essmeier Reviews

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

Yawn

[4/10 · 28 December 2007]

If you've seen one Tim Burton movie, you've seen them all. The film is dark and murky, with the mandatory casting of Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter and a few camera tricks and odd shots thrown in to show you he's in charge.

If you've heard one song by Stephen Sondheim, you've heard them all.

Add blood and guts, and you've got a dull, slow-moving musical with muddy imagery and really bad songs.

The film is just sort of "there"; it doesn't really inspire much emotionally either way. The cast sings fairly well, despite the fact that the songs, like most of Sondheim's material, are simply terrible.

On the plus side, there are no songs in the film that are as bad as "Officer Krupke" from West Side Story, which remains the Worst Song Ever Written.

Pretty much a waste of time.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)

Well, the movie thinks it's funny...

[3/10 · 22 September 2007]

I read the book, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" some 25 years ago and it apparently made no impression on me, as realized that I didn't remember a thing about it as I sat down to watch the film.

The film is certainly harmless enough, but it wasn't nearly as funny or clever as it seemed to think it was. It might have been, were I twelve years old.

But I'm not now, and I wasn't a quarter of a century ago when I read the book.

I never thought I'd say this, but here's a science fiction film that makes "The Fifth Element" look positively cerebral by comparison.

Waste of time.

Silverado (1985)

Worst western ever?

[3/10 · 8 July 2006]

After "The Wild Bunch" and "Once Upon a Time in the West", one wonders if anyone ever need make a western again. Like other directors who failed to watch the above films and note that the genre is complete, Lawrence Kasdan took his shot at it with "Silverado" and the result is a train wreck.

The plot is either incomprehensible or simply missing; it's really hard to tell. It seems as if the director shot two or three full-length movies and then edited the thing, in random order, into a single product. What happened to Rosanna Arquette? She disappears about a third of the way in and them magically reappears at the end as if she'd been there all along.

The actors, as others here have noted, are pretty much phoning in their performances. John Cleese and Kevin Kline seem to be in the wrong movie, Danny Glover seems to be in the wrong century, and Jeff Goldblum seems to be in the wrong universe.

The script, which many mistake for homage, is simply a tired retread of every single cliché ever used in a western. The only thing missing was someone saying, "This town ain't big enough for the both of us." I suppose there may be a clever way of rehashing tired movie clichés in a new script, but you won't find it here. The actors deliver these dusty old lines half-heartedly, as though even they couldn't believe the unimaginative script.

If you like good westerns, there's nothing to see here. Move along.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

Pretty to look at, but otherwise empty

[5/10 · 31 December 2003]

This film, like its two predecessors, is pretty to look at but emotionally sterile and ultimately a colossal bore. The fault isn't with director Peter Jackson; the problem lies with Tolkien's weak, silly, and juvenile material. The characters are poorly developed; you don't know who they are and therefore can't relate to them or the incomprehensible story. It doesn't help that their names all sound the same, and that once you've seen one male character with long hair, a beard, and a name that seems to consist only of vowels, you've seen them all. The characters, places, and battles all have a sameness to them that just leaves the viewer numb. After a while, I lost track of who was fighting whom, or where, or over what.

The character of Gollum surpasses even Jar Jar Binks as cinema's all-time obnoxious character.

Ultimately, it's big, loud, expensive fluff, masquerading as masterpiece. Two stars, assuming that you can manage to stay awake for the entire film, which is something I wasn't able to do during the first two installments of the trilogy.

Moulin Rouge! (2001)

Two trains full of confetti, colliding head on

[2/10 · 18 June 2001]

What a mess! Director Baz Luhrmann takes every known cinematic gimmick, tosses them all into a food processor, and splatters the mixture all over the screen like a would-be Jackson Pollock. It's loud, brash, colorful, relentless, and doesn't make a lick of sense. The result is a musical that seems to take place at no particular time, and in no (despite the name) particular place. There's nothing here that even remotely evokes either Paris or credibility, and character development is nonexistent. Ewan McGregor meets Nicole Kidman, mutters a few Bernie Taupin lyrics to her, and she immediately declares that she's "in love." Uh, right. The next 100 minutes consists of various characters engaging in routine and stereotypical melodrama, singing bits and pieces of twentieth century pop songs to one another with songs rarely being sung in their entirety.

The "Like a Virgin" sequence rivals the "Officer Krupke" sequence from "West Side Story" as perhaps the worst three minutes ever presented in a musical film.

The conclusion of the story is totally unmoving, since you don't know the main characters well enough to care about them. When it's over, you just sit there wondering why you paid good money to be visually and aurally assaulted for 126 minutes.

On the plus side, Luhrmann's use of color is impressive. Kidman looks absolutely radiant, and she and McGregor both sing surprisingly well. The opening credits are quite clever.

I'd have been tempted to give this film a rating of zero, but the film is so emotionally uninvolving that I just didn't care about it or any of its characters enough to hate it that much. 2/10.

West Side Story (1961)

Weak and stagey

[3/10 · 30 May 2001]

The first ten minutes are great - the opening sequence on the playground plays like some bizarre urban ballet....and then they move indoors. Most of this film was shot on soundstages, and the directors made no effort to make it look like anything other than what it was - a filmed play. Any effort at all to shoot outdoor scenes outdoors would have improved the film considerably. Instead, we're left with a film that hasn't a shred of realism. There's no chemistry between the leads (Richard Beymer and Natalie Wood) and one can't help but wonder how two people, acquainted for a mere 24 hours (and who have spent perhaps 15 minutes together in that time), could be so "in love." When she finds out that Beymer has just killed her brother, she dismisses it with hardly a comment. It reeks of phoniness.

