More of the Pulitzer Prizeâwinning film critic's most scathing reviews. A Horrible Experience of Unbearable Length collects more than 200 of his reviews from 2006 to 2012 in which he gave movies two stars or fewer. Known for his fair-minded and well-written film reviews, Roger is at his razor-sharp humorous best when skewering bad movies. Consider this opener for the one-star Your Highness: " Your Highness is a juvenile excrescence that feels like the work of 11-year-old boys in love with dungeons, dragons, warrior women, pot, boobs, and four-letter words. That this is the work of David Gordon Green beggars the imagination. One of its heroes wears the penis of a minotaur on a string around his neck. I hate it when that happens." And finally, the inspiration for the title of this book, the one-star Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: " Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments. One of these involves a doglike robot humping the leg of the heroine. If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination." Roger Ebert's I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie and Your Movie Sucks, which gathered some of his most scathing reviews, were bestsellers. This collection continues the tradition, reviewing not only movies that were at the bottom of the barrel, but also movies that he found underneath the barrel. Movie buffs and humor lovers alike will relish this treasury of movies so bad that you may just want to see them for a good laugh!
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(DIRECTED BY HUE RHODES; STARRING STEVE BUSCEMI, ROMANY MALCO; 2010)
If you were to view the trailer of Saint John of Las Vegas, it would probably look like a good time. It seems to have so much great stuff. Promise me a movie with Steve Buscemi, Sarah Silverman, Peter Dinklage, and Tim Blake Nelson, and Iâm there. But this movie is all elbows. Nothing fits. It doesnât add up. It has some terrific free-standing scenes, but they need more to lean on.
Consider the burning man. This is a sideshow performer who wears a suit designed to burst into flames. Unfortunately, the suit has malfunctioned and he canât take it off until the fuel is exhausted. He waits it out on a folding chair behind the carnival midway, consumed in flames every thirty seconds. Thatâs funny, especially when heâs dying for a cigarette. But . . . what? He exists only to be existing.
Well, not quite. The flaming also seems to fit into the movieâs overall symbolism. The screenplay, we learn, was written by the director Hue Rhodes, based on the story by Dante Alighieri. That name may not ring a bell with a lot of moviegoers and had better not be a question on the Tea Baggersâ literacy test. We all recall that Danteâs Inferno told the story of a journey into hell, with the poet Virgil as the tour guide.
In the movie, Steve Buscemi plays John Alighieri, an insurance claims adjuster who is assigned a partner named Virgil (Romany Malco) and sets off on a journey through the desert to Las Vegas (hell).
Letâs have some fun. Danteâs First Circle of Hell was Limbo. In the movie, that would be the main office of the insurance company. People in Limbo have trouble controlling their weaknesses. Johnâs weakness is compulsive gambling. Second Circle is Lust. He lusts for Jill (Silverman), a chirpy coworker who labors in the next cubicle. Later, in a lap-dance bar, he Âundergoes but resists temptation from a stripper (Emmanuelle Chriqui), who sprained her neck in a car crash but tries to give him a lap dance from her wheelchair. Itâs her crash the insurance company doesnât want to pay the claim on.
Third Circle, Gluttony. In this circle are rain and hail, which the two drive through. Fourth Circle, Avarice. John dreams of winning the lottery and spends every dollar on scratch cards. Virgil also has greed, revealed later. Fifth Circle, Anger. They argue with a cop and arrive at a senseless flaming gateway in the desert, guarded by Tim Blake Nelson and other naked men with guns. Sixth Circle, Heresy. Virgil seems not to take the insurance company seriously.
Seventh Circle, Violence. In a used car lot, they are led into a trap and John, knocked senseless, barely escapes with his life. The lot is guarded by a savage dog, no doubt based on Cerberus, the watchdog of Hell. Eighth Circle, Fraud. John discovers the nature of a scheme to defraud the insurance company. Ninth and last Circle, Treason against Godâor, in this case, Mr. Townsend (Dinklage), who is their boss at the insurance company.
If you recall Dante very well, or jot some reminders on your palm with a ballpoint, you can possibly follow the movie in this way. But if like most people your command of the Inferno is shaky, the film may seem disjointed and pointless. There is also this inescapable storytelling dilemma: Once you arrive in the Ninth Circle of Hell, what do you do for an encore?
The acting is first-rate. Buscemi is an apologetic loser who fled Vegas after losing his net worth, and now unwisely returns. Malcoâs Virgil, now that we think of it, is a guide who seems to have been this way before. Silvermanâs Jill is part temptress, part saint. It must have taken all of Rhodesâs willpower to avoid naming her character âBeatrice,â although of course Beatrice was Danteâs guide into heaven. That would be the Âsequel.
And who is Saint John of Las Vegas? That would be John the Baptist or âJohn of the desert,â divine messenger, not to be confused with the brother of Jesus. Why is he âof Las Vegasâ? I think the answer must relate to Johnâs gambling history. When Anna Dudak, my landlady on Burling Street, would take a trip to Las Vegas, her husband, Paul, would tell me she had gone to Lost Wages.
