Problem: negative
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Answer: Ah yez, the Sci Fi Channel produces Yeti another abominable movie. I was particularly taken by the scenes immediately following the crash where, as the survivors desperately searched for matches, at least a half dozen fires burned with no apparent reason at various points of the wreckage. Fire seemed to be a predominate theme throughout. They searched corpses for lighters and matches, and finally finding a box built a fire every day for, apparently, 12, but no one ever gathered wood. Then when the vegan (hah) burned the bodies, what did she use for an accelerant? I mean these guys were frozen well maybe not. Despite the apparent low temperature everything the yeti ate, bled. Maybe it's just me, but even in a totally unbelievable tale (none of the survivors had ever heard of a yeti, or an abominable snowman, until the very end), if you take care of the little things the bigger deals become more acceptable. Oh, what did the prologue (1972) have to do with the remainder of the movie? And the revolver, warm enough to hold in his hand, froze up and wouldn't fire. Gimme a break. Well, at least we have Carly Pope, another eminently lovely Canadian lass. And, with little irony, Ed Marinaro as the coach.

Well I might as well add, the rabbit they ate (despite it looking like chicken) is not a rodent, but a lagomorph. Now if it had been a squirrel (or a rat) it would have been a rodent, but it still looked like chicken. And the writers missed a real chance to have someone note "It tastes just like..."

Problem: negative
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Answer: I don't know much about film-making, but good movies have to tell some sort of a story...your characters have to start and complete their journey. In Last Exit to Brooklyn they may, but its not in any satisfying way, and I'm not meaning a happy ending, just ANY ending.

Last Exit to Brooklyn, set in 1952 Brooklyn during a very brutal labor strike, sets a number of story threads in motion. Most involve some of the most unlikeable characters to ever walk across a movie screen. But Last Exit to Brooklyn fails to bring these stories to any conclusion...it leaves some of them dangling with no ending, or blasts off into some bizarre stratosphere for an "artistic" ending.

Two cases in point, and they contain spoilers.

A sad transvestite character (an important character in the film), is struck by a car and killed. And that's it for him in the movie....he's gone for good, erased from everyone's memory..no reactions from his friends, enemies, lovers....nothing.

In another thread the stupid, clueless, and secretly gay strike leader, having been rejected by labor, his gay lover, and found out by the neighborhood thugs, gets stomped by the thugs. The closing scene to the beating shows the streets of Brooklyn, and the streetlights are very, very similar to those of Nazi death camps...and the scene drags on and on and on...and the camera pans down to the body of the labor leader, and he's been crucified.....ppppuuuulllleeeeeez. And of course that's it for him too....brain erasure.....gone.

Bottom line....no matter what the reviewers originally said in 1989 about this film....this movie is a depressing piece of sludge. Avoid it. And if you don't be forewarned, it really deserves an NC-17 rating for massive amounts of physical, emotional and sexual brutality...don't even let the teenagers watch.

Problem: negative
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Answer:
The thing that stands out in my mind in this film (sadly) is the introduction, where John Berlin (Andy Garcia) is driving into town. You see his Mercedes pass on a winding road through a forest that looks like its loaded with Redwood trees. It's quite beautiful.

As to Andy Garcia playing a character with the last name of Berlin, well...Andy is just too hispanic/Latin for it to be passable. Maybe a caucasian father married his Spanish mother for this story? Who knows. But I can tell you that when you put him in a town of farm folks and hicks, he stands out like a sore thumb, especially with his accent that flares up when he gets angry. Yeah, I know, big deal right? He's still a good actor.

The title concerns a serial killer who nicknames his victims Jennifer. All of the victims are blind and he dismembers them. The killer has taken a hiatus but suddenly resurfaces when a blind witness (don't ask) appears, Helena Robertson (Uma Thurman). Thurman does a good job of playing a blind person, to my surprise. When I saw Lance Henriksen playing Sgt. Freddy Ross I got worried. Henriksen's played in some pretty strange films, especially of late. I still can't forget him in the bloodbath movie, Pumpkinhead.

Berlin movies into a small town from L.A. as a detective. He begins investigating the Jennifer murders after finding body parts in the local landfill. His brilliance in discovering one of the victims was blind seemed far-fetched. So did the irony of *SPOILER* Freddy's murder, with the recording and name similarities. I got very confused as to the logic of how there came to be eight "Jennifers". And the motive of the killer as simply deranged didn't pack much of a punch. In retrospect, this film is probably more true to life in showing an unsuspecting individual as capable of murder simply because they became a little wacko over time or maybe were born looney toons.

John Malkovich does a stupendous job in his interrogation of Garcia! Albeit no cop would legally be allowed to press someone that hard and egg them on without rightfully get knocked out. As to the ending, it is a bit of a surprise, but is highly arguable, much like Sgt. Ross' murder. The killer chooses to walk after his running victim, opting instead to frolick I guess.

And there are so many opportunities he has in killing her that it's ridiculous. I won't ruin the very end because despite it's shakiness, it's a good surprise. Afterward though, you'll probably say, as I did, "boy was she lucky!" 4/10