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!

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.

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…

Reed Richards (Gruffudd) is contacted by the government to build some sort of tracking system that monitors energy signatures that they believe is responsible for creating big honking craters all over the planet. Sue is against this as it will surely ruin her big day… blah blah blah. Sue and Reed’s Wedding day comes along and it’s far from the way they’d envisioned it. The Surfer crashes the party and causes a big mini EMP which kills the city, a helicopter lands on the cake and Johnny ruins a DG tux, It’s all very tragic. I won’t spoil it for anyone when I tell you the trailer you’ve seen where Johnny (Evans) chases the Surfer is not exactly true to the film, so that sequence wasn’t completely ruined by seeing it in advance. So anyway back to it, the Government comes to the Four and asks for their help in determining the next location the Surfer will strike and if possible to stop him, which leads to the overall plot of the movie. Stop the Surfer, save the Day and rid the world of their old buddy Vic once and for all.

The story is OK, and the performances from Chiklis and Evans are pretty good, and if you ignore Alba’s acting and just concentrate on her lower opsiperal protuberance you’ll be fine. Fishburn lending his voice to the Surfer was cool and Seeing McMahon back as Doom made for a nice spin, but overall just an OK movie. The brightest spot of all was the effects, they were absolutely off the charts, factor in that I got to see it in full digital sound and picture made it all the better, but believe me it’s the highlight of this cookie, if you’re over the age of 12. It earned that PG rating honestly.

As far as sequels go it isn’t great but as far as a decent popcorn movie, it fits the bill perfectly. Lots of explosions, Alba in tight spandex, Cool chases, The Surfer, big gaping sink holes and a being that swallows worlds. Now that’s a summer eye candy extravaganza.

I never have been a big Fantastic Four fan, so this review is coming from a movie fan not a comic book fan. The whole “we’re so much better when we work as a team” stuff just never worked for me with the comic, but it does seem to translate better to film. For those who don’t know, here’s the rundown.

Reed Richards is a bright scientist dude who has an idea to test the effects of solar storms on DNA, with the idea that that’s what sparked evolution here on Earth. He’s broke though, so he turns to fellow scientist Victor Von Doom for help. They, along with Ben Grimm, Susan Storm and Johnny Storm head up to Victor’s space station for some testing. The storm arrives much earlier than expected causing them all to be exposed… and changed. That’s the first 30 minutes of the movie.

The next hour or so deals with them discovering their powers, how to control them, and coming to grips with what they can do. That may sounds long and tedious, but it’s really the best part of the movie. I really enjoyed that unlike other superheroes these guys tell everyone who they are which gets rid of the whole “let’s live a secret double-life in a cave with my aunt while I write for the local newspaper and take pictures” thing. We know where they live, what they can do, and that they aren’t particularly happy about it.

So what’s wrong with the movie? Simple, Dr. Doom kinda sucks. Great name, and he has the right attitude but his powers are a bit boring. He’s obviously written so that none of the Four could possibly defeat him on their own and are forced to work as a team, and even then they just fight to a stalemate. The one battle scene in the movie (yes, I said ONE) is a bit of a letdown, and I hope that with the eventual sequel they bring out some additional bad guys to liven things up. And yes, they left the ending wide open for a sequel.

Other than Dr. Doom, the rest of the movie does quite well. The effects are excellent, the acting is good for the most part, and the story is better than I expected… much better than I expected. If you’re in the mood to just sit back and enjoy a movie without having to think very much, then Fantastic Four will hit the spot. Take a date, take the kids, take the spouse, it’s safe for everyone and they should all have a good time.

Sin City is a collection of three separate, yet intertwined stories like what you saw in Pulp Fiction. In fact Quentin Tarantino is listed as a co-director of Sin City and it certainly has his fingerprints on it. The dialogue is pure Frank Miller, but the pacing and emphasis feels like Quentin.

The thing that sets Sin City apart from everything else though is it’s visual punch. The movie is based on a series of graphic novels from Frank Miller, and the adaptation from that form to the big screen is nearly perfect. They didn’t tone it down from the source material either, this is one violent movie. I was actually surprised at how far some of the scenes went and I’m sure the ratings board must have considered an NC-17 rating for this one. But, in the more gruesome scenes the story is told in silhouette… just like the source material, which is why it managed to get the R rating. Seriously though, this is very violent, so don’t take a squeamish date and expect her to be all cuddly afterwards.

The weakest part of Sin City would have to be the story itself. It’s good, but it’s not great, and the transitions between the different parts of the movie can be a bit jolting if you aren’t paying attention. The dialogue is cheesy, but it’s supposed to be cheesy so I can’t knock that. Actually it all works for me except the storyline with Clive Owen. The eye candy in this segment is great, but otherwise it just feels disjointed. Of course, it could be the fact that in the theater I was in the movie actually broke during this part of the film, and we had about a 10 minute break while they first noticed the problem, then fixed it. So take my reservations with a grain of salt.

You’ll recognize almost everyone in this movie, and while the biggest names certainly would be Bruce Willis and Jessica Alba, they don’t overshadow everyone else (except for Jessica’s belly… wow.) Everyone involved in this project brought their A-game to the set and it shows.

I’ve gushed enough about Sin City, just go see it. Just remember that’s it’s very violent so keep the kids and weak stomached females away.