OFG-Movie Reviews

Natural Born Killers (1994)

Worst piece of trash I've ever seen.

[1/10 · 15 January 2007]

I tried to watch this movie, but I couldn't get past the first half. I think it could have been a good movie but the directing was just plain terrible. The odd camera angles, the bad sit-com of Mallory's home life, the jumping from color to black and white without any reason, the flash backs seemingly at random, the odd clips playing in windows, windshields and odd places in the background, etc., etc, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. Reminded me of one of those 60s' or 70s' bad artsy films that the critics raved about then and laugh about now. There was not one redeeming thing about this movie.

Woody Harrelson played the same character he has always played, Woody Harrelson. How he ever became an actor is one of the great mysteries of the twentieth century.

I found this movie in the $5 bin at Wally's; this is the first time I've gotten a $5 movie where I believe I got ripped off. Save your money and your time avoid this piece of trash. I've done with this movie what I'd do with any other piece of trash, I tossed it out. It will not be in my movie collection.

The Steel Lady (1953)

A Pretty Darn Good B Movie

[8/10 · 16 September 2006]

I found this movie for sale on ebay in DVD format. What I received seemed to be a very good VHS to DVD copy, with no title page or chapters. The movie itself was just like I remembered it from the early sixties. A plane owned by an oil company bellies in during a sandstorm in the North African desert and the pilot and passengers must find a way to survive.

I found it interesting to note how many similarities there were with the James Stewart movie, "Flight of the Phoenix." It made me wonder if the writer of "Phoenix" might have done a variation on a theme. Similarities included an oil company, a North African desert, an airplane bellying in because of a sandstorm, broken radio transmitter, a man with a drinking problem, rationed water, fixing a broken derelict for transportation and evil Bedouins.

All in all it was a pretty good yarn, but there were some hard to believe improbabilities. The idea that a sandstorm could bring down an airplane within a few hundred feet of a buried German tank in an area as vast as the Sahara was a little hard to believe. It was also hard to believe that anyone would be able to disassemble and reassemble a tank engine without a fairly complete set of tools, surely it would take more than would be carried in a fairly small twin engine aircraft. It was also a bit difficult to accept that four men would fail to hear the sound of a DC-3 flying over at about 1000 feet in the middle of the night even if they were sleeping. It was also hard to swallow the British accent of one of the Bedouins.

The main plot is that of survival. Some of the subplots, such as John Dehner's drinking problem, get in the way of an otherwise good story. The tank they found was well away from the battles of North Africa because it had joined with a clan of bad guy Bedouins in a raid on another clan. During that raid a bag of jewels was stolen. The tank escaped into the desert and was buried by a sirocco. John Dehner finds the jewels while looking for a place to hide his booze but keeps it a secret. Our heroes drive the tank straight to raiding bad guys camp at an oasis (another improbability). Our heroes escape the Bedouin camp and head for a French fort battling the bad guys all the way. Sort of a variation on the 'stagecoach in the desert' western movie theme.

I found the movie to be overall entertaining despite its flaws. Maybe because I remember the movie so fondly from my youth, or maybe because it is pretty good B movie.

Die Hard 2 (1990)

Exciting Action Film with a Totally Unbelievable Premise

[5/10 · 26 March 2006]

I have no problems with the action in this movie. The acting is fine and the characters are interesting. Add the plot twists and you have a watchable entertaining movie that is worth your time.

What caused me to rate this film a couple of stars lower that I would have otherwise is an idiotic part of the plot. Airliners are stacked up over Dulles and the tower can't communicate with them. Their radio engineer comes up with the idea of rigging the outer marker beacon to transmit a voice communication to all of the aircraft apprising them of the situation. Meanwhile the Army is being called by phone, TV news crews are transmitting back to their stations and ground vehicles are moving in and out of the airport. If one can communicate by phone, TV link and ground, why not just get hold of the regional traffic center to alert the airliners and divert them to other airports. Meanwhile John McClane's wife is on board one of these planes and it has 90 min of fuel on-board. Hmmm, 90 minutes at 500 mph. gives one lots of time and distance to find some kind of alternate destination. But alas, that would ruin the plot line of John trying to save his wife once more from certain death. This hole in the plot is big enough to fly an Airbus A380 through.

Lone Wolf McQuade (1983)

So Bad It Was Good, sort of.

[4/10 · 26 March 2006]

Just bought this movie on DVD from the $4.95 bin at my local Walmart. I remember seeing this movie on TV ten or fifteen years ago and thought it was a decent movie then. After just watching again, I would have to say that either my taste has changed or my recollection is clouded because this is a bad movie. Predictable story, acted by bad actors, among cheap special effects. I am not sure whether the obvious mimicking of spaghetti westerns was done for dramatic emphasis or comedic relief. It didn't work as the former and it seemed so out of place as the latter.

There is lots of overblown action in this movie. I don't think Chuck met anyone other than women or other cops that he didn't punch, kick, throw, chop, or shoot.

The acting, well what do you expect from a Chuck Noris movie, there really wasn't any. It was for the most part people reciting their lines, usually with either understated emotion (Chuck Noris) or over stated hysteria.

