SF and Fantasy Movie Reviews Starting With S
Satyricon (1969 Italy) 
Genres: F Adv
Dir: Fellini. Gorgeous fantastical hedonistic vignettes set in ancient Rome. Based on a book dating from Nero's time that survives only in fragments, the movie also seems fragmentary; the protagonists abruptly shift from one adventure to the next. This seems perfectly natural, since the whole is like a dream. The dream of an oversexed gayish young man who fell asleep reading Petronius. Although why he was reading Petronius and not some of the much nicer modern gay porn I have no idea. The movie though is a luscious treat.
Save the Green Planet! (2003 South Korea)
Genres: SF Com Hor
All Koreans long to wear funny hats and fight aliens. They love online games! You think kids in the US are addicted, that's nothing compared with the Koreans. In fact this Indian couple were telling me recently that when their son was entering UC Irvine they asked the councilors what was the number one danger that students faced on the campus. The answer: getting sucked into online games. This surprised them, but it shouldn't have. UC Irvine is like 80% Oriental. They have some Indians too, but whites aren't welcome. In fact when my sister's boyfriend (who is a UCLA student) was at UC Irvine one day looking for some building, all the kids around whom he might ask directions were Orientals and giving him hostile looks, and then one of them shouted from a second-story balcony: "Go home, white boy!" Ha ha ha. My sister's boyfriend is tall, buff, and blond -- in fact, her gay friend once told him that he was the prettiest physics major he'd ever seen. It makes sense that the Orientals would be especially hostile to him. I caught a documentary on the History Channel about Japanese WWII prison camps for Americans and they said that the Japanese especially liked to torture and kill soldiers who most stood out as different from them, e.g. the tall or the red-headed ones. I have never been attacked on the UC Irvine campus, for example, but that's not saying much because I'm pretty short and dark-haired.
This playful absurdist anti-violence diatribe uses lots of violence to get its points across. It's refreshing and charming despite all the torture, except the overly protracted scenes of gruesomeness get tiresome and repetitive. On the other hand, it's challenging to keep coming up with new stuff for a kidnapper and kidnappee to do together. So, it gets repetitive. Maybe the amount of torturing they chose was seen as needed to desensitize the audience to the violence, or some similar artistic purpose. But the problem is that for our audience of two, it missed the mark both times. J was too saddened by all the torturing and didn't want to watch any more. I didn't have any strong emotions about it because I usually don't identify with fictional characters -- they're abstractions, and if their function in the story is to get beat up, then they should get beat up, what else. So I got bored with this stuff. You do have to make some assumptions about your audience's emotions, though. Naturally they won't be accurate for all the audience members. So maybe it doesn't speak badly of the movie that we two didn't seem to fit the profile very well. Heck, if everybody likes it, it's probably a piece of generic crud.
Scooby Doo (2002) NR
Genres: F Com
Watched: trailer
It looks stupid. And Jeez, the two all-American sexy teens are so skanky. The luscious bodacious Ginger (?) now looks as though she's ready to fall over dead from anorexia. And the boy? No you can't take any skanky dork, bleach his hair, and call him a dreamboat. It has to be the right skanky dork. You know whom I'm talking about. He's bad, grrrr. If you don't, I pity you. Or maybe you should pity me. OK, let's just drop it.
Scoop (2006)
Genres: Mys Rom MR
Someone was asking me recently whether I liked romance movies and I had to think long and hard before I could think of one I liked, and that was Kiss of the Spider Woman, which was made so long ago. Actually I would like to watch more romance movies. I don't not watch romance movies because I don't like romance movies but because the men in them are unattractive because they're stupid and boring. In action movies they are no geniuses either but at least they're running around blowing stuff up and killing people, which is hot; but in the typical romance movie they don't do much. Here however the hunk is suspected of being a serial killer so the fact that he's boring is greatly ameliorated by wondering whether he's not so boring after all.
Jackman is very pretty. But, you know. So bored. So, so bored now. Maybe that's why they invented bondage gear, for heaven's sake. If you gag the guy he can't say anything funny anyhow so you can't fault him for it. Plus it makes him even prettier.
The Secret of Roan Inish (1994)
Genres: F
Lovely selkie legend set in a tiny Irish village. The time is modern, but there's much to connect the old family with the old times and the old ways. A couple of adventurous and sensitive youngsters help unravel the family mystery and set matters right.
