Battle of the Bulge (1965)

Battle of the Bulge (1965)
Warner Bros.
December 16, 1965
War Drama, Historical Drama
DVD
D

Another dull movie about World War II, although I did snort at the credit "Telly Savalas as Guffy," because I misread it as "Buffy."  Ken Annakin directed.

The Battle of Shaker Heights

The Battle of Shaker Heights
Miramax
August 22, 2003
Comedy
DVD
D+

An annoying teen (played by 17-year-old Shia LaBeouf, who I liked that same year in Holes) escapes from the other annoying people in his life by reenacting wars with other annoying people.  It was nice to see Mike McShane as the History teacher.  Efram Potelle and Kyle Rankin co-directed.

Battle of Britain

Battle of Britain
United Artists
15 September 1969
War Drama, Historical Drama
DVD
D

I tuned out before this slow-moving World War II movie got to any star I'd actually recognize (Michael Caine, Laurence Olivier, etc.), and in fact they don't even get to the opening credits until about ten minutes in.  This is based on the book The Narrow Margin, which I think is a more interesting title.  Guy Hamilton directed.

The Battle of Algiers

The Battle of Algiers
Rizzoli
31 August 1966
War Drama
DVD
D+

Gillo Pontecorvo directed and co-wrote this story set a few years earlier, during the Algerian War against the colonial French government.  Not a genre I'm interested in, but there were some nice shots.

Batman and Harley Quinn

Batman and Harley Quinn
Warner Bros.
August 15, 2017
Animation, Action
DVD
C-

The best animation here is actually the retro opening credits.  I'm not a superhero fan in general, but this wasn't bad, although there were such odd touches as Harley working at Superbabes, sort of like a non-topless Hooters, but the skimpy uniforms are superhero/villain cosplay.  Sam Liu directed.

Baseketball

Baseketball
Universal
July 31, 1998
Sports Comedy
DVD
C

I saw this shortly after it came out on video and enjoyed it, but this time I only made it halfway through.  (Yes, still better than most movies from my library do.)  I liked the pop culture references (including to Chelsea Clinton), some of the silliness, and the concept of the game and of the movie, but, as with South Park, not all of the tasteless humor is funny enough to overcome its tastelessness.  And, yes, Ernest Borgnine (81 playing 85) is more interesting here, at one point singing "I'm Too Sexy" on his living will, than he was in Barn Red a few years later.  Anyway, if I recall, Orgazmo was better.

David Zucker directed and co-wrote.

Barn Red

Barn Red
Studio Unknown
2004
Drama
DVD
D+

A bland, predictable story meets bad direction (both by Richard Brauer), but the scenery's nice.

The Barkleys of Broadway

The Barkleys of Broadway
MGM
May 4, 1949
Musical
DVD
C

Fred and Ginger reunite after ten years to play a bickering married show-biz couple.  I was rooting for the magic to happen but this is actually on a level with 1939's The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (reviewed here https://reviewingeverymovieiown.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-story-of-vernon-and-irene-castle.html).  At least it was nice to glimpse Billie Burke outside of The Wizard of Oz.

Sidney Sheldon was an uncredited contributor to the Comden & Green screenplay.  Charles Walters directed.

National Lampoon's Barely Legal

National Lampoon's Barely Legal
Barely Legal Productions LLC [seriously, that's what it says at Wikipedia]
15 May 2003 [at the Cannes Film Festival!]
Comedy
DVD
D+

Horny teen virgins, all male, decide to make a porno.  About as good as you'd expect.  Tom Arnold plays the main character's father.  David Mickey Evans directed.

Barbershop

Barbershop
MGM
September 13, 2002
Comedy
DVD
C-

Mostly stereotypical Black characters (the player, the stupid thieves, the sassy woman, etc.) live their lives in and around the title location.  I did like the request for a haircut that would be "a little off the top, long in the back but not quite a shag, slope to the left like Gumby, Eddie Munster in the front, a lil' Wyclef on the right."  Tim Story directed.

Baran

Baran
Miramax
10 October 2001
Drama
DVD
C-

Afghan refugees in modern Iran.    Majid directed and co-wrote.

The Bank Job

The Bank Job
Lionsgate
29 February 2008
Crime Drama, Historical Drama
DVD
C-

For an action movie from Lionsgate, this isn't bad and at least the early '70s soundtrack is nice.  Roger Donaldson directed.

