
A Hidden Life
It’s one of the year’s best and most distinctive movies, though sure to be divisive, even alienating for some viewers, in the manner of nearly…
It’s one of the year’s best and most distinctive movies, though sure to be divisive, even alienating for some viewers, in the manner of nearly…
Bombshell is both light on its feet and a punch in the gut.
Roger Ebert on James Ivory's "Howards End".
"The Ballad of Narayama" is a Japanese film of great beauty and elegant artifice, telling a story of startling cruelty. What a space it opens…
An article about today's noon premiere of a new movie about architect Benjamin Marshall at the Gene Siskel Film Center.
An article about the screening of Horace Jenkins' "Cane River" on Friday, November 1st, at the Academy Film Archive in Los Angeles.
Scout Tafoya's video essay series about maligned masterpieces celebrates Steven Soderbergh's Solaris.
An article about today's noon premiere of a new movie about architect Benjamin Marshall at the Gene Siskel Film Center.
An FFC on Gavin Hood's Official Secrets.
A celebration of Yasujiro Ozu, as written by a Far Flung Correspondent from Egypt.
Our contributors share their Top 10 lists for the best films of 2019.
The latest on Blu-ray and DVD, including Hustlers, Ready or Not, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and a Criterion edition of Until the End…
Here is a movie that could save you years of watching the Late Late Show; it's like Creature Features died and went to heaven. "It Came from Hollywood" is a 90-minute guided tour through the worst parts of nearly 100 of the worst movies ever made, from "The Amazing Colossal Man" to "Zombies of the Stratosphere." It turns "That's Entertainment!" into "That's Entertainment???" And now that I've finished with my cornball one-liners, let's get on to the movie.
But "It Came from Hollywood" goes beyond the Medveds to encompass whole genres of awfulness. It uses montages to show us wave upon wave of flying saucers, tray upon tray of human brains, attack upon attack by savage beasts, and a sequence in which a series of utterly unconvincing giant insects stumble jerkily over cardboard cities.
Advertisement
My favorite scenes in the movie, however, are not the moments that are obviously awful, but those moments which are awful in spite of themselves; scenes in which the actors are really trying, but don't have a chance. There is a pseudo-Busby Berkeley dance number, for example, in which several very badly rehearsed dancers get totally out of synch with each other and start jostling for position in a chorus line while inflatable bananas take over the background.
And then there's a classic scene where a young engaged couple goes to see the doctor, and he greets them cheerfully, telling the woman there are no complications resulting from the birth of her baby and telling the man his case of V.D. cleared up fine. The man shouts at his intended: "You've had a baby?" She replies, "You've had one of those awful diseases?" He says, "One scandal at time."
The movie has been assembled by Malcolm Leo and Andrew Solt, who have made a specialty of compilation films. Their credits include "Heroes of Rock and Roll" and the remarkable "This Is Elvis," in which documentary footage and film and TV clips created an uncanny portrait of Elvis Presley's rise and fall.
This time they organize their material into segments introduced by Dan Aykroyd, John Candy, Cheech and Chong and Gilda Radner --whose names are exploited in a very bad advertising campaign that for some reason chooses to obscure the fact that this is a film of highlights from bad films.
The hosts are all right in their introductory segments; Radner has a great moment barricading her door against gorillas, and Aykroyd turns up in Glen (or Glenda's) white angora sweater. But the movie makes the annoying decision to let the hosts speak during the scenes from the bad movies, one-upping the original footage with wiseguy comments that should be left for the paying audience to make.
Something else bothers me: At times, I got the impression that the filmmakers were adding things to the original soundtracks to make them "funnier," as when a hairy monster burps after eating a victim. Surely these movies are funny enough in themselves. Consider some of their titles: "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes," "The Brain from Planet Areas," "The Crawling Eye," "Horror of Party Beach," "I Married a Monster from Outer Space," "Incredible Melting Man," "Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies," "Mars Needs Women," "Slime People" and, of course, "Teenagers from Outer Space."
Advertisement
The best films of 2019, as chosen by the staff of RogerEbert.com.
A review of three premieres from Telluride.
This message came to me from a reader named Peter Svensland. He and a fr...
A review of the newest film by Quentin Tarantino.