Great for kids and women. If your kids don't like it then they have been terribly spoilt by the all the modern flashy crap. You should consider sending them to a kibbutz or something. Because you are a bad parent and they need some time away from you.
The Seventh Seal (1957 Sweden)
Genres: F
Swedish is such a melodic and gentle language. The speaker may be talking about the most dreadful subjects and it still comes out as delightful warbling. And Sweden is so pretty and atmospheric. And their manners are so charming -- well not the peasants', peasants are peasants everywhere, and the comic relief. I like Sweden and Swedes and all Swedes would be welcomed in my home as friends.
It's a pleasant movie, if somewhat disappointing. The theme is old and no new light is shed upon it. But perhaps that is as it should be.
Shadow of the Vampire (2000 UK)
Genres: Hor
Follows the making of the classic Nosferatu (1922 Germany) assuming than an actual vampire was hired for the lead, for authenticity, because this classic is so great that only a real vampire could have headed the cast. And what follows from that. What do you suppose follows from that? It may have been a questionable idea. The vampire tries bravely, but has issues with the demands placed on him by the movie-makers. This point is stretched out for the whole movie.
Shrek (2001)
Genres: Ani F Adv Com Rom
Everything in this romantic adventure other than the Eddie Murphy donkey is so much fun that I have to judge the whole very good, albeit grudgingly. You know, I've tried horse steak in Europe and it was OK, and American Indians preferred mule to horse, so I have to imagine donkeys are fairly scrumptious. Somebody please point that out to the ogre.
What kind of romance can an ogre have? That is a shallow and childish question. First, most men are fairly ugly and women are for the most part practical. Second, every woman in her subconscious wants to be dragged off into a cave by a big ogre. If he's green, that's even better. The point is, there's lonely men out there who look like ogres. Or who could look like ogres if they would embrace what they have instead of trying to smooth it down. I think if they embrace their outer ogre and build up their inner ogre and use it proudly, someone is bound to be impressed, maybe even really turned on.
Shrek 2 (2004)
Genres: Ani F Adv Com Rom
It's so much fun! They make recent-reference comedy charming and funny rather than crass and annoying -- a tall order! They've even toned down the donkey. There's good character development, and the animation is terrific. I love the facial expressions and body movements.
So Fiona is like, eew, get this thing away from me . . . and it's understandable: Prince Charming is such an annoying stupid jerk. And yet. Yeah, Redondo Beach High School had piles of this sort of thing, and I was also like eew, what a loser. But now I wonder: Is it a worthwhile resource after all? I mean, how much does the jerkiness matter, really? Actually, the silliness and jerkiness isn't so bad . . . He's evil and jerky and stupid, but that's cute. And he rides on big dangerous journeys and is no coward -- isn't that worth a lot? And he's um, just so stunningly beautiful.
OK, OK! If I had to choose I would choose Shrek, because after all, he's so sweet and cute and big and effective. And Prince Charming because he's so gorgeous and silly and cute and can dance. If I'm the princess I can darn well have whatever I want and feed them both full of potions so they don't mind each other. And make everyone in the land understand that one look askance and they turn into slugs. And I'd get a really big bed and live happily ever after.
A princess ought to have savoir-vivre.
Shrek 3 (2007)
Genres: Ani F Adv Com Rom
We would all be happier pretending this never happened.
I could forgive Prince Charming his foolish power-grabbing attempts, including his falling on his ass every time. But he lost all his appeal the minute he used "lay" instead of "lie." Now that's gross, much more so than all the potty humor associated with the ogre.
Signs (2002) NR
Genres: SF
This had the balls to bill itself as a movie about an alien invasion. It is. But it's not the way it sounds. The aliens aren't the point (which is good because the aliens really suck). The point is that God and family values are important. And that Mel Gibson is wholesomely hot and look, he is exhibiting wonderful family values, and look, he's hurting inside so you can imagine rooting around in there and feel all nursey-nursey, and look he lives in Small Town America and his wife is dead so you can fantasize, and he's fighting aliens so he's managing some manliness too.
A secondary point is seemingly made: When you're being attacked, it's good to fight back with a weapon. Of course, you don't have a gun in the house, you being a farmer living out in the country. Mel can't be good and attractive and tortured and also have guns. But in the end, when all expedients of sitting around and complaining and bumbling around and inept hiding have been exhausted, someone finally has the epiphany that they should use a baseball bat. It's sure lucky the aliens didn't think of it first.
