Reviews

I remember a horrible "3D" movie in the 1960s named The Bubble (1966). It starred the guy who played Pete in Mod Squad (the 60s TV series.) The Bubble (1966) was written and directed by Arch Oboler, who was famous in 30s and 40s as a radio writer/director and for a film named Five (1951), which was an early post-apocalyptic thriller.

I went to see The Bubble with friends and when we came out of the theater and uncrossed our eyes, we agreed it was possibly the worst film of all time. (In retrospect, it looked like SCTV doing a 3D movie satire. Stuff on wires swinging in and out of the camera, etc. The Bubble (1966) in 3D made Ed Wood's movies look like, well, serious cinema.)

So, I saw this film The Bubble listed on Netflix last week and I thought: oh, no! They remade The Bubble! (No such luck.)

The Bubble (2022) is worse than The Bubble (1966). Karen Gillan, David Duchovny and Fred Armisen and a bevy of familiar actors are signed to make the sixth sequel in an action franchise during the COVID pandemic. They are filming in what the film industry may or may not actually call a "bubble" to keep casts and crews from coming down with COVID. (May or may not because I have no idea.) The plot, if you can call a plot about a movie about actors trapped making a bad movie in a pandemic a plot, is basically unintelligible nonsense with snippets of stereotypical big action movie special effects.

The Bubble (2022) has a few moments of humor (it is, after all, supposed to be a comedy), but not enough of them to justify over 2 hours of screen time.

A seven-minute Saturday Night Live skit, maybe. But only because SCTV isn't around anymore. I got through it by watching it in 30-minute increments, hoping for a big and glorious finish.

Nope. Didn't happen.

Two pity stars go to the actors stuck with The Bubble (2022) on their résumés. I like actors.

Not for want of trying to be a mystery but this one fails in the casting. Glenn Close (Lady Edith) and Terence Stamp (Chief Inspector Tavener) steal it from a weak lead by Max Irons. Irons reminds one of a young Treat Williams minus Williams comedic flair. (Where is Cary Grant when you need him?) The entire story could have been effectively centered on Honor Kneafsay (Josephine) but instead it's just a rambling old house populated with the usual Christie characters played by a cast of good actors with little to do. Who killed Grandpa? Who cares, really?

Read the Parker novels (over two dozen out there) and forget this movie. It's based on one of them and steals some bits from others and it's not horrible, but it's not Parker. I blame the casting. Statham is okay, but he's British and Parker is definitely not. Parker is an American career criminal. A professional thief. Very American. Statham plays him more like James Bond. Jennifer Lopez is a good enough actress but her character in this one is actually (in the book) more like the actress playing her mousy blonde friend at the real estate office. And Claire, Parker's woman friend, is a tough "moll" in the books, not the "frail" in this movie. When I read (Donald E. Westlake aka) Richard Stark's Parker books, Parker is Humphrey Bogart and Claire is Lauren Bacall. Yes, they're both unavailable to make Parker films nowadays, but so is Donald E. Westlake and the last Parker novel was written in 2008, just before his death. The first was written in 1963 and Parker is very much a guy from the past. Read and enjoy the books.

Well this was a pleasant surprise! I've only just found it on Amazon Prime and watched the first episode but I'm immediately won over.

A very message-laden sci-fi series about what happens 40 years after an alien craft lands in the Irish Sea. The Aliens is a 2016 UK dramedy that was canceled after six episodes, featuring Michael Socha (Being Human - US viewers would remember him as the 2nd werewolf in the UK version), Michaela Coel, Michael Smiley and Jim Howick.

It really deals with immigrant oppression and racism very directly but still manages to be funny as hell at times, mostly due to Socha's daft portrayal. I'll say no more to avoid spoilers but it's only six eps so why not give it a go, eh?

