Vanity Fair (2004)

★★
Many lengthy novels suffer during the transition to the big screen because the filmmakers delete excess characters and shorten the plot to facilitate a reasonable running time. Vanity Fair makes a strong case that deletion is sometimes necessary. This is a film with so many characters and personal stories that it becomes overwhelming at 137 minutes, a time that doesn't pass with any noticeable speed. The movie features good acting, the costumes look authentic, and the architecture seems realistic enough, but there doesn't seem to be any drive to its story. It's basically one scene after another of sophisticated British characters and their mundane problems associated with their social status.

Hush (2008)

★★½
Hush (2008) is a taut little thriller taking place on a rainy night. It has a small cast and makes use of only a few locations. Like Duel's menacing truck driver, we have a villain here who drives a truck and remains largely unseen. I came across the trailer on a D.V.D. while I was watching another movie, and the concept intrigued me. Along a U.K. motorway, Zakes (William Ash) and girlfriend Beth (Christine Bottomley) tail a white cargo truck, the back door for which opens by accident and reveals a woman locked in a cage. That was enough for me. Movies with simple premises like this depend on imagination and clever plotting to make up for the lack of characters and settings, so seeing a movie like this succeed in achieving its objectives is very satisfying. There are hits and misses, to be sure, but the good ones, like the misunderstood Open Water, are treasures that are worth the trip to uncover.

Battlefield Earth (2000)

★★½
Early in Battlefield Earth, the hero Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper) thinks he's come across a monster and swings at it with a weapon he finds nearby. When he has a moment to get his bearings, he sees that it was only a lifeless structure. We recognize it as a dragon or dinosaur statue from a mini golf course, and his weapon was a golf club. Jonnie meets two hunters, who inform him of a great city nearby where the gods were frozen in their place during a conflict long ago. The hunters take Jonnie to the city to show him. They find one frozen god, who is just a stone statue. They go inside a building, where Jonnie sees more frozen gods and observes that they must have really angered someone to bring this horrible fate upon them. They are department store mannequins. This is not supposed to be a comedy, but the movie was trending in that direction. I realized this in the first 10 minutes, but I kept holding out hope that the script would settle down and deliver the serious science fiction action movie that the trailers promised. That never happened; the movie kept defying my expectations. Eventually I just gave in and enjoyed what I was watching because it was making me laugh. I saw this in the theater on its premiere weekend. I couldn't gauge the audience's reaction to this, but I'm certain everyone around me could gauge mine.

Skyscraper (2018)

★★½
Like The Towering Inferno but without the crowded room of famous actors, Skyscraper does what you would expect it to do given the premise of a burning high rise and the presence of Dwayne Johnson. It's the kind of movie Sylvester Stallone would have made if this idea had been brought to him in the '80s. With a building falling apart around him and hindered by animated fire that is far from being perfected, Johnson barrels through the action with his signature gruffy tough-guy personality, but this time he has family placed at risk, which gives him the opportunity to show a softer side that works and is a welcome change of pace for the actor. A few surprises here and there keep the interest level high. For once, a Dwayne Johnson character is vulnerable and could fail. Late in the movie he realizes he no longer controls his destiny, and this results in a tender moment with his daughter to assure her of his love for her. The rest of the movie, though, feels like a retread of better action movies.

Lionheart (1991)

★★½
Growing up, I was a big fan of Jean-Claude Van Damme. He came across as a ripped version of Chuck Norris with the added ability to perform gravity-defying moves along with his signature splits. At the risk of running afoul of Norris, whose accomplishments have been documented in a convenient and inexhaustible list of facts, I would go so far as to declare Van Damme's movies as superior in terms of their variety. Norris always had the no-nonsense approach, while fellow European Arnold Schwarzenegger brought his muscular frame to his action movies. Van Damme was the best of both worlds. He was tough, but could soften up when the situation arose. He also had a magnificent physique. His punches and kicks looked like there was plenty of raw power behind them. His drug habit and waning audience interest in martial arts movies sent his career into the direct-to-video market. For a time, though, his movies were a yearly expectation in theaters, and Lionheart was one of his most polished movies.

Agent Cody Banks (2003)

★★½
I find the idea of a C.I.A. division that trains teenagers to be junior agents a stretch, but Agent Cody Banks is focused on being a children's fantasy rather than a deep dive into the C.I.A.'s bag of tricks. Cody Banks (Frankie Muniz) is 15 years old and was selected by the C.I.A. to attend a summer camp/training center for new recruits. Recruits receive the latest in spy gadgetry and lessons in fighting and diving. Cody is a boy of amazing dexterity, but despite his double life, he goes to a regular high school, has a bratty little brother and endures daily chores.

Becoming Bond (2017)

★★½
I'm all for trying new ways to tell stories via the documentary format. Documentaries often work just fine with interview subjects and supporting footage, but a little innovation can go a long way in giving us a fresh look. Errol Morris masterfully introduced his Interrotron in Fast, Cheap & Out of Control, while Jonathan Caouette spent just over $200 to edit home movies together into Tarnation, a story about his mother's mental illness. Innovation can't happen without risk. That brings us to Josh Greenbaum's Becoming Bond, an informative (most of the time) and whimsical account of George Lazenby's brush with fame as the iconic British spy James Bond. Many fans and Bond historians revere Lazenby's On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) as one of the best. Count me among them. It is also his only time starring as the character. He left for reasons made unclear when you consider the multiple sources of information already out there. That aside, the documentary is a little flimsy, trying to balance comedy and drama and sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing.