Our theory on the aliens was that they must have been a non-intelligent race, even though they had spaceships. They were just too dumb and incompetent. So we figured they were maybe like the smart aliens' pets, who took a joyride in the spaceships to go harass the humans for fun.
The Sixth Sense (1999)
Genres: Hor Mys
Surprisingly effective. A horror movie that's neither boring nor stupid is rare.
Sleeper (1973)
Genres: SF Com
Woody Allen doesn't take SF seriously! He just uses it as an absurdist vehicle for horsing around with Diane Keaton. Is that an insult to the genre? . . . Well, she is awfully cute, and most SF fans are male, so I expect no-one minds so much.
Sleepless Nights (2002) NR
Genres: Hor
Watched: 10 min
Low-budget vampire movie with writing and acting of a quality one might expect from a high-school production -- that takes itself seriously to boot. If your dialogue is generic and your actors are boring, you want to go for writhing naked chicks with big boobs covered in blood. But there is nary a one.
Snow White -- A Tale of Terror (1997)
Genres: F Hor
It is certainly pretty horrory for a "Snow White" rendition. Unfortunately it also espouses the legacy of horror movies' slowness. I was never terrified, but I was often bored.
Solaris (1972 USSR)
Genres: SF
I don't remember it much. I do remember the ear. It's slow and not much happens (not the ear, the whole movie).
Solaris (2002)
Genres: SF
Kind of boring but not really bad. Not nearly so boring as the USSR version. Also happily they decided to go with butts instead of ears for this rendition.
As a rule of thumb, butts is a really good choice. How often do I have the reaction: "That actor's butt is really annoying!"? Never. But I often have the reaction that that actor is really annoying. And there's this one guy whom I call "the guy with the butt" because everything I saw him in, I also saw his butt, and this made me like him a lot better.
But maybe the Russians did right to go with the ear. They don't put so much value on exercise over there.
Somewhere in Time (1980) NR
Genres: Rom MR
Really boring romance. Jane Seymour beckons to Christopher Reeve from a different time frame and I think he ends up going to her. Or not. Who cares.
Soylent Green (1973)
Genres: SF Det
It's well made, certainly. If you're willing to accept that this vision of the future isn't unreasonable: that everything is all deteriorated, nothing works and there's no good stuff for anyone except the very rich, the educational system has collapsed so that hardly anyone's literate, and there's people everywhere so that the protagonist who is a big hulking detective has trouble being sneaky because everywhere there's piles of people who complain when he steps on them. Because the greenhouse effect has caused great shortages. We may assume the government is very messed up; they don't say it isn't, don't say anything about its structure. So if you're willing to go along with this, then it's quite a carefully made movie. The details of the world are thoughtfully executed. The scenes aren't wasted; moments where no dialogue or action is going on still communicate a powerful or interesting or important message.
I'm not sure how to rate it. There would seem to be two independent scales: Is it a good movie and is the plot stupid. This one rates highly on both. Because except for the last 20 minutes or so the plot keeps moving along, and there is lots of neat stuff to look at, etc. But the plot is so very silly. The planet is so screwed up that it's difficult to get yucky artificial food from soybeans and plankton, so they've turned to even less appetizing sources. There's Soylent Yellow and Soylent Red, made of poop and cats, respectively. Soylent Green is the most objectionable. Because it makes the least food-production sense. And they manage to support this huge population of people on it. It's so, so silly. Too bad they couldn't find a less silly plot for their nice movie.
I think this is an important point, this point about the two scales. You have to examine what is going on with this medium, SF movies. They are being made by people who don't have the vaguest idea what science, engineering, statistics, etc. are and have a dread of ever having to. (I would add, basic tactics and, what the heck, it's true, basic logic too.) And they have very different goals from making something which makes some sort of sense from these standpoints. Is it really fair to grade them on the basis of something they don't care about and weren't even going for? They care about making money and a good stirring story. So I don't know about this scoring business; it may be a deeply flawed approach. Oh well.
I can understand them though. If you have an adventure starring clever logical guys and you have to worry that the plot makes sense then you have just mindless running around, some sort of stupid war movie type of thing. What you want is good-looking dorks with interesting personal problems. Charlton Heston now in this movie dangerously resembles the former. However the movie skillfully plays him against the rest of itself so the overall effect is certainly not like a boring logical war movie.
