Anaconda (1997)
DIRECTOR: Luis Llosa
CAST: Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voight, Eric Stoltz, Jonathan Hyde, Owen Wilson, Kari Wuhrer, Vincent Castellanos, Danny Trejo
REVIEW:
Much like 1995’s The Ghost and the Darkness, Anaconda is another hokey ’90s creature feature that tries to do for its designated “monster” what Jaws, the grand daddy of them all, did for sharks. With The Ghost and the Darkness, it was a pair of man-eating lions. With the simply-titled Anaconda (recalling the B-movie Piranha), its giant people-swallowing snakes in the depths of the Amazonian jungle. And much like the previous Jaws wannabe, Anaconda just can’t get the hang of this sort of thing. But unlike the lion movie, that was self-serious to a sometimes unintentionally comical extent, Anaconda at least has a goofy, campy element, and its level of intentional tongue-in-cheek humor, while not going all-out with it on as fun of a level as Tremors, has led to it becoming a “so bad it’s good” cult classic that can be enjoyed on a silly level as long as you’re not trying to take it too seriously.
Continue readingThe Saint (1997)
DIRECTOR: Philip Noyce
CAST: Val Kilmer, Elisabeth Shue, Rade Sherbedgia, Valery Nikolaev, Michael Byrne, Henry Goodman, Alun Armstrong, Charlotte Cornwell
REVIEW:
An adaptation of the 1960s television series, which was itself an adaptation of Leslie Charteris’ series of novels, The Saint is a fairly lightweight and insubstantial international spy caper that comes off a bit like second-rate James Bond (an irony on multiple levels, as Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels were in part inspired by Charteris’ Saint novels, and the television series starred future 007 Roger Moore). The Saint is an enjoyable enough diversion, but doesn’t make much of an impression alongside higher-level spy thrillers. Continue reading