The world is finally run by hospital bureaucrats, more specifically Liev Schreiber.  The UNION grants new and better organs to anyone, for an impossible price. That’s where Law and Whitaker come into play. When you run up your 90 day grace period they repossess your overdue organs.  But what happens when the man repossessing needs an organ of his own? After a failed collection, Law is forced to use his own artificial organ. From then on our hero runs for his life and the life of his spicy Latina (Braga).  Now, this isn’t a spoiler site so I won’t give away anything, but this movie even though it seems like your run of the mill bloody action movie, creates a twist that would make M.Night Shamalamading-dong blush.

The DVD contains Deleted Scenes, Special UNION commercials (worth a few chuckles of their own) Featurette on the highly advanced visual effects. Commentary with the Director and Writers.

If you love seeing hearts and organs being ripped out of people’s chests, bouncing breasts, and huge explosions (if you’re on this site its assumed that’s your bread and butter), then do yourself a favor and buy the Blu Ray single disk unrated edition.

Don’t make this movie something it’s not. If you’re in the mood for tons of blood and some memorable explosions give Repo Men a peek. You won’t be dissapointed.

Contributing Critic: C.C. Edwards

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

The first direct sequel to a Bond movie, it starts about 15 minutes after Casino Royale ends. Bond’s in a high-speed car chase in Italy. Then we get a rooftop chase scene in Siena, during the Palio horse race.

Quantum of Solace

I point out just for the record that since there are two Palio horse races in Siena a year, each lasting about 90 seconds, the chances of Bond just happening to get into a chase across Siena rooftops at the same time as the horse race are approximately 85,000 to 1, if my back-of-a-napkin calculation is accurate. This isn’t a criticism of the movie, just pointing out how James Bond is some kind of force who affects probability at a quantum level in his universe.

But where was I. Oh yes, Bond gets into a bizarre trapeze-fight with a bad guy in a Siena church in the midst of restoration, killing said bad guy in the process.   Soon there’s a revelation that there’s a new super-secret bad guy organization that MI6 knew nothing about. Some damn thing (maybe an address on a book of matches, who knows) causes Bond to fly to Haiti. There he kills another guy who attacks him when he enters his hotel room.

Bond seems to spend most of the rest of the movie like this, finding random clues that lead him back and forth across the Atlantic, not really knowing who he’s pursuing or why, but pretty confident that if he just keeps racking up frequent flier miles and defending himself against (and killing) whoever attacks him in the next place he visits, he’ll get a clue and another international flight.

Somewhere in there his boss M declares him rogue and cancels his credit cards and passports and such, but this almost seems more like she’s doing it as an incentive to make him work even harder.

Of course, Bond encounters beautiful, damaged women (if they weren’t damaged before he knew them, they soon are). Gemma Arterton as Ms. Fields (and to the movie’s credit, I don’t think they ever reveal her first name on screen, but, if you know Bond girls, and a certain Beatles tune, and her hair color, you can probably figure it out), and Olga Kurylenko as a woman seeking revenge.

Eventually Bond discovers that the main bad guy is a business mogul trying to buy up seemingly useless land in Bolivia, posing as someone championing the environment but actually doing the opposite. It seems like some of the locals might have noticed his scheme, but it takes Bond crashing a plane in the middle of nowhere to figure it out.

Then there’s a showdown in the Bolivian desert at a fancy hotel that seems to be built out of explosive bricks (Actually filmed at the Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert).

So, it seems like a plot that even Bond doesn’t so much figure out as just play an elaborate, violent version of Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego.

The movie seems to be trying to emulate the Bourne movies, in the frantic pace to the action sequences and the sprinting from one international location to the next with the main character not really knowing why. So… for Bond 23: Stop!

But, despite all this, the movie is never boring, and it’s very stylish, getting Bond into all sorts of scenic locations for the next chase/fight/etc. And it’s very atmospheric.

A lot of people seemed bewildered by the title, wondering what a Quantum of Solace was. It’s a Modicum of Comfort. Now you know.

DVD extras: There’s a regular edition of this and a 2-disk Special Edition.

Regular:  “Another Way to Die” Music Video,  Theatrical Trailers

Two-disc Special Edition:  The above, plus on the second disk:  “Bond on Location” 24-minute documentary, plus 5 short (5-minutes or less) Making Of bits (Start of Shooting, On Location,  Olga Kurylenko and the Boat Chase, Director Marc Forster, The Music), and about 50 minutes of Crew Files, basically excerpts from a web video blog during the making of the film.      Unfortunately, there’s no commentary track on the film.

It follows two families, the Greystones, and the Adamas. Both are struck by tragedy when a terrorist plot on Caprica kills loved ones. So if Battlestar is an Iraq War metaphor, this has overtones of 9/11.

But, it revolves around virtual reality technology, artificial intelligence, and robotics.

Eric Stolz plays Daniel Greystone. After losing his daughter Zoe (Alessandra Torresani, who looks a bit like a younger Zooey Deschanel), he discovers that The Kids Today on the planet Caprica have been playing around in in a virtual reality world to sample the vices that they haven’t done in real life. But he discovers his daughter has left a simulacrum of herself in the virtual world. He becomes obsessed in a Doctor Frankenstein way with bringing her back to life, at least in some form. He’s also developing robotic soldiers for the government. Proto-Cylons, basically.