Spawn (1997)
Genres: F Hor
Guest review: Don't remember it too well. The computer effects were bad for the time, but now that it's an "old cgi" movie they are OK because who remembers exactly what the state of crappiness of effects was just then anyway. It was grotesque instead of scary, and very slow. The characters did really dumb stuff. A lot.
Species (1995)
Genres: SF
An alien woman mates with earth-men (or is it women? I don't remember how many alien women mate with earth-men). I don't remember it too well. I think it's pretty silly.
Good old human-alien miscegenation. Well, this theme pervades folklore, not with aliens of course, but with various non-human things, gods or monsters or animals. So, naturally, aliens. Gorgeous naked blonde aliens! With retractable alien bits! A winning combination of favorite motifs. Yeah, it's standard for gods and monsters to carry off human maidens, and also standard although less frequent for the human to be male (although there he is commonly bewitched and enticed), and even less frequently this male is carried off by a male deity, but I'm unaware of any folklore where both parties are female, if the objective is hanky-panky. Wait, does Buffy fan-fic count? If so, nevermind.
Species II (1998)
Genres: SF
ditto
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Genres: SF Sup
Oh, yes! Thank you, sirs. The hero is thoroughly tortured for the audience's benefit. He is spared no kind of pain! Everything from poverty to bastard friends to celibacy and jock itch, it thrilled me. There is something about a cute young fellow trapped in a never-ending, escalating spiral of pain to set my heart pumping.
Cutely, Spiderman loves comic books. Incongruously, however, he does not appear to like anime. Otherwise he would have seen Kiki's Delivery Service and had less trouble diagnosing his performance issues.
Spirited Away (2001 Japan)
Genres: Ani F Kid Adv
Wonderfully imaginative and gorgeous -- a feast for the emotions and the senses.
We in the US hand the kids such damn dumbed-down crap. I hate Disney. Not that I have kids. It's not about the dumb kids; it's about the art form, which I enjoy a lot myself. I don't mean to imply that I dislike kids, as a blanket statement. I wouldn't take candy from a baby. Because it's surely crappy candy covered in slobber. The fact that babies like candy means that the candy industry get lots of money, and some small part of the money will research and produce good candy. It's the same with children's entertainment.
Splash (1984)
Genres: F Com
Fairly generic 80's comedy romance about Tom Hanks and a mermaid. Slow and boring. And what kind of romance can it be with Tom Hanks? He is totally uninteresting and unsexy.
Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams (2002)
Genres: Act Adv F Kid
I liked the first one better but this one is also quite nice. Went a bit the route of the Star Wars prequels -- more gadgets, less nice plot.
Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (2003)
Genres: Act Adv SF Kid
The writing is thin and the visuals are underwhelming, but at least this movie is not repulsive. Recent U.S. movies, especially those that get two stars or less, especially children's comedies, tend to be more repulsive. It was made by Robert Rodriguez after all.
Seeing Austin onscreen was pleasant. Robert Rodriguez is in Austin. That's why there's lots of AMD logos, they're in Austin too.
Within walking distance of that capitol there's blocks and blocks of nice music venues, discos, bars, restaurants, and shops. I miss that. There's so many musicians in Austin that you could be passing a hole-in-the-wall side-street dive on a Thursday night and hear nice live music. And I miss The Boiling Pot. They spice the boil really nice, and blue crabs are like a couple bucks each. Blue crabs are the best. Those Alaskan king crab legs they have on buffets are crap. A blue crab's best part is the body. It's especially delicious if it's a female and it's the right season for it to have mustard inside. That you can smear on your potatoes . . . it's like a milder version of uni (sea urchin roe). Marvelous.
Oh and I didn't see this movie in 3-D, which I'm sure made it suck more. They don't let the home viewers have it in 3-D. I guess the logistics for that are overwhelming.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
Genres: Act Adv SF
Fun adventure despite the silliness and the rampant showcasing of management in action. Khan is very colorful and fun! Things sizzle when he's on, but without him they drag a bit and moreover, the silliness and management are more annoying. The show had silliness and hyper management but it was part of the style; it was charming quirkiness. This movie is much more like the show than the first one, which is a big improvement, but not enough so. Really someone should have had more respect for the show and not relied on clichés of the relationships, but come up with some more original things for the characters to have said. Oh well. At least they did a much better job than the first movie.
