michael's movie reviews
1997
These are the movies I reviewed in 1997.
reviewed 1997.07.26
Hilarious late-90s moody bungling-ganster flick, as was Bottle Rocket...
reviewed 1997.07.26
Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford, hamming it up, trying to be dominant male...
reviewed 1997.07.24
I suppose this was the original, but it's hard to take as seriously now that so much of what this film did became a staple and from there a cliche...
reviewed 1997.07.23
The "directorial debut" of the fellow from Swimming With Sharks, Seven, and The Usual Suspects...
reviewed 1997.07.21
Absolutely the lamest sci-fi I've seen in some time. Everything from the unexplored politics and theology to the dismal depictions of future was undercooked. From the amazing and unexplained prescience of a robot character on whose advice the main character bases her decisions technology, to the surprising stupidity of the future human scientists glares like a bad dream.This is the usual CRAP wh..
reviewed 1997.07.20
Buddy movie with two goofs, one black, one white...
Mission Condor (Armour of God 2)
reviewed 1997.07.18
The best of Jackie Chan's movies...
reviewed 1997.07.15
Terrible...
reviewed 1997.07.14
Bullshit movie about a circuit of losers who bowl for a living...
reviewed 1997.07.13
Absolutely the best sci-fi produced in some time...
reviewed 1997.07.10
A lovely little film set in the 17th century, when England still ruled Massachusetts, and people got slaughtered for witchcraft...
reviewed 1997.07.08
Lousy...
reviewed 1997.07.07
A gangster movie about four young urban black ladies who decide that bank robbing is the only viable alternative to prostitution, unemployment, or suicide...
reviewed 1997.07.06
This is the best film I have seen in a while...
reviewed 1997.07.05
Sci-fi from the USA...
reviewed 1997.07.04
A very funny account of Howard Stern's life and times. His fights with management, the FCC, and everyone else. His love of his wife and his claims of being widely misunderstood are the apparent themes.Nothing like hindsight to put a spin on past movie reviews...
reviewed 1997.07.03
Very self-aggrandizing, but what can one expect from a movie made by a pornographer about himself? Interesting in that I hadn't realized that Flint had been crippled by a sniper, for instance...
reviewed 1997.06.21
Old and weird, but still as nightmarish as I suspect it originally was. This is a Vietnam flick with little illusion to why America lost. The main character is sent on a mission to kill a rogue member of the same US forces. He's way up river and is thought to have gone native. But it's just PTSD; about a billion tonnes of it.There is some great photography here, and it makes full use of the pop ..
reviewed 1997.06.08
This quiet little film features a shy, overweight fellow who falls in love with Liv Taylor (who wouldn't??)...
reviewed 1997.06.06
Jesus this was terrible...
reviewed 1997.05.31
A movie about a group of would-be Hollywood actors on the prowl for women and careers...
reviewed 1997.05.30
Supremely bad to a cartoonish level...
reviewed 1997.05.30
Reality Bites is a disappointingly uninteresting movie...
reviewed 1997.05.04
May is off to a goofy start with this ridiculous flick...
Star Wars (drinking game edition)
reviewed 1997.04.29
Well, this was the drinking game version of the movie, where you take a shot every time Luke whines, R2's head spins, an old Jedi rambles about the force, someone gets strangled, someone complains about the Millennium Falcon, Han brags about the Falcon, etc., etc.I was wobbly by the time they made it to the cantina, but one of the rules is drink every time an elaborately made up alien gets no li..
reviewed 1997.04.19
This is a quintessentially Canadian movie...
reviewed 1997.04.15
Mmmm, Meg Ryan. This movie was amusing, and it was surprisingly consistent for a Hollywood production. No one gets off easily, and love doesn't exactly conquer all in this film in which the two stars are hell bent on torturing the significant others that left them. Do the stars fall for each other in the process? But he's so nerdy and she's so cool.Recommended...
reviewed 1997.04.12
This is about an offbeat comedy as you'll get from the U...
reviewed 1997.04.10
Bruce Willis playing His Role as the unwitting action hero, gun in his hand, hurt scowl on his face...
reviewed 1997.04.08
For a formulaic Hollywood flick, this one is an entertaining, slick film...
reviewed 1997.04.08
Well, it was an unseasonably warm night, so we rented two flicks -- for the price of one, even: Living life to the max! This movie was, in a word, boring...
reviewed 1997.04.07
Things are definitely looking up for April! This movie is about the first night on the job for a rookie cop (played by Lea Thompson)...
reviewed 1997.04.05
This is an excellent movie...
reviewed 1997.04.01
Well, it can only go uphill for April from here...
reviewed 1997.03.31
Well, this month had its moments, but they were all Star Wars movies...