Meanwhile, he befriends Joseph Adama (Esai Morales), who lost his wife and daughter in the same terrorist attack. His son survives, and, if you watched Battlestar, you can probably guess who he’s going to turn out to be.

The Adama family are immigrants from the planet Tauron. There is prejudice against them on Caprica, and, let’s face it, as depicted here, Taurons are basically movie Sicilians. He’s a lawyer for a Tauron crime syndicate. At times, the Godfather overtones are laid on pretty thick.

Then there’s Laci Rand (Magda Apanowicz), a schoolmate of Zoe’s, who discovers her school may shield a religious cult of dangerous fanatics.

The look of the production is interesting. Like the revamped Battlestar Galactica, it tries to keep fashion and props and architecture somewhat like our world (everybody isn’t dressed in tinfoil outfits) while still trying to make it look like another world in a far-away time.

For the record, I was a mild fan of the revamped Battlestar Galactica. I’ve seen the last half of Season 3 and most of Season 4. I still haven’t seen the first two seasons. It was an interestingly gritty retake on the original series, a big Iraq War metaphor. I think it bogged down sometimes in all the Cylon mysticism.

So I watched this with some misgivings. Did it really need a prequel series?

But it’s actually very good. As science fiction, better than Battlestar Galactica.

It’ll be interesting to see how this turns out as a series in 2010. For now, you can watch the DVD of the pilot.

The first straight-to-DVD movie, STARGATE: THE ARK OF TRUTH, wrapped up the unfinished storyline from seasons 9-10 of the series.

This second movie is a little more accessible to the casual viewer.

It’s a story they’ve done before, but never so well. A time travel paradox causes the SG-1 team to be stranded in an alternate timeline.

This time around, those in charge put the brakes on them correcting the timeline. After all, to everybody else on Earth, this is how history is supposed to be. So we get to see the characters spending some time adjusting to their new universe.

At 98 minutes, this is about 2-1/2 times a regular episode, and the movie has time to show us some nice moments with the characters, and explore the ramifications of the storyline.

The movie has all the major characters, including Jack O’Neill (Richard Dean Anderson). Don S. Davis appears as General Jack Hammond, one of his last appearances before his death in June 2008. Various villains from seasons past make appearances.

CONTINUUM has a bigger budget feel than the TV episodes, and it has another spectacular addition as well: The U.S. Navy let the movie film at their 2007 Applied Physics Laboratory Ice Station, nearly 200 miles out on the frozen ocean, above the Arctic Circle. These are some vistas that you can’t get on a soundstage.

Starship Troopers 2 was a pretty low-budget outing; surrounded by bug aliens, the soldiers retreated into a fortress and the rest of the movie became somewhat ALIENesque.

This time around, either they had a bigger budget, or they really stretched it filming in South Africa. The sets for the human base are pretty impressive, and the CGI is comparable to the theatrical movie.

Casper Van Dien is back as Johnny Rico. Jolene Blalock (The Vulcan on STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE) also stars.

More importantly, some of the dark humor about the fascist overtones of the Earth government are back from the first movie. Along with the retro-future newsreel footage. Do you want to know more?

A military base on a farm planet is attacked. Johnny Rico repels the attack, but, when he punches a superior officer, is sentenced to hang.

Meanwhile, Jolene Blaloch’s ship is forced to set down on a major Bug world.

Rico is sprung to go on a rescue mission.

There’s lots of weird new Bugs.

This movie manages to be a fun science fiction monster movie, with some of the throwback feel of the original movie. And there’s a big dose of political and religious satire.

Also, there’s a nice homage to the original Robert Heinlein novel, with the introduction of the power armor suits (Marauders).

Keeping in mind that a straight-to-DVD movie isn’t going to be equal to a theatrical movie, this is a pretty good third movie, much better than the second one.

Of course, one thing that’s never been explained in any of these three movies is how the alien Bugs travel between different planets. Seems difficult to hold an interstellar war with creatures who have no means of space travel. Yet they seem to have infested the whole galaxy!

In the first few minute it tries a little too hard to justify its R rating, where a bunch of surfer dudes drop the F-bomb about 30 times, and then comes a pretty gory scene.

Later, a brother and sister, 20-something ex-professional surfer Chris (Tad Hilgenbrink from AMERICAN PIE PRESENTS BAND CAMP), and his 17-year-old sister Nicole (Autumn Reeser, THE O.C.), move to Luna Bay (Not the equally fictitious Santa Clara, California of the original). They’ve been orphaned when their parents die in a car accident, and their aunt offers them a place to stay.

Soon, trying to fit in, they go to a lavish house party which involves a lot of beautiful young people, some of them naked women. Nicole falls for the charms of scruffy ex-professional surfer Shane Powers, who looks a tiny bit like Kiefer Sutherland, because he’s played by his half-brother, Angus Sutherland.

As it turns out, Shane and his pals are vampires. Soon, Nicole has taken a swig from the wrong bottle, and is on her way to being a vampire herself. Her big brother tries to rescue her.

Aiding him in this plan is Edgar Frog (Corey Feldman) from the first movie, apparently a part-time vampire hunter for 21 years now, and with a full assortment of stakes, holy water super-squirtguns, etc. He provides the comedy, because, he was a little crazed 21 years ago, and more so now with his years as a grizzled vampire hunter.