Khan is certainly wrathy. When his second in command says, "Uh no we shouldn't go into that nebula," he says, "But my wrath demands it! Look, it's in the title!" (The Bad Strategies of Khan Caused By His Wrath doesn't come so trippingly off the tongue.) I give Khan 4 stars.
Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones (2002)
Genres: Act Adv SF
The plot is better than in Episode I, but nowhere as clean or graceful as in the original episodes. And boy is there a lot of CGI. The puppets and the real sets they had in the older films were far more charismatic, both more real-looking and more tasteful. Now there's this damn overload of CGI, piles of quantity over quality. I can tell CGI and so can everyone else. Feh.
Just like the previous movie, the thing is geared toward silly kids. It's not just cutesy animals -- the senator is practically a child, a silly Jar Jar can be a politician, Skywalker is very young but has all this responsibility and power and heavy romantic tension with an older babe. Adult geeks buy plenty of Star Wars toys but apparently kids are still the big toy market.
The dialogue is often really dumb. It makes Ewan McGregor seem like a total retard, but luckily the critters he's up against are retards too. Obviously the intent is that a five-year-old will be sure to get everything. For example: Ewan visits the planet of the cloners (after a young child explains to him that, given the gravity signature Ewan was already aware of, the planet really must be there after all and he ought to go look). Cloners: Great, you've come from the Federation about the clones then! Ewan: Um . . . yeah. Cloners: The project is moving right along! The clone army should be up and running soon! Ewan: Wait, what project? What clones? Cloners: Why the clone army project y'all commissioned from us! Wanna see wanna see?
Usually Ewan McGregor is so sleazily sexy. He has this great sleazy-guy-acting-sweet-and-innocent thing going on; so he's especially sleazy because he's obviously such a faker. But in this movie he manages to appear a lot less sleazy; I suppose having a big beard and a robe helps. This is also a cute look, but he is so dumb here that, I dunno, it's not even cute anymore.
The snotty kid, now, the one the princess/senator has had the hots for since he was like eight -- he's annoying and snotty, as he's supposed to be, and cute, as he's supposed to be. Senator Amidala takes him seriously and thus generates all this soap opera. My instinct would have been to let him ravish me after building it up sufficiently, then ravish him, then chain him up and whip him till he passed out, bleeding. He's so damn annoying. Then I'd cruelly dump him. Oh wait, he's a Jedi. Well, obviously the correct thing is not to get involved in that sort of situation. I mean look what happens to women who get involved with Greek gods; it's like that. And indeed this guy goes nuts and turns evil. Which is better than being dumped, of course; if your husband's gone because he's become an uber-dark insane overlord, then it's not like you bored him. It's kind of romantic, actually. Makes a good story. Which does not imply that it's a good situation. I mean give me a break. Sure he's cute in a sick annoying kind of way (cradle robbing = sort of sick) but there's not any real shortage. Takes a week or so to shift gears maybe, but then you're good to go.
As to the cradle robbing, G says that it looks like they have a cult of youth on that planet Amidala is from. So it would make sense that she would be hot for little Anakin. But G doesn't give Lucas credit for having this kind of depth. I might, but not for expressing this kind of depth in this movie. What we all decided was that Lucas is now nuts. We disagreed at what point exactly he went nuts, but we were agreed that he has been for some time now. This is what happens when you are so powerful that you hear "you're great" all day long.
Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Genres: Act Adv SF
The creative emphasis is on the special effects and the fighting. That's bad for the rest of the aspects of the movie, and given that they are thus bad, it falls to the special effects and the fighting to provide the entertainment. There's lots of showy CGI, so whatever's happening, one can fall back on gawking, which is fairly enjoyable. The fighting is less successful. Whether the fighting is among Jedi or spaceships, they move too quickly so it's hard to follow what they're doing. Also the Jedi take damage you know a regular person couldn't take, and seem to be inconsistent with their abilities to perform impressive Force tricks. It's not fun if you don't know the limits of the combatants' abilities and therefore can't evaluate their tactics. And when you think you can, they don't seem to be that good -- they'll ignore perfectly good openings. But who knows.