Event Horizon (1997)

★★½
Event Horizon represented Paul W. S. Anderson's most high-profile project to date (1997). His debut film was Shopping, a little-known but respectable effort about thieves who crash cars into stores to steal merchandise. He was also responsible for Mortal Kombat, one of the better video game adaptations. That movie's financial success opened doors for Anderson and gave him the clout needed to take on a bigger challenge. Event Horizon is a space movie with some horror mixed into it. Among Event Horizon's virtues is that it's a sci-fi thriller that gives us a future world that is mostly technologically plausible. I liked a tense scene featuring a man about to be exposed to space, and his commanding officer gives him all the right directions to minimize the damage to his body. There's attention to detail here. What's missing is a lack of ambition. The technical look is great, the special effects are realistic, and the premise is intriguing. Anderson's film just doesn't do these finer qualities much justice. He's satisfied to tell the tale and insert effective imagery, some shocking, but it feels like there's more to the story. Studio interference played a role, according to Anderson, and that wouldn't be a surprise. A similar fate would befall Walter Hill's Supernova several years later.

Abduction (2011)

★★½
Abduction (2011) gets plenty of things right. It has an interesting plot, a solid supporting cast, a talented director in John Singleton (in his last movie before his passing in 2019) and some good fight scenes. It goes wrong in a crucial area, though, and that is the lead role. Taylor Lautner, in the middle of his career peak thanks to his appearance in the Twilight movies, is physically adept, but his lack of emotional range interferes with the necessary task of conveying his character's mental stress while on the run from mob enforcers and C.I.A. agents. During a few scenes, when he's under extreme duress, he finds a believable way to react, but there's not much in between his two endpoints of "normal" and "dialed up to 11." His female co-star Lily Collins, on the other hand, gets it exactly right. Compare the two as the story progresses, and you'll see two different kinds of performances. She endures the same violent situations, but she dials up her emotional state according to the level of danger and decompresses in the same manner. When the two make out in a train car, she looks like she needs it more. For her, it's an emotional release after a close call with a mob henchman. For him, he's just kissing a girl while on a date.

Cyborg (1989)

★★½
Mathematics teaches us that two negatives make a positive, but such a concept doesn’t apply to film very often. In the case of Cyborg, those two negatives are Cannon Pictures and Albert Pyun. The former was a 1980s production company with a wildly varied output, ranging from near greatness (Runaway Train) to laughable action (Invasion U.S.A.). The latter is an action movie director who had some success with theatrical releases, but was mostly confined to direct-to-video nonsense. With track records like these, it’s a wonder that Cyborg turns out to be pretty decent.

Robots (2005)

★★½
The world of C.G.I. animation is opening up the doors to all sorts of visual artists who can't wait to impress us with the images they can create, but it's also opening up the doors to all these screenwriters who want to impress us with how smart they are. Actually, "smart" is the wrong word. The writers of Robots, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, are smart guys, but their script reveals that they've seen a lot of movies, so they're really just trying to impress us with their knowledge of movies.

After the Sunset (2004)

★★½
Aside from the great locations and splendid chemistry between the actors, there’s not much to recommend After the Sunset. If you’re looking for a good caper movie, stick with Ocean’s Twelve. There’s very little here in the way of elaborate set pieces and cool precision. There is, however, an amusing good-guy/bad-guy relationship based on mutual respect and obsessive one-upmanship.

Shrek (2001)

★★½
Shrek (2001) rode a wave of success following the rise of Pixar and the production of C.G.I movies outside of the Pixar umbrella like Antz. For its time, it was groundbreaking, and it still is. The character design is amazing. The vivid, detailed imagery is outstanding and holds up today. Like Antz, it featured adult humor, and its soundtrack contained modern pop hits that stand in contrast to its medieval setting. A Knight's Tale would do the same several years later. The voice actors embody their characters just as well as the actors do in Pixar's output. I loved the movie when it came out, so imagine my surprise when, after watching it again years later, my reaction wasn't so enthusiastic. The technical details are still spectacular, and it's easy to get swept away by them, but the characters—Shrek himself and Donkey in particular—have not retained their appeal.

The Sweetest Thing (2002)

★★½
The Sweetest Thing has an immediate likeability about it. It's kind of sweet, has some funny scenes and the actresses are charming. After giving it some thought, though, I realized that because the movie takes place in the real world, the things that happen in it are far-fetched and included for the sake of shock value. Most of the blame for this can be placed with screenwriter Nancy Pimental. She also writes episodes of South Park, so I can only assume that the extreme sexual nature of The Sweetest Thing can be attributed to that show's influence.

A Quiet Place (2018)

★★½
A Quiet Place is an effective little horror movie that offers an interesting challenge for its characters, then comes up with ways for them to negotiate that challenge that range from subtlety clever to downright ingenious. The horrifying scenario presented here could have been rife with standard fright movie set pieces, yet co-writer and director John Krasinski wants to set the tone with atmosphere and silence, and he wants us to be patient as events unfold. The result is a satisfying thriller, though imperfect, which is unfortunate.

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.

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.

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.

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.