The Gathering (2002)

An interesting myth about the Catholic Church (aren't they all?) is mingled with a well-known fact about the Catholic Church to create The Gathering, a watchable film about the beginnings of the Catholic Church. It's not particularly thrilling but it does maintain interest as Christina Ricci bounces around the English town of Ashby Wake trying to figure out why she is seeing visions. It's benign.

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Splinter (2008)

Splinter might be a very short, B-movie but it delivers the tension as a creepy, pointy thing invades a bunch of people who have locked themselves in an isolated gas station for safety. The actors (Paulo Costanzo, Jill Wagner, Shea Wigham) are uniformly good but the script does veer into the ridiculous and plagiaristic territory that B-movies often do. The best aspect, though, is that the special effects are NOT created using CGI!

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P.S. I Love You (2007)

P.S. I Love You is a story about loss and recovery that has it all. There's an intriguing story with a funny and touching script (that does have some minor issues), a stellar cast (Hilary Swank, Gerard Butler, Lisa Kudrow, Gina Gershon, Kathy Bates, Harry Connick Jr., Nellie McKay), phenomenal music (the CD is worth owning) and directorial pedigree (writer/director Richard LaGravenese of Living Out Loud). Don't pass this off as just some chick flick - although you should prepare yourself for a tear or two...or three.

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Adrift (2008)

Director Hans Horn has done a good job of conveying feelings of claustrophobia in what is essentially a huge space. But although the ocean is terrifying in Adrift (also known as Open Water 2), the script has a few ridiculous plot points and you don't have to be a rocket scientist to guess who dies at the end in the beginning. Still, character development helped and ultimately I think this one did a better job than its ersatz predecessor Open Water.

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Leviathan (1989)

I know, let's make Alien again but put it 16,000 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean and instead of having the monster rip OUT of your belly, let's have it rip INTO your belly. We'll hire some solid B-list actors (like Peter Weller, Meg Foster, Ernie Hudson, Richard Crenna), create a relatively creepy shapeshifting monster, and end it almost like they ended The Poseidon Adventure. We'll call it Leviathan but make sure we don't show too much of the monster; we have to save money to make money.

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The Curse of the Cat People (1944)

The Curse of the Cat People is a sequel in actors and title to the 1942 film Cat People. The real story concerns the imaginary friend of a 10 year old girl (beautifully played by Ann Carter) who just happens to be Simone SImon, the cat lady of the first film. Elizabeth Russell (seemingly producer Val Lewton's muse) has a bigger (and different) role this go round but again it's more fantastical Dr. Seuss than horror and certainly not a real sequel.

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Cat People (1942)

The classic horror film Cat People is really less classic horror and more black and white mood piece than its reputation would have you believe. It's poetic to watch the shadows and light but the film's interest is more historical than horror. Simone SImon is mesmerizingly good and Elizabeth Russell has a memorably brief scene but you might pass on this if you're not a film student.

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The Bride Work Black (1968)

Director Francois Truffaut's fascination with Alfred Hitchcock reached its apex with The Bride Wore Black, a Hitchcockian tale with no suspense starring Jean Moreau (of the Betty Davis face) as the woman denied her walk down the aisle. You almost know what's going on when she dons the darkside threads to dish out a cool style of revenge but the story keeps unfolding anyway to an inevitable conclusion. It's not the best Hitchcock homage that's been filmed but the cinematography of the French locations is breathtakingly real and Moreau's Pierre Cardin clothing is loud and proud.

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Manhunter (1986)

Five years before the onslaught of The Silence of the Lambs there was Manhunter - what can only be described as the sword and spear version of the former. And that's a good thing. It's cerebral and not very gory but the tension created by director Michael Mann and excellent performances from William Peterson, Tom Noonan and Joan Allen (among many) bring it on home.