In accordance with the series' new emphasis on pandering to the tastes of five-year-olds, the plot is dependent on everybody being stupid. Nobody went in for subtle intrigue in the original three movies, but neither were they constantly in the situation that if only the audience could have told them to stop being so clueless, given what the audience was seeing in parallel with them, they would have been OK. Little kids enjoy this kind of setup. Mature people prefer to bonk the stupid heroes on the head. I would enjoy this movie better if I could do that. Actually I don't know if the little kids enjoyed this aspect -- I saw this in a theater and the kids weren't shouting out hints. I guess they were defective.
(J: "I enjoyed this aspect!" A: "Why?" J: "I imagined I could go tell them no, you're being stupid, and then everything would be OK." A: pats J on head.)
The dialogue is largely bad. Everybody is too silly to take any sort of rudimentary precautions, let alone engage in any constructive machinations, so everything they say is simplistic and boring. Everybody that is except the Sith lord who plays them all for the boobs they are, and is thus the only semi-sympathetic character. The scenes of soap operage are boring too. And everything Padmé says is bad. She's whiny and generic, completely devoid of humor or spunk. In the preceding episode, she was a much more worthwhile character -- there was all this cute suspense about when she'll give in and let young Skywalker jump her bones. Here she's totally useless. And jeez, what a wimp . . . "My husband's an evil insane overlord, waah, I just can't take it . . ." I admit the dorky all-covering armor isn't a turn-on, especially with those insultingly prominent on-off buttons like a coffee-maker, but, come on. Men turn into hideous evil monsters, the best you can hope for is they make money -- just go buy some fancy shoes. Loser.
(Note to self: Wear sexy revealing armor upon becoming an evil insane overlord.)
Obi-Wan and Darth are pretty cute so it's sort of hot when they fight, and I like it that little Anakin is all grown up and has a big chest and scary evil eyes now. Obi-Wan would have been cuter if he were a bit edgier; no-one wants such a goofy, good-natured hero/sex symbol, probably because his type is unlikely to win in the kind of setup where sexy muscles, fighting skill, and daring are prized. Strange, Episode IV takes place maybe 20 years later, and Obi-Wan looks so old there; I wouldn't think he was older than 40 here. Well, maybe all the ribbing aged him! He's NEVER going to live down having flubbed on finishing off Darth Vader. Crikey, what do they teach those Jedi? Never, never, NEVER walk away from a wounded opponent, no matter how near-death-seeming. If this is true for a plain human opponent, how much more true is it for a Jedi? Poor Obi-Wan.
Stargate (1994) NR
Genres: Adv SF
Watched: 30 min
I walked out of it, but folks said that it got better after the point at which I walked out. The point where the stupid annoying blond guy gave his candy bar to the alien camel.
Starship Troopers (1997)
Genres: Act SF
Follows a mixed-gender group of young soldiers who ship out to fight invading giant alien bugs, using amazingly awful tactics which slaughter both sides in droves. Based on the
Stepford Wives (1975)
Genres: Dra SF
Silly and slow. The SF idea here doesn't have interesting implications. That is, of course it is possible to come up with a creative plot based on this idea, but if the writer has no instinct for coming up with a creative plot then you get exactly this movie. The thing is, the term of the title has entered American culture and so you might watch it so that you know what it means. Or I could just tell you. You're welcome! It means a wife who has no mind of her own and is like a husband-pleasing robot, assuming husbands are pleased by women who love homemaking. The other thing is, the robot wives never whine about anything, ever; the protagonist is very suspicious because he was just taking a stroll past the window of some fat schmuck, and heard his wife praise his love-making skills and this really got the protagonist thinking: Wait a minute; why is she so sweet and supportive? No way could a woman truly enjoy sex with that pathetic loser. So he decides to look into it. The husbands in this small town were apparently unsatisfied by their real wives' skills at homemaking and annoyed by their wives' whining, and so decided to commission some better, robot wives who would behave the way wives ought to. I mean, already there are like animated puppets in Disneyland, and they say stuff, so why not?
Stepford Wives (2004) NR
Genres: Dra SF
My boyfriend's grand-aunt said, "It's not supposed to be really good, but I was curious to see it because that's the way I was, a long time back. I did anything my husband wanted me to. I got up early in the morning and got my hair done and put on my makeup and got dressed before he got up and could see me. And then if he didn't like the way I dressed I'd go and change. I kept myself looking real good for him; he never saw me without my nails painted. Of course he was always a real handsome man. We made a really good-looking couple, I think."
