The movie begins where all great superheroes are born; a comic book store. Where we get to meet Dave (Aaron Johnson), your average, all-American geeky teen. After being used and abused by some “gangsta” boys, decides to act out his fantasy. Not the disturbing sex day dream he has about his english teacher. No, he joins Spiderman, Batman and Superman as Kick Ass (such a more definitive name don’t you think). He sets out to stop the evil of the New York streets (sound familiar?). The movie begins to look like your run of the mill teen drama posing as a superhero movie *cough Spiderman 3 cough*. That is until the 11 year old Hit Girl comes out to play. How many movies have an 11 year old girl swearing more than Tony Montana? She and Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) come in and turn the story on it’s head and force it to become one of the most violent comic book movies of all time. Kick Ass more than lives up to it’s name. One of the most in your face, kick your ass, not afraid to create controversy movies of the last 10 years.

The DVD features commentary with Vaughn, Johnson, Cage and Mintz-Plasse.Features scenes that were too much for theaters (as if seeing a man explode in a microwave wasn’t enough). Featurette with the entire cast and crew.

If you’re in the mood to see  an 11 year old girl  mutilate and destroy men much bigger than her (and Orphan is unavailable) look no further.

If you ‘re  a fan of hardcore violence with a tinge of tongue in cheek comic spin pick this movie up… Do yourself a favor and invest in the Kick Ass 3 disc Bluray package it makes it even better.

Contributing Critic……C.C. Edwards

Danny Trejo was in the Robert Rodriguez-produced Predators earlier this summer, now he’s back, and Machete is a real film.

He’s called Machete because, well, he carries a machete. He’s a former Mexican Federale, double-crossed and left for dead. He’s fled to Texas, working as a day laborer, and there he’s approached by a rich businessman to kill a U.S. senator for money.

Machete!

I haven’t read the book, so I have no idea how faithful the movie is to the original material. Wes Anderson tends to make movies that are like intricate model dioramas (Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, the Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, the Darjeeling Limited). So the miniatures-and-stop-animation format is right up his alley.

George Clooney voices Mr. Fox, a dapper vulpine. His wife (Meryl Streep) wants him to change his chicken-stealing ways. But the lure of three nearby farms proves too much for him, and he returns to his gentleman thief ways. Meanwhile, his son Ash (Jason Schwartzman) is jealous of his visiting cousin, who seems to succeed in everything he tries effortlessly.

George Clooney here finally makes a good crime caper movie. Maybe he’ll resist doing Ocean’s 14 now.

The humor is aimed at adults as well as kids, but there’s nothing inappropriate for kids.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

New York, I Love You

Directors include Mira Nair, Brett Ratner, Allen Hughes, and Natalie Portman.

Unlike Paris je t’aime, there’s more of an effort to tie the stories together, with characters from one segment making appearance in another. So the effect is like one of those Crash gumbos. Whether this was necessary is debatable; if there are 8 million stories in the naked city, 11 of them don’t really need to intersect.

Many of the stories seem to involve alienated people meeting cute; outside a restaurant for a smoke break, or intersecting in unusual jobs, leading to a possible romantic or sexual encounter.

It’s kind of like making a meal of appetizers. But, if one story isn’t to your taste, another will be coming along in a few minutes.

Set in the distant future Zombieland stars Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), a young man on a quest to see his family in Ohio after the Zombie apocalypse has ravaged the entire world and he’s desperate to find one thing that feels like home. Columbus has a knack for talking to himself and along the way imparting pearls of wisdom for us the viewing audience should we ever find ourselves in a similar situation. Perfect example, Rule #1 Cardio… Zombies can’t eat what they can’t catch. There are plenty of these and they’re presented throughout the film, and they’re all hysterical.

Anywhoo, back to the point; Columbus encounters Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) who’s only purpose in this now F’d up existence is the never ending search for a golden flaky, cream filled slice of heaven known to the common man as the Twinky. Which in case you didn’t know actually does have an expiration date of 25 to 30 days, so sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings but contrary to popular belief they do go bad. Our two heroes go from place to place in search of these spongy beauties and through this obsession they encounter the final characters of importance Wichita and Little Rock (Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin), who constantly gain the upperhand no matter what the situation may be. Con Artists it would seem come in all shapes and ages when the world has turned to sheeot and you only have a life expectancy of the afore mentioned Twinky, so these girls do what they have to do, including stealing the heroes ride… never rub another mans rhubarb. On that note I’ll stop before I accidentally give away a key piece of info and mess it up for everyone.

The plot is pretty simple at the heart of it all; Zombies chase and eat human kind and our 4 heroes kill zombies to stay alive, and along the way have some very hilarious misadventures, and find out that life is worth living even if its just for the little things.

Zombieland is very heavy on the funny and off the charts on the gore but it’s well worth your Friday night and the cash that it takes to see it. My only question to the readers is this… Is it just me or is Jesse Eisenberg a poor man’s Michael Cera? Or is Michael Cera a poor copy of Jesse Eisenberg? A thought to ponder while waiting in line because those two cats are totally interchangeable.

