Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)

To place this film in the horror genre is unfair. It seems more like a melodramatic cautionary tale to me. A cautionary tale of what, you might ask. A cautionary tale of the horrors the industrial revolution is going to unleash of course. The only people that could possible find the story of Frankenstein scary would have to be from way before the 1900s, when science was evil and the most practical way of healing a physical ailment was amputation. There are only two things scary about this movie and they are: (1) Helena Bonham Carter and (2) Richard Branagh’s over the top Shakespearian acting.

Another way to make sense of this movie is to look at it as a classic revenge story. The creature, played by Robert De Niro, is pissed off at Dr. Frankenstein, Kenneth Branagh, because the good doctor created him and then immediately tried to kill him. Not only did he try to kill him, he abandoned him in a backwoods eastern European town where he would be repeatedly hit
with sticks and chased with torches.



When the creature is on his own in the countryside he has some pretty neat interactions with the locals. These scenes are the film’s best parts. He spends about a year’s time hiding next to a farmhouse and helping the family out under the cover of darkness. When he finally reveals himself to the family he is again repeatedly hit with a stick. This is his breaking point, and he then is determined to kill the doctor that created him and kill everyone the doctor cares about. He kills the doctor’s wife, played by Helena Bonham Carter, by punching through her chest and ripping her heart out. At least the film has a couple good kills.

I am still not sure how I fell about De Niro’s interpretation of the monster. When he talks there is a tiny bit of Brooklyn and I am not sure that works for a creature that was made in Eastern Europe. I also think that he talks more than I would like the monster to talk. Other Frankensteins mutter one word sentences, but this one can talk at length and sound quite educated at times.

Overall it’s a pretty decent film and is totally worth watching just for the scene in which a naked De Niro is wrestling with a shirtless Kenneth Branagh in gallons of amniotic fluid.

I am going to continue with De Niro and follow him to a movie I have wanted to see for quite a long time, Sergio Leone’s American crime epic Once Upon a Time in America. It will be good to see De Niro back in his mobster element.

Fierce Creatures (1997)

British comedy and I have never really gotten along. I do enjoy SOME Monty Python stuff and I really do love the British Office, but this whacky, silly, sex comedy, monkey business that for some reason always involves Mr. John Cleese doesn’t do anything for me. To help illustrate my point I’ll briefly explain the plot.

Jaime Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline are put in charge of a small London Zoo that is currently being run by silly old John Cleese. His goof ball antics have gotten him in some trouble and Curtis and Kline are there to set him straight. John’s character Rollo had the big idea to only have “fierce creatures” in the zoo because violence brings in the most amount of revenue. This plot device sets up endless gags about how violent some of the cute animals can be. It gets very old very fast. There are also seems to be an endless supply of bestiality jokes pouring from the hands of the two writers of this film, John Cleese and Ian Johnstone, which can be funny under the right circumstances, but here they simply are not.



Director Fred Schepisi and I are not off to great start together, as I have not really enjoyed either of the films that I have watched from his filmography. Maybe it’s his style of directing heavily dialogue driven scripts, or his lack of interesting visuals.

There just isn’t too much to talk about with this one. It kind of sucks that I didn’t like two movies in a row, but there are so many more movies to watch. I already see a pattern developing, in that I defiantly write more about the movies I really like and a lot less about the movies I did not care for.



Up next is a horror movie that I can remember seeing previews for when I was younger, a version of Frankenstein starring Robert De Nero of all people. I hope I like this one more than the last couple. John Cleese will be the one that takes us there and I hope he leaves his collection of bestiality jokes behind.

Six Degrees of Separation (1993)

The problem with films adapted from plays is that they often don’t take advantage of the visual story telling elements that the moving picture can provide. This is exactly the case with Six Degrees. The entire movie feels like watching a theatrical production that happens to have been filmed, instead of a film that happens to be an adaptation of a play. That’s not to say that some elements of this film don’t work, because certain cast members do a great job carrying this movie with dialogue.



The three leads, Donald Sutherland, Will Smith, and Stockard Channing, each turn in a solid performance, most notably the young Fresh Prince. When this movie was made all Will Smith had done were some small supporting roles and three seasons of The Fresh Prince of Bellaire. So seeing him in a role that involves having gay sex would have been quite a shock to the average Fresh Prince fan. In this early role he does give a glimpse at the charm and charisma that he would later use to great effect in movies like: The Pursuit of Happiness, Hitch, and Bad Boys.