I just finished episode 16 of the first French TV series to hit Netflix, Zone Blanche or "The Black Spot", and I am now shamelessly plugging it to Netflix users. I give it a 9 out of 10. (Loses a point because the plot is a little muddy and borderline predictable a couple of times when it shouldn't be.) 9 because Black Spot is dark and mysterious but not a family show like Stranger Things (which comes off likeable but Peanuts meets The Twilight Zone to me so far, without the dog - I haven't seen S3 yet, I admit.) Zone Blanche is for us older kids :0)>

There are several subtle bows to David Lynch in Black Spot and Lynch fans should love the show, but Black Spot is more straightforward than Twin Peaks and doesn't require much decoding to follow: it is about the strange forest town of Villefranche and a series of murders, strange beasts in the woods, ecological threats from greedy local land barons, soapy sex and romance, etc. Some of these we've seen before (the ice-bound Amazon series Fortitude comes to mind) but it is all made new and suspenseful by an excellent cast led by Suliane Brahim as the sheriff and Hubert Delattre as her "Little John"-like deputy.

Netflix has two seasons up and ready to watch. I am really hoping for a third. BTW, it is dubbed but there is something very excellent about recent dubbed shows on Netflix - like 3% (Brazilian), High Seas (Spanish) and Dark (German), the English voices on Black Spot are so precisely cast and dubbed that you will barely notice.

Of all nine seasons of The X-Files, I gotta say this was my favorite episode.

No Mulder, aliens, super soldiers, Lone Gunmen, clones, conspiracies or any of the usual unusual.

This episode is truly a stand-alone.

A delightful Burt Reynolds dominates the cast in a story sort of about luck and a serial killer and an Italian street fair.

Agents Reyes finds a numerical correlation between some unsolved murders using numerology.

No one believes her at first, but then the numbers start adding up for Scully and Doggett and the FBI is on the case.

Songs (in Italian) and a Fellini-like score round out this darkly comic episode.

Written and directed by Chris Carter, it is just plain fun.

If there was ever a single episode of The X-Files deserving of an Emmy or two, this was it.

Not to be missed!

I really don't get what happened to Westerns. When I was a tyke, I found them irresistible - Hoppy was my first hero. The Lone Ranger was up there too. Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels riding away into the hills of Burbank while some townsperson asked the inevitable: "Who was that masked man?" When I first learned that Johnny Depp was doing The Lone Ranger as a feature, and playing Tonto no less, I had no doubt Depp would pull it off. Even with the concerns raised by Native Americans - and I have read pros and cons in Indian Country Today and elsewhere - I just couldn't be dissuaded. I figured after all those great pictures, Depp knew what he was doing.

If you like Westerns, especially mixed with nonstop action and comedy, you will love The Lone Ranger. Depp is brilliant, as expected, and so are Armie Hammer (as The Lone Ranger) and William Fichtner (as Butch Cavendish) and everyone else. Gore Verbinski has a real feeling for The Old West of Hollywood Past (Rango was animated, but he gave us the same Western fun in that one) and even though a lot of Indians get killed in The Lone Ranger, so do plenty of them bad guy white people.

Much gunplay and other violence - too much bloodshed for little kids, although the two sitting in front of me didn't seem to mind. Forget the stalled box office and go out and see it on the big screen before it's replaced by the latest end of the world epic.

Oh, and Silver often steals the show. Smartest horse since Comet on Brisco County Junior. I give it a 10.

A sad film, ultimately about humans living sad lives against a background of impending doom. Great performances from Dunst and Gainsbourg, slightly less from Sutherland (suffering a dour role), and it's always a delight to see Charlotte Rampling in anything.

This is a beautiful film to look at, great score and cinematography, but the overall predictability of the main story thread weighs it down. To his credit, von Trier attempts to avoid this at the start but waiting for the inevitable does drain pace and suspense from Melancholia.

Another film made the same year, Another Earth (directed by Mike Cahill), used a similar main device to better advantage.

I was a kid in the 1950s, so I remember all the classic sci-fi movies first hand. There were great ones like The Thing from Another World, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet, War of the Worlds and 20 Million Miles to Earth.

There were less great ones like Red Planet Mars, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, This Island Earth and The Blob. Then there were the turkeys.

