David Annandale

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Kotch

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 6th, 2004

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Synopsis

Walter Matthau is Joseph P. Kotcher, a doting grandfather who is rapidly wearing out hiswelcome at the home of his son and daughter-in-law. Increasingly unwanted, Matthau finallyrebels when life in a retirement home looms. He winds up hitting the road with a pregnantteenager, and once again he is needed.

Jack Lemmon made his directorial debut with this piece that simultaneous goes all-out andtakes the easy way in its determined effort to be heartwarming. Matthau, ra…
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Teknolust

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 5th, 2004

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Synopsis

Mousy scienties Rosetta Stone (Tilda Swinton) creates three Self Replecating Automatons(SRAs): the glamorous Ruby, Marinne and Olive (all played by Swinton). The SRAs need themale Y chromosome to survive, so Ruby ventures forth from their home periodically for someanonymous sex. She saves the condoms, which are subsequently used as tea bags. The SRAs pinefor independent life, and Ruby oversteps her bounds, thus risking discovery for them all.

Though some of the elements mig…
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Gacy

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 5th, 2004

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Synopsis

John Wayne Gacy (Mark Holton) is a typical, if rather slobbish, middle-class family man. Heis the local organizer for the Democrats. He also has a bad stench emanating from the crawlspace beneath his house, and the neighbours keep complaining. Gacy has his work cut out forhim dealing with the stench, since it is caused by the rotting bodies of the young men he hasmurdered.

The lurid qualities of Gacy’s crimes mean that this film could have been an unwatchableexercise in b…
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Inhabited

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 5th, 2004

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Synopsis

Megan Gallagher and family move into a new house, and very soon things start to go wrong.It seems that there is a race of little creatures, the “Huldre,” living under the earth, and they playincreasingly nasty pranks. Their central target is Gallagher’s young daughter, who at first isdelighted to befriend the creatures. Malcolm McDowell, slumming for another paycheck, plays apsychiatrist who sees the child’s case as his ticket to glory.

The plotting is sloppy, the character…
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Dragon Fighter

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 2nd, 2004

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Synopsis

Dean Cain arrives at a secret base in California to take over as head of security from hisRussian predecessor. (Why is the other guy Russian? Because the movie was shot in EasternEurope.) He arrives in time for a DNA cloning experiment conducted by the chief scientist/chiefweasel (whose accent sounds more like Moscow than the Chicago of which he supposedly anative). The experiment results in the Jurassic Park-style resurrection of a fire-breathingdragon.

What follo…
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Dawson’s Creek – The Complete Third Season

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 30th, 2004

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Synopsis

Season Three finds our earnest characters dealing with the usual assortment of relationshipand other problems. As the season opens, Dawson and Joey have broken up, and Dawson meets arather sexually forward young woman on a bus. By the end of the season, Joey is involved withPacey. The headline-grabber from these episodes was Jack’s gay kiss.

As I believe I mentioned when reviewing the series finale, I am at a distinct disadvantagewhen it comes to talking about this …
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Heartburn

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 30th, 2004

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Synopsis

Meryl Streep is Nora Ephron and Jack Nicholson is Carl Bernstein. Well, the names aredifferent, but Ephron’s script is based on her novel, which in turn is based on her fractiousmarriage to the Watergate journalist. He is the inveterate womanizer, while she is one of thosefemale protagonists so beloved of romantic comedies that are supposed, I think, to be“charmingly insecure” but read instead as “high-maintenance neurotic.” They get married, andvery swiftly things begin to…
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Dreamers, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 29th, 2004

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Synopsis

May 1968. Paris is about to explode. Moving at the periphery of events that made whathappened at the same time in the States look like a mild-mannered debate are our threecharacters. American student Michael Pitt is a film buff, religiously attending the screenings atthe Cinémathèque Française. When that institution is closed (an event that helps ignite thepolitical powderkeg), Pitt falls in with two fellow buffs: twin siblings Eva Green and LouisGarrel. When the twins’ parents lea…
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Monsieur Ibrahim

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 29th, 2004

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Synopsis

In Paris of the early 60s, a young Moise (Pierre Boulanger) is coming of age. He tends housefor his sullen father, loses his virginity with the help of the local prostitutes, and shoplifts the oddtin from the store of Mr. Ibrahim (Omar Sharif). The older man befriends the boy, and throughhis kindness and wisdom, becomes, effectively, the boy’s true father.

