Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)::rating::0::rating::0::rating::0

Just about everything hits in Peter Jackson’s inaugural nerd derby: Sir Ian gives gravitas to Gandalf, few people can pull off mannered menace like Sir Christopher Lee, and Sean Bean gets to practice playing Ned Stark in more ways than one. The sweeping shots of Kiwi vistas make like cinematic post cards. Lone quibble: Am…

ByTodd WoffordSeptember 13, 20180Comments

Greatest

Vertigo (1958)::rating::0

Vertigo is an odd, elliptical masterpiece that manages to somehow embody Alfred Hitchcock’s cinematic eccentricities and yet stand apart from the rest of his sprawling filmography. It covers his familiar terrain of obsession and death (and his fetish for platinum blondes with icy dispositions) but is defined and distinguished by a melancholic fog that hangs densely…

ByTodd WoffordSeptember 13, 20180Comments

Laughable

Terror in Beverly Hills (1989)::rating::0

No sense in dancing around it: This movie sucks deep-fried donkeys. The cinematography makes the Zapruder film look like Trip to Bountiful. The monotonic soundtrack conjures the image of a twitching Pomeranian in fitful sleep atop a Casio keyboard. The performances, the editing, and the writing—they all land in the weeds, too. Even the clouds…

ByTodd WoffordSeptember 11, 20180Comments

The Archive

Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)::rating::0

It’s full D&D porn, as Big Bad Sauron brings his Orcs, Men, and mammoths to bear on Middle Earth. Jackson builds impeccable spectacle--the Battle of Pelennor Fields is relentlessly exciting, and the players match the technical perfection, especially Mortensen as the titular king. Unfortunately, the soufflé collapses in the epilogue, where we get endless Hobbit giggles and…

ByTodd WoffordSeptember 11, 20180Comments

The Archive

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers::rating::0

Or, The Empire Strikes Back in mail armor. Peter Jackson delivers the middle act of Tolkien’s Middle Earth saga with damn near perfect pitch: The Hobbiton flab of the first film is filched, leaving a lean narrative that’s both faster moving and more dramatically satisfying. The action set piece at Helm’s Deep stacks up to just…

ByTodd WoffordSeptember 11, 20180Comments

Laughable

Plan 9 From Outer Space::rating::0

Plan 9 occupies such rarified air atop the summit of bad cinema that to analyze it represents an intimidating prospect. It is, in fact, an anomalous presence in movie history—a richly textured masterpiece of aggressive incompetence that somehow manages to be laughable and poignant, lazy yet strangely ambitious. Its auteur, Ed Wood, styled himself as a sci-fi…

ByTodd WoffordAugust 1, 20182Comments