imddaveh

I read Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" when I was 16, just barely old enough to not be completely corrupted by the book. The book is a simutaneously hilarious and horrifying read. Now, almost 20 years and one heart attack later, I 've lost some of my sense of immortality and find the book slightly more horrifying than hilarious. Nonetheless, a fascinating read providing a journey to a time and a place and a culture long gone.

Terry Gilliam's film is very faithful to the book and nicely captures not only the hellbent-for-self-destruction antics of Thompson and his frightening attorney, but it also captures the very essence of early-1970s Las Vegas. Typical of Gilliam's films, the production design is astounding. Actor Johnny Depp's portrayal of Thompson is as accurate as it is funny - a considerable feat considering the fact that Thompson himself was on the set, coaching and observing the actor's portrayal. If you've read the book, you know that Thompson is a man you don't want to upset.

The problem I had with the movie is that...well, it's almost too faithful to the book. When you read the book, the print is clear and clean, and you miss not a single horrifying/hilarious detail. However, the movie is hyper-realistic in that the drug-addled main characters speak in slurred mumbles and grunts...much the way you would expect someone to do after consuming an entire pharmacy's worth of drugs. One of my favorite scenes from the book is when Thompson finds his attorney in the hotel room's bathtub, listening to Jefferson Airplane....the dialog between the two is darkly hysterical. When watching the movie, it helps to have certain passages of the book memorized (as many people do) so that you can understand the dialog. I'm not sure if the sound is poorly recorded, poorly mixed, or just deliberately muddy, but the main characters are often difficult to understand. I'm sure the movie is almost exactly as the events described happened, but the genius of Thompson's writing is his ability to recount the events in clear detail. Ironically, the book is a sharp photograph while the movie is a fuzzy memory.

This is another "2% of the population movie" (see my review for "1941"). It's definitely not for everyone. Fans of the book will enjoy seeing the fear and loathing brought to vivid life, and despite some technical problems, some parts of the film are very amusing. If you've never read the book or seen the movie, you could take two approaches. You could read the book so that you can better understand what is happening in the movie, or you could watch the movie and then read the book to find out what was going on. In either case, the film needs the book more than the book needs the film.

Disney's "The Black Hole" captures that moment in Hollywood history when The Walt Disney Company was tumbling in the wake of the major studios like an annoying, tag-along kid brother whining, "Me too! Me Too!". It's hard to believe now, with the Disney media juggernaut having devoured the animation market as well as Miramax and Capital Cities/ABC, but in those pre-Eisner/Katzenberg days, there was a popular joke in Tinseltown that went: Some people work in film, and some people work for Disney. Ahh, but "the Black Hole" comes from a tense period in Disney's history when the studio was till trying to find it's way after Walt's death, still trying to live down all those god-awful Kurt Russel/Joe Flynn movies, and was being run by the man Walt himself appointed as heir to the throne, Ron Miller. At the time, Ron was Walt's son-in-law, a former USC football star, and a future ousted Disney CEO branded with the unaffectionate moniker of "Tron Miller". "The Black Hole" was Disney's attempt to get a piece of the "Star Wars" action. "The Black Hole" follows the adventure of an exploration spcaeship that finds a long-missing space station perched on the rim of a massive black hole that is animated on twos. Upon investigation, the explorers find the station under the command of Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell), seemingly the only human occupant among a ship populated with spooky robots with black robes and mirrored faces. Reinhardt, of course, is a space-going mad scientist, and instantly befriends the exploration crew's resident nutcase, Dr. Alex Durant (played by resident Hollywood nutcase, Anthony Perkins). Of course, Reinhardt has a suicidal scheme to travel into the black hole, and wants the exploration crew's help...whether they want to give it or not. Also along for the ride are several funny robots that serve the purpose of showing the audience how far technology has come in the futuristic world of "The Black Hole". The robots fly instead of walking or rolling, and if that isn't hilarious enough, one of the robots even has ESP! Reinhardt even has his own pet monster (as any self-respecting mad scientist would), in the form of Maximillion, as scary, flying robot that looks a lot like a Transformer and has these unique blender-like attachments that are useful for killing visiting scientists. Maximillion does not speak, and emits an unnerving bass hum for extra spookyness. Rounding out the cast are Robert Forster as the Captain, Joseph Bottoms as his Lieutenant, Yvette Mimieux as the scientist, and Joe Flynn as they befuddled college dean (just kidding!). Of course, the film features a very Dineyesque moral message in which both the bad and good characters go to their just rewards There are some nice special effects (like the glowing meteors bounding through the ship) and some really lame special effects (like Maximillion obviously swinging on a rope to simulate his flying in the path of our heroes), and there are moments of pretentiousness and lame science that make this movie an entertaining snickerfest, if not totally engrossing. All in all, it's a fun movie for anyone with a ten-year-old's attention span but it suffers from the technique that a lot of Disney live-action films of the period did, which is talking down to the kiddies in the audience. Kids know when they are being talked down to, and it never works. However, taken with a grain of salt and looked upon as cheesy pop culture rather than science fiction, "The Black Hole" is fun to watch. It's just bad enough to be good, not so bad as to be unwatchable, and unintentionally funny enough to be entertaining.