The Hangover

The premise is classic.  Doug, played by Justin Bartha, is getting married.  So, three of his friends are taking him to Vegas for the classic bachelors last stand a couple of days before the wedding.   These guys have a night in Vegas that is for the record books.

But the story is told in a very unique manner.  We do not see the night, we see the aftermath.  The boys wake up in a trashed hotel suite.  The groom is missing, so is one of the guys’ pants and underwear.   But they do have a few additions including a live tiger in the toilet, a chicken and a baby in the bar.   What follows is one absurb hysterical situation after another as they try to unravel what happened and find the missing groom in time to get him home for his wedding the next day.

This is not a huge name cast, nor a big well known director.   And I’ve seen some of the stuffy critics reviews.   Don’t believe any of them, this movie is flat out funny and looks to be one of the largest comedies of all time.   Unfortunately it probably means we’re going to get a run of progressively worse and worse sequels, but hey, enjoy this first one it rocks!

Go see it, grab it on DVD for your collection.  I’m sure we have a uncut unrated version to look forward to.    This gets 5 stars, I can’t recommend it highly enough.   And be sure to stick around for the credits.

Lest I be accused of spoilers, this is revealed in the first thirty seconds of the film.

(500) Days of Summer

Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt – 3rd Rock From the Sun, the exceptional movies Brick and The Lookout, and strangely enough, Cobra in the upcoming G.I. Joe movie) is a failed architect who works writing copy at a greeting card company. Enter Summer (Zooey Deschanel – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and numerous Indie-films), the cute, ethereal, somewhat spooky new girl at the office. Tom is smitten.

What follows is 500 days of ups and downs in their relationship. We see it out of sequence; it jumps back and forth between the 500 days.

Everyone probably goes through this type of relationship early on; puppy dog love that’s blind to the fact that the object of its affections is actually a slightly different species all together.

One example, after their first sexual encounter, Tom walks through the park and imagines random passersby breaking into a coordinated musical number to celebrate his scoring.

This is a clever, funny movie that has some hard truths about relationships that you don’t always see in a romantic comedy.

And the worst part is, she’s completely honest with him: She doesn’t want a long term relationship, and she’s not seeing somebody else. That said, she is also playing games with him, with a studied obtuseness.

Sometimes the comedy is a little uneven; for a movie that seems to be trying to strike a realistic tone in much of it, it strikes a false note when Tom, in his cups at the nadir of their relationship, is reduced to writing greeting cards like “Rose are red, violets are blue,” (inside card) “Screw you, bitch!” Yeah, it’s kind of funny, but if he’s actually turning these in to his boss, it hints that he’s bipolar or something, not suggested otherwise in the film.

But there’s a lot of good stuff here. It’s a bittersweet comedy, and that’s not a throwaway reference; it’s bitter, and it’s sweet.

I do find myself wondering, if the movie hadn’t tipped us off at the beginning that the romance wasn’t going to work out, how audiences would take it. Disappointed that they didn’t get a typical Hollywood romantic comedy?

Beyond the dinosaurs, this does incorporate a lot of atmosphere from the original series. In this version, Marshall, Will, and Holly are not related, and are all adults, so we get a lot of jokes about groping Holly’s boobs. But there are still cliff landscapes, jungles, lost cities, and the lizard-men Sleestaks, along with semi-evolved primate Cha-Ka.

But what it mostly is, is Will Ferrell doing some crude, sometimes gross, and generally pretty funny schtick in dinosaur lands – sometimes Laugh Out Loud funny.

It’s not really much of a parody of the old show – oddly enough, the Sleestaks are played pretty straight. And I’m not sure how much of this really needed to be in The Land of the Lost… pretty much the same jokes would have worked with any time-machine-throws-us-back-in-time story.

But, probably a lot of people seeing it have never heard of the original show.

Quite a lot of the movie takes place in a sort of desert Sargasso Sea of time; where artifacts from our world seem to have dropped in willy-nilly. I don’t remember that in the old show, but maybe that was in the 2nd or 3rd season.

The movie seems a little confused at times as to what kind of farce it wants to be. Still, Will Ferrell dumping dinosaur pee on himself, that’s entertainment!

Carl Fredricksen (Ed Asner) is a 78-year-old widower, cranky and living in the same house that his wife and he shared all their lives. In their younger days, they dreamed of being explorers, fans of the Professor Challenger-ish Charles Muntz, going to a Lost Plateau in Peru. Carl has slowly watched his neighborhood devoured by skyscrapers, and developers want to tear down his house as well. After an altercation, he’s threatened with being shipped off to a nursing home. So he straps a whole bunch of helium balloons to his house, and sets his sights on South America.

Unfortunately, a boy scout, Russell, who was trying to get his badge for helping a senior citizen, is inadvertently brought along for the ride.

Once they’ve ballooned onto the Lost Plateau, they encounter strange animals and make a nemesis.

Where Pixar stands out is in story and characterization, not just the computer animation. What hooked me on this was the touching extended prologue where we see the guy grow from childhood to an old man with his sweetheart.

This is maybe less ambitious of a movie than the recent Pixar efforts (Ratatouille and WALL-E – a rat going to cooking school and a robot pantomining its emotions) – but it’s a better overall result.

