kcchiefstds Reviews

The X Files: I Want to Believe (2008)

I Want to Believe......This Movie Did not Suck....but it did..!!!

[2/10 · 28 July 2008]

They (Chris Carter, et.al.) should have quit for good while they were ahead when they were allegedly wrapping up the series in 2002.

This movie has Scully and Mulder now out of the F.B.I. with Scully as a full-time practicing Physician in a Catholic Hospital and Mulder as a disgruntled recluse with the obligatory unkempt house and beard. There is no reference here as to how much time is supposed to elapsed in their lives between their F.B.I. days and the time of this movie. Scully is approached by the F.B.I. at her place of work that they need her help in finding Mulder regarding a missing person case. (She's supposedly the only one who can find him.....) The plot shoots off in different directions soon after Scully finds Mulder. We have an ex-priest who was defrocked for being a pedophile who now professes to be this cross between a human bloodhound with psychic abilities (oh and bleeds from his eyes just for a little extra effect.) Also, we have creepy and Frankenstien-like Russian doctors. They have people kidnapped, and then experiment on them by removing their heads and replacing those heads with those of other people. In addition, I think they also liked to try and add a second or third head on them from time to time for no apparent reason. It seems Carter was trying to appeal to the Sci-Fi Horror crowd ("Saw" I thru Whatever, "The Hills Have Eyes," etc.) Make some of the gory scenes in this PG-13 movie slightly more graphic, and have a few F-bombs thrown in you'd easily get an R rating. But I think Carter was trying to appeal to the old X-Files crowd as well as the graphic Horror flick crowd and wound up with this turd. In the film there is a closeup of Scully and Mulder holding a mail envelope with a postage meter stamp with a rate not used in quite a while. It made me me wonder how long this sorry flick had been in the can. That said, Anderson and Duchovy's performances often seemed "mailed in." That of the supporting cast was even worse. A late-in-the movie cameo by Asst. Director Skinner did not help and I'm not sure even one from the "Lone Gunmen" could have been of any help here. Combine sub-par acting with an uninspired, convoluted, and over the top (even by X-file standards) plot, and this movie is a resounding success in being 2 hours of wasted time and money. Sorry to say, not even rental material.

Auto Focus (2002)

Made me put my tripod in my last garage sale (it sold). Seriously, a good film, hard to watch at times, but stays with you well after it's over

[8/10 · 7 June 2006]

Not having had a chance to see the movie first-run, I bought the DVD and was impressed with it. The movie itself was, to borrow a phrase from another review on this site "brilliantly disturbing." Those of us who remember when Bob Crane was murdered at an apartment in Scottsdale, AZ while doing dinner theater gig; that was weird in of itself. After all who would want to kill good old Colonel Hogan? I remember watching Crane on the show, and also on talk or game shows. He seemed so together, self-assured and quick-witted. So it was even more of a shock to find out about his double-life, which this movie covers so well although it is perhaps a bit misleading in spots.

Greg Kinnear does very good as Crane, especially in the latter scenes of the film. I think the part of Bob Crane would be somewhat difficult to play. Crane's legendary status is caught up not in his career itself, but his life other "on camera" life. A life that ended with his bludgeoning death (by blows from a camera tripod.) in June, 1978, just two weeks before what would have been his 50th birthday. Wilhem Dafoe is even better as the creepy John "Carpie" Carpenter, a video salesman who Crane meets on the set of Hogan's Heroes. Virtually all the supporting cast is also quite good. Particularly good are Kurt Fuller as Werner Klemperer/Col. Klink and Rob Leibman, who plays Crane's agent who watches helplessly as Crane's career and personal life veer out of control and plummet.

Carpenter, an electronics expert, at the time worked for Sony, selling the new and expensive technology of videotape players to mostly celebrities or others wealthy enough to afford them. The movie takes the viewer through the mid-late 1960's as Crane and Carpenter, both sex addicts, videotape their seemingly every night exploits with women they pick up from night clubs. This is no problem for Crane who was handsome and famous. Carpenter was portrayed as a hanger-on, along for the ride, and taking Crane's "seconds." Crane, married with children is at first able to hide his double-life from his family, although his wife is suspicious of his roving eye.. As a sidebar, there are some interesting tidbits in the movie about the development of videotape in the 60's into the 70's. After the cancellation of Hogan's Heroes in 1971 and his expensive divorce (his wife found photographic evidence of his escapades), Crane's sex addition seemingly worsens. He remarries, this time to an actress who played Col Klink's secretary in the Hogan's Heroes who tells him his dalliances are okay with her. They have a son soon after they are married and even she grows weary of his being away so much with Carpenter.

The mood of the film is in the beginning almost light-hearted, almost campy at times. . As the film continues and as Crane's personal life steadily implodes, professional life goes on the decline, a sense of darkness and desperation engulf the film. This is reinforced superbly by the hues on screen and the background music. The symbiotic relationship between Crane and Carpenter are portrayed so convincingly. Crane needed Carpenter for his video expertise and Carpenter needed Crane for the access to women. It is stunning how cavalier Crane was about picking up women and taping his sex acts, with or without their consent.

Crane is portrayed as a nearly broke totally washed-up B or C grade celebrity at the time of his murder. This was not necessarily the case. Crane in fact had made a lot of guest appearances on television series and game shows in the early and mid-70's. He had been signed to star in an ABC Movie of the Week shortly before his murder. Crane also owned a portion of Hogan's Heroes, and had received a royalty check in 1977 of over $95,000. Doing dinner theater was more a choice he had made, and he was making amounts off dinner theater that rivaled his royalty checks. Not a fortune, but a very decent living, especially for that time. To be sure he was strained by having to support one but two families, plus his addiction. He was not the big star he was, but not in oblivion, either. Only so much can be covered in the film's 90 or so minute running time, but the notion that his professional life was in smithereens was a bit misleading. Yet, many in Hollywood knew about his exploits and it no doubt cost him in professional opportunities. There is debate on both sides whether or not Crane at the time of his murder was attempting to change his life.

Near the end it is clear Crane had grown tired of "Carpie" and had basically told him the friendship as they knew it was coming to an end. This was just a day or so before his murder. Carpenter was arrested and tried years later for the murder but acquitted. He died in 1998, and the case officially remains unsolved.

Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver) directs so well this lurid and unflinching story. The DVD has lots of extras, including 3 different commentaries. The first by Kinnear and Dafoe, is good. Schrader's commentary is best as it offers a lot of insight into how they were able to make a relatively low-budget picture ($7 million I recall) look like they easily spent twice that amount. There is a third commentary was by the screenplay writers that I found dull. The deleted scenes are worth watching. For those interested in the Crane murder and the "whodunit" aspect there is a 45 minute feature entitled "Murder in Scottsdale" loaded with interviews and archival footage. The movie is based on Robert Graysmith's The Murder of Bob Crane, which I found to be interesting reading.

Date Movie (2006)

I'm piling on but it is a terrible waste of time and money

[2/10 · 2 March 2006]

I went to this movie with my 13 year old son, who even he didn't think it was very funny, and the comedy was obviously geared for male teens. I hoped for parody movie that would be halfway as good as "Airplane" or the original "Hot Shots." This movie made those above-average films look like a Hollywood legendary comedy like "Dr. Stranglove" or "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World." To be sure the movie did have a few chuckles, but the comedy was mostly an exercise of crossing the line of crudeness into just embarrassingly bad and just mean. If you find fat jokes ad nauseum and beating up on homeless people hilarious, enjoy. It was one of those movies that you walk in the theater with a premonition that it would suck. I will conclude by saying that it lived up to that expectation....big time.