Norma Jean and Marilyn (1996)

★½
I admit that I know very little of the life of Marilyn Monroe. Nonetheless, I think I can safely say that Norma Jean and Marilyn does her little justice. The movie doesn't go wrong in the acting or the directing, but in the material itself. Jill Isaacs's screenplay gives us a Marilyn Monroe who was pathetic and stupid. There's no hint of the legendary actress at her best. We see no indication that she was talented. Instead, we see a loser who slept her way to the top and trampled on everyone who got in her way.

The Wedding Singer (1998)

★★★
The Wedding Singer was the first sign that Adam Sandler had the talent to sustain interest and carry a movie confidently on his shoulders. I never watched Saturday Night Live and was unfamiliar with his work there. I am familiar with Billy Madison, which had its moments but was still a lame comedy about a temperamental man-child. Sandler had a pretty good idea of what people found funny, no matter the quality of the story or the execution, and he milked that desire shamelessly. Billy Madison came out in 1995, a year after Jim Carey’s obnoxious Ace Ventura: Pet Detective became a big hit. The blueprint was there for others to follow. For Sandler, it was just good business to ride that wave, even if the product was artistically lacking. That said, the previews for his 1998 film The Wedding Singer looked promising. Was Sandler using this vehicle to challenge himself? It’s worth considering.

Overboard (2018)

★★½
Against all odds, this 2018 remake of 1987’s Overboard rises above the current wave of remakes and reboots despite swapping the male/female roles of the original. Instead of Kurt Russell’s sweaty carpenter we get Anna Farris’s pizza delivery woman slash carpet cleaner slash aspiring nurse. Instead of Goldie Hawn’s spoiled rich girl we get Eugenio Derbez’s womanizing party animal (and spoiled rich boy) Leonardo Montenegro, with the yacht imported over since falling overboard is one of the common threads uniting the two movies. It works because, among other reasons, instead of simply dumping opposite-sex actors into familiar roles, the movie plays to their strengths and anticipates our expectations. When Derbez’s character finds himself on a construction job, his coworkers notice his soft hands. He’s never worked a day in his life.

Levity (2003)

★★★★
Levity is about a man with a wound so deep that he can't emerge from it and put the past behind him. Twenty-three years prior, Manuel Jordan (Billy Bob Thornton) killed a man in a robbery and spent those years behind bars. He admits that he likes prison, and he doesn't want to leave. He knows that he has done a terrible thing; he feels bad for it and having his life sentence shortened for good behavior was never his wish. As far as he's concerned, he deserves prison, but a review board doesn't agree. Manuel Jordan is a free man.

Exiled (2007)

★★½
Macau is an amazing city. I had the privilege of visiting in 2017. It’s a city steeped in history, with its Portuguese colonial architecture, breathtaking casinos and the amazing Ruins of Saint Paul’s. The Macau Tower is a sight to behold. Few movies are wholly set in Macau. James Bond passed through a few times, while Hong Kong cinema will occasionally drop in now and then. Director Johnnie To has been here before (Fulltime Killer), and he set his 2007 film Exiled in the former colony. This is an effective if somewhat muted Triad crime film taking place in 1998, the year prior to the administrative handover from Portugal to China.

The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977)

★★½
The Kentucky Fried Movie is the first effort by the ZAZ team, which consisted of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker. Throughout the '80s and into the early '90s, these men wrote and directed some of the funniest movies ever made. Though they didn’t develop the idea of the cinematic parody, they used it frequently as the method to deliver their jokes. They would pick genres or current events and apply a humorous spin on them. This approach resulted in their best work, Top Secret! and The Naked Gun.

Piranha (1978)

½ star
Everyone has to start somewhere. For Joe Dante and John Sayles, Piranha gave the young filmmakers the opportunity to work on their craft in a throwaway horror movie, allowing them to get their foot in the door before moving on to better things—much better things like Gremlins and Limbo. Ditto for special effects legends Phil Tippett and Rob Bottin, who supplied the stop-motion animation and gory makeup here before showcasing their talent in Robocop and Starship Troopers. Those titles came later. For now, we have to deal with this mess. Piranha is dreadful, with bad dialogue, questionable decision-making and insane plotting. Only the climactic gorefest brings any suspense to the story. Beyond that, this is a disaster.

