The special effects are so bad in “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock” (1984), I don’t know whether to launch a withering criticism or complement the filmmakers for re-creating the lousy SFX from the original TV show. Animatronic spacedogs, burning tumbleweeds, fake snow, scientific fraudulence, it’s a tour de force. Not so much for the cast, which chases another fat paycheck by going through the same motions of overacting and heavy-handed symbolism we saw so many times before. Spock died in the previous flick, but Kirk forgot to retrieve the hard drive, so to speak. Hijinks (and Klingons) ensue.
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I’m old enough to have seen the original “Going in Style” in the early 1980s, back when Hollywood movies would show up on network TV a year later. The original old-men-rob-a-bank flick, with George Burns, Art Carney and Lee Strasberg, was more poignant. The 2017 remake, with Alan Arkin, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman, is more polished for a modern audience. They’re both good. As usual, Arkin inhabits his grumpy-old-man character like none other. I wanted someone to explain to me why Caine, with his English accent, worked in a Queens (New York, not THE queen) steel mill for 30 years.
I could spend the whole 100 words of “The Addams Family” (1991) talking about how smoking hot Anjelica Huston is as Morticia. I mean, she is a simmering cauldron of restrained sensuality. But I’d get all kinds of restraining orders and stuff, so I’ll stop. This film was part of the first wave of reboots based on old TV shows. With its morbid humor (the family is a conglomeration of witches and monsters), the show was an acquired taste, but it was pretty well executed (see what I did there?). A little cartoonish (hijinks ensue!), but so was the original.
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