Stuff like It Conquered the World (1956), Not of This Earth (1957), The Beast With 1,000,000 Eyes (1955) and, of course, Plan 9 from Outer Space (1958) gave sci-fi a black eye and hurled the genre into the mud for decades. Some of those titles (and there are scores of them) have become cult classics, but they were schlock, let's face it.

Apparently, that's what Steven Fisher and James Swift were going for when they wrote Alien Trespass. That's what they got. Schlock.

The actors in Alien Trespass are the only surprise - this turkey has some excellent actors, led by Eric McCormack - but they can't save a film that has nothing new to offer. Many send-ups of 1950s sci-fi movies have succeeded (Mars Attacks!) This one fails.

Save time and skip it.

A very impressive pilot (I hope it's a pilot - but a good SyFy movie in any case) for still another addition to the Battlestar Galactica franchise. Creators Michael Taylor and his co-creator David Eick have picked up the saga post-Caprica and pre the 2004-2009 Battlestar Galactica series with a new tale centering on a young Bill Adama. Pasqualino and Cotton were excellent as Adama and Coker and the action filled plot is thankfully nothing like Caprica, which was sort of boring. This time we are back in space where the series belongs, shooting Cylons.

There is still a hint of the philosophical depth in Ronald D. Moore's re-imaging of Glen A. Larson's original series but the Taylor teleplay keeps the politic and morality questions to a minimum and we get treated to a lot of good old fashioned shoot 'em ups along the way. (Taylor and Moore worked DS9 for the Trek Franchise way back when, BTW, and David Eick worked on all the recent BG series.)

My only complaint was too little time for vet character actor John Pyper-Ferguson as a sort of bad guy (no spoilers here because he usually plays a bad guy, although some of us fondly remember him as a very funny bad guy in Brisco County Jr.) If we really do get a new series, maybe he'll be back.

BG fans should be marching for a reboot based on Blood and Chrome. This universe has plenty of room for more episodes.

****UPDATED 23 March 2017****

I just watched the Blu-ray release of Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome and I've added one star as it was even better than I remembered. There is a lot of material that didn't make this, the extended cut, (included in Deleted Scenes) that is worth watching, even though this didn't become the pilot I'd hoped it would be.

Sometimes it is wise just to let a dead dog lay. As I remember, the first version of Coma wasn't very good. This one is about the same. Overblown to distraction by the Scott Brothers, the TV "mini-series" version features good actors going to waste and almost nothing new.

Yeah, there is a big super tech conspiracy tacked on to the original plot, but even that was tame next to 21st century TV series like Dr. Who or Fringe. Lauren Ambrose was excellent in the lead, but deserves better, and it was a joy to see Ellen Burstyn working, even in a sort of Boris Karloff role. James Woods was good. Geena Davis, Joe Morton and Richard Dreyfuss - what were you thinking?

I watched it On Demand and, like another reviewer here, was grateful that Fast Forward was not disabled.

My daughter found the DVD of this wonderful original version of The Stingiest Man in Town and I watched it Christmas Eve. I was 10 when it was first telecast and, if I saw it then, I was probably nowhere near as impressed as I was to see it revived for the 21st century. The only drawback is the lack of color, and that because it was a rare color telecast back in 1956. It was also done live (videotape was a few years away), so all we have now is a restored black and white kinescope (that means it was shot on film off a TV tube during the live broadcast.) Unlike a lot of kines, this one comes off very well. You can see some scratches and other signs of filmic age, but the production shines through it all, and it is a great version of The Christmas Carol! Mr. Rathbone, who never claimed to be a singer, holds his own against Johnny Desmond, Vic Damone and the (now somewhat forgotten) Patrice Munsel - they were all pop music stars at that time.

Now that I'm an old codger myself, I miss the extravaganza network productions of 50s TV. Junk like American Idle (whoops! did I spell that wrong on purpose?) and Dancing with the Hasbeen Wannabes just don't hold a candle to the true variety and "special" productions that used to grace the tube in its early days.

