comes with a side of ass!
MM1 had no budget but won worldwide acclaim so this time the director could afford a good plot, exciting pacing, lots of nice car chases, and a good atmosphere. And lots more ass. And Mad Max is more attractive because he's mad, and has a provocative metal leg part, and gets all deliciously banged up, and is always dressed in black leather that looks like it might start falling off, and he's all mad. S'cute!
Madagascar (2005) NR
Genres: Ani Kid F Adv
Watched: poster, and heard a short excerpt on the radio
You already know about imagining scary audiences in their underwear to ease the tension. Perhaps it would alleviate the annoyance when annoying people talk at you to imagine them as animals. Then you could fantasize about shooting and eating them.
Man of the Century (1999) NR
Genres: Com MR
Watched: 15 min
They have this gimmick. And it's OK for like several minutes. But just that. After that, it's not funny. This guy is stuck in the 1920's and he lives in modern New York. You can see how that gets not funny after several minutes.
The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)
Genres: SF Dra
David Bowie is an alien who comes to Earth to look for an answer to his planet's problem. But he gets abused by corporate America and then he just sits around communing with American culture and the movie just sits around too. It's so boring. Truly, one doesn't expect Bowie to play a reasonable guy whom it's OK to send on a mission to save the home planet -- this sort of thing is not his forte. He's better at being all hedonistic. But you never really know, he might decide to get off his skinny duff and get to work!
It may be unfair to regard it from this (American) vantage point though, because it showcases David Bowie. Perhaps it should instead be regarded from the British vantage point. Brits love failure and love to be seen as victims of circumstance (I learned this from a book on the cultural differences between Brits and Americans which I bought before my trip to London). So Bowie is a victim of circumstance and you shouldn't expect him to get anything accomplished.
Man With the Screaming Brain (2005)
Genres: Com SF
Written, directed, and starring Bruce Campbell. It's set in Bulgaria, land of cheap movie production, and Campbell has captured the Eastern European character pretty well. Except it's even much more evil. Eastern Europe has plenty to see and eat and buy for cheap, but you can't relax like you're in overpriced but safe and polite Switzerland.
There is much to admire as well as enjoy in this slapsticky romp but it could have been tighter, both as to writing and directing. And as to Campbell's bod. I say an actor's first priority, anyway if the actor is of Campbell's caliber in looks, is to add to the beauty of scenes. Writing and directing is all very well but should be taken up only once the beauty is taken care of. Let the ugly folks pitch in and go work out, you big dark raving beauty.
Manoushe (1998 Brazil)
Genres: F Rom
Watched: 30 min
There were no subtitles. I sent the disk back and got a replacement, but this one didn't have subtitles either. At this point I figured it wasn't supposed to have subtitles. But the second disk was broken so I couldn't finish it. It could have been my player's fault; it's pretty flakey. I should really get a new player, the kind that can play all zone codes, but I'm too lazy. Those zone codes are such a stupid screw anyway; they should just cut that out. Anyhow, while the fault may not lie entirely with the movie, I feel no desire to order a third disk and will rate it on what I saw. While it is possible to be interesting without dialogue, these moviemakers didn't have this ability. The opening dance number is pretty nice but the rest is underwhelming. And there's way too much filler. Although foreigners may not call it that.
Mansquito (2005) NR
Genres: SF
Watched: trailer
Ooh, another fine SciFi Channel original! With friends like these, the genre doesn't need enemies. They are openly mocking SF now -- despite the title, this movie isn't a comedy. This is almost as bad as the car they're advertising now, the 2005 Suzuki Forenza, which makes me visualize forensic specialists poring over the charred remains of the passengers as the car lies smashed and burned at the bottom of a cliff. Not that crossbreeds is absolutely a bad premise -- there was Mant, which you have to admit sounds pretty classy. And J suggests Vampiranha. I'd watch that.
Mary Poppins (1964) NR
Genres: Mus F Kid
Watched: 3 min
I am not capable of watching this for more than a couple of minutes. As soon as I see Dick Van Dyke's dreadful grimacing . . . well it's a couple of orders of magnitude too much grimacing to bear. You shouldn't let your children watch this, you really shouldn't. Not if you want them not to grimace. I mean children are always told to stop grimacing, and do you expect them to do that if you let them watch this? Assuming, of course, that the grimacing in this movie doesn't drive them insane outright, the grimacing behavior will be burned forever into their developing brains.
The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
Genres: SF Act
I was annoyed with the first Matrix for being awfully silly but this one didn't affect me this way. Some of the silliness is explained, and also they dropped their insane plot premise that the humans in their pods are needed by the machines as batteries -- must have gotten laughed at too much.