The clever bit here in the action sequences is, after the balloons have lost a bit of buoyancy, the house has ceased being a float that can carry our heroes weight and more of a floating tether that they have to haul around. This leads to a series of inventive and exciting action sequences revolving around what happens when you’re being chased while towing a floating house.

Also, in theaters this is preceded by a Pixar short, Partly Cloudy. There have been plenty of cartoons about how the stork brings babies, but none quite like this one!

He learns that many of the figures are being put into storage in Washington to make way for hologram exhibits. So he goes to say goodbye to his pals. But that darn monkey steals the tablet, and so, everything comes alive in the Smithsonian.

Now Larry has to go to the Smithsonian to fix things. But an Evil Egyptian Pharoah (Hank Azaria) has come alive and wants to take over the world.

Yes, this is pretty much the same movie in a new museum, but it’s a cooler museum, America’s Attic. It’s a kid’s movie, but a pretty good one. Museums are cool, and spooky, and there’s probably not a night watchmen in any museum who hasn’t paced the halls at night, wondering, what if all this stuff started moving?

Amy Adams really steals the show as Amelia Earhart. She’s so spunky there should be, and probably is, an Action Figure. It’ll be interesting to compare her Amelia Earhart with Hilary Swank’s in October when the movie Amelia comes out.

Now, if I found myself speaking to Amelia Earhart, there’s probably a question I’d want to ask of her: What the heck happened to you? But, since these museum figures, despite their preternatural animation and sentience, only know what history knows (they’re not the “real thing”), maybe that’s why Larry never pops that question.

One cool addition in this is the Modern Art sculptures coming alive. Also, paintings and pictures come alive, Harry Potter-style. Not sure what Edward Hopper’s NIGHTHAWKS is doing in the Smithsonian rather than the Art Institute of Chicago, but there it is.

I note for the record that a pretty scary horror movie could be made on this same concept – especially the idea of trapped sentience in the inanimate made animate. But, this is not that movie!

This 3-D animated movie asks, what if all of those movies were dropped into a blender?   What if all those monsters existed in the same world, like a kid’s version of Alan Moore’s LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN?   A League of Extraordinary Monsters, if you will.

Enter Susan Murphy (Reese Witherspoon), an ordinary young woman who has the misfortune to be hit by a radioactive meteorite right before her wedding.     She quickly grows to a great height (49 feet 11 inches, so she’s NOT a fifty-foot woman!).  She stomps through her wedding like Bridezilla, and soon government black helicopters are surrounding her, and they’ve got a big tranquilizing dart just for the occasion.

She wakes up in a secret Area 51-ish government base, which is effectively a prison for an oddball crew of Earth-spawned monsters:   B.O.B., a good-natured, dimwitted gelatinous mass (Seth Rogen).  Dr. Cockroach, a mad scientist who combined cockroach DNA into his own (Hugh Laurie).  The Missing Link, a fish-ape hybrid (Will Arnett).  And Insectosaurus,   a 350-foot monster caught stomping Tokyo.

They’re all pretty cuddly, and surprisingly not very upset about being incarcerated in a secret government prison for decades.

The general in charge of the operation (Kiefer Sutherland) informs Susan that she will now be known as Ginormica.    But, since she’ll be kept locked away, she won’t get much chance to use her new moniker.

Things change however when an alien invasion starts, led by Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson), and his alien clone army.    An Attack of the Clones, if you will.    

The government calls on the Earth monsters to win one for the home planet.

What follows is an epic battle in San Francisco culminating on the Golden Gate Bridge (Shades of the Ray Harryhausen movie It Came From Beneath The Sea with the giant octopus attacking the Golden Gate Bridge).

Then Susan gets abducted aboard a UFO because the head alien wants the radioactive stuff that made her big, and her new-found Earth monster pals have to try to rescue her.

Dreamworks made this, and it has the directors of Shrek 2 and Fish Tale.    This is a better movie than either of those, however.

Rounding out the voice talents are Stephen Colbert, Paul Rudd, and Amy Poehler.

It claims to be the first animated movie completely in 3-D (I thought Fly Me To The Moon was also claiming that title).   The 3-D is good, no doubt about it.

This is a fun time; nothing here that isn’t suitable for kids, but plenty that adults can laugh at, particularly if you’re a fan of those old 1950s monster movies.  And the alien invasion is more like what the movie Mars Attacks! should have been.

There’s a lot of fun cameos from various aspects of fandom, which I’m not going to list here, so as not to spoil it. And it ends with a caper sequence onto George Lucas’s Inner Sanctum.

This is a funny film, affectionate towards nerds (although harsher on Trekkies than Star Warsers…uh, whatever you call Star Wars fans).

And even for the non-fan, it’s funny, the humor doesn’t depend on you being up on How Many Parsecs Han Solo Did The Kessel Run in. But, if you are a fan, there’s a lot to chortle at.

Ben Stiller stars and directs.  We were scared of that combo because we kept having Zoolander flashbacks.   This time he again goes over the top, but stops short of being nauseating.   This is at least partially thanks to being surrounded by other strong cast members who help dilute things.