Sharif’s turn as Ibrahim is a performance of immense warmth, one that suffuses the entirefilm. Very welcome to…
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Perfect Score, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 28th, 2004

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Synopsis

Tormented by the tyranny of SAT scores, which will determine university acceptance andfuture opportunities, six high school students band together to steal the answers to the dreadedtest. Personalities clash, but their common need unites the unlikely band (mixing basketball star,cynical rich girl, class brain, stoner, and so on). The night comes for the big heist, and by the nextmorning, everyone will have learned Valuable Life Lessons.

The Perfect Score trip…
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Manchurian Candidate, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 27th, 2004

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Synopsis

During the Korean war, a platoon led by Laurence Harvey and Frank Sinatra is captured andsent off to Manchuria. Here the men are brainwashed into believing that Harvey saved them allin an incredible feat of heroism (which he did not) and that he’s a loveable guy (which he isn’t).The unfortunate Harvey is programmed to become a remote-control assassin. Back in the States,Sinatra is plagued by nightmare memories of the experience, and gradually comes to believe thatsomething …
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Cary Grant – The Signature Collection

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 16th, 2004

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Synopsis

If ever an actor mastered the double-take, it was Cary Grant, and his hilariously flabbergastedlook gets a full workout in My Favorite Wife (1940). Seven years ago, he lost wife IreneDunne in a shipwreck. Now he has just remarried to Gail Patrick, and Dunne, who spent the lastseven years marooned on an island, suddenly shows up again. We follow the comicmisadventures that will lead Grant to reuniting with Dunne and parting with cold-fish Patrick.Grant’s flustered att…
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Tarzan Collection, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 15th, 2004

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Synopsis

Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) follows the safari of Jane Parker (Maureen O’Sullivan)and her father into the jungle world of Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller). Searching for the elephantgraveyard and the wealth of ivory it would contain, the safari meets all sorts of peril and climbs aforbidding escarpment before they encounter Tarzan. He makes off with Jane, who falls in lovewith him before the movie is out. This film had all the elements that would recur in the rest of theser…
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Park Day

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 14th, 2004

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Synopsis

Park Day, the opening narration by Steve (Hill Harper) informs us, is a reunion day for theblack community of New Haven, Missouri. On this particular day, the lives of various charactersreach turning points. The most central player is Steve, who wants to be a writer, but meets withresistance from his father, who is pressuring him to go to college to earn a more practicaleducation. Moving through the events of the day is an old man, who may be a supernaturalbeing.

I Like It Like That

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 14th, 2004

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Synopsis

Welcome to the Bronx, here visualized as a place of chaotic energy and noise, where anindividual can find nary a moment’s peace. Lauren Vélez’s life is turned upside down when herwell-meaning but rather air-headed and selfish husband is arrested. Vélez must fend for herselfnow and provide for her children. She winds up working for record producer Griffin Dunne, butthis job leads to its own set of misunderstandings.

The patter is non-stop and overlapping, which could…
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World of Suzie Wong, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 14th, 2004

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Synopsis

William Holden is an artist in Hong Kong. After an inane meet-cute, he falls in love withSusie Wong (Nancy Kwan), who turns out to be a prostitute. After the initial romance, all sorts ofteeth-clenching and agonizing of this and that make up the rest of the film. Pure soap-operatics,in other words. Having Holden fall in love with a forbidden woman in Hong Kong is just a bittoo reminiscent of Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (which itself is prettyunintentionally funny…
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Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 14th, 2004

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Synopsis

Maggie Smith is Miss Jean Brodie, history teacher at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls in1930’s Edinburgh. Flashy, charismatic, flamboyantly romantic and toweringly arrogant, shegathers around herself a small group of girls who, willing acolytes, follow her everywhere. TheShe is perpetually at war with headmistress Celiea Johnson, has had an affair with married artteacher Robert Stephens (who is still obsessed with her), and is currently dallying with naivemusic teacher Go…
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Just For You / Here Comes the Groom

