The Four or More Collection

I mentioned in The Trilogies Collection that film series that had gone past three entries were excluded from being listed therein, so Four or More was born. Below the cut you'll find links to film series that probably should've ended sooner and, in some rare cases, ones that ended too soon.
If there was an existing Collection post with links to all relevant films in a particular series, I've linked directly to it instead because it made my life easier... and making my life easier is my new favourite pastime.

NOTE: If text is coloured pink, it means no review currently exists for it.

Giant (1956)

A Texan bigwig (Rock Hudson) travels to Maryland to buy a stallion for his ranch and while there takes a shine to the landowner's daughter (Elizabeth Taylor – well, you would, wouldn't you?). The speedy romance is the beginnings of a family story that spans almost three decades. In that time fortunes change (financial and otherwise) and attitudes are adjusted.
There's almost no onscreen chemistry between the lovers in the first half, but the second half makes up for it a little, with the comfortable feeling that long-time couples can sometimes acquire being much better realised. If not for Liz and James Dean doing their thing, she adding heart and he being a fiercely independent worker who resents his boss, that first half would really drag.

3 resources out of 5

Getting Any? (1995)

Comedy doesn't always travel well, especially when many of the gags are reliant on cultural knowledge that a foreign audience may lack. But even when taking that into account Getting Any? misfires on multiple levels.
The comedy, though well-timed, just isn't funny; and its structure is little more than a series of absurd sketches loosely documenting a hopeless man's desire to have sex in a car. But first he needs a car. His leaps of logic in service of his lascivious goal make no sense, but perhaps that's part of the joke(?).
Along the way it parodies other films/characters, including Lone Wolf and Cub, Zatoichi, the roles of actor Jô Shishido, kaijū (specifically Mothra), The Fly (1986), and, bizarrely, Ghostbusters (1984), all of which are much better films.

1 labolatory [sic] failure out of 5

The Van (1996)

In an attempt to salvage some self-respect from their seemingly dead-end situation two unemployed men try their luck running a chip van. The vehicle they acquire would be called a fixer-upper by an optimistic fool, but in reality it's a shit-box on wheels. Their newfound sense of purpose is not without its pitfalls, things that won't be hidden by a lick of paint.
Colm Meaney and Donal O'Kelly are the two men in question. Neither of them knows what the hell they're doing, which leads to comedy, as you'd expect, but it lacks the spark of the previous two films in Doyle's Barrytown Trilogy.
The 1996 World Cup moments add a layer of comparative reflection to their changing fortunes, helping ensure that we understand that in life, as on the pitch, sometimes even a draw can be more than it seems.

2½ ransomed penguins out of 5

Adrift in Tokyo (2007)

Takemura (Joe Odagiri) is an average loser, not completely shameless but more than willing to stoop or weasel if the situation calls for it. When a capable debt collector (Tomokazu Miura) offers Takemura a solution to his financial situation, an unusual but ostensibly harmless alternative to punishment, the indebted loser has little choice but to accept. He understands the request on a literal level, but there's more to be gained than he can know.
I adore these kinds of films, simple character studies that have no need for CGI support, that achieve their objective in an adroit way that's quirky but not like an overindulgent Jeunet bomb. Adrift is a fine addition to the genre.

3½ spicy straits out of 5

The Octagon (1980)

An unsuccessful date's end for most guys means returning home to sleep alone. Be thankful, because a failed date with Seduction-Chuck ends with ninjas and there isn't a tissue big enough to solve that problem.
In addition to cock-blocking stuntmen there's a terrorist group threat and a sly lady throwing spanners in the works. It's a lot for the action star to contend with, but Chuck doesn't have the emotional range to make his character anything other than functional, not that the script gives him much opportunity to even try. At best, it's like a live action Street Fighter II ending scenario.
His inner-voice has a bizarre echo effect, like his head is empty. And what's the deal with the angora vest? Oh, my bad, it's Chuck's manly chest hair.

2 red-tinted flashbacks out of 5

The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960)

aka House of Fright / Jekyll's Inferno

A Hammer Studios production based on Robert Louis Stevenson's tale, starring Paul Massie as both the Dr. Henry Jekyll and Mr. Edward Hyde characters.
Some intriguing concepts are discussed prior to the inevitable potion and transformation scene, including thoughts on how shame and morality might connect to notions of personal freedom. The talking sections are used to highlight how two opposing forces struggle for supremacy in each and every one of us, a conflict that gets its manifestation in a surprising way, when compared with cinema's handling of the same in previous years.

2½ locked-door keys out of 5

The Longest Day (1962)

It's somewhat fitting that a film titled The Longest Day should have a long running time. And while its 178 minutes don't exactly fly by, because a great many tiny dramas exist within the larger one (i.e. the World War II D-Day landings at Normandy in June, 1944) it rarely drags its heels.
Also noteworthy is the cast. It's packed with famous faces but many have little more than a cameo role. The closest it has to a leading man is either John Wayne or Robert Mitchum, but even they feature only occasionally because the binding thread is the event itself, not any one person or squad. That means we get scenes not just from the Allied side but the French and German sides, too, and in each case it's in the nation's native tongue, like it ought to be.

4 tough nuts out of 5

The Snapper (1993)

As if six bickering kids of his own weren't enough to cope with, Dessie's limited peace is further shattered when his eldest daughter (Tina Kellegher) gets herself "up the pole" for the first time. The resultant shit-storm over who the father is or isn't (she refuses to tell) is the basic set-up in a smaller-screen follow-up to Roddy Doyle's The Commitments (1991).
He may technically be only a supporting cast member but Colm Meaney as Dessie earns himself the biggest slice of celebratory cake. His working class one-liners are hilarious and even when evoking pained sympathy his outbursts are laced with an acidic and sarcastic Irish wit.

3 wrong wrong words out of 5

Koma (2004)

A Cantonese language film directed by Law Chi-Leung that has some impressive camerawork in the first half, making it feel like we're inhabiting the same space as the characters do. It's shot like a horror movie a lot of the time but is actually more of a thriller about human relationships that get more complex as it goes along, due in part to the scalpels and illegal kidney removals. It was okay, but the final act was by the numbers.

2½ icy baths out of 5

Shock Treatment (1981)

It's the Brad and Janet characters from The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) moved from that crazy world and placed into an equally crazy one: the cutthroat world of manufactured reality TV fame, years before such a thing became the shit-stain on programming that it's been for the past 20+ years.
ST will probably always exist in the shadow of RHPS, but to lambaste or dismiss it entirely for that reason, like some folks actually do, is unfair. Judged on its own merits it's lively; its commentary on the 'wholesomeness' of US culture and advertising is savagely satirical; the songs are catchy and funny; and Jessica Harper is a great choice for Janet, whose girl-next-door beauty is exploited by manipulative businessmen for their own nefarious ends.

3 crowd-pleasing happy thoughts out of 5