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Curse of the Forty-Niner (2002)

Karen Black can do no wrong when it comes to acting but when it comes to choosing the films in which she acts, well that's another story and Miner's Massacre (aka Curse of the Forty-Niner) tells it. How the producer managed to get her, John Phillip Law, Richard Lynch and Jeff Conaway for this laughable story of a dead miner protecting his gold claim is beyond comprehension. I guess times are hard everywhere.

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Death Becomes Her (1992)

Sorry Goldie Hawn, Meryl Streep and Bruce Willis but taste trumps talent in Death Becomes Her - bad taste that is. The comedy is SO not funny and the story is SO not, even in its fantastical elements, interesting to watch. The special effects are good and the ladies might have had a fun time making the film because of it but, that alone doesn't mean this one is worth the time it took to finish.

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District 9 (2009)

What is the deal about District 9 (produced by Peter Jackson for that worth)? It was sometimes mildly enervating but ultimately not very appealing. I left the theatre twenty five minutes into it I was that bored.

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Daughter of the Mind (1969)

Seances and sleeper spies (that's what they called them in the 60s) are at the heart of Daughter of the Mind, an ABC Movie of the Week which I had remembered fondly. Watching it low these forty years later, I was pleasantly surprised to see Gene Tierney in this story of a man (Ray Milland) who is being visited by the ghost of his dead daughter - the ubiquitous Pamelyn Ferdin. Not as scary as I had remembered, it does have an element of interest although the denouement was something I figured out way before the 90 minutes were up.

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Bonnie & Clyde: The True Story (1992)

The made-for-television Bonnie & Cyde: The True Story might have the facts correct but it doesn't have the glamour and excitement of its more famous large screen forebear. Betty Buckley steals the show as Bonnie's mother and Tracey Needham as Bonnie is fine (once you lose the memory of Faye Dunaway) but Dana Ashbrook as Clyde seems like he popped off the stage of an 'N Sync concert. Although the first half keeps interest it loses steam towards the end when the most exciting part, their death, is relegated to offscreen status.

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Small Sacrifices (1989)

Even at her best, it is difficult to separate Farrah Fawcett, the icon, from Farrah Fawcett, the actress, but, despite this conundrum, the first fair-haired angel is mesmerizing in Small Sacrifices, based on the true story of Diane Downs who shot three of her children in the hopes of gaining the love of a man. Emily Perkins (a personal favorite due to her appearances in the Ginger Snaps trilogy) and John Shea as her daughter and the prosecuting attorney (respectively) are Fawcett's equal in this intelligently scripted and well-directed television miniseries (that is currently out of print but sending me an email will get you a free copy). Small Sacrifices is three hours long so get your bathroom and kitchen desires out of the way as it is so riveting your ass won't leave the chair.

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The More the Merrier (1943)

You can't go wrong with a picture starring Jean Arthur but The More The Merrier adds the handsomely hunky Joel McCrea and the obligingly ornery Charles Coburn to create an adult (pre-Three's Company) comedy about roommates and love. The classic George Stevens directed the picture (about a housing shortage in World War II era Washington, DC) which, despite its age, still works. Watch for the rooftop scene and the scene where Jean and Joel walk home from their first date - if only they made movies this naively erotic and oddly romantic today!

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Idiocracy (2006)

Idiocracy, a comedy about two people who wake up five hundred years into the future and find our country peopled (and run) by idiots, is not funny but it is sad and prescient. Compare Joe Wilson's recent outburst in the hallowed halls of Congress to the House of Representin' in this film; compare television like Judge Judy and Jerry Springer to the courtroom scene in this film, and compare the current fight over health care reform to Brawndo's takeover of the F.D.A. and the F.C.C in this film and you will see where our country is headed. It does have the sweetness of Luke Wilson and the absolute charms of Maya Rudolph which move it along but Idiocracy is very sad to watch.

