Ankh-11 Reviews

Blast from the Past (1999)

Boring and disappointing!

[3/10 · 1 February 2001]

In agreement with those reviewers who did not fall for this film, I must say that it was too implausible/non-engaging for being truly romantic and far too boring for being a comedy. Christopher Walken and some of the other supporting actors do - admittedly - a very good job on their characters but for the rest ... Apart from the jokes not being particularly funny and the "funny sequences" too overacted/too easily predicted, I really questioned the conservative moral which seemed to be the basis of the exercise: The leading idea seemed to be to hold up Brendan Fraser's character (too overacting to be considered really human, by the way;-)as a kind of positive counterforce to the presumed degenerated manners of present days' people. Surely, I'm not an opponent of politeness etc but this "everything was really better in the good old days"-attitude really did get on my nerves. Rather than to recommend this film to anyone, I would instead suggest watching "Welcome to Pleasantville", which also deals with the issues of "past meets present" but in an overwhelmingly much better, intelligent, funny and emotionally enjoyable way!

Graveyard Shift (1990)

Horror movie with social pathos

[8/10 · 9 June 2000]

This film is sadly underrated: Actually, this may be caused by the relative low-key way the film is shot in. In contrast to many other recent "horror"-movies (take "The Mummy" for instance) the special effects are not generally exploiting gory, in-depth looks at the monsters (which almost always tend to ruin much of the real horror, i e where you yourself fill in on the aspects not covered by the camera; a commendable example of this last aspect would be the first "Alien", where the monster often only is shown in extreme short-cut scenes). Anyway, what made the film stand out is, however, not the spare use of monster-over exposure but the social setting of the plot. Unlike many other American stories, which seem to be set in rather idyllic surroundings (but for the appearance of the monster, that is!), this film actually lay out a more grim, perspective: The owners and the manager of the plant are basically exploiting the workers in search of greater profits, the possibilities of getting other jobs seem slim, the local people is not very keen on strangers and peoples´ basic attitudes towards each other often seem to range between distrust and hostility. This creates a darker, more menacing setting for the everyday life than could be expected; something I find much more interesting than the ordinary "everything here was so fine until the monster arrived to our idyllic town"-plot. If one likes to think about symbolic interpretations of horror movies (and why not? Even Stephen King does this in his book "Dance Macabre"), one could perhaps state that the monster in some way could be perceived as the physical manifestation of all hostility, exploitation and other bad feelings which seem to prevail in the little society depicted;-)

To top it all (warning- spoiler ahead!), given what happens to one of the sympathetic characters very close to the end of the movie, there is not a really wholeheartedly happy ending: Quite extraordinary if you think about that this actually is an American movie!

To summarize: This is a horror movie which, in many positive ways, feels like it was made by an independent company!

Freud Leaving Home (1991)

Very good and quite different!

[9/10 · 25 May 2000]

The overall plot - a young woman on the verge of moving away from the home of her parents for the first time - may seem trivial enough. What makes the film so remarkable is, however, the extraordinary good dramatic - and funny! - use made of this plot. The acting is vivid and the main character (the girl, called "Freud" due to her excessive interest for psychoanalysis and her persistent analyses of her family ...) is brilliantly played by Susanne Röör. A good-hearted, warm film to be recommended to anyone interested in a film depicting "ordinary life" in an extraordinary, funny and yet thought-provoking way!

The Mummy (1999)

Failed in all categories but possibly special effects.

[1/10 · 24 May 2000]

If the movie is supposed to be anything near a horror movie, one can safely conclude that this adaption of the classical Mummy-plot has lost most of what made the old Boris Karloff-version its depth and pathos: While the "old" mummy was driven by the search of his long-lost love, the modern mummy´s only driving force seems to be a never explained lust for destructive power in a non-specific, dull way which reduced this mummy to yet another of these dimensionless "evils" typically found in your average second-rate film. Some would perhaps argue that this new Mummy-film is, in fact, more of a comedy/adventure-film than a horror film. This is, in one way, probably true but the film falls short even in those categories. The obvious resemblance to the Indiana Jones-films only reminded about how much better those films handled things in terms of plots, characters, action sequences and all other aspects, while at the same time underlining how little character of its own The Mummy actually possesses! The jokes were in generally not really funny, the adventurous parts not really exciting and - as stated above - the horror-parts not horrifying. The only reason to still watch the film would probably be to check the special effects like the sand storm, which I suggest be done in front of a video (giving the otherwise bored viewer a chance to skip the less fascinating scenes ...).

American Beauty (1999)

Quite good, but "Happiness" has definitely more bite!

[15 May 2000]

CONTAINS SPOILERS

The acting is very, very good: Annette Bening, in my opinion, in one of her very best performances. Kevin Spacey is not bad either and most of the dialogue is definitely on par. Still, the plot and the way it develops leaves quite a lot of question-marks, especially to the morale of the whole: [Warning - here follows a number of spoilers to the story; don´t read further if you don´t want to be let in on what actually happens and how the film ends!!].

Kevin Spacey´s revolt against the daily routine seems, when you think about it, quite hollow: Is it really such a (meaningful) revolution to quit your boring job and then make a "fresh start in life" by taking a job in a hamburger-joint and frenetically doing your best to emulate an idolized teenage-era, basically consisting of smoking a lot of marijuana, while pumping iron in your garage and jogging around the neighbourhood to improve your body? This "revolution" seems to me quite shallow and would, in the longer run, probably leave the main character in other kinds of problems than the ones he so earnestly tries to free himself from. In that sense, the somewhat stereotyped murder-sequence in the end probably saves the story from this inherent weakness - if the main character dies quite early on, there is no need to worry about the longterm consequences brought about by his new lifestyle. However, it is possible to see the story in a somewhat different light if the "turning point" in the end would have given rise to a new direction to the revolt than to teenage-regression. This, however, is never dealt with by the film.

In that sense, I for myself am of the opinion that the darker sides of the "American middle-class dream" is dealt with much more sharper and with more coherent lead in the film "Happiness" from 1998: Definitely more bite in that one than the, admittedly talented, soft-hamburger-version of American misery given in "American Beauty".

Notting Hill (1999)

Spend your time on "Four Weddings and a Funeral" instead!

[12 May 2000]

The story of romance between the main characters is really not believable in any sense: All other plot-ingredients which have been put in to thrill the audience (like stereotyped English characters, "exotic" (i e highly fabricated) London-locations and supposedly "witty British" lines of dialog) form a much more convincing whole in films like "Four Weddings and a Funeral". This film just never managed to go beyond its rather boring surface and, hence, I found myself strangely disinterested in whatever happened to - at least - the main characters.