And she used to keep the house real neat, even with the children, and would cook all sorts of fancy things for her family and all the neighbor kids who stopped by all the time, and all the parties. Then she got "cooked out," but still kept house real good. Now, though, she lives alone and says it just isn't important anymore (although her place seems clean enough to me). I hear this from other older women too -- how neat they kept their house, how they'd wash the floors every day, and iron the sheets, and fold the washcloths, besides all the sewing and cooking and obeying their husbands, but now they don't bother with a lot of it. "No more!" By the way I am not making up the daily floor-washing. I heard this from two separate ladies in their fifties. Wow. I figure it's easier to throw away food that touches the floor than to keep it so clean you can keep that food; food's cheap and it doesn't fall down that often.
So she and I went to see it. After it was over she said she was so glad my boyfriend didn't have to sit through it. She's a very considerate person and has the sweet traditional elevated value for men's time and doing what they enjoy with the spare portion of it.
She thought this movie dreadfully silly and so do I. Now there is nothing wrong with being silly if you're not a bore about it, but this movie stops any possible enjoyment of its positive qualities dead in its track with much of the dialogue. It does have good points. The gay subplot is cute, and Bette Middler is cute. But it endlessly explains the silly plot to us, because it's sooo complicated and we don't already know it anyway. The wife is so helpful and explains the movie so well to the audience that if they happened to bring their retarded five-year-old with them, all of them were bored. One good thing about being a robot is that your eyes could spin all the way back in your head and out again when you can't believe how boring the person speaking at you is.
Stigmata (1999)
Genres: Act F Hor
This hip young atheist chick keeps getting stigmata. A priest who specializes in debunking this sort of thing looks into it and decides that something is indeed going on. I don't remember what happens after that except there's running around and special effects.
Stir Of Echoes (1999)
Genres: F Hor
Kevin Bacon is a blue-collar worker who comes down with second sight and uses it to investigate a long-ago-committed crime. He's a regular guy who likes his beer and his wife and has a really sexy blue-collar-worker body which he takes many opportunities to show off to us, so he's weirded out by this crap. I liked it OK.
The Story of Little Mook (1953 West Germany) NR
Genres: F Kid
Watched: 20 min
The dialogue might be delightful in the original German, but I don't speak German. The English dialogue is terrible.
Strange Things Happen At Sundown (2003)
Genres: Act Com Hor
This independent low-budget horror film is good fun and a breath of fresh air. The complicated, funny, and actiony plot follows the misadventures of assorted vampire schmucks.
As compared with big-budget movies, this is much more believable. The big-budget movies tend to get all alike. A certain style gets stabilized and everyone clings to it, because they want to make money too and here's the formula, here's what the public wants. Currently, action protagonists have to be super-cool (not really cool, but Hollywood's stupid version of cool) and glower and posture a lot. But this movie is like some foreign movies: fresh and vibrant compared with the same-ole crap Hollywood cranks out.
The plot raises real issues vampire might face. I actually cared about some of the characters in this movie. There's good interpersonal relationships, funny and moving personal problems. The dialogue is much better than the cookie-cutter "cool" Hollywood drivel.
The most characteristic thing about this movie however is lots of thrashing around almost-nude women with bloody boobs! Really lots, or rather beyond just lots. Whenever they thought a scene might be a little slow, or long, or they couldn't come up with the perfect dialogue, they put a thrashing around woman with big fake bloody boobs on the floor in the foreground, or background or maybe on a sofa.
Street Fighter (1994)
Genres: SF Act
There was this Japanese video game where you pick one of ten good guys and then you fight all the bad guys in order until you culminate with the evil insane dictator. The gameplay was pretty straightforward -- you start at the left and you walk to the right, you meet more and more bad guys, and each one you fight. The Japanese are so silly -- they started it, games like that. This wouldn't work very well as a movie, so they moved the fighting into the evil mad dictator's compound. In the movie there are a lot of fighters but not so much streets. Actually, there's no streets; it's pretty much all compound. But there must have been some streets leading up to the compound. Anyway they had to call the movie this because it's based on the eponymous video game.