It's still just silly babbling interspersed with crazy pretty fighting. But there's also lovely poignancy in the interaction of the aging but still-beautiful Reeves and his beautiful mature strong girlfriend. She is his mommy. And his silliness is actually part of the plot it turns out. That's classy.
I think the whole Reeves thing endeared me to these movies. The first one was pretty nonsense, kind of like him; but here he's all vulnerable and I dunno . . . I'm starting to relate. So it has heart, at least to me. Because I'm perverted that way. When young he was luscious as a peach . . . but sometimes the sweetest peaches are those which are starting to age a little.
The Medallion (2003 Hong Kong)
Genres: F Act
The villain has such cute decadent outfits and he's all blond and pretty and evil. Hee. He always plays this character, and why shouldn't he.
It's always a pleasure to watch Jackie Chan doing stunts. Sometimes they're better and sometimes they're worse; in this movie the momentum is frequently clearly screwed up using wires. That's disappointing, but it's still entertaining. Partly it's his wonderful skill but a big part of it is the clever choreography and the humor. He said exactly this in an interview once -- that the humor is very important to his work. Well.
His movies aimed at Chinese are often hilarious. Sadly he figured out how to make movies for the lucrative American market -- dumb them down catastrophically. Lots of people complain about this, but obviously he knows what he's doing. He is very competent and wealthy so of course he's studied the demographics and decided what the optimal level of intelligence to aim at is. How sad that it is apparently that of a four-year-old. Not even that. The only adult I can think of who would find the policeman buffoon funny is the Unfraggable Krunk. (I don't know any four-year-olds.)
On the other hand perhaps Jackie is wrong after all. It's like me and tall people or my boyfriend and short people. We can't tell exactly how tall or short someone is, within quite a wide range. So maybe that's what happened to Jackie. He figured that he needs to cut out the charming quirky comedy because apparently his American audience is stumped so he decided they are hopeless morons and the more moronic the humor is the better. I dunno. But as much as I love Jackie I have skipped several of his US-aimed efforts recently because I saw the trailers and didn't figure I could stomach the "humor." How unfair.
Merlin (1998)
Genres: F
It's slow and long (a four-hour miniseries). There are some good aspects, e.g. the relationship between Martin Short the elf and Morgan. But, man! The main plot line between Merlin and his boring mushy girlfriend is so annoying and whiny. Guys, listen up: when your woman has some defect, go out of your way to convince her she's beautiful anyway! This is extremely important! If you don't, the best you can hope for is that she'll never quit whining and making your life miserable.
Mimic (1997) NR!!!
Genres: SF Hor Act
Watched: 30 min
I walked out. It's really really dumb. These bugs evolved to look like people, sort of. They evolved because they were predators, and they mimicked their prey (people) because people stepped on them. And they could do it all in a few years because they were bugs, and bugs have short life spans. In a future project, they'll have E. coli that evolve to look like the city of Paris in a couple of weeks. While the bugs didn't get any people powers from being people-shaped, they don't seem to have lost any of their bug powers -- they can fly and be really strong. They are like bug-people-shaped killing machines. They did it all in several years and nobody noticed. Well, they don't look exactly like people; they can do Homeless Person Wearing a Cape, and it's only passable in poor light at that.
Exterminating all the homeless people is a difficult task and a definite sacrifice, but I suppose it could be done. The thing is, these bugs can evolve to look like something else next and again we wouldn't catch on. Like Big Mac wrappers. Arguably we shouldn't be eating Big Macs. But then they would evolve to look like gasoline. Then we should switch to using nuclear power and energy cars. But then they would look like energy cars. You'd go to get into your energy car and it would be a bug. In fact they would look like everything. All the stuff in the house would be bugs. The toaster would be a bug. The phone bill would come, but it would be a bug. And the Internet service would be a bug. And in the end, the guy being chased around his house by all the bugs would realize --
"Wait a minute! I'm a bug too."
Monkeybone (2001)
Genres: F Adv Com Hor
Rollicking surreal wacky comedy with awesome stop-motion animation sequences. The hellish world of the hero's coma is a big delight. Brendan Fraser is the attractive comedic action hero, a role he successfully specializes in. There's also Whoopi Goldberg, but don't worry -- it's a small part. Chris Kattan is surprisingly funny as the corpse (it is a surprise to see one of these SNL characters playing in something else and actually being funny). Someone should kill him.