Sanctum
1/2
(DIRECTED BY ALISTER GRIERSON; STARRING RICHARD ROXBURGH, RHYS WAKEFIELD; 2011)
Sanctum tells the story of a terrifying adventure in an incompetent way. Some of it is exciting, the ending is involving, and all of it is a poster child for the horrors of 3-D used wrongly. The film is being heavily marketed as a âJames Cameron Production,â but if this were a âJames Cameron Film,â I suspect it would have fewer flaws and the use of 3-D would be much Âimproved.
The movie, based on a true story, involves a scuba-diving expedition into the Esa-ala Caves of New Guinea, said to be the largest cave system in the world. The plan is to retrace an already explored route to reach a âbase campâ somewhere far beneath the surface, and then to press on, perhaps to find how the surface water draining into the caves finds its way to the sea. Thereâs no need to discover this, you understand, but after some loss of life, Frank (Richard Roxburgh), the leader of the expedition, tells his son, Josh (Rhys Wakefield), that only in a cave does he feel fully alive; the humdrum surface world is not for him and âhuman eyes have never seen this before.â
After awkward opening scenes of almost startling inanity, we find ourselves deep inside the cave system, and our heroes deep in trouble. They are combining dangerous climbing with risky diving, and itâs a good question why an inexperienced girlfriend was allowed to come along. Still, tactical errors are not what concerned me. I only wanted to figure out what was happening, and where, and why.
This movie should be studied in film classes as an example of Âinadequate film continuity. At no point are we oriented on our location in the cave as a whole or have a clear idea of what the current cave space looks like. If you recall Cameronâs Titanic, its helpful early animation briefed us on the entire story of how the great ship sank. That was a great help in comprehending the events of its final hour. In Sanctum, thereâs a computer animation showing the known parts of the cave, but as the POV whizzes through caverns and tunnels, it achieves only a demonstration of computer animation itself. We learn damn little about the cave. The animated map even flips on its horizontal axis, apparently to show off. Hey, I can do stuff like that on my Mac, and then my hair is parted on the other side!
The movie is a case study of how not to use 3-D. Sanctum takes place in claustrophobic spaces with very low lighting, which are the last places you want to make look dimmer than they already are. The lighting apparently comes from battery-powered headlamps, and the characters are half in darkness and half in gloom. Now why put on a pair of glasses and turn down the lights?
One purpose of 3-D is to create the illusion of depth. One way to do this is to avoid violating the fourth wall by seeming to touch it. Let me give a famous example from Jaws 3-D. The problem with that movie is that when the shark attacked, it was so big its body touched the sides of the screen, and the 3-D illusion was lost. (The movie has a scene of an eel attack, and thatâs scary.)
Alas, the cinematographer of Sanctum, Jules OâLoughlin, consistently touches the side of the screen. He even has the curious practice of framing middle action with large, indistinct blocks of foreground stones and stuff. These are out of focus so that the midrange can look sharp, and 3-D only makes us wonder why the closer objects are less distinct. In close quarters he has to use many close-ups, and those, too, get old in a hurry in 3-D. The Brendan Fraser 3-D movie Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008) did a much better job of placing its actors in its spaces. Of course, the spaces were mostly f/x, but there you are.
In its editing continuity, Sanctum doesnât make clear how the actions of one character relate to anotherâs. There is great spatial disorientation in the use of the close shots. There is a scene where a character gets in trouble underwater, and I invite anyone to explain exactly what happens. The movie has a tactic to distract from this visual confusion. Three team members follow many of the events from above on a large computer monitor. Alas, we donât see what they see. We only get reaction shots of them seeing it. Where does their screen image come from? Head-mounted webcams? A cam in that submersible lighting device? I dunno. How is the image transmitted? I doubt the cell phone service is great in a cave in the jungles of New Guinea. Maybe they set up a LAN? How is it powered? They even complain about the batteries on their headlamp.
There are a few closing scenes that involve the ruthless reality of who survives in a cave and who doesnât. One of these involves Frank and Josh. Weâve had a long wait, but the scene works. It has absolutely no need for 3-D. I wonder if people will go to Sanctum thinking the James Cameron name is a guarantee of high-quality 3-D. Here is a movie that can only harm the reputations of Cameron and 3-D itself.
Scre4m
(DIRECTED BY WES CRAVEN; STARRING NEVE CAMPBELL, COURTENEY COX; 2011)
The great pleasure in the Scream movies is that the characters have seen other horror films. At times they talk as if theyâre in the chat room of a Âhorror site. Wes Cravenâs Scre4m, the typographically skewed fourth movie in the series, opens with a clever series of horror scenes that emerge one from another like nested Russian dolls, and Kevin Williamsonâs dialogue is smart and knowing. All through the movie, Scre4m lets us know that it knows exactly what itâs up toâand then goes right ahead and gets up to it.
The premise is that a psychopath has returned to the town of Woodsboro, which has already seen so many fatal slashings you question why anyone still lives there, let alone w...
