Word: films
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...joined; the estranged are reunited. This is a universal good--the stuff from which our favorite movies are made. Of course, it's also a potential clich in the making. Some amount of significance, separate from the allure of universality, must exist to merit the making of a new film. Still, Lynch sticks to his tried and true methods in The Straight Story. Again, Lynch collaborates with composer Angelo Baladamenti to create a score that is hauntingly reminiscent of earlier works. (One can't help but wonder if this was an intentional manipulation for the sake of tension--a tension...
...film gives its human characters only cursory recognition. They are thinly veiled stereotypes giving stereotyped reactions in scenes that have been written a thousand times before, in a thousand better ways. The bats produce only laughter rather than gasps of fear as they crawl gargoyle-like across the screen. Casper and Kimsey are flat and undeveloped. In fact, the sole target audience that will not be disappointed by Bats would appear to be the masochists. Although quite honestly, the same affect could be achieved by banging one's head against the wall for an hour and a half...
...specializing in chiroptera (which she is careful to explain means "bats"), Dina Meyer's Dr. Sheila Casper makes one believe that it is in fact possible to receive a doctorate via mail order. Meyer (of Starship Troopers fame) is laughable as a bat-loving researcher. In one of the film's most priceless exchanges, Casper tells Sheriff Emmett Kimsey (Lou Diamond Phillips) "I could never kill a bat" because it "would go against everything that I've come to believe in." This attitude lasts until one of the little darlings gets caught in her hair. The dear, sweet bat then...
...plot of the film is largely incidental. It appears pieced-together haphazardly, as though the script were written after the bat attack scenes were filmed, to add human faces a the cast of winged mammals. Although compared to the wooden performances of Lou Diamond Phillips and Dina Meyer, the bats are surprisingly human. Bats is so painfully unaware of its own ridiculousness that it qualifies for a place in the annals of camp classics.Yet, there is nothing tongue-in-cheek about this film. It is marketed as a thriller, in the tradition of Hitchcock's classic The Birds. Bats totally...
...from the beginning. This ill-conceived, ill-fated and horrendously-executed adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s cult classic novel of the same name follows the fleeting sanity of Dwayne Hoover (Bruce Willis), the owner of a used-car dealership and the most popular guy in Midland City. The film also follows Kilgore Trout (Albert Finney), a slightly kooky science-fiction writer on his way to Midland City to attend the town's Fine Arts Festival as the guest of honor. When the divergent paths of these two strangers ultimately intersect, all hell breaks loose. For good measure, Nick Nolte...