If you find this movie for rent and are bored with talented actors, exciting action and good story lines, give this one a try. You could do worse, but not much.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

It must be a generational thing

[1/10 · 18 March 2006]

My daughter loaned me this movie two weeks ago and I finally tried to watch it last night. I'll admit that I am not a big Jim Carey fan, but he does alright in some films, The Truman Show and Liar, Liar are two that I enjoyed. What I didn't like is that I found nobody in this film that I liked. There wasn't a single character that was somebody I felt I'd like to meet. Some of the scenes seemed either badly acted or badly written, or both. The scene when Joel first met Clementine on the train seemed like it was written by middle school wannabe writers. The ridiculous scenes inside Joel's apartment while his memories of Clementine were being erased seemed like something out of a bad seventies anti cultural movie. Who could really believe that this crew would be so blatantly juvenile. They acted like 14 year old kids left alone for the weekend.

My daughter really liked this movie, I really didn't. According to this films score (8.6) and it's standing in the top 250 (currently # 36) I must be wrong, and maybe I am, but to me this movie stands in the middle of the mediocre 50,000, a very unremarkable film.

Hudson Hawk (1991)

A schizophrenic and confusing movie

[5/10 · 24 February 2006]

When I first started watching this movie I thought that it was an action adventure with comedic overtones. Actually it worked fairly well for the first few scenes. When Willis and Aiello start doing a song and dance as they were making their escape from an art gallery after stealing a bronze horse I started losing interest. I don't care how cavalier a person might be, nobody is going to start singing out loud in a guarded museum. (This song and dance shtick was repeated toward the end of the movie as the two were about to assault the bad guys stronghold.) They made their escape by jumping off what looked like the sixth floor and landing on a canvas awning. The action in a movie as to have at least a hint of plausibility to keep me interested, this movie action scenes were often played to the point of stupidity

I think that the acting and writing would have made a reasonably entertaining film, but the directing was so disjointed I really didn't know what kind of film I was watching. It was at times a fantasy, action/adventure, comedy, slapstick comedy, dark comedy, etcetera, etcetera. Hudson Hawk never would have been film art, but it may have been an entertaining film with some kind of continuity in the directing department.

While not a complete waste of time, one can find better ways of using an hour and forty minutes one's life.

Pearl Harbor (2001)

Passable entertainment to a point.

[5/10 · 30 September 2005]

While I like certain aspects of this movie, it left me longing for Tora Tora Tora. Ben Afleck is a pretty boy and must make the feminine hearts throb, he isn't much of an actor. The acting overall was acceptable and the story was to if one could ignore the dumb romance plot. The absolutely worst part of this movie is the Dolittle Raid. It was totally unbelievable that two single engine fighter pilots would be chosen to fly twin engine bombers a few months after Pearl Harbor. Not only was this sequence unbelievable, it is unnecessary and anti-climatic. What idiot decided to add this to a movie. On the plus side, the attack sequences were quite good and seemed very realistic. The exception to this are the low level fighter scenes created by computer graphics. (The aircraft are flying much faster than they are actually capable of and seems to be an attempt to mimic the Star Wars land speeders on the forest moon.) Also in the plus column is the way the movie is split on the 2 DVD set. It ends with the aftermath of the attack where it should have. The DVD set also includes two documentaries that I found to be more interesting than the movie itself.

Porky's (1981)

Adolescent male fantasies.

[8/10 · 13 September 2005]

I like this movie. It's funny, it's entertaining and it is perverted. This movie is a collection of common adolescent male fantasies sewn together into story about Florida high school kids in the fifties. Fantasies depicted include a peek into the girls locker room, a trip to an adult club, making it with that especially good looking teacher, (done vicariously teacher on teacher) revenge against a group of bullies and more. Add to this several just plain funny practical jokes mixed in between the other scenes and you get an entertaining movie. Just about every male out there will be able to relate one or more situation or one or more characters. If you are looking for art or a message then this is not your movie. If you are looking for a glimpse into the teenage male mind, then you may enjoy this film, just don't become indignant when you see yourself dimly reflected here and there in the film.

The Deer Hunter (1978)

I kept waiting for it to really begin and but it never did.

[3/10 · 13 September 2005]

I remember watching this movie when it was first telecast on network TV. I was spending the evening with my dad and we decided to watch this movie which had been hyped for the previous week. It was a common trait for movies to be slow to start, but they would usually start getting interesting around 30 minutes into them. Several times during this movie it would seem as if the movie was really starting to get good and then it would just die. After the movie was over I remember looking at my dad and saying that I was still waiting for the movie to begin. He smiled and said "Me too." Other than spending an evening with my dad before he passed away, it was a waste of time. (We both got a chuckle out of these east coast steel town guys hunting deer in the mountains near Mt Baker in Washington State though) Ever since the Deer Hunter, I've looked at the best picture award as being a clear indication of a boring and meaningless movie. Or a movie that tries so hard to be artsy or give a message that it forgets to be entertaining. With a few exceptions in the past 25 years, they usually are.

Nothing But Trouble (1991)

A comedy that was never meant to be taken seriously

[7/10 · 21 May 2005]

I received this movie as a birthday gift and put off watching it because of all the negative reviews I read here. The giver insisted today that I watch it with her today. I must say that I was pleasantly surprised. While the movie will never be a comedy classic, it was still quite funny and moved along fairly well. Some things were over the top, such execution via the bone cleaning machine that that took in live people at one end nd spit out dry bones at the other. It sort of reminded me of all those Abbot & Costello Meet the (insert monster here) movies of decades past. If you are looking for an artsy sophisticated comedy, this is definitely not the one for you. If you just want to watch a movie for fun with a few bad moments and some intentionally nauseating scenes, then take a chance. I saw this movie on sale in the $5.99 bin at wally world, at that price, its worth the gamble.