Children Of The Damned. When Ashton Kutcher is the funniest thing in your movie, it’s time to re-assess everything you hold dear. CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN is an unworthy, implausible remake of a 1950 film of the same name, with parents Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt unconvincingly helming a hornet’s nest of selfish, ill-mannered, impertinent teen and sub-teen models in … Read More
HULK
Shrek On Steroids. Despite the disconcerting fact that the HULK does in fact look like a juiced Shrek, this is not as bad a film as its detractors would have us believe. With the masterful Ang Lee in the director’s chair, the blame for this production’s lack of luster must surely be placed on the shoulders of others. Even though … Read More
HOUSE OF THE DEAD
Laid up and drugged out, as a kidney stone wended its merry way through my scarred urinary tract, with ab-so-lute-ly nothing better to do than let the painkillers swoon me into semi-oblivion, I happened to catch this movie on cable. I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I paid to view it in a cinema, or rented it, or – … Read More
TENACIOUS D THE COMPLETE MASTERWORKS
Once every hundred-thousand years or so, when the sun doth shine and the moon doth glow… Not exactly Spinal Tap. Not exactly Martin & Lewis. Not exactly normal. Once in a great while, an act appears that shimmers with such kineticism, such verve and lust, that audiences are scorched into submission – such an act is The Darkness – oh, … Read More
THE CORE
Anthropocentric Spin. I want to hurt this movie. Like it hurt me. THE CORE opens with a Peter Gallagher clone sans Eyebrows dropping dead at a board meeting – so begins a series of events that establish the Earth’s core has inexplicably stopped spinning, causing electromagnetic anomalies. So scientists must drill down and re-start the spin with The Universal Solvent … Read More
SCHOOL OF ROCK
Tenacious D’s Boy-Thunder Rides Hellacious and Raises The Goblet Of Rock. A beautiful rarity when an actor is bequeathed a role that envelops him (in the words of Ace Ventura) “like a glove.” This movie IS Jack Black. And Jack Black IS this movie. Had he not piloted SCHOOL OF ROCK like a deranged Timothy Leary by way of Keith … Read More
IDENTITY
Identity Cleft. More than a murder mystery. More than a psychological thriller. More than a horror movie. IDENTITY is its own special slice of crazy. With most viewers being either misled by this movie’s similarities to Agatha Christie’s TEN LITTLE INDIANS, or just pompously broadcasting their knowledge that IDENTITY was inspired by it, they missed the point this was not … Read More
TIMELINE
Space-Time Continuum Saved by Surfer Dude & Community Theatre Actress. TIMELINE makes the execrable indecency of THE CORE look like a scientific masterpiece. With costumes borrowed from a traveling Renaissance Festival and actors borrowed from the local community theatre, even the brainless idiocy of FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY reads like CITIZEN KANE when weighed against this bone-chilling waste of resources … Read More
CHARLIE’S ANGELS FULL THROTTLE
Too much style IS a bad thing. Despite the consensus that Cameron Diaz wantonly proffering her backside like a baboon in estrus makes for good cinema, my existence would be incalculably enhanced if I never witness this repulsive rectal display cloaked in ostensible good-natured humor ever again in my short span on this earth. CHARLIE’S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE is so … Read More
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING
deus ex tolkiena. Okay, tattered robes deployed? – check; multiple story lines at the ready to entwine and entangle viewers? – check; sets constructed on a budget which would’ve stamped out hunger in Ethiopia? – check; everyone smeared in poo? – check – let’s roll! Trust me, Movie Maniac, if you’ve not seen the first two installments of this bloated, … Read More
X2: X-MEN UNITED
X-traordinary. In X2: X-MEN UNITED, the two factions of warring mutants we met in X-MEN (2000) unite against a common enemy: homo sapiens. And all genetic babbling breaks loose… The “good” mutants (the ones tagged with the X-Men epithet) are Professor X (Patrick Stewart), Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, Wolverine, Iceman and Rogue (joined by additional cast, Nightcrawler and Colossus); the … Read More
THE TV WHEEL
Pure Joel, Pure Genius. THE TV WHEEL is a large circular studio set with a camera in the middle, able to rotate and capture sketch performances in segments of the circular set. As one sketch is performed in one segment of the set, another segment sets up the props for the next sketch, camera rotating to capture that sketch, and … Read More
KISS SYMPHONY
Elevator Muzak pumped with testicular dynamite. It’s KISS Meets The Phantom Of The… Opera. Like the great Godzilla matchups of old, it’s KISS versus the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. And all Strauss breaks loose. The machine started rolling on the band’s fourth live album in 2000, but politics (and Ace Frehley’s launch off KISS planet) shelved that endeavor. Three years later, … Read More
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