I watched a dozen movies last week:
- Pressure Point sometimes feels a little too stagey, but it has some strong performances and interesting things to say.
- Plane is never terrible, but it never does anything remotely interesting. Memorably terrible would be a lot preferable to the boring paint-by-numbers actioner we get here. As Nick Allen writes, it’s “the case of an action movie in which the dumb title—the most memorable thing about it—isn’t an artistic statement, it’s an alibi.”
- Jarhead is like a war movie without the war. As Ebert writes, “It contains no heroism, little action, no easy laughs…[and] is about men who are exhausted, bored, lonely, trained to the point of obsession and given no opportunity to use their training.”
- Even Maika Monroe can’t save Tau, a never exactly terrible but also instantly forgettable film whose sci-fi premise would probably feel tired even if the film itself brought anything remotely new to the table.
- “‘Old School‘ wants to be ‘National Lampoon’s Animal House,'” wrote Roger Ebert in his review, “but then don’t they all.” Will Ferrell’s sincere commitment to the bit is occasionally almost-endearing, but there’s not a single moment in the movie that I would call funny, and it’s all held together in the laziest way possible.
- There was a time when A Touch of Class was nominated for Best Picture. Even discounting the quality of the other four films nominated that year—The Sting, The Exorcist, Cries and Whispers, American Graffiti—that’s kind of astounding. I suppose the movie has its lazy ’70s charms in Segal and Jackson’s performances, but the characters feel very dated and unlikable, and the whole thing feels perhaps best left in 1973.
- Cut The Resurected‘s runtime (and probably its number of characters) neatly in half, and you’d likely have a very credible entry in a horror anthology television show. It boasts some impressively gruesome special effects and decent performances, especially by Chris Sarandon, but the dialogue often feels stilted, and the runtime really drags halfway through.
- The Osterman Weekend doesn’t make a lick of sense. You get the feeling that the cast is really trying, but the finished product, as Roger Ebert wrote, “resembles the proverbial movie that was fed through an electric fan and then glued together at random.”
- The Evictors doesn’t entirely work, especially once it answers the mystery of what’s been going on, but there’s a reasonably effective creepiness up until that point.
- Separate Tables has some lovely performances and quiet tender moments.
- The Queen isn’t revelatory (or even necessarily informative) about the drag queen subculture it presents, but it is an interesting snapshot of a moment in a time, especially daring for 1968.
- By turns hypnotically slow and brutally violent, I’m not altogether sure Valhalla Rising has a whole lot to say, but it is often visually stunning.
