The Parallax Review

"Murphy's Law" by D. B. Bates

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 16:06:02 -0600

Bronson plays Jack Murphy, an alcoholic robbery-homicide detective whose wife has just left him. In a bizarre twist, Jan (Angel Tompkins) has left Murphy in order to live out her dream of stripping (she calls it “dancing”). Murphy has a habit of sitting in the back of her club, getting hammered, taunting Jan, and then following her back to her apartment to peep while she makes love with other men. Seriously.

"Death to Smoochy" by Matt Wedge

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 23:09:48 -0600

This is a hell of a lot of plot for a first act and that’s without even getting into the Irish Mafia outfit that takes a special interest in Sheldon’s continued success and well-being. Admittedly, the film teeters on the edge of a cliff, ready to fall into the abyss of satirical overkill before something unexpected happens: Sheldon grows from a one-note hippie joke into a character worth rooting for. In the midst of the aggressive cynicism and heavy-handed satirical jokes, Sheldon becomes a likable, somewhat too earnest protagonist whose quest to improve the world goes from being mocked to encouraged, a surprising turn for a movie directed by the ever-subversive Danny DeVito.

"The Ultimate Solution of Grace Quigley" by D. B. Bates

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 13:25:21 -0600

The film’s writer, executive producer, and longtime champion, A. Martin Zweiback, took me up on that. As you may have seen, he sent me a videotape of the “writer’s cut,” which filled me simultaneously with fear and hope. Hope, because I believed a good film could come from the botched version I saw; fear, because, based on what I had seen, I didn’t know what could be done with the existing footage to substantially improve it.

To my great pleasure, The Ultimate Solution of Grace Quigley — Zweiback’s cut — is, indeed, the great film I wished Grace Quigley could have been.

"Executive Decision" by Kyle Kogan

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 15:00:00 -0600

Specifics don’t matter because the surprises and suspense are what make the film so enthralling. Sure, you can see the end coming from a mile away and there is nothing here that you haven’t seen before, but it’s handled with such deft care that it left me breathless. I knew the good guys were going to win in the end, but I nonetheless couldn’t wait to see it happen.

"Hall Pass" by Matt Wedge

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 15:00:00 -0600

That setup supplies a wealth of opportunities for the film to explore any number of possibilities that could be both very funny and insightful. Are Rick and Fred so driven by their hormones that they would cheat on their wives, even if it’s not technically cheating? Are Maggie and Grace unhappier in their marriages than they realized? Do they want their husbands to have affairs so they would have an excuse to end their marriages? Could having this valve to blow off steam actually improve their marriages? These are all interesting questions, rife with potential for conflict. Unfortunately, the Farrelly’s blow their intriguing setup on an assorted bag of their greatest hits (not one, but two feces jokes, an embarrassing masturbation scene, multiple men obsessed with a beautiful blonde, and grown men acting like twelve-year-old morons).

"The War of the Roses" by D. B. Bates

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 00:00:02 -0600

The second hour of the film wouldn’t work at all without those reaction shots — moments that show us both Oliver and Barbara are still recognizably human. Their faces express the guilt and embarrassment anyone would feel with those early, accidental dust-ups. Once things have escalated, they vacillate between genuine anger at one another and the sort of wondering look of a person questioning whether or not he or she has gone too far.

"High Plains Drifter" by Josh Medcalf

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 00:00:02 -0600

This is an early example of the “Weird West” subgenre, a fusing of the Western with, in this case, the occult or supernatural. Eastwood plays the Stranger, a rugged gunfighter appearing out of the haze of the desert and stumbling into the town of Lago, where he may or may not have unfinished business — left over from another lifetime. If that premise doesn’t do it for you, I don’t know what will.

"Freaked" by Josh Medcalf

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 00:00:01 -0600

When you reflect back on what you’ve seen, it’s like stringing together the random, bizarre segments of a half-remembered dream from the night before. Nothing makes sense; what seemed to work in dreamland is now utterly absurd in hindsight.

"Regarding Henry" by Mark Dujsik

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0600

Regarding Henry’s sincerity is at once the movie’s crutch and its downfall. It is the story of a man of loose moral sensibilities who awakens to the recognition of treating his fellow human beings with decency, and all that has to happen to him to come to this realization is that he’s shot in the head.

"Powder" by Matt Wedge

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0600

Let’s just get this out of the way, right up front: Powder is a mess of a film. But it wouldn’t be such a mess if there weren’t some interesting ideas and promising plot developments buried beneath a ton of pretentious metaphysical conceits and obvious manipulations on the part of writer/director Victor Salva.

"Broken Lizard's Club Dread" by Matt Wedge

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0600

The result was a film that was funny without going for the obvious jokes that the Scary Movie franchise had already poached numerous times over. But critics bashed its straight-faced approach to comedy and audiences stayed away in droves, turned off by bad word-of-mouth that the film was just as much a horror film as it was a comedy.

"Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects" by D. B. Bates

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0600

Some might laugh at the depiction of Japanese culture here, but it’s no less silly or over-the-top than the portrayal of American culture. The movie works for two main reasons. First, as is often the case with Bronson’s late-period work, Nebenzal and director J. Lee Thompson create a crazy world that’s consistent within its own set of strange rules. In my review of Death Wish 2, I described it as “a paranoid fever dream where all the fears of the elderly have come true.” That about sums it up.

"WarGames: The Dead Code" by D. B. Bates

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0600

From that point, it’s pretty much a dumbed-down remake of the first film. Director Stuart Gillard tosses in numerous references to the original film (including the presence of WOPR, who must “fight” RIPLEY at a certain point) that come across more like cheap nostalgia than worthwhile homage. Maybe that’s because it literally steals the best moments of the first film, unabashedly and without commentary.

"Unknown" by Matt Wedge

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 18:00:00 -0600

Sometimes I feel as though we don’t appreciate Liam Neeson enough. Moving easily between leading-man roles and character work, he’s able to chew the scenery when a script calls for it and just as easily dial his performance down to a subtle level approaching minimalism. Ever since his breakthrough turn in Darkman, it seems that every time I look up at the screen, there’s Neeson, doing good work in films that often aren’t worthy of his talents. Such is the case with Unknown, an otherwise soggy conspiracy thriller that Neeson practically horsewhips into watchability.

"I Am Number Four" by Matt Wedge

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 21:00:00 -0600

Needless to say, this is a ton of plot to shove into a movie that runs less than two hours. I would take the film to task for not cutting some of the more extraneous plot details, but director D.J. Caruso has his hands tied by the fact that the film is supposed to be the first in a series. When taking that into account, it’s actually surprising how well I Am Number Four turned out. This could have been a dispiriting failure along the lines of The Vampire’s Assistant — a film that felt like one long first act setting up all the fun for films down the road. But Caruso is able to make John just an interesting enough protagonist and capitalize on a great performance by Olyphant, that I was willing to sit through the explanations and plot setups until the overblown, but rousing third act finally rewarded my patience.