Monsters, Inc. (2001)
Genres: Ani F Com Kid Act
The monsters are so cute! And I know a guy who looks just like Sulley! But he doesn't have horns, as far as I know. (Little Russian joke.) Come to think of it I know someone who looks kind of like Mike too. (That's an American one.) Well, we're on a roll! Anyway, it's a darling movie for all age groups. The monsters are not scary, they are pretty much all cuddly and adorable. The scariest character in the movie is the little girl. There's just something freaky about her. Maybe it's because the animation technique was optimized for monsters.
Moon Over Tao (1997 Japan)
Genres: SF F Act Adv
First, the dub sucks, so choose the subtitled version. Really it's a rule of thumb that you want the original Japanese if colorful male characters are present (you might wonder what sort of action movie it might be without colorful male characters, but there's loads of anime with just a bunch of kids running around; they don't have any character depth or colorful Japanese voices like older men). Take every opportunity to listen to that manly throaty Japanese! They grunt "Ho!" like someone ran over their foot when they mean "yes." It's so charming.
This movie is written like an anime (down to the obligatory pantyme molesto-cam shot) but it has live actors. That's a neat effect. The actors do a fine job; I quite enjoyed them. Well, the men anyway. The alien ladies are OK I guess, but they're laboring under quite a handicap -- they speak telepathically. This seems like a challenge to act fascinatingly.
The ladies are apparently from a high-pressure planet: when you cut them they really spray. Why they wear those big helmets when they beam back up to their ship, but take them off on Earth, I don't know. Maybe they evolved somewhere without a breathable atmosphere. These are their own problems and the audience, like the Earth-people in the movie, aren't made privy to them beyond the necessary minimum.
The fight choreography is spotty. The ladies' initial super-sword fight sort of sucks, but there's better fights later with samurai and magic monks. Also a big thing shows up at the end.
Moonraker (1979 UK)
Genres: SF Act
Guest review: In the
The Mothman Prophecies (2002)
Genres: Hor F Mys
For a rather slow horror mystery, it's surprisingly not bad, for several reasons. It isn't as clichéd as it might have been, mostly. The monsters in this sort of thing are usually pretty simple, easily understandable once the big plot question of what they are is solved by the protagonists, and they have some simple goal in mind, like kill teenagers. But here the hero works to solve this same plot question (maybe not as efficiently as one might hope but he doesn't totally suck at it either) and he solves it to some extent, but comes up against the problem that the monsters are actually weird enough that it's very difficult to understand them. (But people don't like this answer. How many people do you know who enjoyed reading Solaris? OK, how many Americans? Thought so.) Plus he has personal problems caused by the monsters which puts him in a pretty hysterical frame of mind not conducive to efficient investigating. This is worked in well into the plot. (Again, as in Solaris.)
But the spooky cam is annoying and it's sorta slow and boring. I guess it's just not my sorta thing. Neither is Solaris.
J says: I liked this movie more, especially later, well after I saw it when I didn't remember the spookycam but only the good parts, like all the bafflement. On the subject of bafflement, the fact that Richard Gere was in a movie that was good also is high up on baffling things. You'd think from his previous movies that he was a sure indicator of worthlessness, but he did this and then Chicago. And this from this man that could suck up a Kurosawa movie, even. Also, I liked this movie so I wanted to read a book about it, and I bought The Mythical Man-Moth by Fred Brooks. I was surprised to find that the book actually wasn't about moth-men at all, but about managing large computer software development projects. It was still pretty good, although a lot of it was both (1) obvious and (2) something that no software manager could possibly understand. In fact, this brings us back to the movie, which had the same sort of thing. The movie suggested that the universe couldn't handle people knowing about the mothmen, because they violated causality and people-like-us can't violate causality -- if we try it, a piano falls on our head. Something similar probably happens with software managers; the universe can't handle them understanding the points in The Mythical Man-Moth Prophecies, so they just never do -- the ones that did are dead.
Mosquito (1995) NR
Genres: SF
Watched: 10 min
There's giant mosquitos. They like to drink white people's blood because it's easier to create drained-dead makeup for whites than blacks. So, there's a black guy wandering around all these strewn white people with drained-dead makeup. Then some more white people show up, and there's some dialogue. Everyone acts like zombies, apparently having had the life-force drained out of them by this ordeal, of having to act through the wretched dialogue. Their timing is even all wrong; it's like they stand around until someone off camera starts jumping and pointing at them to get them to say their line already.
Mr. Vampire (1985 Hong Kong)
Genres: F Com
This recipe of dangerous practical jokes, bumbling acolytes, dimwitted officious officials, and sexy ghosts will not fail to delight.
