The Setup: Noir With a Spray Tan Love Is a Gun is one of those early ‘90s erotic thrillers that you’d find sandwiched between a Shannon Tweed classic and an “after dark” Cinemax rerun. But unlike its straight-to-video cousins, this one has two things going for it: a tighter-than-expected script and Kelly Preston playing a … Read More “Love Is a Gun (1994) Review: Kelly Preston Shoots to Kill (and We’re the Willing Victims)” »
Intro: When Love is Blind… and So is the Script There are romantic comedies that make you believe in love. Then there are ones that make you believe in root canals. Only You is the kind of film that asks you to suspend disbelief, common sense, and your will to live — all in 85 … Read More “Only You (1992) Review: A Rom-Com Misfire with a Kelly Preston You Don’t Deserve” »
The Premise: When Your Vegas Trip Turns into a Manhunt Imagine if The Fugitive and Ferris Bueller had a love child, and then that kid got stuck in a B-movie casino thriller where nobody wins — not even the audience. That’s Run, a film where Patrick Dempsey goes from slick college kid to wanted fugitive … Read More “Run (1991) Review: A Sprint to Nowhere — But at Least It’s a Stylish Jog” »
Introduction: Plastic Surgery Meets Black Magic and Moral Bankruptcy You know you’re in Tales from the Crypt territory when the plot involves an elderly millionaire trying to seduce a young woman by literally buying a new body, only to have it all unravel in a glorious trainwreck of vanity, betrayal, and horror-host cackling. “The Switch” … Read More “Tales of the Crypt ‘The Switch’ Episode (1990) Review: An Old Man, a New Body, and Kelly Preston Worth Dying For” »
Introduction: Welcome to the Late ‘80s, Where Bad Ideas Were Given Budgets The Experts is one of those movies that seems to have been greenlit because a studio exec owed someone a favor. Or lost a bet. Or maybe just wanted to see if a film could be made entirely out of hair gel, neon … Read More “The Experts (1989) Review: A Cold War Comedy With the Warmth of a Siberian Gulag” »
Introduction: In the Beginning, There Was a Bad Idea Sometimes Hollywood greenlights a movie based on a dare. Twins feels like one of those dares. The pitch meeting must’ve gone something like this: “What if we put Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito in a movie… as identical twins?” Cue the coke-snorting execs laughing so hard … Read More “Twins (1988) Review: One Joke, Two Hours, Zero Logic” »
Introduction: Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered Some movies sneak up on you. Spellbinder is one of those late-’80s occult thrillers that didn’t quite make a splash on release but found its home on late-night cable — the kind of movie you half-remember seeing between infomercials and commercials for psychic hotlines. And yet, here it is, casting … Read More “Spellbinder (1988) Review: Witchy Woman, Sultry Spells, and Kelly Preston in Full Bloom” »
Introduction: Witch, Please If Airplane! and Monty Python and the Holy Grail had a drunken one-night stand during a community theater production of The Crucible, the resulting mess might look something like Love at Stake. Released in 1987, this comedy about the Salem witch trials tries so hard to be clever, it trips over its … Read More “Love at Stake (1987) Review: Burn It, Bury It, Forget It” »
Introduction: Noir with a Porn Mustache If the 1980s were the high school locker room of cinema, 52 Pick-Up was the older burnout kid who sold bootleg pornos from his Camaro and told you Santa wasn’t real. Directed by John Frankenheimer and based on an Elmore Leonard novel, this 1986 film is a sweaty blend … Read More “52 Pick-Up (1986) Review: Sleaze, Blackmail, and the Best Midlife Crisis a Man Could Regret” »
Intro: The Shuttle Launch No One Asked For There are bad ideas. Then there are catastrophically tone-deaf ideas. And then there’s SpaceCamp, the family-friendly film about kids accidentally launched into space — released just months after the Challenger disaster. That’s like releasing Titanic 2: Jack’s Revenge the day after an iceberg convention. Even if you … Read More “SpaceCamp (1986) Review: Houston, We Have a Script Problem” »
