Whew, we finally made it. The last bit of backlog left from the summer.
‘Best in Show’ (2000)
As far as I know, Woody Allen invented the comedic “Mockumentary” with ‘Take the Money and Run’ back in 1969, but it was Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer who took it to the next level with ‘This is Spinal Tap’ in 1984.
Christopher Guest writes, directs, and acts in this pastiche of dog shows, and the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in particular. Every Guest regular (Eugene Levy, et al.) is in the film, save for Harry Shearer, and everybody gets their moment to shine and give the audience a good laugh.
What makes movies like this so tremendous is that there’s not a single bit of written dialogue. Every line is improvised by the actors and the reactions are equally on-the-spot, like watching a bunch of great jazz musicians playing together. Not only that, but the details in this production’s design are spot on as well; I mean, I think the filmmakers pretty much had to put together a reasonable facsimile of a dog show in a real venue, which gives the movie a grounded sense of realism, even when the dialogue is getting over-the-top silly.
I can’t say if ‘Best in Show’ is the best of Guest, but it’s definitely worth seeing.
Rating: ★★★★☆
‘Maniac Cop 2’ (1990)
I can’t lie, I think this one got a little overhyped for me. People were saying it’s definitely better than the first ‘Maniac Cop’, but I don’t know. To me, both movies work fine as a continuous story, and seeing as how they’re both 90 minutes or less, you could easily watch them back-to-back in a single evening (I have yet to see the third installment, but will definitely check it out one of these days), but the first one has Tom Atkins, so, I’m hard pressed to say the sequel is superior.
‘Maniac Cop 2’ is pretty good for a late-80s B-horror flick, and, like its predecessor, an interesting time capsule for New York City, but it’s hardly any sort of required viewing in my opinion. The one sequence of particular note is the police station shootout, which rivals an analogous scene in ‘The Terminator’.
Performance-wise, Robert Davi is strong as usual, and Bruce Campbell and Laurene Landon do a fine job continuing their roles from the first movie.
Other than that, not much else to say.
Rating: ★★★☆☆
‘Above the Law’ (1988)
This isn’t the best Steven Seagal movie, but it is the first, which makes it somewhat important. It’s also the first of two collaborations between Seagal and director Andrew Davis, who would later reunite for arguably Seagal’s best movie, that being ‘Under Siege’.
‘Above the Law’ is far from perfect. Seeing it now, many of the performances come off as rather hackneyed, but, it does offer some quintessential Steven Seagal martial arts action, and some signature Seagal one-liners. My personal favorite: “Ever notice how clean babies smell? Like nothing in the world has touched them yet.”
‘Above the Law’ is also a very Chicago movie. Not only was it mostly shot on location in the Windy City, but every working Chicago actor of note is in the movie. You’ll recognize them from other movies such as ‘The Blues Brothers’, ‘Backdraft’, ‘The Fugitive’, even ‘The Dark Knight’.
If you’re a Steven Seagal fan, this one’s a must see; otherwise, it’s hit or miss.
Rating: ★★★☆☆
‘ either. In fact, I’d argue that ‘Sleepaway Camp’ is more clever than anything in the ‘Friday’ series. Most horror movies, regardless of budget, tend to ride in “scare the audience” mode for at least 90% of the runtime. ‘Sleepaway Camp’ brings that down a few notches and actually has some good stretches that feel like a real movie about kids at camp, which gives is a lot of charm.
‘ is a must-see for fans of scary movies. It’s a low budget slasher, for sure, but, as writer and director, Robert Hiltzik really elevates the material to a sum greater than that of its individual parts (having a twist that would make M. Night Shyamalan jealous certainly doesn’t hurt matters). It’s also a great time capsule of the 1980s. Makes me want to take a trip to 
‘ a good-bad movie (as opposed to a bad-bad movie, which we’ll get to) is not only the camp factor of the acting and special effects (which are not technically great, but you have to give them credit for trying), but also just this consistent befuddlement factor. At a certain point I lost track of how many times I asked “What?” while watching this movie, which is often a turn-off, but in this case it wasn’t, because it actually maintained my interest. At different points I also hypothesized that it was a prequel to both ‘Interstellar’ and ‘Pacific Rim’.
‘ rip-off (only without a sea creature) was by far the most star-studded affair of the night, and, unfortunately, the most disappointing.
