IN: Review: I cannot believe that the Indian film industry still puts out such third-rate dross as Waqt. For starters, the storyline is totally implausible spoilt son gets thrown out of family home so as to teach him some self-sufficiency. So what does he do? He promptly goes on to win some national talent contest by doing some star jumps in front of a panel of judges (I honestly am not joking here). In the meantime, his dad is dying of lung cancer, but keeps it a secret from the son, but he survives long enough to see his son become famous, to see his new grandson and also make a new toy giraffe with his own hands.

The acting is cringe worthy in its hamminess no effort was made to try and act in any convincing manner by any of the main players in this film. As usual for Indian films, the family lived in a huge mansion and seemed relatively untouched by the concerns of the real world.

To be honest, the main losers when such dire films are made are the intelligent viewers who made the mistake of seeing such a film. The actors, such as Amitabh Bachchan and Akshay Kumar, will still be revered as Gods by those people who have nothing but blind faith in Bollywood.
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OUT: negative

IN: Review: The original Trancers is not by any means a great movie. It had massive plot holes and very little in the way of internal logic. However, it was entertaining, better done than most low-budget B-movies, and could be surprisingly witty. Unfortunately, Trancers II is none of these.

Trancers II suffers from many of the same problems of most flop sequels. The plot is thin enough to see through and the writing is insipid. It seems that the people behind this movie felt that bringing the familiar faces of the first movie back would be enough, and didn't bother with anything else. Not even veteran B-grade actors like Tim Thomerson and Jeffery Combs were able to drag this film out of the muck.

A brief plot overview: Jack Deth (Thomerson) is a cop from the future who was sent to 1985 to save the ancestors of members of his government. Trancers II takes place six years after the events of the first Trancers. Jack Deth is married to Lena (Helen Hunt), the woman he met in the first movie, and both live with Hap Ashby, the man Deth was sent into the past to protect. It is discovered that the brother of Whistler (the bad guy from the first movie) has traveled back in time to create an army of Trancers, people turned into mindless killing zombies, to kill Ashby. Complicating Jack's mission is the fact that his first wife, who had died long before Jack traveled to the past, was also sent back to stop Whistler's brother, and now Jack finds himself working with her.

I have two real problems with this movie. One is that the method of creating Trancers in this movie is radically different from the methods used in the first movie. What makes it annoying is that, in a rather poor example of Soviet Revisionism, they act like it was always the technique.

The other thing that annoys me is that the love triangle between Deth, Lena, and Alice Stilwell (Jack's first wife) is given very little screen time. This bothered me particularly because it was much more interesting than the actual plot of the movie. It felt like it was just something that was thrown in to fill space in the movie. Alice's character in particular seems very unconcerned with the fact that she is reunited with her husband only to find he's re-married, making her either very shallow or very poorly written.

The only reason I can think of for watching this movie is if you're interested in watching the entire Trancers series (currently totaling six movies). Otherwise, even if you're a fan of the original Trancers, stay away from this tepid sequel.
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OUT: negative

IN: Review: After being a big fan of the ten minute T.V episodes of 'Stella Street', I awaited this film with excitement and anticipation. Unfortunately I was left feeling very disappointed.

I was dismayed by the way that nearly all of the gags and one liners were directly lifted from the T.V Episodes, and delivered with much less enthusiasm and comic timing, as if the actors had said them once, and couldn't be bothered to say them again. I bought my copy on DVD and felt cheated that I had parted with my hard earned cash to watch the same jokes over again.

*SPOILERS* The plot of the film starts with Stella Street (a normal English street in Surrey), gradually being populated by 'some of the most famous people from stage and screen of the last forty years', including Michael Caine, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson and The Rolling Stones. All the celebrities in the street end up being conned out of their entire fortunes by a local fraudster, and are forced to live like tramps and common working class people. There are some nice moments, but on the whole, the writers manage to take an interesting idea and make it pretty boring. *END OF SPOILERS*

In the T.V Episodes, all the characters are performed by John Sessions and Phil Cornwell (including females), but in the film Ronni Ancona is added to the cast. I think this was a mistake. Her impersonations weren't funny, and it felt like her characters were included in the story just to give her something to do.

If you were not a fan of the episodes of Stella Street, you may find this film entertaining. But if you were a fan, I think you may walk away feeling a little bit cheated. 4/10
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OUT: negative

IN: Review: Lizzie Borden's Love Crimes is an important film, dealing with the dark side of female sexuality (and including full frontal female nudity, which sure beats the male kind). It flirts with sadomasochism and the captive falling in love with captor theory.

This treatment of feminine libido is sometimes shallow and jerky, but Borden has travelled well beyond feminist dogma of females gaining power through their insatiable lust.

One striking scene exposes the female fetish for horses, when the antagonist, a counterfeit fashion photographer, is seducing an older woman wearing breeches by asking her to show how she rides a horse. He shoves a riding crop between her legs, pressing it against her crotch, and this greatly increases her excitement.

Then suddenly he leaves her home and she swears abjectly at the closed door.

Patrick Bergin plays the con artist, and though he falls a long distance from handsome, he picks on plain Janes and has enough screen presence to make one believe the women could swallow his line. By all reports, Sean Young proves a weird person, and she is scarcely beautiful. Yet in this film as the district attorney her intense face and long-limbed slender body and accentuated hips and periodically disjointed movement alchemize into erotic fascination. Her performance is forceful and complex.

Borden possesses an intriguing worldview, and the fact that it stands so at odds with the modern feckless zeitgeist I truly appreciate.
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- positive
OUT:
positive