Tourist hotties. Psycho ocker. Unconscionable Strine. Three young backpackers visit WOLF CREEK meteorite crater in Western Australia, on a killer vacation. Two British girls, Liz (skinny, square-jawed Cassandra Magrath) and Kristy (blond busty Kestie Morassi) team up with low-education-taut-abs Sydney surfer-boy Ben (Nathan Phillips), to drive across Australia in a shitbox he just purchased, hitting tourist hotspots along the way. … Read More
THE PROPHECY: FORSAKEN
Hells to the No. Again with the boasting: “I could whisper a suggestion and have you step in front of a subway train, I could force a neighbor to hurl you down a flight of stairs. I can put a baby in your belly that would rip its way out of your womb in three days–” Okay, I wanna see … Read More
THE PROPHECY: UPRISING
My gorge is up rising. There’s this “anti-bible,” see? And the Big Man Himself is narrating it even at this moment, burning the ancient Aramaic into the pages. He’s putting the finishing touches on The Book of Revelations because it went to the printer too early the first time, apparently. And – like all three previous PROPHECY movies – it’s … Read More
FOUR BROTHERS
Four Muthas. Four adopted brothers – two white, two black – reunite in the hood to hunt down their mother’s killer. And make a racial bonding statement. FOUR BROTHERS stars Mark Wahlberg as Bobby Mercer, one of four “brothers” (unrelated street kids adopted by kindly Fionnula Flanagan when she couldn’t find homes for them), all returning to their Detroit haunt … Read More
HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX
Order off the Menu. Nothing’s pulling the carriage, Harry. It’s pulling itself, like always… — Hermione, ORDER OF THE PHOENIX. HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX reminds us of how Jor-El’s warnings to Krypton’s elders went unheeded, and how Krypton paid the price. In PHOENIX, the demon wizard Voldemort is back – but no one believes the people … Read More
HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE
Goblet-de-gook. HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE continues the disjointed adventure of the world’s most famous boy wizard; not so much a feature film as a laundry list of tasks performed by two-dimensional characters, told with no logic, less motivation and lots and lots of not very special effects. It’s Magic! That’s great! Fuck you! It surely seems like … Read More
SERENITY
A ‘verse not big enough for Joss Whedon’s ideas. Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane!…Well, it’s kinda both. It’s a goose-shaped spaceship called Serenity. Space cowboy and Gale Harold lookalike, Nathan Fillion, leads his hip crew of lovable space brigands, as they ricochet around the galaxy, avoiding government spooks, mutated killers and references to STAR WARS, … Read More
STEALTH
Top Dumb. Uninvolving tale of a hi-tech artificial intelligence warplane that threatens to make human pilots redundant. STEALTH stars Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel and Jamie Foxx as the three top gun pilots the robot plane may potentially replace. Ironically, in this movie, they all act like robots. Part of a secret military project (is there any other kind?), overseen by … Read More
THE ISLAND
Attack of the Clones. You know what they say: Every man is an island. Unless he has a clone. Then he’s an archipelago. Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson discover they are clones living in an underground community, being cultivated for rich people as “harvestable beings” for their body parts. And who wouldn’t want body parts from Ewan McGregor and Scarlett … Read More
MILLION DOLLAR BABY
Punch drunk love. Clint Eastwood‘s magnificent tone-poem of determination, redemption, salvation, loyalty, guilt… oh, and there’s some boxing and stuff… MILLION DOLLAR BABY is as much a “boxing movie” as UNFORGIVEN is a “cowboy movie.” That is to say, not at all. (Simpletons: “Say wha–?”) Sure, Clint plays a boxing trainer, Frankie Dunn, in a boxing gym, surrounded by boxers … Read More
KISS KISS BANG BANG
Lethal Schleppin’. A petty thief (Robert Downey Jr.) finds himself allied with a gay private detective (Val Kilmer) and thrown into a Los Angeles murder mystery. It’s like LETHAL WEAPON if Riggs and Murtaugh were totally incompetent. KISS KISS BANG BANG is a self-aware, wry action comedy, from a book by Brett Halliday (Bodies Are Where You Find Them), directed … Read More
HOSTAGE
Like a hostage, we are captive. There’s no denying Bruce Willis has based his career on The John McClane (which is something like The Tom Cruise, only a lot more tolerable) – that intensely smug, sassy maverick. That’s not to say he isn’t a great actor, but The John McClane has woven itself so deeply into Willis’s turbo-charged man-roles over … Read More
A SOUND OF THUNDER
A Sound of Chunder. A Sound of Thunder. One of the greatest short stories ever written. By one of the grandest Grand Masters of Fantasy, Ray Bradbury. A SOUND OF THUNDER. Vomitous movie. In Bradbury’s science fiction short story, a company called Time Safari offers big game hunters the opportunity to go back in time and kill dinosaurs. Rule Number … Read More
SAW II
Seen it once, SAW it again… The opening scene of SAW II is as compelling and horrifying as anything you will ever see as a human being with pain receptors: A man wakes in a dungeon with an open bear trap locked around his neck, lined with nails. It is on a timer to snap shut on his head, but … Read More
THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE
The Lyin,’ the Snitch and the Whored Road. Four bloodless, pasty-white British kids on an adventure in a magical wardrobe. When I was 13, I loved the C.S. Lewis book so madly that I forced my mother to read it on the train on her way to work every day. Fast forward thirty years, I knew the film version of … Read More
THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN
Most fun you can have not having sex. Judd Apatow’s THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN has a premise which is utterly ridiculous, a story utterly preposterous and a cast utterly hilarious. Steve Carell is Andy, the eponymous 40-year-old virgin, enjoying his bachelorhood working at an electronics store by day, painting action figures and playing video games by night. After Andy’s … Read More
MR AND MRS SMITH
Emasculation Proclamation. Almost – but not quite – Bennifer. Idiotically tagged “Brangelina,” the publicity-romance dream team of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie explode in popcorn bedlam in MR. AND MRS. SMITH, as married super spies who are unaware that each other is a spy. …Real pros. Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to popcorn and die – … Read More
JARHEAD
JARHEAD is the new JACKET. Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy. — Henry Kissinger. “Every war is different. Every war is the same.” Kubrick’s FULL METAL JACKET (1987) followed U.S. Marines from boot camp to Viet Nam. Director Sam Mendes keeps the formula and updates the war in JARHEAD (to the … Read More
FANTASTIC FOUR
Fourscore Bore. Four scientists and a rich guy use Movie Excuse Number Seven to go up in the rich guy’s space station where they are all engulfed in Movie Convention Number Twelve (see “cosmic storm”) which gives them super powers. While using Movie Explosions Numbers Six through Twenty-Four, a story emerges as the Four scientists turn into Movie Stereotype John … Read More
WAR OF THE WORLDS 2005
Spielberg and Cruise: Reign of the Smugs. One good thing can be said about the alien attack in WAR OF THE WORLDS – at least it achieved the mission impossible of wiping that insufferable smirk off Tom Cruise’s face. Steven Spielberg wields this remake of H.G. Wells‘ 1898 classic tale like Mel Gibson wielded his recounting of the peacenik crucified … Read More