Movieline Online

THE FLICK: Inspired by the true story of American pilot Dieter Dengler’s capture and eventual escape from a North Vietnamese prison camp during the early years of the war, there was probably no better choice to direct the screen adaptation than Werner Herzog. After all, the man had already let Dengler tell the story himself in the riveting documentary Little Dieter Needs To Fly. And Herzog’s penchant for shooting under exceedingly uncomfortable jungle conditions (proven in Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, The Wrath of God) set up some high expectations for the director’s first foray into traditional narrative filmmaking in quite some time. And there is much to praise about this survival story, namely the acting by stars Christian Bale, Jeremy Davies and especially Steve Zahn - who performs a complete career transformation as the soft-spoken Duane Martin - along with the smothering rain forest locations, so thick with suffocating greenery you can’t imagine how they squeezed a camera between th...

THE FLICK: I know that it’s not the popular opinion, but in a side-by-side comparison I prefer the tangible carnage in director Marcus Nispel’s Pathfinder to the fantastical CG renderings of 300. Yes, I understand that Zack Snyder’s film is a groundbreaking piece of filmmaking that will influence cinema for the next 10 years or so. It’s the better movie, no doubt about it. And Pathfinder will most likely fade away into Netflix limbo, rented only by customers who couldn’t get the latest Bourne film added to their queue fast enough. But for kids who grew up on a healthy diet of Heavy Metal magazine and repeats of Conan the Barbarian, this one will strike a nerve. The sole survivor of a failed Viking raid on North American soil, “Ghost” (Karl Urban), as he is billed in the credits, is adopted by a Native American tribe and grows to adulthood under their gentle tuteledge. Although the white warrior never quite fits in, his skills with a sword are put to good use when another band of Nordic...

THE FLICK: From the first thundering echo of footsteps over a black screen, you just know Godzilla is different from other films in the atomic monster genre. There’s an ominous sense of doom, dread and tragic destiny at work that’s at odds with your expectations of a man in a rubber suit crushing scale-model buildings. And the long-awaited release of the original Japanese version of Gojira (sans Raymond Burr and the re-shot American footage) only serves to prove this point further. Director Ishiro Honda may have been working in a B-movie domain, but he was delivering an A-movie message. Rising from the depths in a boiling fury of atomic age retribution, Godzilla himself is a fairly clear-cut embodiment of Japanese fears of reckless nuclear testing in the aftermath of their own personal losses during WWII. And unlike later films in the series, Gojira is a serious, somber metaphor of the consequences mankind may endure if he doesn’t smarten up. This is no light-hearted monster mash. Now ...

THE FLICK: It’s a minor Hollywood miracle that the Ocean’s remakes even exist at all. The cumulative salaries of the stars involved would stretch around the world six times if they hadn’t deferred a good chunk of change to work together under the guidance of director Steven Soderbergh. The appeal to the trilogy is that “backstage pass” vibe you get by watching “A-list” celebrities goof off for a couple of hours. Of course, Ocean’s 12 took things too far, stretching out poorly improvised dialogue that probably seemed funny on the set but came off as arrogantly self-serving on the screen. And the whole Julia Roberts playing Julia Roberts meeting Bruce Willlis thing? Save it for the after-party, people. Luckily, things are back on track for part three. After a cocky casino owner (Al Pacino) gives one of the gang a raw deal, Danny Ocean (George Clooney) gets the band back together for a one-time-only revenge heist with the intent of breaking the auspicious new Bank casino on opening night....

THE SHOW: The rise of the serial TV drama has been both a blessing and a curse. Shows like Lost, 24 and Prison Break have elevated episodic television to Hollywood standards, delivering mini-motion pictures in the course of 45-minutes that equal anything you might pay $7.50 for in a theater. But TV is a marathon, not a sprint, and the challenge of creating 20+ episodes of the same quality is next to impossible. And let’s not even talk about the Season Two slumps! That being said, I believe the first season of Lost is the best thing ever produced for the medium. And Prison Break ain’t far behind. The writing isn’t nearly as complex, nuanced or imaginative, but it’s compulsively crafted with built-in cliffhangers and cul-de-sacs that all but guarantee you’ll be back next week. And now that Fox has blessed us with a Blu-ray set of Season One, next week means right now! When Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller), a dashing young structural engineer with no criminal record, suddenly commits a...

THE FLICKS: All hail the DVD box set! Sure, there are bound to be a couple of stinkers in there you really don’t want to own - two thirds of a trilogy that just aren’t up to snuff (ahem, The Matrix) or a remake that went horribly off course (yo, Superman Returns). But when you plunk down $50 bucks and change for a box set, you’re also buying a little piece of history, aren’t you; a document of our pop culture fascinations and foibles on a few shiny metal discs...and maybe some liner notes, if you’re lucky. Severin Films understands this completely. And because no one else had the courage to do it, they took it upon themselves to release not one, but two Black Emanulle collections featuring the immortally exotic Laura Gemser. Why preserve second-grade soft-core porn, you might ask? They’re not particularly well-made, not particularly arousing, and very few would complain if the prints simply deteriorated in some private collector’s basement. But for fans of the history of cinema, these ...

THE FLICKS: While he doesn’t have Dario Argento’s fanbase or Jess Franco’s padded resume, Italian director Lucio Fulci is not without his admirers, mostly earned during his gory glory days during the ‘80s with The Beyond, House By The Cemetary, and Zombie. But like any filmmaker of note in his native country, Fulci dabbled in almost every genre, including the giallo (mystery) format and even a sex comedy or two. Severin Films has released one of each, showcasing a less bloody side of the director not known for his restraint. Based on the title alone (not to mention the delightfully naughty artwork) The Eroticist would likely be dismissed as nothing more than subtitled T & A. But the film has much larger aspirations and a much broader canvas, ridiculing the Italian political system and all its inherent corruptive influences with equal gusto. Sure, there’s some ass-grabbing and naughty nuns, but Fulci’s emphasis is on satire and slapstick rather than soft-focus sex scenes. Candidate ...

THE FLICKS: As with every other film genre, when the Italians stumbled onto something that made money, the market was flooded with an infinite number of variations of the subject. Cannibalism was no different, and although it offered less creative opportunities for exposition (explorers trek into the jungle, get eaten, roll credits please), producers found ways to get prints into theaters, even recruiting good ‘ol Jess Franco – the prolific Eurosleaze director who ineptness crosses all genre boundaries – to step up to the buffet. Cannibals was sold under a number of other titles, but, as Led Zeppelin so aptly put it, the song remains the same. Al Cliver (Fulci’s Zombie 2) brings his family along on a scientific expedition only to lose his arm, his wife and his young daughter to a tribe of natives sporting KISS make-up. His wife is promptly eaten alive in a genuinely disturbing slow-motion montage. His daughter is kidnapped and proclaimed a white goddess to be worshipped. While his arm,...