Straight-to-DVD is straight-to-DVD; if you’re expecting a theatrical-quality movie, this isn’t it. It starts out a bit rocky, but it gets better as it goes along. It’s a fairly stylish, rather gory vampire horror movie.

It’s got a bunch of pretty young actors, it’s got some comedy though not as much as the first one (mainly provided by The Brother Frog).

One thing that the original had that this does not is an outstanding soundtrack; this has three songs by one band, and then a revamp (sorry, couldn’t resist) of “Cry Little Sister” from the original.

All in all, for a straight-to-DVD vampire movie, this isn’t bad. And it’s fun seeing what Edgar Frog is up to these days.

Stick around through the end credits; there’s a little extra scene not too far into them.

So the scriptwriters were given the assignment, update this for the 21st century, where now we have an Internet, laptop computers, cellphones, GPS systems, etc.

The setup is pretty convoluted, so take notes. The hacker, basically a good kid but in need of some quick money, is playing on a website that’s a combination gaming site and gambling site. So you could wager your money on poker, but you could also bet you’ll win some first-person-shooter game or whatever. The site’s avatar is R.I.P.L.E.Y, a 2-D Lara Croft-ish babe. Why “Ripley” is chosen as a hot babe’s name is mysterious, except that doubtlessly the writers have seen a lot of ALIEN movies.

Now, it turns out, the site is a front for a Department of Defense supercomputer that is trying to catch terrorists. The thought is, terrorists or would-be terrorists will play the games that have a terrorist theme (So watch out when you’re playing CounterStrike, always play the Good Guys!), and bet money on it.

This idea is pretty wonky (Can we assume that the Department of Defense is handling the millions of dollars that would inevitable result from the people just there to play poker?). But wait, there’s more. As it happens, our hero has “borrowed” the money to play the game from his former-Syrian neighbor whom he was helping with his computer problems, and the money transfer triggers an alert that it’s Middle Eastern Money. Also, the kid’s mom works in biological research, and has been bringing samples from the lab home with her.

All this ends up basically pointing the finger at the kid as a terrorist. He flies to Montreal on a high school chess club trip (which he’s joined to impress his would-be girlfriend).

Somewhere in there RIPLEY goes HAL-9000, and decides she’s going to really release a biological agent or nerve gas or some damn thing from a drone plane on Philadelphia.

None of this really makes a lot of sense, but it’s directed at a fairly breakneck pace. It’s a competently done thriller. It plays out more like a movie like ENEMY OF THE STATE; lots of running around, trying to avoid government agents and surveillance cameras.

Eventually the movie shows that it is a sequel and not just a remake; we get appearances by two characters from the original movie (though not the actors).

A theatrical movie is a theatrical movie, and a straight-to-DVD movie is its own animal. It’s not really fair to berate this for not being of theatrical quality: If it was, they would have released it theatrically. This is mildly enjoyable, as a homage to the original, but it’s also very silly.

There’s a number of occasions where it would seem that when the Department of Defense realizes things have gone haywire, their problems with RIPLEY could be solved in minutes with the use of a large axe.

Look for the cameo appearance of the coming MMORPG, STARGATE WORLDS.

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.

Based on Steve Niles’s 2002 comic book, it’s set in Barrow, Alaska, a town far above the Arctic Circle. At least as depicted here, around the time of the Winter Solstice, it’s in pitch darkness for 30 days, and so a group of vampires decides this is their Disneyland.

Josh Hartnett plays the small town’s sheriff, Melissa George (ALIAS) is his estranged wife, and Danny Huston is the king of the vampires.

This is an atmospheric, snow-covered film, and you really get the feel of the brutal winter trapping these people in the town while the vampires pick them off one by one.

These aren’t some Anne Rice pretty boy vampires; these are feral, nasty creatures who are just hungry, and they don’t seem to be having a very good time with their preternatural immortality. And they want to pass their misery on to their victims.

The film takes some liberties with Barrow; in reality the town isn’t nearly as cut off during its dark time as this makes it out to be. Here it’s depicting almost as remote as an Antarctic base.

Incidentally, the real-life residents of Barrow, Alaska really do have to take precautions to avoid being eaten alive by monsters. Only they’re not called vampires; they’re called polar bears.

DVD extras: Commentary with Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, and producer Rob Tapert. Eight short “Making Of” featurettes.

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.

When we last tuned in to the ongoing struggle against the Ori, ascended beings from another galaxy trying to get everybody in our galaxy to believe in their religion or die, our heroes had unleashed a weapon that (they think) wiped out all the Ori. Unfortunately, the human minions of the Ori, the Priors (basically fanatical priests who make the Spanish Inquisition look like a pack of playground bullies), are still around.

This time, Daniel Jackson, Samantha Carter, Teal’c, Cameron Mitchell, and Vala try to locate an ancient secret weapon: One that will brainwash the Ori Priors into learning the truth. That is, it’ll make them get on the side of The Good Guys.

This seems a little morally ambiguous, and they touch on that briefly, but onward. For the first time, the Stargate team flies a ship through the Supergate into the Ori galaxy.

Once there, everybody but Mitchell beams down to another planet that looks like forest around Vancouver to look for this weapon. Meanwhile, Mitchell’s ship in orbit is threatened by an overzealous Earth bureaucrat, and, eventually, an old enemy.