Donald Sutherland, the man we followed from Aurora Borealis, plays a distinguished art dealer. He does a good job at pulling of the snooty New York aristocrat. I didn’t enjoy him in this as much as in the last film, but he was still solid and shows some very subtle emotion in a few key scenes.

Stockard Channing is an actress I am not very familiar with, except for her role as Rizzo in Grease, but her role here as wife of Donald Sutherland’s character is really very good. By letting Smith’s character into her life she discovers so much about herself that she never knew existed and transforms into a new person at the end. The transformation takes place during an emotional monologue and probably the film’s best minutes.

The lack of visual storytelling was really hard for me to get past and even the good acting was not enough to help me enjoy this one. Just one to many long stretches of dialogue without much interesting happening on screen.

That’s it for Donald Sutherland for now. Next we follow this films director Fred Schepisi to his 1997 comedy Fierce Creatures that looks like it stars all the British actors in the world. I haven’t been a big British comedy fan in the past so we will see how this one goes.

Aurora Borealis (2005)

Why the hell haven’t I ever heard of this movie? It’s a really good drama, it has some big names, it was made fairly recently, and was largely shot on location in Minneapolis. The film only had a very limited release and according to IMDB has only grossed $60,000 in the two years since its original opening date. Why the powers that be at the studio didn’t give this thing a wide release boggles my mind.

I though for sure that because this was the first drama on my list that I would be bored out of my mind and get to finally complain about a movie. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I am sure that I will eventually run into some really horrible movies but this sure wasn’t going to be the first one.

The well-crafted story follows Duncan Shorter, Joshua Jackson, a young man that is trying to regain control of his life and reconnect with his aging grandparents. His grandfather, played with absolute perfection by Donald Sutherland, suffers from Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s and is also extremely suicidal because he hates what he is turning into. He is always trying to get his grandson to help with killing himself and there is one scene in particular that gets pretty intense. Duncan ends up falling in love with his Grandfather’s home health nurse, played by Juliette Lewis.

Having just seen an incredible performance by Juliette Lewis in Kalifornia, watching her in Aurora Borealis was kind of a let down. Not to say that she is bad in this movie she just turns in a standard performance, not really shining like she did in her earlier role. Some of that blame can be placed on the material she had to work with. Her character wasn’t all that interesting and her story arch fades into the background.

Where the film really succeeds is at illustrating the heart wrenching realization that the person you have been married to for over 50 years is falling apart before your eyes. This is mostly thanks to the great performance from Louise Fletcher as the wife of Donald Sutherland’s character.

Another great thing about this movie is seeing all of the Minneapolis locations and hearing some great local music on the soundtrack. Although I think they talk about the Vikings a little bit too much, and I probably could have done without the requisite shot of the Mall of America.

I am going to stick with Donald Sutherland and follow him to 1993’s Six Degrees of Separation that also stars a young Will Smith a couple years before his action packed breakthrough Bad Boys.

Kalifornia (1993)

Kalifornia is a pretty decent early 90’s thriller. It is nowhere near as good as Se7en, but is worth watching just to see a young Brad Pitt act circles around everyone else in the cast, especially Mr. Duchovny.

The story follows Brian Kessler, a budding true crime novelist played by David Duchovny, and Carrie Laughlin, a very stereotypical 90s artsy New York photographer, as they take a trip across the country researching famous murder cites for Brain’s new book. For some reason this hip, urban couple can’t afford to pay for the gas on this trip that finishes in California, so they enlist the help of some strangers, played by Brad Pitt and Juliette Lewis, to help share some of the expenses.

This is where the story gets interesting. Early and Adele, played by Pitt and Lewis respectively, are the driving force behind this movie. Lewis plays the extremely naïve and simple-minded Adele with perfection, and it’s an early sign of some of the great roles she would have later in her career in films like Natural Born Killers and The Other Sister. The real stand out performance here belongs to the one and only Mr. Brad Pitt.

Pitt’s Early is all at once scary, funny, intelligent, moronic, rude, and thoughtful. He is a sociopath that kills on a whim, but shows signs of remorse when he knows that what he has done is bad. The script hints at an abusive father in his past, but never flat out tells the viewer what is wrong with Early. Watching Pitt in this early role, it is easy to see why he became the super star that he is today. While at the same time it is easy to see why David Duchovny did not. David should have never taken a role opposite Pitt because it is painfully obvious in every scene they share, that Pitt is the superior actor.