If you're looking for the real thing, see if you can find this one! (And thanks to my kid for a nice Christmas Eve :o)>

I watched this show way back when it came out but only saw about a half a dozen episodes. Some of these also appeared as reruns a while later, but never the entire series. So I was delighted when the DVD box was announced at last and even paid the folks at Amazon in advance of its release. Now, don't get me wrong kids: this is a TV series by the guys who did Magnum p.i. and Quantum Leap (and J.A.G and N.C.I.S) and it is really a TV series from that Magnum period all the way. Studio sets, stock shots, very familiar character actors and that horny, brassy Mike Post music (again, like Magnum) screaming inappropriately everywhere. But this series is a gas, man! It's fun! It's silly! It's TV! AND it has Jack - undoubtedly the smartest dog in TV history! And Jack talks! Well, sort of. One bark for "no" and two barks for "yes" and he cracks me up in every episode. Rent it, buy it, I don't care. You'll thank me later. (Arf, arf!)

I'm giving this episode a 10 for two reasons: it's the only episode of The Mickey Rooney Show that I remember and because it inspired me. (At age 8, I might add.) In 1954, I probably knew as much about outer space as any other kid - we had comic books and Captain Video on TV and rumors of flying saucers in the news - but it was a couple years before the first great sci-fi epic Forbidden Planet arrived in 1956, (complete with free passes for kids hidden in boxes of Quaker Oats.)

It was before all those horrible Corman sci-fi films and a decade before Star Trek. But Mickey Mulligan was a guy any modern kid could like (he even worked for a TV network!) so the day after I watched Mickey and his pal Freddie build their backyard spaceship, I was out there in my back yard with my little sister creating one of my own. We never did finish ours, much less get it off the ground, but the spark was there and a couple of years later I was reading sci-fi books. I started out with Robert Heinlein's Revolt in 2100 and then dropped back to H.G. Wells and Jules Verne before discovering Theodore Sturgeon, Ballard, Bliss, Bradbury, Clarke, Robert Sheckley and hundreds of others. For a while, I read at least one (paperbacks were 25-35 cents) sci-fi book a week, and many of them were collections of short stories.

Maybe I was trying to find Mickey's blueprints?

I continued to read sci-fi (and so does my sister) and of course we're both Trekkers and Firefly fans, but I still remember that night in 1954, watching Mr. Rooney and Joey Forman build Mickey's space ship. Before I ever saw him as Andy Hardy or song and dancing with Judy Garland or any of the wonderful stuff he's done since in his amazing career, Mickey was my TV hero. What I wouldn't give to see this episode again!

I've been following Giovanni Ribisi's career since the 80s because I love character actors and this guy has always been a great character actor and I came across The Dog Problem in the cable listings and thought: "Giovanni Ribisi in a lead role?" Now I gotta wonder why no one has cast him in a lead before this? Anyway, see this movie! It's one of those great little films you'll never forget and everybody in it is fantastic and Scott Caan (who wrote and directed and co-stars) made all the right choices here. (Mark Mothersbaugh does the music and Phil Parmet shot it - that didn't hurt either.) Trust me, this movie is no dog!

I liked Ghost Whisperer. I don't know how long it will last, but who can tell nowadays. (I figured Joan of Arcadia for a seven year run.)

At least Jennifer Love Hewitt is back and she's not reprising Party of Five this time. She's chasing ghosts, which allows her to do everything she does well except sing. (She has a great voice. Started out singing in Texas at age 3. Maybe she'll meet a singing ghost somewhere along the way.)

So it's Ghost Whisperer on CBS versus Medium on NBC and that may rankle Medium fans but Medium is on a different night and seems to be slowing down this season. I always tape Medium because it usually puts me to sleep in the last half-hour, despite the admirable talents of Patricia Arquette and Jake Weber and their wonderful TV kids Sofia Vassilieva and Maria Lark.

It isn't Jennifer Love Hewitt versus Patricia Arquette in any case. These two actresses are as different as night and day in look, style and approach. Both total pros and completely capable of leading a series.