This movie isn't good but it's sure strange, because they decided to put all fifty characters from the video game in here. Like you're following the exploits of the martial arts reporter lady, and suddenly the movie introduces this good scientist who trains a genetically engineered soldier and while the evil scientist isn't paying attention he trains the genetically engineered soldier on endearing images like kids instead of soldiers -- all these people just keep coming at you. Still the plot is fairly straightforward, and still has nothing to do with fighting in the street.
Well, lots of goofy action that doesn't take itself seriously and has somewhat funny villains is good enough. Sometimes it's boring but often it's pretty cute, like there's some pretty cute dialogue. The Russian goon is funny. Who would win in a one-on-one between a big bearded Russian goon and a sumo wrestler? Watch this movie to get answers to this question and more just like it.
Super Mario Brothers (1993)
Genres: Act Adv SF F
This is the best based-on-a-video-game movie I can think of. It's a funny, colorful, and actiony fantasy. All that plus a sweet love story. Sweet, but the best kind, where the girl is kidnapped right away so you don't have to sit through all this crap about her feelings; instead you get to see the heroes try to rescue her.
Superman Returns (2006) NR
Genres: SF Act Rom
Superman is like a Realdoll with a bad personality. This is the most plastic-y actor I have ever seen. No amount of laziness to get up to go to the bathroom could make me like him -- my bladder could burst and he'd still totally creep me out. In the olden days, kids learned various obvious but nonetheless valid good character traits from superheroes they encountered in comics and TV shows. From this movie kids will learn to be shallow conceited creeps. The kind who will scan your underwear while talking to you and then whoosh to the nearest lingerie store with a sale to get you a sleazy tasteless gift. Really there's no-one to concentrate on in this movie. The other prominent supposed hunk is Cyclops and OMG is he better looking with the Cyclops glasses on. So sad. So Lex Luthor is the most attractive male, and there's a lot to like about him -- his wigs, his clipped tender feelings for his mistress and henchmen, his credible mad supervillain vibes. However these vibes come heavily tinged with gaydar vibes for me so again, no cigar.
I like what this person did to to fix many of Superman's personality problems.
Speaking of Realdolls, I notice they charge the greatly reduced price of 1.5K for a limbless, headless torso. I understand that not everyone can afford to spend 6.5K on a new girlfriend but it seems to me that many folks would be interested in a torso + head version. That would be the ultimate woman for some, in fact. Unable to run away or resist. Throughout history this inability has been highly desirable. I'm not putting down their product however, I'm just saying they might want to add this other version. Certainly a headless woman is also desirable. The Silent Woman is a popular pub name in the UK. A headless woman is typically depicted on the sign. The name might indeed have something to do with a martyred saint as the wiki article claims but that's not how my boyfriend interpreted it on our last trip over there. I imagine that's how any clueless male would interpret it.
I also notice that none of the available hairstyles available to Realdoll purchasers is anywhere as short as mine. I am not going to take a clue from this, however. I'm smart enough to not need girly hair. Anyway I already have a boyfriend. He wishes I'd grow my hair out, as does my mom. But I don't see what I'd get out of it.
My boyfriend was offended by various ridiculous unscientific happenings in this movie but my feeling is that if the play sucks, there isn't much point criticizing the fake scenery. I wasn't paying attention to the details anyway because I hated Superman and his stupid girlfriend and her husband and most of the plot so much that I tried with some success to leverage the full bladder to take me away from the horror altogether.
Guest comment: Supersquirrel!
Swordsman II (1991 Hong Kong)
Genres: F Act
It's often gets confusing, with the bad subtitles and all the Chinese looking similar. But it's often funny and charming when one manages to figure out who these people are and what they're doing. It's nice cute dialogue when you can get it, and really, this movie wouldn't be half as good with good subtitles -- it's a bonus source of hilarity that the Chinese audience misses out on.
Sometimes you think you have it more or less figured out but then the movie throws a series of fast balls at you and you're floundering again. It's always good to introduce new characters in the final battle! Who the heck is Carol? But you can tell who's good and who's bad so the confusing stuff either starts making sense eventually or doesn't matter.
It's interesting that it's a common theme in Chinese martial arts movies that powerful magic often involves cross-dressing and transsexuals. Maybe because women are mysterious. And martial arts advancements are done by monks, to whom women are even more mysterious. Or because the Chinese think transsexuals are hilarious.
Please note that all material on this page is Copyright © 2005 by D. Aline Lurie.
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