This is a good wrapup to the Ori storyline. At about 2-1/2 times the length of a regular episode, it doesn’t feel like just another episode either. And the production values are higher (as we see with a lot of shots of Teal’c striding majestically over a mountain range).

Either you’re a fan of STARGATE SG-1 or you’re not; if you’ve never seen the TV series, this probably isn’t going to wow you, but if you did watch it, this is a nice wrapup of loose ends.

DVD Extras: They did a good job with these (unlike the bare-bones DVD for FARSCAPE: THE PEACEKEEPER WARS). There’s a commentary track with the director, the director of photography, and Christopher Judge. A 9-minute PRELUDE which gives a synopsis of seasons 9 and 10 of STARGATE SG-1, in case you missed some of it or have forgotten details. A 20-minute Q&A filmed at the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con with the cast. And a 30-minute Making Of documentary (Uncovering The Ark of Truth).

Ah, how the mighty have fallen.

In 1986 there was a movie called HIGHLANDER starring Christopher Lambert as Connor MacLeod. It involved guys who were “Immortals”, existing down the centuries, who could only be killed by decapitation. If one killed another, he’d get more power, leading to some legendary final battle where the last two vied for a rather vaguely defined The Prize, which seemed to be mainly a burst of movie special effects. All this was window dressing for a neat concept: Dudes having swordfights hundreds of years ago in flashback, and current day in parking garages. One of these Immortals was Scottish, thus, The Highlander.

Then there was HIGHLANDER 2 (1991), a movie so incomprehensible that there are fans of the first movie who will tell you, earnestly, “There WAS no movie called HIGHLANDER 2“, hoping to induce hysterical amnesia.

Then came a 1992 TV series, which, after a rocky first season, became a fairly good show and ran until 1998, six seasons (and even had a short-lived spinoff). Adrian Paul was Another Highlander, Duncan MacLeod (”Same clan, different vintage.”).

HIGHLANDER III (1993) ignored the second film, and for that matter parts of the first film, and the TV series. But, all in all, it wasn’t a bad movie, just not very necessary. Essentially a remake of the first movie.

In 2000, there was HIGHLANDER: ENDGAME, a fourth movie, which attempted to bridge continuity between the movies and the TV series. Not a very good movie.

Then in 2007, straight to the SciFi channel, came HIGHLANDER: THE SOURCE, the fifth HIGHLANDER movie, and the first not to be released theatrically. In 2008 it was released to DVD.

It has the distinction of being almost but not quite as bad as HIGHLANDER II. Duncan MacLeod is back, and it’s set in some vague almost-MAD MAX future where society is falling apart.

There’s some mumbo-jumbo about The Source, presumably The Source Of Immortality, a legend among Immortals that everybody neglected to mention through 4 movies and 141 TV episodes. No matter.

We have another villain, called The Guardian, who, like other HIGHLANDER villains, seems to have a thing for bondage fetish clothing.

For some reason Duncan MacLeod’s girlfriend has been getting psychic visions about this Source business.

Hilariously, it’s announced at some point that all the planets in our solar system are moving out of their orbits into alignment. Nobody seems to notice this except the Immortals, even though we’re repeatedly shown this graphic of planets bumping around in the night sky bigger than the Moon. Also, it’s mentioned that this phenomena goes STRAIGHT TO THE CENTER OF OUR GALAXY. We wouldn’t be able to tell this for some 28,000 years, but apparently the speed of light doesn’t exist in the HIGHLANDER universe. No matter.

So we have our good guy, aligned with a handful of other immortals (Maybe all that are left), against the Bad Guy.

They run around Eastern Europe, and, as happens in HIGHLANDER movies, we get a final showdown between the good guy and the villain.

Adrian Paul tries to give some dignity to this, but it’s just bad. The villain is absurd, wearing a small version of a steam engine’s cowcatcher around his neck as an anti-decapitation device. He says everything in various funny voices, and occasionally is shown speeded up like something out of silent movie Keystone Kops routine.

So. Incomprehensible plot, not very good swordplay. Attempt to explain everything with an explanation contradictory and more vague than even the lame attempts of the previous movies.

Anything good about it? Well, we do get to see some characters from the TV series return. The Immortal Methos, and human Joe Dawson, a Watcher (HIGHLANDER Watchers are sort of like BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER Watchers).

Other than that, drek. It takes a pretty bad movie for me to only give it one star.

But it’s still better than HIGHLANDER 2!

One train in particular is guarded by a notorious conductor named Shack (Ernest Borgnine). He likes to knock hoboes off his train with a sledgehammer. The movie opens with one guy falling under the train and getting sliced in half.

A-Number-One, who is more-or-less the King of the Hoboes, is determined that he’s going to ride Shack’s train. There’s a young upstart named Cigaret (Keith Carradine) who wants to get into this hobo secret society.

The last hour of the movie is a brutal King Of The Mountain game played atop a moving train. These hoboes don’t have anywhere they particularly need to go on this train, and the railroad probably wouldn’t go bankrupt if a few of them managed to ride the train, so it’s pretty much Men On Trains Behaving Badly.

Something maybe not readily apparent in the movie is that it’s (very) loosely based on stories by Jack London (CALL OF THE WILD), and the real-life hobo A-Number-One. In fact, Jack London’s hobo nickname was Cigaret.

DVD Features: Commentary by a film historian, theatrical trailer and TV commercials.

Both involve members of a primitive tribe being kidnapped and enslaved by a more advanced, pyramid-building culture, escapes, long pursuits across savage landscapes.

