Movie Review - The Apostate (1999)

This is a forgettable flick despite the formidable talents of Dennis Hopper and Richard Grieco. They know how to swim but how can they save the Titanic?

Nothing works in this movie. Story, effects, characters… it's all hackneyed, stereotypical, Devil-Meets-the-Church type of artificial conflict.

It is hard to place a finger on any one particular aspect of this film that does not work because there are so many things that do not work in tandem.

Even the music is weird -- an amalgamation of spooky Gregorian chants, some electronic scratchings and base riffs emulating heart-beats, mixed with some "Clarinet Blues" from the Balkans, etc. It's all over the place, like the plot line.

But worst of all, both Hopper and Grieco are seriously miscast. Especially watching Hopper is like watching an actor playing an actor playing a role. It is that self-conscious a performance; that on the surface and contrived. He is almost checking out his watch to see if it is time to go home.

Hopper is certainly no Hannibal Lecter in this particular film. His outbursts that were supposed to reveal some serious evil end up as the whining and protestations of a an artist bored out of his skull so he ends up butchering good looking young people right and left. All of course covered with a thin patina of "metaphysical angst" directed at Mother Mary, Jesus Himself and the Rest of The Universe.

Opposite him is the Grieco character, an artist priest… You can tell the kind of real talent Grieco has (fantastic diction, for example) but thanks to wrong directing, he ends up with an over-the-top performance that is painful to watch.

The bad guy Hopper has butchered up Grieco's male prostitute brother. So the Grieco character makes it his business to find the left-handed artist madman. It takes a frustrated artist to find another who loves to paint with blood.

I'll just stop there since I actually do not want you to commit the error of renting this DVD and watch it. Don't.

A total disappointment. 1 out of 10.

Go rent the "Exorcist" if you want to really see some scary merchandise that pits the Catholic Church against Evil. Or the "Silence of the Lambs" if you enjoy the shock of facing some truly demented and twisted characters. But not this. This is just boring.

Where Are All The Good Movies?

The sound of soda being sipped, the smell of fresh popcorn in the air, the scream or laugh the whole room has burst into, the actor saying the line he'll be remembered for his entire career and a while after it – simply put, the movies. Though we've always been fascinated by going to our local multiplex or movie theater, are we getting the same chills and thrills, twists and turns as our parents were, not 20 years ago?

I'm not sure if this is an all-out phenomenon, but I'm sure there are some people that can to me when I say the movie industry has reached a standstill concerning interesting new products. Over the years we've seen actors get shrunk, cars come to life, we've explored new corners of the galaxy and the world of women as seen through a man's eyes, so can anything still surprise us? The answer is yes, but producers are unwilling to search for our new desire, to experiment, to take a gamble and see what happens. Most things we see in movies today are inspired from other, much older movies and filtered through the director's eyes. Is this actually a Hollywood conspiracy? Do they wait long enough to suspect people have forgotten the original and then do a cheap remake? Honestly, I don't think this is the care, but it can't be far from it. They must believe the original was a flop because of the poor special effects, but the truth is, the story was its downfall.

In contrast to the previous category, another type of movies does boast an original story, but using concepts from older ones. In this category we have zombie movies, most monster movies and hey, let's admit it, even some action movies (Avp for example). Although this isn't always a bad idea (Avp again, which I found fairly satisfying), the basic concept behind the character they "borrowed" from other movies changes slightly with each new adaptation. Most directors in this category prefer to inspire themselves from the most recent production involving the myth they want to use, so their idea will stray even more from the original than the previous one has. It is sometimes nice to see a myth evolve, but enough is enough!

I will admit that making a movie isn't all too easy and coming up with an original idea is becoming increasingly difficult, but the fact remains: if it's already been done, you will never get full credit for your work. Sadly, this is what happens with most "new" productions, because they found their stories on older ones. This is why more and more people exit the movie theaters disappointed, having hoped for something better. Or maybe it isn't the movies that are changing….maybe we're just getting harder and harder to please…

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