The Chinese have so many troubles with their relatives. Here, once they're dead and buried, you're quits. But in China you just have to fiddle with your dead relative forever. There is so much going on after people die. They explain that in the movie: there's good people and bad, live and dead -- it's all a continuum, and the Taoist priest has the skills to keep it all under some amount of control. There are advantages too, of course. You can become a ghost after you die with all kinds of special superpowers, and molest nubile acolytes and drain their yummy life forces. Oh yeah!
In the US we have our own issues and inconveniences. Like people who choose to display their relative's remains in their living rooms, next the remains of their dog or cat. Chinese-style ancestor worship is far less creepy. Of course, as with all cultural mores, it's completely subjective. It's like preferred amounts of personal space. Exactly like it, in fact. I find it comforting that the cat is buried in the back yard, but that someone's ashes in a tasteful urn on a bookshelf is oogy. My preferred proximities to the dead are no more logical than anyone else's. Well, except maybe that tribe in Africa where the wives all have sex with the husband's corpse to show it respect and all get ebola, and such. But in general it's illogical to let others' oogy practices get to you. The only thing you can do to them for discomfiting you is to discomfit them right back. Next time they're over for BBQ seat them in the middle of your cat graveyard and make sure they know it.
The Mummy (1999)
Genres: Hor Act Com
These mummy movies admirably don't take themselves seriously, and have the heroes continuously face disasters with fun effects. The only one with a coolness complex in the mummy; the heroes don't try to be cool, they try not to die and when they fall on their behinds they jump up and keep running, screaming comically.
The Mummy Returns (2001)
Genres: Hor Act Com
More of the same
The Muppet Movie (1979)
Genres: Com Mus F Kid
Guest review: Everybody should see this movie. When I was in high school or so, I won an audio tape of the soundtrack in some sort of Christmas event in church. I listened to it over and over and now I know all the lyrics to all the songs. I don't regret this.
Muppet Treasure Island (1996)
Genres: Com Mus F Kid
I didn't know the Muppets were Disney. Guess Disney bought them. Or maybe it's Treasure Island they own. You might assume Treasure Island is in the public domain, but while you're sitting around assuming, Disney could have gotten it taken out of the public domain. They can get any law passed they want.
The musical numbers are lots of fun. Certainly they are lots of fun when the Muppets sing, or Long John Silver (Tim Curry).
Early on I decided I hated the kid. I was feeling generous (if the Muppets don't mellow you out I don't know what will) so I reasoned his haircut was a big part of it; it's a mullet. But then, he started to sing. Is this brat some Disney executive's nephew? Whoever put him in here didn't bother to cover his tracks either, because the rest of the casting is very nice. I like the expression on Long John Silver's face when the the kid sings next to him.
My Left Eye Sees Ghosts (2002 Hong Kong)
Genres: Hor Com F Rom
Cute romantic ghost comedy set in modern times.
The DVD's "glossary" explains certain pertinent Chinese traditional beliefs. For example, the "Death Bridge," which ghosts must cross in order to be reborn. Only good souls are able to cross; bad ones fall off into the bloody river below. Clearly this system is designed to filter the good souls from the bad, but I don't see why any bad souls should remain after a few years. Perhaps they use a sliding scale, or else due to the population explosion too many new souls had to be manufactured. Stuff made in China is sometimes pretty shoddy. But the people in the movie are surprisingly nice, so maybe it is a sliding scale.
Mysterious Island (1961)
Genres: SF Adv
Several Civil War soldiers escape imprisonment in a bulletproof gas balloon and land on an island inhabited by creatures suitable for Ray Harryhausen animation. These movies always end up like this, with a crowd of guys poking at a giant claymation thing with sticks. It's nice if you're feeling nostalgic, but it's too slow. Aah, for the days when you could show stock footage for 30 seconds . . . But it picks up once they stop dicking around and meet Inspector Clouseau's insane boss.
Much more interesting is the DVD bonus feature of an overview of Ray Harryhausen's life work. Harryhausen, Ray Bradbury, and others speak about his beginnings as a dinosaur-loving teen and all his movie projects. My favorite among the animation clips they show isn't from a movie but a series of Mother Goose fairy tales -- really cute. At the end of the program there's a Hollywood award ceremony where Ray Bradbury presents Harryhausen an Oscar for life achievement. When Harryhausen receives it, the presenter presses a secret button and the statuette starts waving its arms around! No, not really. These movie people have no imagination.
Mystery Men (1999)
Genres: SF Com Act
Cute comedy about third-rate superheroes who are forced to unite their meager, bastard abilities to save the day.
Please note that all material on this page is Copyright © 2005 by D. Aline Lurie.
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