But APOCALYPTO is the real deal.

Set in the 16th century but before Europeans arrived, it’s an odyssey across the Mayan civilization.

Jaguar Paw lives with his tribe in the remote jungle. He has a wife and child. He and other members of his tribe are kidnapped by one of the Mayan pyramid-building cities, destined to be sacrificed, to have his heart cut out atop a pyramid while he’s still alive.

But he gets a lucky break, and then he’d Better Run Through The Jungle, pursued by his captors.

This movie makes some overtures to our society; the pyramid-builders are destroying their environment, they’re controlled by a religious fanaticism that their cynical leaders don’t really believe in, and their society is very definitely divided into rich, middle class, and poor. Guess who gets sacrificed?

I think there’s also a subversive element here; Mel Gibson probably saw one too many DANCES WITH WOLVES-type movies that postulate a Garden of Eden in the New World before it was ruined by the White Man. And he said Give Me A Break, somebody’s always pounding on somebody else, long before Europeans got here.

This is a a fascinating, brutal society built around human sacrifice.

But people are people, and the family dynamic, and the humor and camaraderie of the tribe are also depicted.

This is an epic unlike anything you’ve seen, huge city-sets constructed, hundreds of extras (looking like thousands of extras), like a Cecil B. DeMille Bible epic (maybe not surprising since Gibson’s previous movie was THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST, and like that, the movie is in original dialect with subtitles).

But it’s also just a good action flick, and the final half of this movie is one amazing foot chase through dangerous territory.

DVD Extras: A commentary with Mel Gibson and writer-producer Farhad Safina, deleted scenes, and a Making Of featurette.

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.

Andrew Clay’s career went downhill after the release of Ford Fairlane perhaps due to all of the controversy. It’s easy to forget just how funny this character is, and Ford Fairlane captures The Diceman at his most sexist, politically incorrect best. No nasty nursery rhymes here, but when Ford wakes up with two hotties who upon realizing what/who they’ve done proclaim “But Ford, we just wanted to be held!”, he quickly answers “You got the bonus plan!”. In fact, many of sexist pigs who are fans of his work can pull an insane nmber of quotes from this movie.

But is the movie any good? Critics hated it, still do. We love it. It captures that time between the excess of the 80’s and the beginning of the whiney depressing grunge era of the early 90’s. And it makes fun of the music industry as part of the story. The plotline is simple, Ford is a famous private investigator in Los Angeles specializing in the music industry, he’s known far and wide as “the rock and roll detective”. He gets involved in a case surrounding the death of a rockstar. This is not an edge of the seat thriller, this is pure comedy with a dash of action. The story exists as a platform for The Diceman to do his thing.

The Adventures of Ford Fairlane is one of those movies that you need to just check your brain at the door, sit back and enjoy. We give it a strong 4 stars. The studios were slow to release The Adventures of Ford Fairlane on DVD, but since they have, it has found a new life. It’s also typically a bargain, this one belongs in every guy movie collection.

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.

All but the hardest core Star Trek fans were very disappointed with the first Star Trek movie, a movie with a decent story but the pacing of a glacier. Condense it down to 30 minutes, and it might have been good. As a result, there wasn’t much hope for the franchise to continue… but then the title for the second movie came out, and fans had reason to hope. Wrath? That’s gotta be action, right?! Khan? Ooohh.. from Space Seed, Khan was good!

The fans were not disappointed this time as Star Trek II turned out to be a kick ass movie, full of action, drama and more than a few surprises. To this day it’s considered the best of the Trek movies by most fans. It achieved this status by understanding what the fans wanted, and giving them exactly that.

Action. Khan is full of action sequences, and has the classic space battle between the Enterprise and the Reliant where Khan forgets that space is more than just left and right turns. There are explosions, crew members die on both ships, hulls are ripped apart by phaser fire, and nacelles are blown apart by photon torpedoes. It just rocks.

I’ve done far worse than kill you, Admiral. I’ve hurt you. And I wish to go on hurting you. I shall leave you as you left me, as you left her: marooned for all eternity in the center of a dead planet, buried alive. Buried alive. – Khan

Drama. Trek fans like some drama too and we get that in spades. Ricardo Montalban’s Khan is a fantastic bad guy, smart, egotistical, and rather determined to get revenge. He’s a bit angry over being stranded and there’s no length he won’t go to to make Kirk pay. We also learn that Kirk has a son who doesn’t like him very much, we get Scottie upset over losing a cadet, and in the end, Spock dies. Come on, how much more drama do you need?!

Comedy. I’m a doctor not a bricklayer! Star Trek has always had humor as a core element, and while Khan was full of Wrath there were some great lines as well.

McCoy: Where are we going?
Kirk: Where they went.
McCoy: Suppose they went nowhere?
Kirk: Then this will be your big chance to get away from it all.

This isn’t the comedy fest that was Star Trek IV, but it’s got some great lines.

Over acting. Yeah, go ahead and admit it.. you love how over acted all those old episodes of Star Trek were, the slowly.. paced.. words… that.. came.. out of.. Kirk’s.. mouth when he wanted to make a point. The Wrath of Khan turns this up a notch with some fantastic over-acting by both Shatner and Montalban. Just look at Kirk in that picture. Awesome!

