Newfarmer

Before I submitted my rating (1) for "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover" I looked at the previous voting breakdown and was astonished to find that one-fourth of the over 2400 voters had given it the highest rating (10). Holy smokes! It made me wonder if I was an artless rube in the field of film criticism and appreciation.

I then read several of the user comments. I will admit, much of the visual sophistication and allusive storytelling went unnoticed or unappreciated by me while I was in the movie theater. What I did notice, however, was how badly I wanted to leave the theater. I have never walked out of a movie in my life ("It might get really good at the end"), and frankly have been deeply tempted to do so only perhaps four times in my life. But this movie takes the cake. I hesitate to say this about a film that is clearly ambitious and crafted with such knowing technique, but this may very well be the very worst movie I've ever seen.

Bottom line: I just didn't see the point of it. It may have been a portrait of abject evil; but if that's the case, I would have to say that it was badly focused. Was it some sort of social commentary or social criticism? If it was, it was pretty shallow. It may well have been chock full of cinematic and literary allusions, and had erudite style and sophistication oozing out its pores - but to what end? What story did it tell me? What aspect of our world did it illuminate? What did it show about, say, evil that I didn't already know before? My only reaction to the story was that they should've shot the bad guy dead in the first scene so he couldn't have wreaked his pointless havoc throughout the rest of the movie. If mere technique and visual panache are supposed to impress us, then by extension scales and exercises could be great music and crossword puzzles great literature.

I can appreciate that others may not agree with me, but I found no redeeming value in this movie. I might choose to regard it as a pretentious exercise in gangster-movie-making, or a nihilistic message about Thatcherite England. Either way, my chief opinion was that it was simply vile.

"Footloose" is a lot of fun to watch. The main high-school characters are very likable and we sympathize with their "oppression." Even the initially unsympathetic authority characters, led by the Rev. Moore (expertly portrayed by John Lithgow), are given some genuine depth in this movie. They aren't just mindless martinets. Their beliefs are shown to have some credible foundation, although most of us wouldn't agree with them.

The kids, too, are shown fairly realistically. They are not portrayed as over-idealized defenders of artistic freedom. They just want to have fun. And it is fun watching them have fun. I was particularly drawn to the slightly goofy, yet faithful, secondary characters played by Chris Penn and Sarah Jessica Parker. I thought to myself, "Those are the kind of people I'd like to hang out with." The picture of adolescent friendship shown in this movie is very appealing.

Sure, the plot is a tad formulaic. But who says you can't have fun with a good formula, particularly when it presents a decent message embodied in decent characters? And oh yeah, the dancing and the music are good too.

This is perhaps my all-time favorite trash-TV movie. I have a theory that all of us secretly cherish at least one utterly indefensible object of art or entertainment - something we know is simply awful, but which we love nonetheless. Maybe it's pro wrestling, maybe it's "The Dukes of Hazzard." For me, it's this TV movie.

I'm something of an amateur astronomy buff, so that may explain part of my attraction to this movie. However, virtually every moment, every plot device, every line of dialogue, every scene and every revelation of character in "A Fire in the Sky" is so stultifyingly formulaic that you wonder if the people who wrote it even graduated from grade school. It's no exaggeration to say that, twenty minutes into the movie, you can accurately predict the final outcomes of each of the several subplots. The characters are not the least bit real; they are complete and absolutely transparent stereotypes. And adding an element of incongruity to the movie is the fact that the actors attack their roles with surprising vigor. Richard Crenna and Elizabeth Ashley, in particular, seem to think they're in "King Lear," not this hokey, connect-the-dots, pre-fab drama.

The result is a production that is not in on its own joke. It doesn't seem to know how bad it really is. It's a professional product that seems to have been offered seriously. And yet it's awful. The result is that it achieves a kind of exquisite stupidity. We're not laughing with it; we're laughing at it. And as such, for me, at least, it transcends its own badness and becomes highly entertaining.

What can I say? There's no good reason anyone should like something this dumb. And yet I do.