Anyway, back to the story. Somewhere along the trip, Brian and Carrie discover that Early is indeed a homicidal maniac. This fact distresses Carrie a great deal, and when she finally witnesses a murder first hand, the fun road trip comes to a screeching halt. Adele also has to face the harsh reality that the man she loves is a cold-blooded killer, and she copes with it in her own unique ways.

Like in any good thriller things keep escalating until the final showdown between the two male leads. The winner in this case is, unfortunately, Dochovny’s character.

Duchovny’s performance here is not even worth talking about. At the time this movie was made he was becoming very famous for his role on the X-Files. His character is this movie might as well have been named Mulder, because I don’t think anyone would be able to tell them apart. He also gets to narrate the movie, which was a horrible choice on someone’s part.

Up next I am going to follow Juliette Lewis to her role in 2005’s Aurora Borealis. Which also stars Donald Sutherland and takes place in Minneapolis.

The Hidden (1987)

Jack Sholder has got to be one of the most under rated directors of the 80s. I have only watched two of him films now, Alone in the Dark and The Hidden, but I‘ll be damned if I wasn’t extremely entertained by both of them. As far as I am concerned he has tackled both action and horror with a high level of success.

The story behind The Hidden involves the L.A.P.D battling with an alien that can take over human bodies, turning them into killing and stealing machines with zero emotion. Let me tell you, cops vs. aliens has never been this much fun. The alien in this movie has an insatiable lust for 4 things: Ferraris, punk rock music, guns, and women. He takes what he wants, when ever he wants, and kills everyone that tries to stop him.

Anyway, the alien uses the body that he is currently inhabiting until the body has taken so much damage that it becomes unusable and it must find a new one. It takes over old guys, a stripper, the police chief, and then a California Senator.

The action scenes in this movie are pure 80s awesomeness. There are car chases, tons of really fun shootouts and let’s not forget alien murder sprees. I’m not going to write too much about the content because I am just going to let the trailer do the talking.

After watching that and you still aren’t sold on the coolness of this film then you and I have different tastes my friend.

The only other thing I want to say about the movie actually involves an element of the plot that they keep “hidden” from the audience for the first half of the movie. So if you want to go in spoiler free then stop reading now.

******BEGIN SPOILERS*********

The character played by Kyle MacLauchlan is an alien disguised as an F.B.I. agent pursuing the evil alien. The problem here is they have him act so clueless about every aspect of human culture that there is no way he could pass for an intelligent high ranking agent. Yet when he is paired with a hot shot L.A. detective to work the murder cases that keep popping up the detective just thinks that he is a little quirky. Now I don’t know about you but if I handed my partner and Alka-Seltzer tablet and he put it in his mouth like he had no idea what it was I would feel very unsure about his ability to back me up during a shootout. That Alka-Seltzer tablet scene actually happens in the movie, I kid you not.

Next I am going to follow writer Jim Kouf to a film he produced in 1993, Kalifornia. It also happens to star Brad Pitt and David Duchovny.

Alone in the Dark (1982)

This write up is going to contain many SPOILERS so if you have not yet seen this film and are a fan of the horror genre, go see this movie as soon as you can because it is an amazingly solid horror/thriller with an awesome cast.  After you have seen it come back and see what I have to say about it.  If you just want to read about the movie then be my guest and read on. 

***BEGIN SPOILERS***

This is one of those films that I had very low expectations going in and when it was finished I was totally blown away by what I had just seen.  I absolutely love when that happens.  I knew nothing about this movie other than it stared some pretty great actors and it was some kind of early 80s horror flick.  There is so much going on in this movie and it all works.

The film starts out with Dr. Dan Potter, Dwight Shultz, landing a new job working at a mental institution know as The Haven.  This place is run by pot smoking Dr. Leo Bain, Donald Pleasence, a doctor with very unconventional ways of treating his patients, or voyagers as he calls them.  This story line on its own could have made for a very entertaining movie because all of the scenes in the hospital are fantastic and the patients are super crazy. 

The main focus however, is the gentlemen they house on the third floor of the facility.  This is the only floor that contains any sort of security system to prevent them from escaping.  Various characters mention at least four times that the system is run by electricity. If that isn’t foreshadowing a blackout or some kind of power failure then I don’t know what foreshadowing is. 

