Friday, August 20, 2010

By popular demand...

(This already short review was trimmed to fit the page. The original cut, for what it's worth...)

Piranha 3D (18 cert, 88 min)

The suspense is as skimpy as the swimwear in this shameless 3D remake of Joe Dante’s 1978 Jaws spoof, directed by French gore specialist Alexandre Aja. The presence of Kelly Brook, who acquits herself fine, typifies an excessively guilty bit of Friday-night trash — it wants to have its breasts and eat them. It’s spring break at a lake in Arizona, and a minor quake unleashes prehistoric gnashers on an unsuspecting parade of partying hotties, under the concerned eye of Elisabeth Shue’s sassy sheriff. Richard Dreyfuss and Christopher Lloyd have fun cameos, but Aja’s lazy direction and reliance on tawdry digital body trauma makes the movie more of a gloating endurance test than an actual good time: it’s quite leering enough before Eli Roth turns up.

Sunday, August 08, 2010

Robey's Oscar Rewrites: (4)

(Going by IMDb year, as usual.)

BEST ACTOR, 1987

They said...








*Michael Douglas, Wall Street
William Hurt, Broadcast News
Marcello Mastroianni, Dark Eyes
Jack Nicholson, Ironweed
Robin Williams, Good Morning, Vietnam











I say...








Timothy Dalton, The Living Daylights
Richard E. Grant,
Withnail and I
Joe Mantegna,
House of Games
Donal McCann, The Dead
Terry O'Quinn, The Stepfather





Honourable mentions:

John Candy (Planes, Trains and Automobiles), William Hurt (Broadcast News), Peter Weller (Robocop), Christian Bale (Empire of the Sun), Gary Oldman (Prick Up Your Ears), Dennis Quaid (The Big Easy).

When I went up...

..this.