As a package Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is almost perfect. It’s easy to spot flaws of both a story and technical nature, but that’s true of all Sci-Fi movies, and misses the point. Khan was made for the fans, and the fans appreciated it.. and still appreciate it.

KHAAAAAAANNNNN! – Kirk

Tonight I indulged myself with Secrets of Egypt’s Lost Queen. The scoop here is that Egypt once had a queen named Hatshepsut and she was one seriously bad mamma-jamma. She was more powerful than even Cleopatra had ever been. The problem was that after she was gone, her existence was systematically erased from the records and histories of Egypt and, for decades, no one could figure out why…or what had happened to the body of this once powerful female Pharoah.

I have to admit that, after having been bitten in the arse many times in the past by shows of this nature that failed miserably to deliver answers to their respective mysteries, I went into this one with low expectations. I fully expected the conclusion of the show to be something like, “Well, we gave it our best shot but it’s been 3000 years and we just can’t be sure of anything.” Fortunately, I was way wrong!

Over the 100 minute span, they do an excellent job of answering the questions that had long surrounded this mystery and, unlike lesser shows, the answers don’t smack of random speculation. If this is your cup of tea, then consider this one to be worth four full stars.

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.

Sex and Breakfast is a good example of the marketing tease, it would have been even better had the movie been unrated and had a red band trailed up on youtube. This is a 100% chick flick, and I’m honestly not sure what they hell kind of conversation you’d end up having with your date if you made the horrific mistake of watching this one together.

James (Macaulay Culkin) and Heather (Alexis Dziena) are having problems in the bedroom, basically Heather can’t get off. James blames himself, Heather gets frustrated and they end up going to a seminar for a therapist who suggests couples engage in group sex to help grow their relationships. It takes four to tango, so the other couple are Ellis (Kuno Becker) and Renee (Eliza Dushku) who are adventure seekers more than anything else, but they have their problems as well.

I was sure that the emotional baggage would be the women in this movie, but nope, it’s the guys. Heather is the horny little devil that gets everything moving, while James is an utter pansy. Also, when Renee tells Ellis (I would have sworn his name was Alice until the credits told me otherwise) that she’d like to be with another woman and he could watch and he freaks out in a negative way… totally unrealistic. Totally and completely unrealistic.  I don’t discount that there’s some guys out there who actually wouldn’t want that to happen with their SO’s, but Ellis is into the group sex thing and has just expressed that he’d like to watch another couple doing it right in front of him when Renee speaks up. Nope, impossible for that to be a compatible mindset. “Oh sure hon, let’s go get a hotel room with this other couple so I can watch this guy bang you, but his wife better keep her hands off you!!” Puleeze.

OK, it’s not all bad. I do like indie/artsy flicks on occasion and can deal with a chick flick now and then, and keeping that mindset at the front of my mind the story had potential. The acting was ok, the setups were amusing and I was entertained on some level, and I knew going into this that it was gonna be a talkative movie. You just can’t have a movie that deals with a subject like this that doesn’t contain lots of people dealing with emotional issues. But dang, this thing makes a Tarantino movie seem like a silent film.

On an artsy/fartsy scale I’d rate this higher, but on our scale I’m gonna have to go to the bottom… 1 star. Guys, if your SO brings this home to watch with you on movie night.. let me know how that goes for ya.

But let’s shake it off and get down to business. So, The Rock plays Joe Kingman. Joe is the all-everything quarterback for the ficitional Boston Rebels pro football franchise. You might say that “The King”, as Kingman calls himself, is the most electrifying performer in football today. He’s also single with one of the most high tech bacheolor pds you’ll ever see. His pad also gives you some incite into the man himself as he has oversized pictures of himself all over and insists upon complete quiet whenever he appears on ESPN, which is quite often. His lifestyle is nightclubs, sports cars, money and hot models.

Now what more does he need? Well, if you’re making a Disney movie, you throw in a 8 year old girl who is so cute she’ll make you puke. Now would this be from “The King” screwing around? No, not in a Disney film, instead he has a daughter he didn’t know of by his ex-wife. Seems they had “one for the road” while divvying up the furniture or something, and she never told him. So old Joe doesn’t know he has a kid til she shows up on his door step right in the middle of the play offs.

It’s at this point that fish out of water hilarity is supposed to ensue. Have you seen the trailer? Well, it doesn’t get any better. Lots of predictable gags and a very predictable story. It’s all very family friendly, and if you have an 8 year old in the house, they will probably howl at it, which is a shame because it’ll keep you from getting some good quality sleep during this snoozer.

We almost feel sorry for The Rock. He actually does a great job with this part. He’s a natural as a jock, and playing a self centered guy like “The King” is also a a piece of cake for him as it mirrors some of his wrestling ring persona. But he also does a great job with some parts of this film that make him stretch, yet he still comes across as a natural. The problem here is the story just flat out sucks,

So the most electrifying man in sports entertainment fails to become the most electrifying on the big screen once again. The Rock can act, he has some natural gifts of charisma, timing and a big athletic body, but he has yet to land that perfect role that let’s him showcase what he can really do. We give The Game Plan 2 stars. If you have a family though, be sure to get a copy for the rugrats to watch on the headrest in the back of the minivan or SUV. Not only will it make them giggle, it’ll ensure we have no desire to tailgate you.