Most of the songs are OK, although I feel compelled to point out that "Officer Krupke" just may be the worst song ever written. The dialogue, in trying to sound hip, instead sounds forced, and probably sounded phony even in 1961. Finally, most of the Jets just don't seem like gang types. Imagine Wally and Beaver Cleaver as murderers and you have some concept of the Jets. All in all, a colossal misfire, and one of the Academy's Best Picture blunders of all time. 3/10

Vertigo (1958)

One of the Master's weaker efforts

[3/10 · 13 September 2000]

"Vertigo" is often hailed as a masterpiece, but it's difficult to see why. The film runs 128 minutes, but feels like 240 while it pursues ultimately unimportant mysteries involving long-dead non-characters. The logic-defying plot, as many have pointed out, is convoluted to the point that it makes almost no sense, and the abrupt ending comes out of nowhere. The ending is so bizarre that I couldn't help but burst out laughing the first time I saw it. Stewart's performance is OK, but his character borders on the psychotic, and one can't help but wonder why Novak didn't just tell him to get lost. Barbara Bel Geddes turns in a nice performance, and then abruptly disappears for the last half of the film. Herrmann's score is noteworthy, but not as memorable as those of "Psycho" and "North By Northwest." I've seen 35 of Hitchcock's films; this one ranks near the bottom, right alongside "Rich and Strange" and "The Man Who Knew Too Much" (1934.) Pass on this one; try "Frenzy" instead. Two stars.

Motorpsycho! (1965)

The best film title ever!

[14 August 2000]

Really. How could anyone ever come up with a better film title than "Motor Psycho?" No one ever will. Now that we've said that, let's get on with the story. Alex Rocco makes his film debut as veteranarian Corey Maddox, whose wife is violently raped by a gang of motorcycle hoods. Maddox tries to hunt down the gang to glean a little retribution, or perhaps bring the gang to justice. In the process, he meets Ruby Bonner, whose husband has been murdered by the same thugs. Ruby and Corey team up and get caught in a canyon where they are forced to violently confront the by-now-totally-nutso leader of the group, who happens to be a wacked-out Vietnam vet. This film is a little-known Meyer gem; you get the opportunity to see how good he really was at shot composition and editing. What's it got going for it? Awesome title, incredible sixties twangy guitar soundtrack, great period dialogue, a great tense snakebite scene, and perhaps the first example ever of a film character who's clearly spent too much time in the Vietnam jungle. Odd side note: everyone in this 1965 film drives a Toyota. Three out of four stars.

Eve and the Handyman (1961)

It's just one joke...

[7 August 2000]

...but it is funny. Eve, the unnamed narrator (played by Russ Meyer's then-wife Eve), is following a handyman, private detective-style, around town as he does his odd jobs, taking copious notes on his behavior for reasons that are not immediately explained. Of course, each of these jobs seems to take place in a setting that includes a busty blonde, each of whom are also played by Eve Meyer. For the most part, the handyman is preoccupied with his work, and relatively oblivious to the charms of the women. At the conclusion of the film, Eve confronts the handyman and we finally find out the nature of her motives. The film really does build up to one big joke, but it's pretty funny, especially if you don't see it coming. Good early effort from Meyer. 7/10.

The Big Blue (1988)

The Big Bore...

[16 July 2000]

After an eternity of trying to find the director's cut on laserdisc, I finally got to see it...and I understand why the original release was an hour shorter. There are two films here - a love story, and a competition among friends. Unfortunately, neither story is fully developed, and the final result is a mess that just begs for editing. He loves her? Probably not. It doesn't really matter, because she just wants a baby. Why? Because another character with about three minutes of screen time told her she did. From that point on, it's her obsession. A diving competition? Not really, because Jacques doesn't seem to care. Eric Serra's score is nice, and Reno's performance is solid. The photography is nice, but if you want nice photography, you can always check out Koyaanisqatsi instead, where you won't have to deal with ambiguous/non-existent narrative. All in all, it's a film full of loose ends that never quite come together.

Two stars out of four, even in the director's cut.

Frenzy (1972)

The Master's last hurrah...

[8/10 · 7 July 2000]

This is the sort of film that Hitch would have made more often had he been born twenty years later. Some might be put off by the violent nature of the film and the unusually blunt sexual themes, but Hitch always pushed the envelope when it came to the subject of sex. In "Torn Curtain", he depicted an unmarried Paul Newman and Julie Andrews in bed together, and in "Blackmail", made in 1929, he showed a rather graphic attempted rape scene. In the case of "Frenzy", one must simply accept that Hitchcock was, as always, making the most of what the standards of the day would allow. All that aside, what we have here is a tremendously suspenseful film, and one that is often hysterically funny. Granted, the laughs are often guilty ones, but that's the sort of thing that made Hitchcock Hitchcock. If there's a downside to the film, it's the fact that the "hero" isn't all that likeable. True enough, but that makes the film more realistic. In real life, we don't often have Cary Grant handy in times of trouble. Tough, gritty, blunt, funny, and shot by a man who knew how to use a camera like few others before or since. Not to be missed. *** 1/2