Change Your Image
a-chriw
Reviews
Some Nudity Required (1998)
Almost balanced portrayal- more of a TV movie
Director's look at the B-Movie industry is thought-provoking, at its best, but spends a good deal more time with her own interpretations of her experience than really trying to show us what the industry is like.
Odette Springer is in many ways embarrassed about her involvement in the industry, and attempts to explain both her attraction to such work and the involvement of people in the industry in terms of personal weakness.
A great deal of time is spent making the argument that women are 1) discriminated against based on looks 2) intentionally kept out of good roles and 3) only like the industry if they are mentally disturbed.
This documentary (which watches like a TV movie for Lifetime TV) really, really begs some questions, such as: Did any of the "exploited" women portrayed take any acting classes? Did any of these women explore other, more "tasteful" options like dinner theater?
The underlying, unquestioned premise here is that "Any woman should be able to get tasteful roles which do not require nudity in 'A' grade films." Had the director worked on questioning this a bit (by interviewing women with acting ability or in live theater), this would be a 7. Without ever explaining or questioning that, it is a 5.
Fortress (1992)
Bad idea made worse: did anyone write a script?
Weird (kind of interesting) premise: The U. S. has banned abortion but is worried about population control, so they limit couples to one child, and there is now a black market for sneaking pregnant women out of the country. Okay, some big leaps of logic have to be made to see this happening, but you swallow your pride and make it past the first 10 minutes or so.
Now the scriptwriter goes on vacation, and someone else starts writing a tough-guy in tough-prison movie for about 45 minutes.
Now that guy gets fired, and someone else writes a cyborg love story.
Now that scriptwriter retires, and you hire Terry Gilliam to direct a weird surgery scene. Gilliam takes the money, runs, and...
We finish off with 5 minutes of Theodore Sturgeon's _Killdozer_.
The effects are mediocre at best, but apparently cost a lot of money- they would have been way better off spending that money on a script and making it a low-tech prison- or just plain not making this movie.