Ben, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black, Brandon T. Jackson and Jay Baruchel play 4 actors starring in a Vietnam war film.   However, they end up in real combat with Vietnamese drug lords.   What makes this work is the mix of characters, each actor plays a stereotype of a different “problem” personality type.   Ben is the washed up action hero trying to prove he’s a real actor.   Jack Black is the druggy.   Jay Baruchel is the star struck unknown.   Jackson plays the rapper turned actor.  And the scene stealer is Robert Downey Jr. playing a blonde haired blue eyed Australian 5 time Oscar winner.   Who could they possibly be thinking of when they wrote that character?   Oh,  and by the way, he is such a character actor that he got his skin dyed to play a black man, and he of course refuses to slip out of character until “the DVD commentary is done”.

This makes for a funny funny combination with each of the characters having some really great memorable lines.   Tropic Thunder has potential to be one of those movies that guys quote from for years.   It may also be one of the most politically incorrect movies shot in a long time.   But so far not a lot of controversy even with Downey going “black face”.   The reason?   The movie is hysterical, it’s not offensive it’s just funny as heck.

Tropic Thunder is likely to end up being one of those late summer releases that does ok at the box office, but quickly goes to DVD and really mops up.    We give it a very strong 4 stars.   We laughed til our sides hurt.   And if nothing else, you have to see this one to see what has to be Tom Cruise’s best performance ever.   I wont spoil that, just go see for yourself.

While they’re there, the older, jovial Ken wants to play tourist. The younger Ray is bored out of his skull, and also guilt ridden for what he did back in London. They spend a lot of time sitting in restaurants and talking about funny stuff, all while swearing a blue streak. Periodically there’s some sudden, shocking violence.

But the film works at a deeper level than a Tarantino movie. While Tarantino’s characters like to B.S. about philosophy, these guys, surprisingly, actually seem like fairly moral guys beneath their hit men exteriors. And that probably means they’ve chosen a career that isn’t going to end well for them.

Ray strikes up a romance with a Belgian girl (who incidentally is Clémence Poésy, the French Chick in HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE).

He also meets a surly dwarf, hilariously played by Jordan Prentice (And I would have bet money it was Peter Dinklage, because the two actors do look similar, although probably not side-by-side) who is in Bruges to film a movie where he plays the inevitable dwarf in a dream sequence (which is probably a joke reference to Peter Dinklage’s role in LIVING IN OBLIVION).

This is a dark comedy, and very funny, but ultimately surprisingly moving as well. The ending maybe has a little too much synchronicity for its own good.

DVD extras: Deleted and Extended Scenes, Gag Reel, When in Bruges (Making Of), Strange Bruges, A Boat Trip Around Bruges, F**king Bruges.

Now FOX is producing four straight-to-DVD movies, and this first one, FUTURAMA: BENDER’S BIG SCORE, came out in November 2007.

A race of nudist aliens (and, like most nudists, they should keep their clothes on) has attacked Earth with an email scamming plot, and are taking over the planet with identify theft and stolen credit card numbers.

They discover that, mysteriously, the secret to time travel has been tattooed on Fry’s ass in the form of a Bender tattoo. Using this, they take over Bender and send him into the past to steal Earth’s greatest art treasures.

Time travel was a plotline not explored on the FUTURAMA series, with the exception of one expedition to 1947 Roswell.

This works as an epic story more than just a string of FUTURAMA episodes lumped together (although it’s being sliced up into 4 episodes for syndication). The 4+ year hiatus allowed the writers to bring their A-game back to this. And they get a bit fancier with the animation. About the only thing that doesn’t work is some ill-conceived musical numbers.

If you’re not a fan of the show, this probably won’t change your mind, but if you did like the show, this is a fun reunion.

DVD extras:

* Feature-length commentary with Groening, the writers and director, and the voice actors.
* “Futurama Returns!”, a live reading by the cast of a FUTURAMA comic book at a science fiction convention.
* “A Terrifying Message from Al Gore.”
* “Bite My Shiny Metal X”, A math lecture about FUTURAMA.
* “Everybody Loves Hypnotoad”, a TV show from the FUTURAMA-verse.
* Deleted scenes.
* Character sketches.
* Comic-Con promo.

Clooney plays Dodge, a professional in the not-very-respected game of football, who’s getting a little too old for this stuff. John Krasinski (From the TV show THE OFFICE) plays a young World War I hero who, now just finishing college football, is convinced to Go Pro. Meanwhile, football is about to be transformed out of cow pastures and into the commercial venture we know today.

Renee Zellweger (who seems to be the Go To Girl when it comes to doing a 1920s movie) is a reporter ostensibly doing a puff piece on the team but actually trying to track down a rumor that the hero’s World War I experiences are much exaggerated.

What develops is sort of a love triangle.

This is a good-natured comedy that is funny, but unfortunately runs out of steam about 3/4ths of the way through it. Right before The Big Game finale, which is a bad sign in a sports movie. One problem is that Clooney seems to like all these characters so much that he can’t really bring himself to make anyone The Bad Guy.