The Banishment AKA Izgnanie

The Banishment AKA Izgnanie 
Intercinema XXI Century
18 May 2007
Drama
DVD
D

This is incredibly slow-moving (the whole movie clocks in at over 2 1/2 hours) but the scenery was sort of nice, even if opening with a one-minute long-distance shot of a tree is overkill.  Apparently it gets more eventful later, but I didn't care enough to watch.

This is loosely based on Saroyan's novel The Laughing Matter.  Andrey Zvyagintsev directed.

Bangkok Dangerous

Bangkok Dangerous
Lionsgate
September 5, 2008
Action
DVD
F+

Yes, this is worse than Cage's Bad Lieutenant, with an unappealing character in an unappealing setting (a hitman who looks like he's clinically depressed, even in Bangkok).  The Pang Brothers co-directed this remake, which is based on their original script.

Band of Angels

Band of Angels
Warner Bros.
August 3, 1957
Historical Drama
DVD
D

The main entertainment here is in the bad acting and dialogue, especially Rex Reason as Capt. Seth Parson.  I tuned out before Clark Gable and Sidney Poitier showed up.  (De Carlo, however, portrayed the central character and was then 34 but playing roughly half that.)  The movie is based on the Robert Penn Warren novel, which I assume was not as good as All the King's Men.  Raoul Walsh directed, fourteen years after Action in the North Atlantic.

Bambi

Bambi
Disney
August 21, 1942
Children's, Fantasy
DVD
C+

I think as a child this was never a favorite of mine, and it has nothing to do with Bambi's mother being killed.  There's too much macho posturing and yet too slow a pace much of the time.  This time around, Thumper was still my favorite character, and I could've watched sequences of him and his siblings for much longer, although admittedly that wouldn't be that eventful either (but cute as heck).  Bambi's mother's death, and the fire sequence, didn't really have much of an emotional impact.  I still like Old Owl's "twitter-pated" lecture (yes, back before Twitter was capitalized and changed history) and the lighter, brighter moments.  Not a classic, and I don't imagine most modern children warming up to it more than I did, and yet worth revisiting. 

Note that I'm using the "fantasy" tag for the talking animals.  I've tagged all the directors listed at IMDB.

La Bamba

La Bamba
Columbia
July 24, 1987
Historical Drama, Musical
DVD
C-

While there is of course a potentially good story in a biography of Ritchie Valens, the first quarter-hour seemed to be more about family drama than his interest in music, and not very interesting family drama at that.  Still, the soundtrack was good, although I didn't stick around to hear the title tune.  Luis Valdez wrote and directed.

Balto

Balto
Universal
December 22, 1995
Children's, Historical Drama
DVD
D

Combining as this does dogs and sports, I already wasn't interested, but the slapstick humor and cliched characters sank the movie further with me.  Still, the look of the animation is nice.  Simon Wells directed.  This is an American-British production, but Margolyes is doing an American accent.

Balls of Fury

Balls of Fury
Rogue Pictures
August 29, 2007
Comedy
DVD
C

Although I didn't laugh out loud at this, except for at one of the reaction shots of the Reagans in the 1988 prologue, I can see how someone might think it was hilarious, and I've certainly seen worse comedies, especially for this project.  I tuned out before Christopher Walken showed up.

Thomas Lennon co-wrote and appears as Karl Wolfschtagg.  Robert Ben Garant directed.

The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez

The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez
Embassy Pictures
August 19, 1983
Western
DVD
D+

Based on the book With His Pistol in His Hand by Americo Paredes, this is a slow-moving story set in 1901, in which the most interesting thing in the first quarter-hour is a glimpse of a very-early-20th-century automobile.  Robert M. Young directed and co-wrote.

Bail Out AKA W.B., Blue and the Bean

Not my rating

Bail Out AKA W.B., Blue and the Bean
Studio Unknown
February 28, 1990
Action, Comedy
DVD
D

This dated (check out the size of the cell phone) direct-to-video flick doesn't even achieve campiness, despite Hasselhoff.  I tuned out before Linda Blair turned up, although her character was referred to.  Max Kleven wrote and directed.