The four men on this floor are completely insane and have committed varying horrific crimes.  The leader of the group is Col. Frank Hawkes, played absolutely brilliantly by Jack Palance, he is a retired Vietnam vet and is extremely paranoid and schizophrenic not to mention terribly violent.  Then you have Byron “preacher” Sutcliff, Martin Landau, who suffers from extreme religious delusions and has a taste for setting fires to crowded churches.  Rounding out the group is a 400 pound child molester and a serial strangler known as the bleeder, he gets his nickname because every time he is about to kill someone he gets a bloody nose. 

These four guys get the idea in their paranoid heads that Dr. Dan Potter has killed the previous doctor that they all loved and of course the solution to this problem is to kill Dr. Potter and everyone else that happens to get in their way.  As luck would have it a city wide blackout occurs and allows the group of crazies to bypass the electronically run security system, giving them all the permission they need to start a murdering rampage.  The rest of the film is actually quite suspenseful as the group hunts down Dr. Potter and lays siege to his house.  There is even a scene where The Bleeder dons a white hockey mask in a sporting goods store and proceeds to kill someone while wearing it. Interestingly enough Friday the 13^th Part 3 was released that same year and is the first of the Fridays to contain Jason wearing a hockey mask. 

The main things to talk about in this movie are the performances the cast turns in. Jack Palance is on top of his game as Frank Hawkes and is scary as shit when he gets violent.  Martin Landau as the crazy Preacher is the creepiest and most unpredictable killer in the group.  He will be shouting scripture one second and laughing uncontrollably the next.  I think what I love about this group is that they are all older guys and for some reason that makes it way more believable and scary.  It’s not like most new horror movies where everyone is an extremely attractive teenager.  I actually believe these guys when they say they are going to raise me into the air and cut me in half.  Donald Pleasence as Dr. Bain is great as well.  He has so much compassion for his “voyagers” that even when they are clearly out of their minds and seconds away from killing him, he is still on their side.  It could possibly be all the pot he smokes throughout the movie or he just really loves those crazy bastards. 

When the crazies are laying siege to Dr. Potters house there a scenes that induced a fair amount of terror in me.  The family does a great job of acting like this is absolutely the most insane thing that has ever happened in their lives.  There is a great scene in which Dr. Potter’s wife is forced to wield a knife and stab one of the killers and she shows a great deal of hesitation, like she can’t believe that she actually has to stab this person to save her family.  These are the kind of scenes that make this film work.  Not like in most horror movies, that when the killing starts, everyone is very comfortable killing anyone that happens to be around. 

I am not going to spoil the ending so if you want to know how this one turns out you will have to go and discover this forgotten 80s gem for yourself.  But I will let you know that 80s punk band the Sic Fucks has a couple pretty awesome concert scenes in the movie and that’s just another reason to watch this immediately. 

Next I am going to follow director Jack Sholder to his 1987 action sci-fi flick The Hidden.  Hopefully he does just as good with that genre as he did with horror.

Escape From New York (1981)

The year is 1997 and the island of Manhattan has been turned into the only maximum-security prison in the Unites States by having a 50-foot wall erected around its entire perimeter.  What do you do when the president has crash-landed right in the middle of hell?  Why you call in the only person badass and crazy enough to get him out.  Snake Plissken!  He’s Special Forces, a convict, and highly decorated by the president himself, oh yeah, and fully loaded with guns and enough one-liners to make Arnold blush.  To make sure Snake accomplishes his mission without any funny business the prison warden, played very effectively by Lee Van Cleef, injects Snake with microscopic explosives that after a certain amount of time will detonate inside his neck killing him instantly.  Snake leaves the warden with one promise, “When I get out, I am going to kill you.”

This is a movie I wish I had seen as a thirteen year old when it premiered in the theaters.  Snake Plissken would have been my idol and I probably would have worshipped all things Kurt Russell.  It’s too bad my introduction to Kurt was as a goofy dad in Overboard opposite Goldie Hawn.  Don’t get me wrong he is an excellent comedic actor but I absolutely love him as Snake.  While John Carpenter’s original electronic score dates this movie a lot of things help make this movie work.