How forgiving you are of the movie’s faults probably depends on how interesting 1920s proto-football is to you, and whether or not you know what 1930s screwball comedy is.

But Clooney has great comic timing, and he’s not afraid to poke fun at himself.

Five years later, he has visitation rights to his young son, but is trying to win back the mother of his child. She’s being romanced by a handsome, arrogant American (Hank Azaria, who does most of the voices on THE SIMPSONS).

Somehow Dennis convinces himself that if he can run a marathon he’ll have shown that he can stick with something for once in his life and he’ll win the girl back.

He’s actually not all that fat, but he is out of shape, so this becomes a sort of Labor of Hercules, if Hercules was a slob.

He’s egged on by his eccentric friend (Dylan Moran, also in SHAWN OF THE DEAD) , and coached by his Indian landlord (and his landlord’s incredibly hot daughter).

The writing in this isn’t anything spectacular (it’s pretty much what it appears, Slob-ROCKY romantic-comedy), but it is funny, due to the talents of Simon Pegg, Hank Azaria, and Dylan Moran.

It’s a spoof of the 1960s animated series JONNY QUEST, but it spoofs a lot of superhero comics, boys action-adventure series, etc.

The Venture Brothers are Hank and Dean Venture. Their dad, Dr. Thaddeus “Rusty” Venture, is a super-scientist. They live in his laboratory/headquarters/compound with their bodyguard, Brock Samson.

Each episode they get into adventures, often due to the nemesis of Dr. Venture, arch-villain The Monarch, and his many henchman.

Several writers of this worked on THE TICK, and it has that feel, but with more sexual innuendo and more fart jokes.

Several episodes spoof The Fantastic Four (The Visible Woman can only make her skin become invisible, leaving muscles and veins like one of those old plastic anatomical models).

Various sometimes-villains-sometimes-allies show up, like Russian femme fatale Molotov Cocktease.

In one episode, Dr. Venture has a yard sale to clear out some of the junk his father (also a super-scientist) accumulated. All the super-villains show up, hoping to buy super-weapons at low low low prices.

This is funny stuff, highly recommended.

DVD features: Each season has 13 episodes (A third season is in the works). Bonus features on the DVDs include the pilot, a Christmas short, and various deleted scenes and mockumentary segments. The first season has 5 commentaries, the second season has commentaries for all 13 episodes. Unfortunately, the commentaries aren’t very good. That’s my one complaint about this DVD set; the creators make fun of the fact that they’re doing commentaries, taking time to answer their cell phones and whatnot. This would be funny a couple of times, but doing it every commentary is a waste; I’d be interested in actually seeing some detail on the creation process behind the show.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the show, it’s a little hard to explain. ATHF has three members: Frylock, Master Shake and Meatwad. Frylock, an enormous floating order of french fries, is the brains of the operation while Master Shake, a man-sized milk shake, is the deliquent and Meatwad, a rolling ball of…meat…is the ‘tard of the team. They *are* teens, but the “Aqua” part of the name is pretty much a complete red herring. As for being a “Hunger Force,” welllll…. not so much. They just hang out in New Jersey and make life miserable for their neighbor, Carl, as you can see from the picture here as he gets anally raped by a two-legged mutant dog named “Hand Banana”. Yes, its name is Hand Banana. All he knows is “ball!” and “good!” ….. and “rape!” But I digress…

The fifth season of ATHF has a lot of the things that made the show really cool. But it’s also missing some things, too. Gone are the Dr. Weird and Spacecataz openings. And there’s no MC Pee Pants! Ok, ok, I didn’t really miss MCPP. One thing I do miss, though, is the laid back tone of the first few seasons. It really seems like they’re trying too hard sometimes here in season 5. The bit with Tera Patrick eating a corn dog in the episode Grim Reaper Gutters was beyond lame. I mean, I’m all for porn stars eating phallic objects on camera, but they way it was done here just sucked…no pun intended.

Despite these criticisms, however, there is a lot of brilliance here which is as expected. Unlike the past seasons, however, the negatives come too close to negating the good stuff. The end result is a 3-star effort.

NOTE: The extras on this set are just deplorable. There’s a lot of them but they are pretty universally lame so just do yourself a favor and just skip them entirely.

Miranda (Evan Rachel Wood) is 16 years old and has been living on her own for the past two years while her father Charlie (Michael Douglas) has been in a mental institution. During this time she’s dropped out of school and been working double shifts at McDonalds to make ends meet, and has even managed to buy a car off eBay. An industrious girl for certain.

When Charlie gets out and begins acting strangely, she realizes that his release might have been a bit premature. It seems that while in the hospital Charlie found a book that details the location of a buried treasure, one that many people have looked for but never found. What he discovers is that the book is written in code, and he’s managed to break that code. OK, so your father gets out of the loony bin talking about buried treasure… the logical conclusion is that he’s still nuts, right?

Miranda doesn’t believe him in the beginning but after they find a few clues she starts to question her beliefs, and at the very least Charlie seems happy and they are having a bit of an adventure together. The presense of the gold, be it real or not isn’t the point, the adventure itself is the point.

