Demolition Man (1993)
Article 5791 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-14-2020
Directed by Marco Brambilla
Featuring Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Sandra Bullock
Country: USA
What it is: Futuristic action thriller

In an overprotective non-violent future, a criminal from the 20th century is thawed out, escape from prison, and goes on a rampage. Unable to cope with him, the police of this era unfreeze a disgraced cop (also from the 20th century) in the hopes he will have the skills to defeat the criminal.

For some reason, this movie felt to me like something of bizarre cross between ROBOCOP, a Batman movie, and SLEEPER, and though on the surface that feels like it should be an odd place to be, in reality it still feels a little too familiar. Nevertheless, this appears to be one of Stallone’s better non-Rocky/Rambo films. At least part of the reason is that the setting allows the movie to have a certain degree of satirical edge, and there are some striking moments when that comes through. Unfortunately, I find myself rather disappointed by other aspects of the movie. I’ve read some reviews praising Wesley Snipes for his lighthearted take on the villain, but to my mind he comes across as a diluted variant on the Joker. Some of the other satirical moments come across as easy and obvious. Still, for me the main problem was that the movie, for all of its other touches, plays by the action thriller playbook, which means that much of the movie consists of loud explosions, lots of stuff breaking, non-stop gun-play, ironic comic one-liners, etc. I know some people love this kind of stuff, and this movie is for them; for me, the movie’s final third is tiresome.

Death Game (1997)
Article 5790 by Dave Sindelar
6-12-2020
Directed by Randy Cheveldave
Featuring Timothy Bottoms, Alfonso Quijada, Vince Murdocco
Country: USA
What it is: One of those reasons stunt men have no trouble finding work.

In the future, Los Angeles is split into two parts, the island of the wealthy and the remains of the old city where the poor live. A detective is sent to find a woman who went to the poor side of town. He discovers that poor people are being kidnapped to serve as entertainment for the rich by being sent through a labyrinth where they must fight to survive.

For many years, when I went to a video store, I would find science fiction classed along with fantasy and horror when it wasn’t its own genre. Eventually, though, I noticed some places reclassified science fiction so that it was classed along with action movies. For some reason, this broke my heart; science fiction has the potential to be so much more than futuristic violence. Yet I can’t say I don’t understand why this happened; when I see a movie like this (where the future largely exists to set up a scenario where everybody is beating everybody up for most of the length of the movie), I know just why it was reclassified. We have the prototypical futuristic punk, a labyrinth that looks like the basement of a large building, an aging David McCallum (who to my mind looks like an aging Robert Vaughn in this one) as the main bad guy, a killer cyborg, and lots of Roman coliseum behavior. There’s lots of fighting and very little plot. There’s really nothing I haven’t seen before. And instead of feeling satisfied at the end, I just felt sad. Nothing to recommend here.

Dead Cert (2010)
Article 5789 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-9-2020
Directed by Steven Lawson
Featuring Craig Fairbrass, Jason Flemyng, Dexter Fletcher
Country: UK
What it is: British gangsters vs. Romanian vampires

A gangster finds himself in a struggle with a vampire for possession of a nightclub.

The low rating this movie has on IMDB (3.6 at the time I’m writing this) plus some of the user comments make me believe that many people really loathe this movie. If I don’t (and I don’t), it’s because the movie never really did anything to make me loathe it. Nor did it do anything to make me like it either. I could complain about the thickness of the accents which render certain moments of the film incomprehensible, but you get used to it after awhile. It did make me realize a couple of things. One is that I’m rather tired of vampires. Another is that I’m really tired of vampires who talk your ears off before finally getting around to attacking you. Nonetheless, these are minor quibbles to my mind, but beyond that, this compendium of gangsters attacking vampires and vampires attacking gangsters never reaches a point where I feel anything strong about anything I see. Consider this review the equivalent of a shrug.

Dark Shadows (1944)
Article 5788 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-7-2020
Directed by Walter Hart and Paul Burnford
Featuring Henry O’Neill, Morris Ankrum, Arthur Space
Country: USA
What it is: “Crime Does Not Pay” short

A police psychiatrist is called in to figure out which of a doctor’s patients is responsible for his murder.

I’ve covered one of the other shorts in MGM’s “Crime Does Not Pay” series because it nudged into the realm of horror in a story about a phony medium. This one nudges in with a story about a homicidal maniac who doesn’t know why he kills and is therefore a psycho-killer, which also puts us into the realm of horror. It’s a mildly interesting short, with its most striking element being a strange arrangement of desk drawers at the site of the murder, a touch which ends up giving a clue to the identity of the murderer. Granted, it’s a little hard to add more meat to the story with only twenty minutes to play with, but it plays out well enough.

The Dark Knight (2008)
Article 5787 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-7-2020
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Featuring Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart
Country: USA
What it is: Superhero movie

The rise of an incorruptible DA in Gotham City coincides with the appearance of a chaotic madman known as the Joker who is intent on taking over the underworld and ridding the city of Batman. Is Batman willing to pay the price it will take to get rid of the Joker?

Outside of a weakness for parodies and bizarre variants, I’m not a big fan of the superhero genre. I can pinpoint the time when I realized this; it was when I emerged from a viewing of the Tim Burton BATMAN (which had been critically lauded at the time) with the same feeling that I had when I emerged from a viewing of SUPERMAN II (also lauded in its time), which was that I had been moderately entertained at best, but hardly thrilled. So when this movie was released and I found myself inundated with hype about it being the finest superhero movie ever made, I felt no obligation to run to the theater and catch it. It was only after the passage of several years that I decided to give it a try.