reviewed 1997.03.23
This nasty little flick follows a convicted killer who returns to his home town, and returns to as normal a life as a mentally handicapped (or whatever the hell the appropriate term is this semi-decade) ex-con could hope for...
reviewed 1997.03.17
The final - and nicely improved - chapter of the Star Wars trilogy...
reviewed 1997.03.16
This is a depressing Russian film which won raves at the Cannes film festival, but is just to grim and pointless to get into...
reviewed 1997.03.14
This is Tom Hank's much-reported first directorial attempt, and his first screenplay (to my knowledge)...
reviewed 1997.03.14
Starring Kevin Costner, Rene Russo, Cheech Marin, and Don Johnston, which seems to have been the point. It's about a loser golfer who can't accept that he must take less than perfection in life. His whole focus is on golf, where he plays to win and nothing less. Of course, he fails. Johnson seems to be around because he's the only actor Hollywood has who can be more annoying than Costner.At time..
reviewed 1997.03.12
This is an older Jackie Chan movie from HK...
reviewed 1997.03.08
This is about a kid who gets into a fight with his girlfriend and accidentally kills her...
reviewed 1997.03.01
This was a lousy movie...
reviewed 1997.02.20
I was astounded...
reviewed 1997.02.19
A quasi-sequel to The Brothers McMullen, this is another relationships movie starring the same crew as the first film, minus the older brother and plus the guy who plays Frasier's dad on TV...
reviewed 1997.02.15
This one is about an electrical blackout which appears to have effected the entire North American continent...
Things to Do in Denver when You're Dead
reviewed 1997.02.14
A very typical American '90s gangster movie...
reviewed 1997.02.14
A film from Montreal with that Canadian weirdness-for-the-sake-of-it and depressing French grittiness...
reviewed 1997.02.07
Morgan Freeman, Keanu Reeves star in an action/spy piece about scientists who discover fusion...
reviewed 1997.02.04
I suspect that you have to be a fan of the game to get this film...
reviewed 1997.02.02
This is a number about a young man who's swept up in big events when he buys a droid with a bad motivator...
reviewed 1997.01.31
This kinky little Ontario-filmed and produced film follows the hero (Henry Czerny) through a few days in a small town filled with the type of aren't-we-sleazy characters you expect to find in a Canadian film...
reviewed 1997.01.31
Three excellent stop-motion short flicks by Nick Park. The first, The Wrong Trousers pits the dog Gromit and his hapless owener Wallace against a roomer they take in. The roomer is a penguin who robs banks. The animation has to be seen to be believed, and the story is funny as hell.The second film was A Fine Day Out, in which Wallace & Gromit go to the moon on a day trip...
reviewed 1997.01.26
I found this a third-rate anime with uninspired animation and story. The animation style in particular - which I think was intended to be heavy and moody - instead is inaccessible and yet also seems to have cut corners. It was like "Heavy Metal" with a certain frenetic jitter.I know that this was based on a series of books and that this is (or was) meant to kick off a series of movies, but I fou..
reviewed 1997.01.25
This was a pretty film, but a little long...
reviewed 1997.01.25
This is a flick from Taiwan about a small family - a man and his three daughters...
reviewed 1997.01.24
This is a flick about two sisters who are singers. One, played by Jennifer Leigh, is the troubled sort, a junkie who burns through her friends in the usual arc of self-destruction as a star. Mare Winnigham plays the straight one, a respected performer in her own right.The basic tale is a good one, without a lot of unnecessary drama and angst...
reviewed 1997.01.24
The quasi-sequel to A Fish Called Wanda...
reviewed 1997.01.20
You know how some movies are made around the leading cast, and they tack on a story of some kind and then half-ass it? This is one of those, with Sandra Bullock, Samuel Jackson, and Matthew McConnaughy...
reviewed 1997.01.16
This is a story about a room full of toys...
reviewed 1997.01.14
The crowd went and saw this one...
reviewed 1997.01.13
Minutes into this one, we were savaging it...
reviewed 1997.01.11
A B kung-fu flick about an HK cop who loses his wife and rescues his son while bringing a host of baddies to brutal justice...
reviewed 1997.01.11
"Jackie Chan's First Strike" is the best in several outings. And yes, I watch them all.Chan breaks into the 007 tradition, going so far as to add the dull moments...
reviewed 1997.01.10
This is animated piece set in historical Japan during the Shogunate. It is a very well-done action period piece, involving a lone ronin, eight daemons, and a treacherous government spy. The demons are trying to overthrow the government, and it's up to the ronin to stop them.It is extremely violent in a fast cartoon style, which comes with the territory and is why we partake of this genre...
reviewed 1997.01.01
This is a slasher pic, a spoof...