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The Golem (1920)

If the story told in The Golem moved any slower it would be running backwards. Despite its reputation as a horror classic and pre-cursor to James Whale's 1931 film Frankenstein, Paul Wegener's (director and monster) film is overwrought, overacted and seemingly anti-Semitic - not surprising as it is, after all, a German silent film. The most interesting things about the film (whose story of reanimation is steeped in Jewish folklore) are its expressionistic sets, the cinematography by Karl Papa Freund, and the similarities it holds with the real time horror classic Pumpkinhead - yes, I wrote Pumpkinhead.

Easy Living (1937)

Easy Living is a genuinely daffy, Preston Sturges-written laugh riot. Jean Arthur as the girl who gets bonked on the head by a sable (or is it kilonsky) fur coat and starts a chain of events that leads to a stock market meltdown demonstrates why she is one of the greatest (albeit underrated) actresses in Hollywood history . Edward Arnold and Ray Milland round out the triumverate exquisitely in this screwball classic that (finally) gave auteur Sturges enough clout to direct the next screenplay he wrote; Hollywood was never the same after that.

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Children of the Night (1991)

Had I ever seen Buffy, The Vampire Slayer I might think Children of the Night is quite like it: a different take on the vampire legend, well made, decent acting and interesting enough to keep you watching. It's also got Karen Black which is a plus. Although it teeters on camp I was surprised at how much I actually enjoyed it - even the poster has camp...I mean, class.

Quarantine (2008)

From the first shot of cutsie reporter Jennifer Carpenter to the next shot of the here-to-fore unseen television news camera man you realize that Quarantine (the remake of [REC] a nail-biting Spanish horror film in which for one, the camera man is never seen) has been homogenized; the former is a problem, the latter not so much. The rest of the movie is almost a scene by scene (as I recall) copy of the original with this unappealing woman at the center and a story that bypasses the religious issues of the original to appease a larger American audience. This is commerce, not art - go with [REC].

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Michael Clayton (2007)

Michael Clayton is an excellently creepy drama about corporate greed with a smartly written, complex story and characters. George Clooney has probably never been better and Tilda Swinton deservedly won an Oscar for her role. The only downside was the unwelcome (but admittedly small) supporting performance from Michael O' Keefe; ironically the second actor in the movie to play a romantic interest to Jackie in the situation comedy Roseanne with Clooney being the first.

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Troop Beverly Hills (1989)

A red-headed Shelley Long is the pampered leader of a bunch of pampered Wilderness Girls in Troop Beverly Hills, an obvious but nonetheless fun fish out of water comedy that seems to have taken on cult status; it came almost two years before the first episode of Beverly Hills 90210. There are no real laugh out loud moments and Long's character is just a jump away from Diane in Cheers but somehow it works - maybe its the outlandish Beverly Hills clothing that Phyllis Nefler wears or watching her Do The Freddie in high heels or getting soused on Evian water. Betty Thomas and Mary Gross add to the tension (or lack thereof) as the villains, and the Cookie Time rap is classic in a family B-movie sort of way.

Vantage Point (2008)

Everyone in Vantage Point is trying really hard to make this an important movie but in the end it spends too much time literally rewinding and rehashing the same story from a different camera angle. Ridiculous plot elements (like overweight Forrest Whitaker keeping up with, and recording, the Secret Service as they chase the bad guys or Dennis Quaid emerging unscathed from a horrendous car crash) add to the overall mediocrity of this Run, Lola, Run (which it kind of, maybe, resembles) knock-off. Ultimately, the movie lacks any complexity and the ending is a lot of Hollywood nothing.

Party Wire (1935)

Party Wire is pure, unadulterated Jean Arthur as illustrated by her line to the bank president upon being fired from her job: Don't worry. Christmas is coming. Maybe your wife will give you a dog collar. The story concerns small town gossips (who get their information from the telephonic party line) and, surprisingly, apes the much later written and produced Harper Valley PTA. The movie is well made and somewhat unusual with a cautionary conclusion that is still relevant today.