I Spit on Your Grave (1978)

★★★
The level of vitriol leveled at I Spit on Your Grave during its initial release in 1980 (after a smaller release in 1978 under the original title Day of the Woman) ensured not only its notoriety but also its longevity. While other grindhouse movies have come and gone, Meir Zarchi’s rape-and-revenge film refuses to go away, inspiring an awful remake with two sequels, as well as its own official sequel released in 2019. Contemporary reviews blasted it, while retrospective reviews have attempted to analyze the movie in a new light. This is a dark tale. There is no way to enjoy this experience, nor should there be. There is simply to watch and ask why. Don’t read into the subtext (there is little) or deconstruct the events or characters (they are too simplistic for that). The actors are the director’s props, on hand to give form to his own outrage following an up-close encounter with a rape victim.

Scream (2022)

★★
I once wrote, in my review for Scream 3, that I hope there isn’t another installment. Years later, there was another installment, Scre4m, which turned out to be a strong entry in the series. Now I’m going to say it again. I hope there isn’t a Scream 6, because Scream (not called Scream 5), is a weak entry. While it cleverly tackles the latest trend of soft reboots (as seen in Star Wars and Jurassic Park) and the motivation for making them and featuring a Ghostface killer who follows the rules for soft reboot storytelling, the movie plods along, devolving into a standard slasher affair instead of rising above it. The first, second and fourth installments managed to incorporate the formulaic construction of slasher movies into gripping stories. This one, and part 3, fall victim to their source material.

Tremors (1990)

★★★½
Tremors is one of those amazing success stories in modern film. When it was released in 1990, it received good reviews, but it wasn't successful at the box office. That's where the beauty of home video comes in. Many times over the years, this format has elevated films from mediocre release to cult status. Friday and Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery are two recent examples of movies that were wildly popular on video after unimpressive showings in theaters.

Hide and Seek (2005)

★★½
Robert De Niro is once again at the center of mysterious circumstances, which could be undone by a simple revelation that asks us to rethink everything in the film and reassemble it to form a new picture. The actor took part in the best twist ending I've ever seen, in Alan Parker's bloody Angel Heart, and here he is again to participate in another mind-boggler, only this time he's at the receiving end. His daughter, played by Dakota Fanning, has an imaginary friend named Charlie, who is responsible for the poltergeist-style haunting of his new home.

In the Company of Men (1997)

★★★½
I read my one-star review of In the Company of Men before writing this update. I saw it years ago, when I was still fresh out of college and barely into a career job. This movie’s themes were largely foreign to me. I compared it unfavorably to Tootsie, “…which does a much better job of examining the challenges women must face in the workplace, as well as how men act in each other's company, and how some men change face when around women.” I also compared it to Welcome to the Dollhouse, “…another movie about cruel people picking on an outcast. That movie was far superior because director Todd Solandz placed our sympathies and focus on the teenage girl character who was the subject of torment.” Seeing Neil LaBute’s movie now, years later, is like looking into my past. Aaron Eckhart’s Chad is one of the slimiest characters ever written. It is with great misfortunate that I’ve encountered his type.

The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D (2005)

½ star
The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3-D is bad enough already, but the addition of 3-D effects makes it worse. I don't know what Robert Rodriguez's fixation is with 3-D, and I don't care to understand it. Most of his film is very dark, with heightened shadow detail and pale-skinned characters. This is because we have to wear those ancient blue and red glasses, which create the desired three-dimensional effects, but also dominate over every other color on the screen. It looks like we're watching the movie through a stained-glass window.

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)

★★½
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is a refreshing return to the source material to create a movie that fans will instantly recognize. Rather than introduce new characters and situations, writer/director Johannes Roberts faithfully brings the stories of the first two video games of the series to the big screen, perhaps because he sensed how tired the Paul W.S. Anderson adaptations were getting by the end. It’s a commendable goal. Anderson jettisoned much of the series’ mythology in favor of his own narrative, and though his formula was financially successful (his movies grossed over $1 billion), it nevertheless felt like something was lacking. Anderson’s series peaked at the third entry (Resident Evil: Extinction) and went on the decline afterwards, with each installment making enough money to justify another sequel without any sense of direction on where to take it all.

Escape Plan (2013)

★★★½
This was a long time coming. Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the two action stars of the ‘80s and sometime rivals, finally appear together in a movie worthy of their reputations. Better late than never, I say. Escape Plan catches these two at the right moment in their careers. Not in their prime but still capable of projecting forceful characters on screen, Stallone and Schwarzenegger bring with them the grizzled appearances of men who have been around the block. This movie could not have been made in the ‘80s. They were too young and too amped up with adrenaline. The ‘90s? Probably, but Stallone’s missteps (The Specialist, Judge Dredd) could have doomed a potential pairing. In the ‘00s, Stallone was making a comeback with his two iconic characters Rocky Balboa and John Rambo, while Schwarzenegger became the California governor. By the time he left office, the failure of Collateral Damage was long enough in the past that by 2013, the time was right to bring these two together finally.