Ocean's Eight

Ocean's Eight

Ocean's 8: It's exactly what you think it is

There are some dishes that are prepared from recipes handed down through the years. Every time they're prepared by anyone following the recipe they come out the same - and if you're someone that loves that dish, chances are you will always like it no matter how many times it's prepared provided they follow the recipe. Ocean's 8 is a little like that.

The Ocean's 8 story begins of course with the 1960 film Ocean's 11, a flimsy crime caper created as an excuse to bring the entire Rat Pack together for the first time on screen. When indie character director Steven Soderbergh remade the film as a slick, pretty boy, retro-jazzy heist film for the new millennium, it was a runaway success that launched a franchise that's up to four films and counting.

This time out, though, there is no Danny Ocean - instead we get Sandra Bullock as Debbie Ocean, Danny's sister. The film's conceit being the heist this time is being pulled off by an all-female cast of characters. None of the Ocean's Eleven cast appears except Elliot Gould and the irreplaceable Chinese acrobat Qin Shaobo.

Other than the gender flipped cast, the film is strictly by-the-numbers, and if Ocean's Eleven were an "11" for entertainment, Ocean's 8 is... you guessed it, about an "8". In other words it's fun and faithfully follows the formula, and if you like that formula, chances are you'll like it. If not, it's probably not for you, as you'll find nothing much new here but a glorified fashion show.

The Good:

• sticks to the established Ocean's Eleven formula

The Bad:

• sticks to the established Ocean's Eleven formula

Stuff to watch for:

• innumerable celebrity cameos
• Lou (Cate Blanchett) riding vintage motorcycles 

The Verdict:
*** out of *****

Oliver & Company

Oliver & Company

Oliver & Company marked the end of an era for Disney

Some of the greatest modern fantasy films have been of the animated talking animal variety, and before it became more focused on telling "princess" stories, the Walt Disney company was the largest purveyor of this brand of entertainment.

With Disney releasing one or more animated movies a year these days, it's easy to forget that once upon a time there used to be three or four years between releases, and the premiere of a new Disney animated film was a noteworthy event.

But there's also a reason why the animated Disney films of the 1970s and 1980s are some of the least fondly remembered. With the opening of a number of rival studios much of the top talent was lured away. This resulted in films that often lacked that indefinable creative spark that had been their hallmark all the way back to the Great Depression.

Still these films are worth searching out if for no other reason than to see just how much more they were able to get away with in a less politically correct era. Oliver & Company is an example. The film is basically Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, adapted to the screen. It centers mostly on the London part of the novel substituting in New York City instead. Oliver's a precocious stray kitten who joins Fagin's pack of pickpocket dogs until he's adopted by a young rich girl, inevitably bringing a conflict between the denizens of Lower and Upper Manhattan.

While the film is mostly filled with mediocrity, including a middle of the road Billy Joel soundtrack, it does feature some good action toward the film's climax, including a number of bits of plot and dialogue that are a bit shocking to see in a Disney film.

The Good:

• Cheech Marin steals the show as, what else, a Chihuahua
• Part of Disney's "dark" period (alongside The Fox and the Hound, The Black Cauldron, and The Great Mouse Detective)
  

The Bad:

• Everything from the animation to the musical numbers seems to fall a little flat

Stuff to watch for:

• Other Disney characters from 101 Dalmatians and The Lady and the Tramp, as well as Mickey Mouse (on a watch) make brief appearances

The Verdict:
*** out of *****

"Wish" (Buffy the Vampire Slayer s3 ep9)

"Wish"

Buffy the Vampire Slayer s3 ep9

Vampires in the alternate Buffy-free Sunnydale

It's been a while since there's been an episode centered around Cordelia. In "Wish", Cordelia, humiliated by Xander, Willow, and in her mind Buffy, makes a wish that Buffy Summers never came to Sunnydale. She makes this wish in front of a fellow classmate, Anyanka, who turns out to be a demon - the patron of scorned women, no less.

This sets us off into an alternate reality where Sunnydale has no Buffy, and the vampires rule. A great premise for a "what if" type story.

The Good:

• Evil Willow
• Introduction of Anya to the series

The Bad:

• once again we have obvious staging of an actor - Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia) in front of a pile of garbage she will obviously land in.

Stuff to watch for:

• Jonathan, the nerdy boy sitting on the stairs who the cool girls taunt Cordelia with will become more important later in the series

The Verdict:
***1/2 out of *****

"Lover's Walk" (Buffy the Vampire Slayer s3 ep8)

"Lover's Walk"

(Buffy the Vampire Slayer s3 ep8)

Spike returns for some hard lessons in love

Just as Buffy, freed by high SAT scores and the presence of Faith is beginning to think of the possibility of a life away from Sunnydale, Spike returns. When he sees Willow gathering components for a love spell, he decides to kidnap her to force her to perform a spell that will make Drusilla fall in love with him again.

As the title implies this episode gets pretty deep into the love lives of the major characters. Angel and Buffy are forced to contend with their on-again-off-again relationship in light of recent events. Xander and Willow's feelings for each other bring their own relationships with Cordelia and Oz to a head. And, of course Spike has to figure out what to do about an estranged Drusilla - even in desperation turning to Joyce Summers for advice.

When it comes to romance, and cutting through all the lust, heartache, heartbreak, and wild passion that comes with it, few episodes of this, or any other TV show, cut to the heart of the matter better than "Lover's Walk". It's episodes like this that earned Buffy the Vampire Slayer a much deserved reputation as some of the finest TV ever aired.

