in (mostly) alphabetical order
Komodo (1999)
Giant lizards have killed young Patrick’s parents and eaten his dog, and now everyone’s worried because the poor kid’s having a hard time processing the trauma. To me, he just seems like a typical sullen teenage boy.
His psychotherapist is a beautiful young woman, which (pardon my sexism) seems like the wrong choice for a fixing a teenage boy’s head. The movie wants nothing to do with such thoughts, though, or much of any thoughts.
And then the lizards return.
This is schlock, but not quite schlocky enough to be fun.
Verdict: NO.
♦ ♦ ♦
Konga (1961)
Famous botanist & scientist Charles Decker survives a plane crash in Africa, and is nursed back to health by a local tribe. Their witch doctor shows Decker “the link between vegetable and animal life,” a serum squeezed from leaves.
All the above might’ve been interesting to see, but we’re shown none of it. Instead, the movie opens with Decker’s return to “civilization,” where he very briefly describes what could’ve been the best part of a better story.
As a souvenir of Africa, he’s brought a cute li’l chimp with him, and of course, this being a mad scientist flick, Decker feeds the serum to the chimp, which grows into a reincarnation of King Kong.
Michael Gough, later to be butler for Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, and George Clooney’s Batmen, plays Doc Decker, dully. A man in a cheesy ape suit plays the ape.
The most interesting moment in the film is a brief stroll through Decker’s London greenhouse, jammed with carnivorous plants, all fake but cheaply and charmingly constructed by old-school physical effects.
“Photographed in SpectraMation,” says the credits, which made me chuckle.
Verdict: NO.
♦ ♦ ♦
Konstruktor (2016)
a/k/a Constructor
Some rich guy owns a robot shaped like a pretty young woman, and he’s in love with it, but the robot wants its space. “We spend each day together,” she/it says. “It’s too much.”
The luck of the alphabet has delivered a streak of science fiction lately, and this li’l 20-minute short from eastern Europe (Poland, I think) is slightly splendid, asking a few questions in a smart but playful way.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
The Chronoscope (2009)
This is a 20-minute short, about a 1930s woman who had no scientific training but somehow used bedsprings, hairpins, and cutlery to construct Tesla coils, then used the Tesla coils to invent a camera that can see back in time.
“We see the past all the time. Every time we stare into the nighttime sky at that vast myriad of stars, we’re looking into the depths of time.”
Indicative of either how good the film is or how dumb your humble critic is, for the first five minutes I thought it was a documentary. It’s not, but archival footage is delicately weaved into fresh but artificially-aged scenes, and the ruse works well. Jeremy Irons narrates, which adds to the effect.
Written and directed by Andrew Legge, someone I’d never heard of before, and I’ve added a few of his other films to my list.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
The New Age (1994)
“To be born a human and not a snake is a tremendous opportunity.”
Peter Weller and Judy Davis play an upper-class married couple enduring a crisis of platitudes and infidelities, but mostly platitudes. They’re each failures in their respective careers, but their shared passion is shopping, so they decide to open a boutique selling very expensive clothes and accessories. They call the shop Hipocracy.
These are staggeringly shallow people who fancy themselves deep, and I hated them from act 1, scene 1, but eventually it becomes clear that the movie hates them, too.
The New Age is a dry, subtle satire of upscale idiocracy, with digs at capitalism, spiritual tourism, seashell chakras, sex parties, spam calls, death woo (“It takes just as much courage to die as to live”), and Everything Else.
Written and directed by Michael Tolkin, who wrote the novel Robert Altman’s The Player is based on, though this is really nothing like that. Corbin Bernsen, John Diehl, Patricia Heaton, Samuel L Jackson, and Adam West are in the mix. Music by Mark Mothersbaugh. Produced by Oliver Stone.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Seattle’s Northwest Film Forum will be open seven days a week
I haven’t seen a movie in a theater for months, maybe a year, which is unprecedented. But even if I never attend again, it’s still delightful seeing a surge in local cinemas specializing in the old and weird.
Still playing Fridays & Saturdays at L.A.’s Nuart
10/2/2026
Logo illustration by Jeff Meyer.
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If you can’t find a movie I’ve reviewed, or if you have recommendations, please drop me a note. And I mean it — if you ask, I will get you the movie.
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No talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff.
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