I didn't like the Medium rip-off scene where a prophetic nightmare wakes Melinda (Jennifer Love Hewitt) in bed with her husband (David Conrad), but once you get past the obvious similarities GW goes way beyond Medium. Melinda doesn't depend on dreams. She sees ghosts everywhere, all the time. (The bedroom in Medium is that show's main set.)

Ghost Whisperer is no Dead Zone and it's not jumping on the post-X-Files backlash bandwagon like Supernatural either. It's more Touched By An Angel (a similarity that Dead Zone exec producer Michael Piller specifically instructs his writers to avoid.)

The Ghost Whisperer pilot did center entirely on Hewitt, but it's her show, after all. I wondered if they cut stuff out for time. References to what her husband does for a living were rather obviously thrown in as voiceovers until they briefly discussed his day as a paramedic, rather than showing him in action somewhere in the beginning to establish him.

I liked that producer Hewitt pulled in character actors Eddie Jones (ex-Pa Kent from Lois & Clark, the Invisible Man's boss, etc) and Jon Polito and also Wentworth Miller (from Prison Break) as guest stars. (And was that June Lockhart as Melinda's grandma? Sure looked like her.) Wentworth Miller reminds me so much of Steve McQueen that I'm hooked on Prison Break, despite the limited nature of that plot line. And the scene where guest Balthazar Getty (as Michael Adams) told Melinda off was terrific.

Anyway, there's no denying that Hewitt is beautiful and maturing as an actress. She has a great, expressive face. (I admit that the whole show could be shot in close ups and I'd probably still like it.) Modern former child actors like Hewitt and Sarah Michelle Gellar and Seth Green knock me out because they always seem to know exactly what they're doing. They don't just stand around waiting while other actors deliver their lines. They're always "on".

But Hewitt is more than just a pretty face. (She could have been a Charmed One after Shannen Doherty left, but turned down the role.) I say let's see what happens with Ghost Whisperer. It may just be the surprise hit of the season.

A unique film of the "if I had it all to do over" variety, Turn Back The Clock gives Lee Tracy a chance to show the full range of his talents as an average Joe who wants a second chance at life and gets it.

Director Edgar Selwyn and screenwriter Ben Hecht delivered a small masterpiece in 1933 that might seem familiar now to later generations. Everyone from Frank Capra to Rod Serling has used the same theme successfully - the lesson to be learned: you can't change the past without consequences, so maybe its better just to be happy with what you have.

TCM has this one in its vault, so see it if you're a Tracy fan. You won't be disappointed. Excellent performances by Mae Clarke and Peggy Shannon as well. Funny and dramatic with some of the delightful over the top stuff you'd expect from an early Thirties film, but fast and insightful at the same time.

Oh, and an uncredited guest bit with The Three Stooges as wedding singers!

I'll try, but this is a very unique film with an outstanding cast. It really needs to be seen. Let's just say that had Nick Roeg's The Man Who Fell To Earth worked this well back in 1976 it would be known today for content rather than David Bowie.

A&E is showing Epsilon under the title Alien Visitor late at night with a few little censorship blurs to hide Ullie Birve's brief nudity, but if they put it up in prime time unmasked for all the world to see I'll bet they wouldn't get one nasty letter.

The plot is similar to TMWFTE or Starman or a dozen episodes of a dozen sci-fi TV shows. A woman from the star (or perhaps planet - we never really know) Epsilon drops in on a lad hiking out in the Australian outback unexpectedly and they fall for each other, but that's where comparisons to most alien visitor plots fade away.

The visitor (Birve) is not happy to be stuck on Earth, a planet reviled throughout the universe for its inhabitants' inability to see their inevitable self-destruction. The Earthling (Syd Brisbane) is just an easygoing guy living a simple life and doesn't really register the reason for her distain. Especially after she illustrates her point by jumping him around on his own planet in the wink of an eye and without even the celestial special effect of a Star Trek transporter.