Michael Douglas is a delight to watch, he plays the crazy old man to perfection and made me smile, a lot. He showed a great conviction that he was on the right path and that he had every right to do some of the things he was doing, and showed that if you act like you know what you’re doing people will generally let you do it. Evan Rachel Wood showed no less talent as the daughter either, the struggle with being the “responsible” one while wanting to just be a trusting child showed through on her face in every scene.

So I have to ask myself, is this a chick flick? Yeah, it is, but it’s one of the few that I feel comfortable in recommending. The relationship stuff is there but amazingly it’s not thrown in your face, it’s just there for observation. Don’t bother trying to watch this one when the guys come over for beers, but this is a good film to watch with your SO or even alone when you want to see a good example of actors embracing a story and giving it their all.

BTW, California got its name from a 16th century Spanish romance that referred to an island plentiful in gold, filled with strange beasts and inhabited by Amazon women ruled by a Queen. It’s true, look it up.

Charlie (Dane Cook) is a successful dentist and a good looking guy, who gets lots of women. He’s never found the “right” girl though, and always ends up breaking up for one reason or another. But there’s a twist, it seems that the girl will marry the very next guy she dates after breaking up with Charlie. Boil this down to the essence and it’s Boinking Charlie = finding Mr. Right. Once word gets out Charlie literally has them lining up to have sex with him. For the good of the women, Charlie goes with the flow.. after all, he’s just spreading happiness.

The root of this curse stems from a birthday party where an 8-year old Charlie was playing spin the bottle and ended up getting jumped in the closet by a 10-year old Goth girl. She takes off her shirt, showing that someone out there makes black leather training bras, and asks to see his penis. When he refuses, she rips open his shirt, scratches his chest and starts kissing him. Charlie escapes the closet (something I’m sure he regretted a few years later) and crawls back out into the room, and the embarrassed girl curses Charlie.. resulting in his unusual love life.

Two things go wrong for Chuck. First he realizes that he’s in love with Cam (Jessica Alba) and second he gets bored with all the humping sans relationship. I have to think that it’s Cam’s fault, cause Chuck is banging a ton of really hot women, women that don’t need to be wined and dined, they just want him to lay some pipe. Consider this a moment. Charlie literally can have a lunchtime boink, then an evening boink or two with an endless supply of hot women and never has to do any “relationship work” to make this happen. Better still, the women *all know about each other* so it’s not like he has to keep a secret. But I suppose it wouldn’t have been much of a romantic comedy if he didn’t fall for Cam, damn her.

If I’d seen this movie in theaters I would have given it 3 stars. It was funny at times, it only had one really slow section, and there’s a ton of nudity. But I saw this as the unrated DVD, and that’s getting it an extra star. Why? Well, I was able to do a frame by frame analysis of Jessica taking off her shirt and showing some side boob… when the romantic part kicked in, I was able to fire up the notebook to check email, and there’s a lot of extras worth watching. The extras included a “sex matrix” where you see extended sex scenes, a gag reel that’s funnier than the movie, some featurettes that themselves included lots of boobs, deleted scenes, and an ad lib section where you see just how much funnier the movie could have been.

Final result, it’s a 4 star DVD, toss it in your Netflix queue with confidence.

Alvin, Simon and Theodore … did you catch yourself humming the tune? … are minding their own business preparing for the winter when they find themselves suddenly uprooted and moving to the city. Through happenstance they end up with Dave and the fun begins. (By the way, Jason Lee is Dave, he of the “My Name is Earl” fame. I knew I recognized him, but I didn’t realize just how annoying he is.)

The three chipmunks are the same curious “kids” they have always been in the cartoons, always finding ways to turn neat into messy, and with a certain munkish charm. They fall into a nice routine with Dave, singing and playing, but there has to be a villain, right? “Uncle Ian” (of Jett Records) is predictably self-serving and even more so when he learns the chipmunks can sing. He proceeds to do all he can to make as much money as possible on their munky grooves.

The chipmunk story grows weary in parts (and is moderately predictable) and the director tries to cover the lulls with cute chipmunk antics. In some cases … it works. In others … not so much. The movie was entertaining overall but one which I should have waited for the DVD release. It was, however, a great father-son day, so because of that time spent together, I’ll give it 3 stars (instead of 2).

Jack plays Edward Cole a self made billionaire. Cole has lots of ex-wives and employees, but not any real family to truly care for him. Even while in the hsopital battling for his life against cancer, his only visitor is his long time ever loyal personal assistance Matthew. Edward calls him Tommy instead and reminds him he can fire him anytime, which probably explains why he is not getting a lot of visitors.

His roommate in the hospital is Carter Chambers, played by Freeman. As you might guess, he’s much the opposite of Cole. He has a family who loves him and a wife of 45 years. But although he’s an extremely intelligent man who absolutely dominates Jeopardy, he has spent his life working as an auto mechanic. His wife got knocked up during his freshman year of college, and he dropped all of his life plans to support his family.

