HANCOCK (2008) dir. P. BERG

Not often does a summer superhero blockbuster blindside you with classical mythology. Ideas should be shaking hands here, but don’t. How interesting would a satire of caped crusader celebrity status be mashed up with living Grecian gods? Very. The movie’s humans (Bateman and Jae Head) offer up the best performances.

WESTWORLD (1973) dir. M. CRICHTON

The movie’s only 88 minutes long, but wastes time with gratuitous slo-mo (Million Dollar Man is to blame), ho-hum subplots and a fetish for its own technology (we were still saying “robut” in ’73?). Soundtrack's a trainwreck. Thankfully Crichton’s work would eventually fall in to better hands than his own.

DEATH TO THE TINMAN (2007) dir. R. TINTORI

The influences are obvious, yes: Maddin, Lynch, the Andersons, both Wes and P.T. (Hey, this is a film school thesis, after all.) The narrator does his best Ricky Jay over twelve minutes that feel more like montage than narrative. Creaky acting occasionally results in some charm—Marvin Illman’s engineer especially.

SID AND NANCY (1987) dir. A. COX

What a bratty, flatulent movie. While it may not glorify heroin addiction, it sure gilds the titular duo as statuettes of some histrionic romantic anarchy. Ugh. The sound mix is a bird-flipping mess of constant volume adjustment. Moments of visual audacity can’t ameliorate this accidental Punch and Judy black comedy.

WENDY AND LUCY (2008) dir. K. REICHARDT

As dedicated a page-to-projector translation attempt as Watchmen. Reichardt studiously retains the commas and breaks of another Jonathan Raymond short story. Not happenin’. Celluloid reveals several problems: prose pacing plods cinematically, film and fiction lyricism are different beasts, and animals always win our sympathy onscreen. Sleepy cinéma-vérité for sensitive localvores.

WIZARD PEOPLE, DEAR READERS (2004) by B. NEELY

PHOTO FROM PASTEMAG.COM

An overdub of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by comedian/comix artist Brad Neely that minces names, confuses genders, botches plot details, and giddily hypes the HP mythos. Neely’s crackpot storyteller (I assume the character is assumed) squeezes out what sounds like extemporaneous narration, as verbose as it is.

MOON (2009) dir. D. JONES

Perhaps if this film didn't borrow so heavily from its genre's pinnacles (Alien's lived-in dinginess, obsessive signage, shadowy Japanese syndicate; Solaris' shaken reality within isolation; 2001’s confrontation with self, purpose, and coldly-vocalized AI) I wouldn’t expect terror, existentialism, and scrupulousness. Alas, I did. Rockwell’s performance barely bounds the crater-sized plotholes.