Reviews

In 1982, Charlton Heston was doing the rounds with the press for his new film, "Mother Lode." My brother took me up to the radio station where he worked without telling me, and I got the surprise of meeting the actor as he was coming out of the broadcast room. Me being me, I had no idea what to say to him, so I limited myself to "Nice to meet you." He smiled, shook my hand, returned the pleasantry and left for his next appointment. I got an autographed movie poster, and a very short story, out of the deal.

As an adult, I've looked for the movie so I could see what it was all about. Blockbuster never had it, Netflix didn't, neither did Amazon Prime. I finally found it - let us not worry about where - and I watched it.

According to IMDB, this was Heston's last directorial effort, and I can see why. In defense of the work, I can say it's not the worst thing I've ever watched. It's fun watching Heston chew scenery like there's no tomorrow, but the writing is awful, and the sound mixing, ADR, and foley sound like they were recorded on the built-in mic of a Realistic portable cassette. They are, bluntly, the worst I've ever heard, even by the standards of the time. So little compression, oh so much clipping.

No animals were harmed in the watching of this motion picture. None derived any benefit, either.

"The Witcher." How can I concisely sum up the grandeur, the utter brilliance, the mind blowing originality, the dazzling spectacle that was the twenty minute span I was able to tolerate until the nausea took hold and overcame my defenses? Before I took the remote from it's scabbard across my back and put an end to the horrific threat to the kingdom of my creative integrity?

Writing worthy of a junior high creative writing class filled entirely with junior varsity football players, one of whose little brothers once played D&D because he thought the DM's seventeen year old sister was really hot.

Acted by people with plenty of time in their schedules because the local community theater rejected them.

Costumed so consistently that I'm sure there's not a thrift store anywhere in North America or Europe without an empty "Used Prom Dresses" rack. The Witcher himself looks like he shopped at Dress Barn...in 1986. God save us from shoulder pads.

I'm sure the books are great, blah blah blah. Henry Caville should hunger game his agent.

It's a poorly written Saw wannabe, a good concept executed with all the enthusiasm and intensity of a coked-up community theater cast. How the actors can deliver the lines in the script without dropping into despair is a tribute to just how not self-aware they have to be as a cast, uttering dialog bad enough to have been written by George Lucas himself, with little regard for verisimilitude or empathy. At no point did I ever care what happened to any of the characters.

This is the kind of movie you'd get if a goth con held at a renaissance festival had a collective fever dream while in possession of a camcorder, a bootleg copy of AfterEffects, and a budget of just under $20, most of which was spent on eyeliner. There are some good ideas here - though readers of The Dresden Files will be treading on very familiar ground, since the script seems entirely derived from Jim Butcher's world building - but the majority of the cast just isn't capable of carrying them off. The actor playing Hermes - mostly because he has so much screen time - is particularly horrific, delivering his lines in an ostentatiously declamatory oration better suited to reading Wagner aloud while stoned. Kudos to (Austin Texas musician) Bekah Kelso, who not surprisingly gives the best performance of the cast, delivering with sincerity lines that would have challenged a funeral director's ability to keep a straight face. If you like bad movies, this is a worthy addition to your collection. (Search up the review on God Awful Movies. It's brilliant.)

This is a movie that takes its time, gives the actors time to do their jobs without being rushed. The story moves at a good clip - it has to, there's a lot of ground to cover. Visually it's beautiful, and I absolutely believe the world the production created. My one criticism is Chris Pine's accent: it fades in and out like a bad AM signal. Pine has the acting chops to carry off the role - hell, any role - but his dialect coach was a little lax.

"1922" is a story with a lot of cinematic potential. In the novella we spend a lot of time inside the characters' minds and that doesn't always translate well to film though the writers on this production do a fair job of picking the important bits so we, the watchers, can at least follow along. The movie takes its time, and that's not for everyone.

The production design is where the whole falls apart, though. Leaving off the obvious anachronisms - a Model A car showing up years too early; modern-styled paper money - there are details that distract badly from the story. The sheriff's car (the aforementioned anachronistic Ford) is bright and shiny - as it would have been - but also perfectly spotless. So is the tractor shown not long after: in farmland, especially during harvest, nothing is shiny, and everything is covered in dust, inside and out. The tractor Wilford is shown working on is as shiny as a piece in a museum, not like a working vehicle at all. The two times we're taking to Hemingford City, mountains are visible in the background. If the geography described in the novella is our template (southeastern Nebraska), there are no mountains like that within three hundred miles.

Thomas Jane's performance is, as always, fantastic, but his accent is very out of place, pure southern Appalachia; Nebraska was settled by Germans and Russians, and even today, Nebraska farmers don't drawl like that.

A reasonable if uneven adaptation that suffered from a lack of attention to detail. It almost gets there, but not quite.

Once the story gets rolling it follows three completely unlike-able main characters continually being unpleasant to one another. Will they die? Will they live? We are never given a reason to care. The problem with starting your movie with *that* much tension is that once you peak there's nowhere to go, and it peaks in the first twenty minutes. Jump scare, scream, rinse, repeat for-EVER. Not even the beginnings of entertaining.

Although the script hits all the major beats and is a reasonably faithful adaptation, for those who have read the novel upon which the movie is based the story will feel rushed and frequently awkward. On its own merits, though, it's a decent enough thriller. Drew Barrymore gives a good performance for one so young, and the casting choices for Rainbird, Wanless, and "Cap" are perfect. I do miss Rainbird's backstory; his feelings toward Charlie would make much more sense, but that's a relatively minor thing. It's always tough to cut a novel of that scope down to a two hour film, but if the film has one major flaw it is the soundtrack, a hopelessly dated synth score that was "awesome" in my high school years, but seriously distracts now.