Director Rolf de Heer uses fixed camera positions to record time passing rapidly mixed with gentle cuts into long fluid pans that effortlessly move the viewer with the main characters as they explore the Earth. It is a wondrous device, only possible in a movie, and we immediately share the Earthling's sense of amazement at the visitor's power over nature's physical laws but also learn with him that magic is the least important aspect of their encounter.

The underlying ecological discourse between the two hasn't lost one bit of relevancy since the film was made in 1995. If anything, the message has become more urgent in the 21st century.

Humans are killing the Earth and something must be done about it - by humans.

Epsilon is beautifully edited and shot by Tania Nehme and Tony Clark. Director Rolf de Heer also played with sci-fi in Encounter at Raven's Gate (1988).

Personally, I'm buying the DVD!

I caught this film as part of a Showtime preview this weekend and it knocked me out. It's a hard film to describe. Gena Rowlands plays the title role and all the other leads were new faces to me, except James Caan in a supporting role.

The storyline is about a kid who is having trouble at home and in school and the principal (James Caan) gives him a choice between working after school for an eccentric old lady or expulsion.

It's so full of surprises that I'll say no more, but Miss Rowlands, Kevin Zegers and Leslie Hope were outstanding.

I don't know if it's a rental yet but keep an eye out for it. It's one of those movies you'll never forget.

Two notes.

This is a classic sci-fi novel and Lem is a classic writer, It's hard to move a classic from one form to another, but Andrei Tarkovsky did a pretty good job of it, even though you must read the novel to appreciate the film.

Best seen in it's (now) restored widescreen version. The original US release was missing footage.

Other than the presence of Ricardo Cortez, who is one of those very cool actors nobody remembers, and the beautiful Karen Morley (who died in March 2003, only a couple of months ago), Crestwood is somewhat unique as it is the finale of a popular radio program. But it may also be the first interactive mystery!

According to the opening titles, radio listeners were invited to submit their storyline for the finale in a nationwide contest, with the movie to be based on their plot.

There were disclaimers, of course, and who knows what RKO really did with the winner's script, but the film deserves a place in history for the attempt at least.

Convoluted, yes. Stiff and rather lurid, perhaps. But Crestwood is an archeological clue to the once close bond between the radio and the movie theater.

At the very least, truly an "RKO Radio Picture"!

A very bad adaptation of a wonderful short story by master fantasy and sci-fi writer Roger Zelazny. None of Zelazny's many other novels or shorts were made into features in his lifetime, and this film is probably why. The Sci Fi Channel is currently threatening a TV version of Zelazny's Amber series (Nine Princes in Amber, etc.) Let's pray it is light years away from this turkey.

If Stephen Spielberg is reading this, check out Zelazny's Jack of Shadows or Doorways in the Sand.

As a non-Catholic, I'm not sure if I can truly gage the impact of Agnieszka Holland's The Third Miracle. I found it both moving and lacking, but I'd recommend it to those who are wondering about the mysteries of life and the human spirit. I have no idea how the Catholic Church and its membership would feel about it.

On a purely human level, the movie is about doubt: Ed Harris is Father Frank Shore, an American priest asked by his Bishop (Charles Haid) to investigate Helen (Barbara Sukowa) an American candidate for sainthood. Along the way, Frank uncovers miraculous deeds, encounters his own doubts about his calling, and eventually seems to believe in miracles.

Other main characters have their doubts too: the prospective saint's non-Catholic daughter Roxane (Anne Heche in one of her best performances to date), the stuffy official Vatican investigator Cardinal Werner (Armin Mueller-Stahl), and Maria (Caterina Scorsone), the troubled subject of one of the questionable miracles.

Good prerequisites for this film might be Martin Scorsese's film version of Nikos Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and most of Federico Fellini's films, in particular 8 1/2 (1963) and Juliet of the Spirits (1965).

Holland lets the Church off lightly compared to Fellini, but she does successfully underscore the pomposity of the cardinals and bishops in their big cars and sparkling vestments. This leads to an essential question about her reasoning and the meaning of film's ending, but I won't give that away: I'll leave that for you to judge.