Every time I think about this movie, I can feel a surge of testosterone coursing through my system. I swear, I think my penis gets an inch longer for a time, too. Guys like war movies and this is my all-time favorite. It doesn’t have the best battle scenes or the best special effects. The main character never engages in any hand-to-hand gladiatorial battles with the enemy. It doesn’t have a lot of blood in it, either. So why is it so good? One name: George C. Scott.

General George S. Patton was a warrior without compare and a true man’s man. He was, perhaps, the greatest general this country has ever seen. To say he was bold, audacious, hard, bloodthirsty and aloof would be wholly inadequate. He was, perhaps as simply as can be put, larger than life itself. And to successfully portray a man like that requires a supremely gifted actor giving the performance of a lifetime and, in this, Scott does just that. The famous opening speech gave me goose pimples the first time I saw the movie. Hell, I wanted to go grab my father’s .30-06 rifle out of the closet right then and there and march off to war behind the man I was seeing on the screen. Nevermind it was the mid 70’s and we weren’t at war with anyone at the time. It just didn’t matter because I wanted to follow that man into battle. Such was the nature of General Patton. That George C. Scott could recreate him so accurately and intensely puts his performance at or near the top of any ‘best of all time’ list.

“The Nazis are the enemy. Wade into them. Spill *their* blood. Shoot *them* in the belly.”

After the stirring speech the movie takes a breath and begins to unfold in a more normal fashion. Patton, like the hand of a god, takes command of the U.S. forces in North Africa and transforms these rag-tag soldiers into a hungry, aggressive army through sheer force of will. His victories pile up as does his fame. He is just what the doctor ordered! Morale improves and soon it appears we might win WWII after all! There is a problem, however. General Patton is not a quiet man nor is he a particularly nice man. He is, in the eyes of many, quite offensive and he does some very harsh things. Such is the nature of war. But now that things are going well, it seems the American people are much less inclined to allow him his faults. And then, at a very inopportune time, he gets angry at a soldier suffering from battle fatigue. He slaps the soldier, calls him a coward, and orders him to be marched to the front. Popular opinion turns against him and his turn from brilliant field general to worldwide embarrassment is complete.

“We’re not just going to shoot the bastards, we’re going to cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads on our tanks.”

Buried in controversy and shame, he is removed from command. America, it seems, cannot afford a harsh, unforgiving general to lead its armies. He is used as a decoy for a while; a humiliating duty, to be sure. But, as all fallible heroes of legend do, he gets a second chance. Being a true hero, he takes advantage of this second chance and leads us, once again, to victory multiple times after the invasion of Normandy. He even used the Nazi’s own Blitzkrieg tactics against them and pulled off some of the most remarkable victories of the entire war.

“The last great opportunity of a lifetime – an entire world at war, and I’m left out of it?!? God will *not* permit this to happen! I *will* be allowed to fulfill my destiny! His will be done.”

But what then? What if doctors finally managed to cure the world of all its ailments? They would no longer be needed. They would fade from existence over a short time. Such is what happened after World War II. With no more fighting, there was no need for the pure warrior. A glimpse into this lonely afterlife is seen; an afterlife that the general himself was well aware of. In real life, General Patton died of complications of injuries incurred after an automobile accident in December of 1945, not long after the war. Some people would point that incident and decry the unfortunate timing and the ironic nature of his death. I suspect, though, that the General himself wouldn’t have thought it so bad. Better for a warrior to die than to live out a long life with nothing left to fight for.

“There’s only one proper way for a professional soldier to die: the last bullet of the last battle of the last war.”

Well said, General. Well said.

Kong (Jacky Wu Jing) is a nice guy, a nice guy who is also on the Chinese Olympic kung fu team. When he’s not training for the Olympics he keeps himself limber by performing in low budget acrobatic shows, think Cirque du Soleil without the huge cast and stage. OK, he twirls stuff on stage, but he does it really really well! After one of his shows, some guys that run an underground fighting organization approach him and offer him $2000 to fight one match, win or lose. Kong is a nice guy though, and underground fighting is illegal, so he declines.

Enter Siu (Miki Yeung), a cute girl who shows an interest in Kong after he says no to fighting. Unfortunately for Kong, this girl is the definition of a controlling girlfriend. Not only does she encourage Kong to fight, but she keeps jumping in to the negotiations to get him more money.. though I suppose it’s a good thing, since he’s far too nice to handle business on his own.

Anyway, Siu talks Kong into trying out a fight, he does, and he wins easily. They want him to come back the next week, and with her encouragement he says yes.. and wins again. At this point his skills are obviously far above anyone he’s meeting, so the guy running the show starts to raise the stakes, getting better fighters and more money involved. After several rounds of this Kong starts to change.. a little. During the fights he’s getting meaner, but only when really provoked. And even when he does get “meaner” he doesn’t totally come unglued.

There’s other stories involved of course, the guy running the fights is trying to expand his territory, Siu is obviously trying to get Kong to make more and more money for her own reasons, she’s got a friend who’s a hooker that she gives life advice to, there’s “The Captain” (Ronald Cheng) who helps look after Kong and Siu and who has his own story of course.

But it’s all about the fights, and the fights are excellent. Yes, there are wires used on occasion, but it’s the exception rather than the rule. The battles look realistic and there’s no “let’s jump on the roof and run up and down walls” crap here. Picture martial arts street fighting, and this delivers that picture. I really like the way Jacky WuJing moves, he seems to act fairly well judging from his facial expressions (I don’t speak Cantonese so had the English track playing) and I could see him one day becoming a star in Hollywood assuming he learns English.