A Bag of Marbles AKA Un Sac de Billes

A Bag of Marbles AKA Un Sac de Billes
15 January 2017
Gaumont Film Company
Historical Drama
DVD
B+

This is a stunning movie, both grand and humble, about two brave Jewish brothers who struggle to survive in Nazi-occupied France, while longing to be reunited with the rest of the close-knit family.  Early on, the younger brother Joseph (who would grow up to write the autobiographical novel that inspired this and a 1975 adaptation) trades his Yellow Star for a bag of marbles, although it is only one battered blue marble (like the Earth?) that he keeps through all his adventures.  The film runs the gamut of emotions, including petty ones, and is filled with moving performances, so that the subtitles aren't a barrier (except when on light backgrounds, but I'm not going to mark it down for that).  I can't, however, give an A- or higher because the violence, although necessary to the plot (and less than it could've been of course), and overall danger make this in some ways a hard movie to watch.  Still, highly recommended, and indeed the first B+ in this project.

Christian Duguay directed and co-wrote.

Badlands

Badlands
Warner Bros.
October 13, 1973
Crime Drama, Historical Drama
DVD
D+

A boring couple meets in 1950s South Dakota and they go on a crime spree sometime after I tuned out.  Terence Malick wrote and directed.

Bad Words

Bad Words
Focus Features
March 28, 2014
Comedy
DVD
C+

Bateman directed and stars in this movie that I enjoyed more in the theater, although it still has its moments, both comedic and dramatic.  Maybe it's that shock comedies don't age well or maybe the plot twists felt more obvious on the second viewing.  Still, yes, it's better than most of the movies I'm checking out of the library and I stayed tuned for the extras, including Bateman's commentary.

Kathryn Hahn was Carla in Bad Moms Christmas, a totally different role from her mousy but persistent reporter character here.

Bad Samaritan

"Some doors are better left unopened."
So are some DVD cases.

Bad Samaritan
Electric Entertainment
May 4, 2018
Crime Drama
DVD
D

David Tennant plays a jerky American but he's not the title character, who I'm assuming is the Irish petty thief who we first  see make out with a girlfriend, although he pauses to take pictures.  The back cover of the DVD case gives away that the film gets darker than the quarter hour I watched, but even that wasn't anything I was invested in.

Brandon Boyce wrote the script, while Dean Devlin directed.

A Bad Moms Christmas

A Bad Moms Christmas

STX Films, 

November 1, 2017

Comedy
DVD
D

I remember sort of considering seeing the first movie because of the cast, but this one just made me feel like everyone's time was wasted, including mine.  I have to say that with many of the characters, including a little girl, saying wildly inappropriate things, there's just no shock value.  If there was one happy or normal or sane character, there could at least be some contrast that might produce humor.  (And I say that as someone who enjoyed Bad Teacher, sadly not coming up.)  I doubt I'll watch the first movie now.  Jon Lucas and Scott Moore co-wrote and co-directed.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
First Look Studios
December 11, 2009
Crime Drama
DVD
D-

Not only didn't I care about the title character (played by Cage), but I quickly tired of the swearing, drug use, and general "badness."  Still, it was relatively non-violent in that first quarter hour, so I didn't want to go below D-.  Werner Herzog directed.

Back to the Future Part II

Back to the Future Part II
Universal
November 22, 1989
Sci-Fi, Comedy
DVD
C-

Robert Zemeckis directed and co-wrote this middle movie of the trilogy, as he did with Parts I and III.  The weird thing is, I pretty clearly remember seeing the first movie in the theater and a few times after, but it feels like I've just seen the second and third movies in pieces on cable, over three decades.  I watched the first quarter hour now and just wasn't drawn in.  The first movie was a little hokey even at the time, but there was something fresh and sweet about it.  This just felt, well, mechanical.  I can see why I could never watch more than a scene or two at a time before.  (And it's entirely possible that I have sat through the whole thing and have blocked it out, as I did for Ferris Bueller years ago, until I watched it all the way through the second time.)

Back to Bataan

Back to Bataan
RKO
May 31, 1945
War Drama
DVD
D+

This wasn't as boring as I expected, since there was the thread about Quinn's character's ex being the Filipino equivalent of Tokyo Rose.  But I still had to mark it down from a C- for the gratuitous use (at one point in every other sentence) of the slur "Japs."  Edward Dmytryk directed.