The two get to know each other and find out at about the same time their diagnosis calls for them to only live a few more months. The Bucket List is created. Now imagine the fun you could have with absolutely nothing to lose and a billionaires’ bank account at your disposal. Wanna see the Great Pyramids of Egypt? No problem, fire up the jet!

That’s the concept, but what really makes this movie work are the characters and two great actors to portray them. This is a perfect role for Jack at his current age. He makes a great grumpy geezer in the hospital. Their condition is handled very candidly with some admittedly dark humor. This is the type of thing director Robert Reiner, aka Meathead, has always been so good at, and Nicholson is the perfect guy to be able to get a laugh while his head is shoved in a toilet trying to puke up his little toe due to sickness from chemotherapy.

We went in expecting a movie tailored to an older adult audience and women with one of those bitter sweet tear jerker endings where everyone gets a good cry afterwards. I wont spoil the ending by commenting too much on that, but I’ll say there is so so much more to this movie. If you’re a fan of Jack, you’re going to love this movie. And there’s even a car chase of sorts thrown in with a couple of cars we really love. We give this one 4 stars, and it’s a great date movie as a bonus.

Gretchen Mol has sex with a man who makes her believe in God.

Winona Ryder has an unnatural attraction to a ventriloquist’s dummy, and She’s Gotta Have It (Just in case you didn’t get enough puppet sex in TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE).

The protagonist dumps Famke Janssen for Jessica Alba, then begins to suspect he may have traded down too young when she chirps, “Will you buy me a pony?”

And there’s seven more stories as well. The connection to the commandments is tenuous at times, but it’s usually crude, often strange, and by and large funny.

There’s a strange animated sequence in the middle of the movie.

Pretty funny, weird stuff. 6 of the 10 commandments were hilarious…

Such is the case with Smiley Face.  I must confess that I had at least some hope for this one.  The cast was a pretty solid one and the “buzz” on the movie seemed legit.  But, no.  It just sucked.  Only one movie has ever been so bad that I quit watching it before it was over but this one came really close to that point.  Some nugget of journalistic integrity, however, guilted me into enduring this one until the end.

The details, if you really want them, are as follows:  Jane (Anna Faris) is a pothead.  She has things to do one day which include making it to an acting audition, paying the power bill, and buying more pot.  That’s pretty much it.  As you might have guessed, however, things go wrong.  For starters, she accidentally (probably for the first time in her life) gets explosively high.  Some other things then get added to that list of things to do but it really doesn’t matter by this point.  Jane stays high for the entire duration of the movie.  When in this state, she is unable to do anything right and thus, I’m sure, is where the writer and director thought all the comedy would pour forth from.  Somebody should have told the people in charge that a girl acting high and screwing things up is NOT automatically funny.

You have to get imaginative with the gags.  And it would help if the main character wasn’t alone most of the time acting and pratfalling in a vacuum.   Another helpful hint would be that characters wanting to get high are much funnier than characters who are already high.  Harold and Kumar go to White Castle, for instance, followed all these tips and it was a FANTASTIC movie.

Unless death is your only other choice, JUST SAY NO to this pile o’ cinematic road apples.  Hell, I might even consider a slight maiming rather than submit to wasting another 85+ minutes of my life on crap like this.   I think now I’ll go watch a Cheech & Chong marathon to see if I can get the taste of this one out of my mouth.

This time around Jackie plays the role of a bad guy, a compulsive gambler who steals to keep his habit going. He and his two partners aren’t above stealing anything, from shark fins to cash, whatever it takes to make a payday. Early onFong (Jackie) shows he’s really a good guy when he risks his life to save a baby during a robbery of a hospital pharmacy. After the rescue Octopus (Louis Koo) andFong go about their normal thievery and the movie takes a detour to introduce us to the family lives of the main characters. I won’t do the same.

After Landlord (Michael Hui, and the third member and leader of the crew) is robbed himself, he accepts a new type of job, one that’s worth $7 million dollars. Since all of them need the cash, Octopus andFong say yes without even knowing what the job is.. and it turns out to be a kidnapping. Not an “evil” kidnapping though as they are just stealing the baby from his parents and giving him to his grandfather. I’m skipping some details of course. As fate would have it, this is the same babyFong rescued back in the hospital.. ahh.. fate, the best movie cliche of all.

What follows is the typical segment where Octopus and Fong go from hapless men who don’t want anything to do with the baby to loving caretakers who will do anything to protect it. An amazing transformation considering it happens over a couple of days. There’s also a new love interest thrown in, and more family details forFong. Robin-B-Hood really does try to hit every page in the lets-soften-the-action-star playbook.

This is a Jackie Chan movie though, and you’re only watching for the stunts and action sequences. I’m happy to report you won’t be disappointed, as Jackie shows once again that he’s nuts. Would you scale down a 10 story building by jumping between air conditioning units without a safety wire? How about a simple slide down a marble stair railing that’s 3 stories tall, with just some mattresses to break your fall if you screw up? Nuts. The fights aren’t his best work (he is getting a bit older ya know) but it’s still entertaining.

In the end Robin-B-Hood is mildly entertaining, really only suitable if you’re looking for a date movie with your wife and are ready to have a baby, cause she’s gonna want one after watching the one featured here. I’ll give it an average rating of 3 stars, but barely.

