The Girl Next Door (2004)

 'The Girl Next Door' is a film of which it can reasonably be asked, how did this get made? Emile Hirsch is a bookish California high school senior, whose life gets much more complicated when porn star Elisha Cuthbert movies in next door. This is one of those movies that acts like it wants it both ways, porn is bad as Cuthbert wants to stop doing it, but has self worth issues and keeps getting pulled back in, but also porn is fun, let's secretly film a porn movie in our high school during prom.

This is an odd piece, it would be interesting to see what the original concept was and follow it through the various drafts that lead to the final product, a story of inconsistent character motivations, baffling morals, and a last act which laughs manically at cohesion and offers one of the more credulity straining resolutions I've seen in film. It's not good, but its more then watchable and at times fascinatingly bad. I'm gonna cop out as well and give this **.

Timecop (1994)

 In 'Timecop' Jean-Claude Van Damme is a timecop, a temporal security officer working for the U.S. government in the year 2004 policing unauthorized time travel. Ron Silver is a U.S. Senator running for president who is using time travel to make money on the stock market. Mia Sara is Jean-Claude's late wife, who was killed in 1994 on the orders of Senator Silver, as part of a botched attempt to take out Van Damme before he started his investigation that would lead to Silver. Spoilers don't matter in 'Timecop'. 

I wanted to see this when I saw the trailers back in 94, but I was 14 and it was rated R. So 30 years later I finally got around to it and I guess you could say it was worth the wait, because I rather enjoyed 'Timecop', it meet all my (low) expectations for a vaugly smart, pretty well structured, decent action movie with time travel hijinks. It is what a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie is meant to be, an off brand Schwarzenegger movie. ***

Whoopee! (1930)

 Eddie Cantor stars in 1930 film adaptation of his hit 1928 musical 'Whoopee!', in which he sings, among other songs, his signature tune, 'Makin Whoopee'. Cantor is a New York hypochondriac staying at ranch in the southwest, who ends up in what I guess you'd call a "Love pentagon" as it involves five people. Movie was filmed in the two strip technicolor process so it looks fadded and pastel. Modern audiences should be aware there is blackface and alot of Indian jokes in this. Overall though I found funny and well paced. ***

Palmy Days (1931)

 I had never seen an Eddie Cantor movie before, the singer/comedian of prohibition times who is still the only person to have a Macey's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon made in thier likeness. In the films first five minutes we have an artdeco bakery, chorus girls in slinky, stylized bakers outfits, a clearly coded gay character and a musical production number titled "Bend Down Sister". So we are clearly in pre code times.

Cantor plays a fake psychics assistant who is mistaken as an efficency expert and tries to go straight, all while pursuing one girl, being persued by another, and threatened by gangsters in league with the fake psychic. The whole film has a rather Looney Tunes air about it, fast paced, kentic and pretty funny. This got me interested in seeing more Cantor movies. ***

Hardcore Henry (2015)

 'Hardcore Henry' is a first person shooter game as motion picture. Ironically it's not based on any existing video game, though it turns out to have a good portion of lore all it's own. In the film you are Henry, recently resurrected as a cyborg and as a consequence temporarly mute. The whole film is your point of view, you are the camera. Your wife, the comely Haley Bennett, is abducted at the start of the picture by a telekinetic bad guy named Akan. You spend the movie traveling through action set piece levels as you try to rescue your beloved, assisted in this by a number of bio-mechanical, avatar clones of Sharlo Copley, who in effect becomes the films lead character, or at least the one with the most screen time. 

A movie with this first person conceit was going to be made eventually, and while the film can't sustain its roughly 90 minute running time, parts of this do work rather well and it's fun as a novelty. If they never make another film like this again, I'm fine with that. **1/2

The Favorite (1989)

 'The Favorite' aka 'Intimate Power', is a low rent, seedy but want to be pseudo-classy, Swiss-American co-porduction based on a novel written (I am not making this up) by a Greek royal, based on a legend that Naksidil Sultan, the preferred consort of two consecutive Ottoman sultans, murderer of a third and mother of a fourth, was actually Aimee du Buc de Rivery, a French heiress and relative of Josephine Bonaparte, who was supposedly lost at sea in 1788 at the age of 19.

The story has Aimee abducted by pirates who sell her to the Sultan, who at first she resists but then comes, reportedly, to love. Presumably this was less of a problem with the Sultans much younger nephew who succeeded him. The film has the good fortune to have Amber O'Shea in the lead, an at best mediocre actress whose career never amounted to much, but who the camera just loves.

This a pretty ridiculous movie, which gets most of its production value out of location shooting and somehow getting F. Murry Abraham to play the first Sulton and the capable Jack Smight (Harper, No Way to Treat a Lady, Airport 1975) to direct. Trash with a pedigree, but watchable. *

Anything Else (2003)

 Hey, I watched a movie all the way through off live TV, I can't remember the last time I did that. A comedy from Woody Allen's weak turn of the Milleniaum period, 'Anything Else' is a comedy about a comedy writer (Jason Biggs (who was remarkably at a period in his career where he was a viable Woody Allen lead)), whose once passionate relationship with his girlfriend Christina Ricci is cooling off, much to his (totally understandable) dismay. Biggs is the obvious Woody Allen surrogate here, a point brought home by giving him an older comedy writer mentor figure played by Allen, where the first time you see them together they a wearing basically the same outfit. Allen's not stretching any muscles here in either the writting or directing departments, it's the kind of generic-ish, oddly out of time fair, he could have made with just about the same script in 1983, 2003 or 2023 (for the latter just add smartphones). Still, pleasant enough. **

Megamind (2010)

 'Megamind' is a surprisingly good DreamWorks (computer) animated movie about a supervillian named Megamind (voiced by Will Ferrell), who after the unexpected defeat of his nemesis Metro Man (voice of Brad Pitt) decides he might actually want to be a good guy, after spending some time (in disguise) with the lady reporter he's always been abducting as bait (voice of Tina Fey). I enjoyed this, but the film has been overshadowed in the zeitgeist by the similar but more successful 'Despicable Me', which came our that same year. ***

Battlefield Earth (2000)

 After seeing the better then expected 'Jupiter Ascending', I decided to watch another famously bad, over bloated sci-fi spectical turned box office bomb, 'Battlefield Earth'. Unlike 'Jupiter', 'Earth's reputation is truly warranted. Based on the novel of the same name by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, set 1,000 years into an alien occupation of our planet, there are two stories told 1) an anemic and well past credulity straing tale of a human rebellion lead by Barry Pepper and  2) power jockying amongst the mid-level alien management overseeing the occupation, lead by John Travolta. These slow, awkward and not particularly interesting stories end in one of the more ridiculous climaxes I've ever seen in a film. This is a truly odd movie full of all sorts of odd, directing, editing a especially acting choices. A film that honestly begs the question, how did this get made? *