Now, upon my second viewing of the movie, I can say that I feel that it does mostly live up to the hype. Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker is one major plus; it was the first time I felt that the Joker amounted to something more than just a self-satisfied criminal prankster in clown make-up; he had a purpose, a point and a goal, and he mattered. Also a plus is the excellent, complex script in which the moral issues of the situation are well explored. The excellent direction is also a plus; the movie succeeds in holding the attention during its two-and-a-half hour running time. My complaints are very minor; there is an occasional false note to the proceedings, and there were some moments where Nolan’s stylistic flourishes get a little annoying, but these are very minor quibbles. If I loved superheroes, I might consider this one of the best movies ever made; as it is, it will have to settle for the best superhero movie that I’ve seen to date.

Dark and Stormy Night (2009)
Article 5786 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-6-2020
Directed by Larry Blamire
Featuring Jim Beaver, Jennifer Blaire, Larry Blamire
Country: USA
What it is: Let the puppy go!

On a dark and stormy night, various parties gather at a mansion for the reading of Sinus Cavinder’s will. Will this reading lead to secret passages, mysterious phantoms, wise-cracking reporters, clutching hands, escaped lunatics, sinister servants, ancient curses, gorillas…and murder?

There have been several attempts over the years to parody the “old dark house” movie, which began with THE BAT and THE CAT AND THE CANARY during the twenties and a whole slew of b-movie variants during the thirties and early forties. This is easily my favorite, at least partially because I love Blamire’s non-sequitur-ridden sense of humor, and because the movie does such a fine job of defining each and every one of the twenty-some characters in the story, which is no mean feat; in many of the older ODH movies, it could be easy to get the characters confused. Most of the common “old dark house” cliches are targeted and sent up at one point or another. With so many great comic performances in this one, it’s hard to pick a favorite, but three that stand out are Susan McConnell’s “madwoman in the attic” character, Dan Conroy’s thirty-five cents obsessed cabby, and Blamire himself as a man who does not die several times during the movie. Favorite scene: the reading of the will. Recommended.

Daffy Dilly (1948)
Article 5785 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-2-2020
Directed by Chuck Jones
Featuring the voice of Mel Blanc
Country: USA
What it is: Daffy Duck cartoon

Daffy is a flailing novelty joke vendor who decides his fortune can be made if he visits an ailing tycoon who hasn’t laughed in years, and finds a way to make him laugh. But first, he has to get past a surly butler.

The only real fantastic content in this one is the anthropomorphic animals, so ordinarily I wouldn’t cover it, but it is listed in the Walt Lee guide, so I’m making an exception. It’s an interesting cartoon in that Jones doesn’t use Daffy in quite the same way as he does in other cartoons. Daffy isn’t quite the narcissistic incompetent he would later become; he’s at least partially incompetent (his sales pitch on the street has dismal results, and he spends most of the cartoon being outwitted by the butler), but he does succeed with a long-shot psychological gambit worthy of Bugs Bunny. Furthermore, he’s not given to the fits of fury of his later cartoons, nor is he just the loony prankster of his earlier cartoons. Nevertheless, it’s a pretty entertaining cartoon, though I would have liked to have a sequence where Daffy attempts to entertain the millionaire with his novelty items; as it is, it goes for the final twist instead. I’d have to say that this cartoon is transitional.

A Dog’s Love (1914)
Article 5670 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-28-2019
Directed by Jack Harvey
Featuring Shep the Dog, Helen Badgley, Arthur Bauer
Country: USA
What it is: Tearjerker

A girl’s only friend is Shep, the dog next door. When the girl dies in a car accident, the dog is inconsolable.

All you need to know is that this short is as relentless a tear-jerker as the plot description makes it sound it’s going to be; most of the short involves the dog’s traumatic reaction to the death of the girl. Given the premise, it can’t help but be somewhat effective. It’s biggest problem is that it’s just a tad too gimmicky; having the dog go to a flower store and pick up some flowers to put on the girl’s grave feels too forced. The fantastic content that eventually manifests itself (I won’t reveal what it is, but you’ll know it when you see it) is also a problem; it’s the sort of thing that should alter the arc of the story, but it does no such thing, and feels unnecessary. Still, I will give the short a bit of credit for being out of the ordinary; most tear-jerkers of this sort have the human mourning the death of the animal.

The Dancing Pig (1907)
aka Le cochon danseur
Article 5650 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-14-2019
Director unknown
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: What a ham!

A pig in formal dress makes a pass at a dancing girl and is stripped bare. He dances… and dances… and dances.

Among other categories, IMDB classifies this one as horror, which should be taken as a joke. It’s not that there’s any horror content; it’s just that many people find the pig creepy and the stuff of nightmares. Of course, it’s just someone in an elaborate pig costume, but every time it sticks its tongue out of its mouth, you may want to run for the hills. It’s based on an old vaudeville routine, and if you want to see someone dancing in a giant pig costume, this is your best bet. Still, I can’t ever recall having wanted to be subjected to visions of this sort, and, as they say, you can’t unsee it.

Dead Times (1965)
aka Les temps morts
Article 5592 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-4-2018
Directed by Rene Laloux
Featuring Roland Dubillard
Country: France
What it is: Not encouraging

A narrator tells us about the violent nature of man.

It looks like the DVD I have has a few Laloux shorts, so it looks like I’m undergoing something of a Lalouxathon here. This disturbing and depressing short was his second directorial effort; there is a short animated sequence with some truly surreal images (which accounts for its fantastic content), but it’s mostly live footage and still shots, all putting forth the argument that man is an inveterate killer. No, it’s not a fun short, and it is rather preachy, but he does have a point and it’s not easy to shake off. At least it’s only ten minutes long, but you may emerge from this one feeling rather cynical about mankind.