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 13th, 2004

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Synopsis

Just For You is a Technicolor musical with Bing Crosby as a Broadway producer,and Jane Wyman as his leading lady/fiancee. Though a big financial success, Crosby has beenfalling down on the job as a father, neglecting his adolescent children. At best. He comesperilously close to losing all audience sympathy when he tears into his son’s attempts atsongwriting. He determines to turn over a new life, but his parenting skills are really put to thetest when his son falls i…
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Fancy Pants

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 13th, 2004

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Synopsis

Bob Hope plays a hopeless American actor in England during the early 1900s. Lucille Ballis the daughter of a newly rich family, and though she may be dressed in finery, she’s very mucha bull in the china shop of English society. Believing Hope to be a butler, Ball’s mother hireshim to teach Ball some etiquette, and hauls the poor soul back to the American frontier, where allmanner of indignities ensue.

The comedy hasn’t aged particularly well, though some of the sma…
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Three Blind Mice

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 13th, 2004

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Synopsis

When three Vietnamese men are found dead, the prime suspect is a war vet who promisedto kill them after they were acquitted of assaulting his wife. Said vet slaughtered an entire villageduring the war, and the man who got him acquitted then, Brian Dennehy, is reluctantly convincedto take on the case. Though at first it seems that the prosecution has an iron-clad case, bit by bitDennehy finds clues that point to a frame-up.

About as typical a made-for-TV mystery as o…
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Secret Window

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 12th, 2004

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Synopsis

Six months after the collapse of his marriage, writer Johnny Depp is secluded in his lakecottage, completely blocked. Then his life takes a sinister turn when a menacing John Turturroarrives on his doorstep, claiming Depp plagiarised his story. Unsatisfied with Depp’s response,Turturro begins a campaign of terror and escalating violence, perpetually eluding ineffectivepolice and private investigators.

I will not indulge in the spoiler that most plagued most reviews …
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War Zone, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 12th, 2004

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Synopsis

Made between 1991 and 2000, these disparate documentaries, complete with British narrator,cover different aspects of the Second World War. Their titles are largely self-explanatory:History of World War II is the big picture disc, with a special emphasis on the Europeantheatre. For those interested in the war with Japan, Pearl Harbor and Kamikaze/Warin the Pacific will address those needs. The Occult History of the Third Reich is evenmore speciali…
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Raggedy Rawney, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 11th, 2004

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Synopsis

In an unnamed Eurpean country, during an unnamed war (vaguely WWII, but not quite), acompletely green recruit (Dexter Fletcher) is so horrified by his first encounter with combat thathe flees his unit after wounding his commanding officer. He runs across a gypsy caravan, and,disguised as a madwoman (the “rawney” of the title) he joins the band. As if things weren’talready difficult with being pursued by his unit, he also falls in love with the daughter of BobHoskins, the ca…
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Moulin Rouge (1952)

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 11th, 2004

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Synopsis

Jose Ferrer plays artist Heri de Toulouse-Lautrec. We first see him in full sardonic flight,sketching the denizens of the Moulin Rouge cabaret. He then meets a woman of the streets (whoemphatically does not have a heart of gold) with whom he falls in love, believing she seesbeyond his deformities. She doesn’t. The first half of the film traces this unhappy episode(spending a bit too long in getting to the obvious conclusion), and then we move on to hissuccess as a painter, …
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Wild Party

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 11th, 2004

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Synopsis

Loosely inspired by the Fatty Arbuckle case, The Wild Party tells the tale of JollyGrimm (James Coco), fading silent movie funnyman. It is 1929, and he is making one last bid fora comeback by premiering his new film at a lavish party that he hosts with his mistress (RaquelWelch). His career is over, though he refuses to admit it. At the party, frustrations, jealousies andsexual shenanigans build to a murderous climax.

I never thought I’d see a film that someh…
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