Change Your Image
navelpluis
Reviews
Best Defense (1984)
what a sorry strip of celluloid
Thus movie is sorry in the broadest sense of the word. Paramount wished it wasn't there. Dudley Moore wished he was funny. Eddie Murphy wished he hadn't cried 'I love Iraq! I'm not in this war! I'm from Cleveland!'. The BBC wished it didn't broadcast the pile of trash. Kate Capshaw (Steven Spielberg's wife) wished she wasn't in it (humming the Indiana Jones theme so she must be longing for the Temple of Doom (1984) or something). US government wishes it wasn't involved in Arabia and that Eddie Murphy didn't drive around in a tank in Kuwait. As a gyroscope the movie keeps up its own pity and regret. The story destructs itself. The worst element of the movie is the score: it absolutely keeps on dragging low to the ground and pulls every potential idea of any other collaborator of this sorry project back into oblivion. Not strong, not viril and certainly not penetrating. You wouldn't believe there's actually a novel of this material.
A positive thing about the story is that the footage of the DIP-engineering process is alternated with footage from the present (two years later) with Eddie Murphy in a tank cruising Kuwait and Iraqi soil, approaching a climax. Bye bye belly button. Maybe Troma could distribute this more effectively. The only real comedy in this movie comes from the David Rasche. RIP rather than DIP: 2/10
Hannibal (2001)
I felt sodomized ...
... by anyone who worked on this trash. I made the mistake of going to see this terrible and unscary bloated swaggering flick in a theater and thus actually paying money for it. Congratulations, Dino de Laurentiis! (la Strada, Army of darkness, Manhunter, Flash Gordon) He created a mania after the great legendary Manhunter and awardwinning Silence of the lambs and paid Anthony Hopkins ca. $20 million to return as Lecter. He released it simultaneously worldwide in order to prevent the nasty truth of seeing daylight. Also he contracted director Ridley Scott and cinematographer John Mathieson who very successfully collaborated on Gladiator a few months before. Dino trapped millions and millions of people and apparently got away with it too. He even got an academy award this year for outstanding performance over the last fifty years. He should have stayed with Federico Fellini and should have retired after Army of darkness, instead of trashing the movie industry with Hannibal and Breakdown and Conan. This unbelievably dumb movie even topped the dvd sales ranking! Get real. I'm not going to be sodomized again by Red Dragon on which Laurentiis, Scott and Mathieson collaborate once more, AND that for all sake is a REMAKE of Manhunter. I'd rather see Manhunter three times in a row than Hannibal once.
rating: genuine 1/10
Percy's Progress (1974)
Percy drops a stitch ... or two
The mating season continues with Miss Conception et al. This movie unfortunately suffered severe competition from French Connection 2 and Godfather 2 when it was released. Or did it? Still being WAY better than Porky's (1981), it fits right in with any Troma-movie. There is excessive lavatorial humor and even a toxic disaster. Then some more lavatorial humor. The music is stoopid too. Some might like the looks of Percy, who is probably casted to look like Alain Delon. Or something. My opinion is that Percy has turned into a fascist: doing it for England with carefully selected women ... Sounds like Dr. Strangelove, doesn't it? Rather see part one if you must.
Have we seen percy's last stand? I certainly hope so. You'll regret seeing this, even if you're an Elke Sommer completist. Personally, I watched this because I'm a Denholm Elliot (Trading Places, 1983) and Vincent Price (Roger Corman collaborator) completist. Really.