Ben (John Krasinski) and Sadie (Mandy Moore) are getting married and Sadie wants to do it in the church she grew up in with Reverend Frank (Williams) performing the service. No problem, but Reverend Frank requires all new couples to undergo a marriage prep course before he’ll allow them to get married in his church. The course stresses communication, trust.. you know, the usual things. The catch is that if the couple fails the course for any reason Frank gets to call off the wedding. It’s a 3 month course.. but due to scheduling, they have to do it in three weeks. Nothing like cramming!

First requirement, no sex! Imagine this… you’re engaged to Mandy Moore and you’ve just been told that you can’t have sex for the next three weeks. Obviously, this causes Ben great stress. Next up is a series of counseling sessions, some with other couples, some one-on-one, and some with the three of them. In addition to the stress build up from the no sex rule and the stress caused by all the counseling, add in the stress of planning a big wedding in only 3 weeks. It’s romantic comedy gold I tell ya!

So what makes this movie deserve 4 stars? First up, Robin Williams gets to be funny and seeing him talk about sex with Sadie in front of Ben was quite amusing. Next, the choir boy (John Flitter ) is damn funny every time he’s on screen. Also, playing “spot cast members from The Office” provided some amusement. And lastly, it makes a GREAT date movie.

Guys over drinking beers? Don’t pull this one out.. you’ll get punched. But if you managed to get a date over.. use this as a secret weapon. However, normal warnings apply.. you are watching a movie about a wedding after all.

BEE MOVIE tells the story of Barry Bee. As is fairly common in these type of computer-animation movies, an anthropomorphic animal wants to be an individual, and not just another generic member of the hive/anthill/herd/robot assembly-line.

He’s slotted to be a worker-bee in the hive, but he wants to join the bees that gather pollen outside the hive.

There he meets a human florist, a disturbingly hot animated Renee Zellweger. They strike up a friendship which borders on romance, which fortunately the film never follows to its logical conclusion.

Barry learns in a trip to the grocery store that humans steal honey from hives, and he brings a lawsuit, Bees vs. The Human Race.

This is one of those movies that’s somewhere between kid’s movie and one where the jokes are as much aimed at adults. It’s made by the makers of SHREK, and the best thing about it is, it’s not another Shrek movie.

Is it funny? Mildly; Seinfeld’s brand of observational humor lends itself to Barry’s pointing out of quirks in bee and human society.

The animation is cool; the interior of the beehive is a strange cross between a factory floor and an amusement park. Biomechanical, but in a fun way, not a creepy Giger way.

And when Barry gets out into the man-made canyons of New York skyscrapers, and Central Park, bee flight is exhilarating, and hazardous.

The first half of this movie is a lot better than the second half. The movie slows down during courtroom scenes, and it leads to a muddled ecological message and a bit of a dead-end as far as storytelling. And a finale with some action thrown in that doesn’t make a lot of sense. And curiously, something of a backpeddling on the “non-conformity is good!” message.

The young kids who were in the theater when I saw it seemed to like it throughout. I’d suspect older kids (and some adults) may get a little restless during the second half.

Metalocalypse is about the metal group Dethklok, the biggest band in the world. They are so big that they have the 12th largest economy in the world (just ahead of Denmark.) There’s a group that monitors Dethklok that’s made up of some military and religious figures, looks like the U.S. Army, the Pope and some other “shadowy” types. There’s a quick segment during each episode where they discuss Dethklok and what they should do about them, either monitoring or destroying them is the end result of these meetings. Obviously, they fail each time.

Each episode follows the group through something ordinary for a metal band.. writing a new album, finding a chef, doing employee reviews.. all in a way that’s just so METAL! The employee videos the band made for the annual meeting are priceless.

I’m having trouble describing just how awesome this DVD is, so I’ll just sum up. If you like or have liked metal music in the past, buy this. If you have had friend who likes or has liked metal, buy this. If you know people who like or have liked metal, buy this. All you need to really enjoy Metalocalypse is a general understanding of what metal band and metal fans are like. If you’ve got that, you’re gonna have a METAL time!

Dethklok RULES!!!

Is it that I can’t relate to the characters? Let’s see.. it’s full of a bunch of redneck hillbilly stereotypes, but some of them are squids (and other various creatures.) Think Beverly Hillbillies with some meth thrown in. I grew up in Georgia and had friends into hunting and farming, some had livestock for pets, so I have some ability to relate here. Maybe that’s the problem.. nah, I poke fun at rednecks so that’s not it.

Is it the animation? After all the style is much like South Park.. but wait, I like South Park. I don’t care about animation quality if the characters and stories are funny, so that’s not the problem.

Voices! Yeah, must be the voices! Nope, the voice acting is actually one of the really good things about Squidbillies. Early is great, and all of the voices have a good quality to them. I also like the music/lyrics you head in the background of the episodes that comment about what you’re seeing. Good stuff.

I think Squidbillies is one of those shows that you’re either gonna get or not, and I just don’t get it. But since I did smile a few times, I’ll give it 2 stars.