dr_steve Reviews

Event Horizon (1997)

Bad. Just plain bad.

[3/10 · 10 August 2005]

Sorry all, this is a real train wreck of a movie. I've seen it more than once, each subsequent time staring in disbelief at what passes before my eyes.

If you want a good mixture of horror and SF, see Alien. Not Event Horizon.

Here, the acting was decent. The effect were competent. The script, plot line, direction, sense of absorption, well, all were noticeably absent.

In some bad movies, the classics (Plan 9...), the love of the medium transcends the skill of the production. Not here.

When watching it, think of Hulk Hogan, dressed in a bikini, wearing stiletto heels, driving the spike of the heel through your foot. It'll remind you that there are worse things in the universe.

Eraserhead (1977)

Not really a movie in the classic sense...

[10/10 · 23 August 2004]

I've watched Eraserhead countless times. In theaters. Off of the infamous Japanese-subtitled VCR copy. Off of the recent Lynch re-release. From around the late 70s onward. Yes, that long.

I have friends who won't let me recommend movies to them any more.

Anyway, the capsule summary, "Can't be summarized," is pretty close.

First, it is not a movie. It is not a film.

It is a piece of art.

All of the comments I read that attempt to describe it as a movie fail for precisely that reason. If you read the ones that can handle it, they handle it as an art review.

So don't even think of it as a movie. Don't recommend it as a movie. It doesn't work.

I'll also admit that I sat in a haze for decades, absorbed in the imagery. In awe of the impressions. And finally, an image crystallized, an image of what this was a portrait of. (And, of course, I expect this image may change with repeated viewings...) And as I watch it, with this in mind, a continuity appears.

We are living in hell, we just don't realize it.