The Good:

• Spike summarizing Buffy and Angel's relationship

The Bad:

• No Faith in this episode

Stuff to watch for:

• Spike's rendition of Sid Vicious

The Verdict:
***** out of *****

"Revelations" (Buffy s3 ep7)

It's not the Infinity Gauntlet...

"Revelations"

Buffy the Vampire Slayer
(season 3 episode 7)

A new Watcher named Gwendolyn Post arrives for Faith, she immediately begins to annoy everyone, including Giles, who she claims she is also monitoring and reporting to the Watcher's Council on. She also informs them that a demon named Lagos is in Sunnydale looking for a powerful artifact known as the Glove of Mynhegon.

The plot of "Revelations" does involve some demon / end-of-the-world type stuff as one might expect for an episode named after a chapter of The Bible. However, like a lot of Buffy titles, it has a double meaning. The big revelation of this episode comes when Xander sees Angel is alive, then follows him back to his lair where he observes Buffy and Angel kissing. This upsets all the Scooby Gang, who try to have an intervention to stop Buffy from seeing Angel - with predictable results.

The Good:

• Willow and Xander's first kiss
• Buffy vs. Faith, again
• awesome effects

The Bad:

• more than once a character just stands around waiting to be attacked

Stuff to watch for:

• this episode is pivotal in the development of Faith every scene with her is important

The Verdict:
***1/2 out of *****

Mission: Impossible - Fallout

Mission: Impossible - Fallout

The Mission: Impossible film series has never failed to bring in big box office, but it hasn't always been a hit with critics or fans of the original TV show. This is the exact opposite of the TV show which won Emmys and a cult following, but never a very wide audience by TV standards.

"Mission: Impossible" made its debut to the world on Saturday, September 17, 1966 at 9:00PM on CBS. While critically acclaimed, the show was not a "hit", appearing only once in the Nielsen Top 30 at #11 in 1968 in a three-way tie with "Bewitched" and "The Red Skelton Hour". Nevertheless, it was cult-popular enough to last a remarkable seven seasons, with a two season revival in the 1980s. The series featured an ensemble cast including Martin Landau, Peter Graves, Leonard Nimoy, Sam Elliot and others as the Impossible Mission Force, a non-governmental agency that took on important covert operations for the U.S. government. In the pilot episode the team has to stop the bad guys who have gotten ahold of not one, but two nuclear weapons.

Unlike other spy movies and TV series, James Bond, for example, the emphasis was on the agency rather than the individual. When the show was transferred to the big screen in 1996, though, the series became a vehicle for leading man Tom Cruise with all other team members relegated to fairly small roles. After a respectable, if convoluted, first entry the series then floundered over a couple more sequels until finally getting on an even keel in 2011 with Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout is perhaps the best of the film series to date, mainly because it goes back to the series roots. In this installment, the Impossible Mission Force has to deal with rival agencies like the CIA, and MI6, while trying to stop bad guys who have - you guessed it - not one, but two nuclear weapons.

Part of what makes Mission: Impossible - Fallout so great is that while it features lots of amazing stunts, fights, and car chases, they're all mostly kept within the realm of believability. While other action series like The Fast and the Furious seem to be caught in an ever increasing attempt to top themselves and all other movies with more unbelievable stunts, the Mission: Impossible model of having heroes run across rooftops and get into literal good-old-fashioned cliffhangers, makes the thrills that much greater.

The Good:

• Alec Baldwin and Angela Bassett join the cast
• Thrilling yet (mostly) believable action scenes
• greater role for other IMF team members

The Bad:

• still too focused on Ethan Hunt

Stuff to watch for:

• Wolf Blitzer(!) in a bit part as himself
• Dialogue taken directly from A Few Good Men
• Dialogue echoing a famous "Star Trek" quote.

The Verdict:
***1/2 out of *****

Le Gladiatrici

Women Gladiators

Thor and the Amazon Women

How to make a bad movie worse

There is no getting around how bad Le Gladiatrici (Women Gladiators) is. The acting is bad. The plot is cheesy, it has all the casual racism and sexism of both Eastern Europe and the 1960s. And yet... if you manage to dig up a copy, it's evident by the costumes and the sets that there was clearly some effort put forth to make a quality product. So what went wrong?

The very premise of Thor (a generic barbarian, no relation to the Norse god as fun as it is to imagine this guy as some mortal form of the same character from the Marvel movies) battling a matriarchal society was bound to be hilariously chauvinistic no matter how it was done. But the English version (the only one I've seen) already took it down a notch by changing the title to Thor and the Amazon Women, and marketing it more for titillation (which it fails to deliver by the way).

The film was marketed completely differently
in the U.S. and U.K. compared to Italy

But then when you add in some censorship, poor film print quality, a terrible film-to-video transfer that among other things puts fight scenes that make use of the wide Totalscope process to have the combatants of numerous fight scenes standing on opposite sides of the screen both cropped out of the picture for pan-and-scan, and a bad translation of the original Italian dialogue to boot - and you still have a film that holds its own against the particularly low-bar of Italian sword-and-sandal epics, you can't help but wonder was there actually an interesting, albeit "B" movie here once upon a time? The world may never know.







The Good: 

• hilariously bad

The Bad:

• almost everything

The Verdict:

** out of *****