The story doesn’t suck (except the ending, which just blows) and there’s some good humor to go along with the action. It’s a solid 3 star movie, might have been 4 if the ending were different.

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.

History and Comedy are two things you might normally consider hard to mix together, but the brits seemed to have discovered the secret: A dry subject like history should only be mixed with comedy that is also dry. Enter Python alum Terry Jones! Following in the footsteps of several of his Python brethren, he narrates (and editorializes) this nifty little series to great effect.

History, as it turns out, has always held a rather dim view of the “barbarian” hordes of Europe. Although Rome was always viewed as corrupt and rather vile at times, at least the Romans were always viewed as being … well … civilized. The wealth and technology available allowed the Romans to build the fabulous cities whose ruins still stand today. We know of their many remarkable achievements in art, medicine, architecture, politics and, yes, warfare. But what of their foes? Always portrayed as tribal, savage, and superstitious, historians on the whole gave them little regard. But now, thanks to some clever deductive reasoning as well as newly unearthed evidence of their cities and civilizations, we now know that long-held view of these Barbarians was simply a fabrication of the victors who vanquished them – the Romans.

The Celts, as it turns out, built the first intercontinental highway system! As well, they created a *very* precise astronomical calendar that is believed to be the first to ever of its kind. It was much more complex – and accurate – than anything the Romans ever devised. Many other very surprising accomplishments have been discovered about the Celts and they are covered here in this material. And the other three episodes include equally fascinating information about the Goths and other peoples.

And through it all speaks the inimitable Terry Jones. He does a great job here of explaining with dumbing down the material (much). And he infuses the whole series with some very nice commentary and dry humor, too. My only real complaints about the series are 1) it’s too short. I would like to have seen more than just 4 episodes…and 2) while they did a great job explaining the ‘what’, they spent very little time on the question of ‘why’. A bit more attention there would have been fantastic. But complaints aside, this is still 4 stars worth of material.

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…

Though certainly not destined to be a classic, this is a very watchable movie with some fine acting performances, entertaining story elements, and some good “gotcha” moments. I’m not exactly keen on cheap “gotcha” stunts in movies, but the ones here, though predictable, were done in a way that I didn’t mind them. I actually was looking forward to them by the end of the movie! Go figure! Beyond this, however, I have to give kudos to both Fillion and Sackhoff for turning in such nice performances. They had some very nice chemistry together and both managed to be convincing and sincere.

The story, like the “gotchas”, is very predictable at times. But, perhaps due to the aforementioned performances, I really didn’t mind. From beginning to end, this was a VERY watchable movie and I definitely am not looking to get back the time I spent watching this one.

But before I get too carried away, don’t forget that this IS a direct-to-DVD movie. You will see holes in the story that are big enough to drive a truck through. And sometimes simple things like Logic and Common Sense apparently don’t exist. But that’s ok since you’ll still like it anyway…or at least I did. I love being pleasantly surprised!

I’m going to start with the things that are wrong with this movie, which is like shooting fish in a barrel. The story itself is kinda lame, every 500 years a serpent is chosen to become a celestial dragon. If it’s a good serpent, then things continue as expected for the next 500 years, but if it’s a bad serpent then life as we know it on Earth is over. Isn’t this a recipe for disaster? Only one failure and the world ends? To become a dragon the serpent has to join with a mystical force contained in a chosen girl when she turns 20 (the girls dies in the process of course), but we have a loophole! If the girl dies before the serpent joins with her the clock goes for another 500 years. For the humans who protect this girl the logical choice is to kill her at birth, or at least sometime before she hits 20. Let’s see… a few billion people or one baby. Tough call. Time to go all Spock on her ass!

There’s not much to say about the acting, it’s just bad. Not bad as in “these people couldn’t act their way out of a cut rate community theater production of Hamlet” but bad in the “I don’t want to be doing this, please pay me so I can go home” kind of way. The interaction between characters is just horrible in parts, enough where you just want to press fast forward and spare yourself the agony. This leads to the writing, which is also pretty bad. There are HUGE plot problems, HUGE. There’s a 1000ft snake (did I mention those serpents were kinda big?) slithering around Los Angeles, tearing down buildings and causing lots of havok… but nobody notices it. The opening scene of the movie shows a path of destruction through LA caused when the serpent first arrived, but the big snake itself wasn’t seen.. and wasn’t captured on any cameras.

That’s so stupid it was hard to keep watching.

But now for the good, the special effects. I think all but about $3.50 of the movies budget went into the CGI, and it’s really pretty good. Little details like a flag moving out of the way when a big creature walks past help set the scene for the battle in downtown LA. The obvious thing to compare the battle to is Transformers, and surprisingly it holds up pretty well. Scene after scene you see building being damaged, a big snake slithering up a sky scraper, weird dinosaur type things flying around and huddling on buildings, and it all looks good. It’s far from perfect, but much better than expected.

And that’s the only thing good I have to say about it, but it’s good enough for me to award a second star and to actually recommend that some of you give this movie a shot. If you can’t stand the 15 minutes of story setup at the beginning, just jump about 50 minutes into it and enjoy the eye candy. If you’re a big fan of sci-fi/fantasy films you might even like the story. I doubt it, but anything is possible.