I spent our nation's birthday feeling rather crappy (like everything else on Earth, colds are worse in the summer), but I managed to do two American things on the Fourth: I washed my car and I watched Showgirls. That's what this nation's founders fought and died for, right?
"...gave proof through the night/that her boobs were still there."
My buddy MaryAnn wrote a great review (as usual) of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer on her site, in which she complained about the self-centeredness of the foursome. One of her commenters agreed, noting that Warren Ellis (who wrote Ultimate Fantastic Four for a while) had even said the F4 are not exactly good people. So I went into the theater with a plan: to view the movie through the lens of "these superheroes should probably be taken out and shot."
And that perspective worked all too well.
Continue reading "Super-heroes, really rather crappy people" »
A recent upgrade to our cable service has given us 3 free months of Cinemax. At first, we were unsure how much of a bonus this would be, but last week we realized that we've been given temporary access to a treasure trove of badly made, incompetent, non-arousing softcore porn. Now, some of you may be saying, "Hey, but it's still porn... ish. How bad could it be?" But what if there was no nudity and you had to watch the scenes of dialog and plot? Well, wonder no more! I've compiled the non-porn scenes from Busty Cops 2: More Cops, Bigger Busts. And it's mind-blowingly awesome.
Clearly.
This is my entry in Nathaniel's Action Heroine Blog-a-Thon. Being the massive Jolie fangirl that I am, I jumped at the chance to write about what makes her so damn watchable as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider, despite the fact that the film itself is awful. (I'm not even going to touch the sequel; it was even worse than the original, if you can believe that.)
And yet, whenever Tomb Raider appeared on cable in the early '00s, I'd watch it. What drew me in? It wasn't the clever plot. It wasn't the razor-sharp dialogue. It wasn't the breathless sense of excitement or tension. It wasn't the special effects. No, it was something more dazzling than all of the above put together.
Angelina Jolie's smile.
I'm not going to lie to you: I'm a little unnerved by the coming summer movie season. Yes, you've got Harry Potter. But you've also got another Fantastic Four movie. You've got a long-awaited Die Hard movie, but you've also got the utterly unawaited, unasked-for and undeserved sequel to Bruce Almighty. I don't know what to make of Transformers, and you will never get me to see I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry for love or money. It's a pretty mixed bag, is what I'm saying.
And nothing exemplifies how random it can be than my reaction to the two movies I saw over the past two weekends. Talk about night and day...
Continue reading "Blockbusters, gutbusters... and cat poetry" »
J and I have taken to watching the Sci-Fi Saturday night movie... on purpose. Honestly, when it's 9 p.m. on Saturday, you're tuckered out from yard work and you just don't feel like going out, oftentimes your best bet on TV is going to be whatever schlock masterpiece the Sci-Fi channel is airing.
We've seen some classics in our time: Mammoth, Dragon Sword, Mansquito, Frankenfish, Ice Cream Man, and the Yeti Trio (Sasquatch, Sasquatch Mountain and Abominable -- all of which, incredibly, have Lance Henriksen in them). So we were expecting something pretty special with this week's offering, Kaw.
(You know, "caw," like the sound a crow makes.) Unfortunately, Kaw actually plays its ridiculous plot straight, resulting in a movie that tries to create terror but only comes up with a feathery mess. I've also come to think of the movie as The Turds.
There's definitely such a thing as too much of a good thing. Especially when it's not so much that as it is "too much of a thing that's much better than you thought it would be in some ways, but mind-numbingly bad in other ways." In other words, I think they might have gilded the lily in making Grindhouse a double feature.
Caution: There are SPOILERS aplenty in this review, so you might not want to read much further if you prefer to be surprised. You also might not want to keep reading if you think Quentin Tarantino can do no wrong.
I think it's been four or five months since I recorded this film off the Sci-Fi network. Damn. That's a long time to wait for a movie recap, especially if it's for the wackiest medieval fantasy epic ever to air on expanded cable: Dragon Sword. But then, the movie itself languished in distribution hell for two years before it even got onto TV, so maybe my delay isn't so bad.
Did I mention that it contains 1991's Sexiest Man Alive? You know you've missed him!
Some of you might be wondering why I haven't posted anything on the Oscar nominations yet. Frankly, I'm a little underwhelmed and disappointed in the choices. Maybe I got a little too into the whole Golden Globes business, but I just feel like we've been through this already. Almost exactly, in fact.
When I look through the nominations in what I consider the major categories (acting, directing, best film and best foreign language film), I don't see a whole lot of difference in the nominations. And while I guess that's a feather in the cap of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, it makes for a pretty boring awards season. Still, there are enough differences to warrant some discussion, plus I've got to go off on my designated rants for the season.