The film was made in 1981 and it feels like it. John Carpenter is like a jack-of-all-trades in the industry.  He was responsible for the script, the directing, and unfortunately the score.  He does action well and despite the dated Foley effects the action is fast paced and really fun.  There is even a pretty sweet gladiatorial nail-bat fight that pits Snake against a huge dude with mammoth sideburns. 

There are some really great performances in this film.  Ernest Borgnine plays a very likable cab driver aptly named Cabbie.  He does a really good job playing the goofy sidekick and provides the only comic relief.  Isaac Hayes plays the Duke of New York and he is the guy that is running the prison city, which he rules with an Iron fist. He also dresses exactly the way I picture Isaac Hayes dressing when he’s not in a movie, kind of like Shaft crossed with a stereotypical pimp from the 70s.   Donald Pleasence, of Halloween fame, turns in a solid performance as the President.  I haven’t really seen him in too many films but every time I do he is great.  Let’s not forget Lee Van Cleef as the untrustworthy warden.  My god that guy can play a bad guy like nobody’s business.  If you haven’t seen Westworld check it out for Van Cleef’s role as a maniacal robot gunslinger.  I love that guy. 

Another thing that I love about this film is all the pre-CG era special effects.  There are no fancy computer generated futuristic landscapes.  Everything was done with awesome miniatures and matte paintings.  Some may feel that this dates the movie but I love the look of miniature work and it kind of sucks that it has been totally replaced with computers.  Don’t misunderstand me I love the things that computers can do for movies but there is just something about a real explosion blowing apart a model building the feels very satisfying.   

If you love 80’s action like I do and can put up with some dated elements then you should definitely check this one out.  There is even a sequel that was made in the 90s with a much larger budget.  I have seen it and there is just as much comical badassery in that one as there is here.  They would play awesome back to back provided you have enough beer. 

I am going to follow Donald Pleasence to my next film Alone in the Dark. It’s an early 80s slasher that also stars Jack Palance.  Should be interesting.

Poseidon (2006)

How fitting that I start this task with a film that takes place on New Years Eve.  I have had people tell me how much this movie sucks and I have had people tell me how awesome and fun this movie is.  However, my feelings toward this aquatic adventure fall somewhere in the middle.  The action sequences and the special effects were top notch but certain elements definitely fall flat.  Now I have not been fortunate enough to see the original Poseidon Adventure so this review will not be a comparison of the two films, but a fresh take on the subject matter.

Lets start by addressing the director who is none other than action aficionado Wolfgang Peterson. He is the director of such action epics like Troy, In the Line of Fire, and Outbreak.  This is also not his first attempt at a film that is set at sea.  He has been there not once but twice before with the films Das Boot and The Perfect Storm.  The pacing and action sequences feel like they were in the hands of someone who knows how to make action work and the action scenes do work.  However the character development seems to have fallen by the wayside and that may not be all Wolfgang’s fault.  Some of the blame can be placed squarely on writer Mark Protesevich. 

For those of you that don’t know already this film is about an extremely large luxury liner that gets hit by a rare and deadly rouge wave, which causes the ship to capsize and send the survivors, scrambling to the bottom of the ship to safety.  After the character introductions and the pretty awesome capsizing scene the rest of the movie plays like one very long chase scene that pits the rag tag group of survivors against the relentless rushing water.  So after awhile it all feels pretty repetitive. The group gets in to trouble and then they figure a way to get out of it.  Repeat repeat repeat. 

I won’t go to much into the acting beacuase it all feels pretty phoned in.  I have a feeling that much of the attention in the film was paid to the sucesss of the special effects and not to the quality of the performances.  The cast does contain some pretty big names like Kurt Russell and Richard Dreyfuss.  I love both of those guys but this is not either of their finest 90 minutes. 

So in conclusion if you want to see some pretty cool ocean special effects and lots and lots of ship explosions then check this one out because it will not let you down.  If you hate cookie cutter Hollywood big budget disaster movies then avoid this at all costs. 

For my next film I am going to follow Kurt Russell to the movie that gave him all the action movie cred he would ever need.  Escape From New York.

A Cinematic Adventure

My goal is to watch 300 movies that I haven't seen in the year 2009.  I am going to try to connect the movies by actors, crew, genre or other way.  I am also going to write a little bit about each movie that I watch.  So join in and lets talk about some movies.  I will post a list of the films that I am going to watch as soon as I get it finished.