Stephen Sommers

Big-budget crazy effects guy, famous for The Mummy.


The Adventures of Huck Finn (1993) -- This movie is most famous in my mind because two of the extras (Noby Nobriga and Kevin Young) are my friends. You'll see someone messing with a chicken and then Jason Robards will say "Good day, boys" to some soldiers, and they're the soldiers. Besides this, it's sort of a run-of-the-mill version of the Huck Finn story starring a young Frodo. C

Van Helsing (2004) -- A good idea for a movie: Van Helsing is not anymore an old man vampire expert and hunter, but he is a young handsome Batmannish hunter of all monsters; and Count Dracula is not just a big-whig vampire, but he is the ruler of all creepshow classics. Slam them together with crazy effects and gags and you should have a nice action-packed post-modern movie. But... it only half works. Sometimes you're saying to yourself "This is pretty cool," but most of the time you're just sort of ignoring the movie. One of the better examples of a great idea not so greatly executed. My favorite character was played by David Wenham, who managed to make the scaredy cat sidekick type actually funny. C


Copyright (c) Jun 2004 by Rusty Likes Movies