The movie blasts off with Tony riding along with some of our brave men and ‘women’ throughout the mountains of Afghanistan, where he plans to dazzle the brass with his newest weapon of mass devastation, the Jericho… Break the walls Down! This thing is a sight to behold, lord help anyone if we already have it, but it would look damned cool on CNN. For those of you not aware of Tony’s comic adventures, he is a bona-fide war mongering, womanizing, alcoholic that loves to make money, and in the first 10 minutes you get to see just how cool it is to be him. Just think of Batman but less broody.

Anywhoo, back to the plot… Tony is in this Hum-vee, cruising along shooting the sheeot, when suddenly it gets attacked by insurgents, and all hell breaks loose around him. Tony is the only survivor of the assault, and just as he thinks he’s safe, out of no where a brand spanky new ‘Stark Industries’ anti personnel device lands right next to him. The bomb blows up and when he regains consciousness, he finds that he’s attached to a car battery, and he’s being held captive by some very nasty cave dwellers, that want him to save them with a Jericho of their own. Tony has plans of his own and instead of building the Jericho, he builds the coolest suit or armor ever, and begins his journey to redemption.

The story is good and the acting is not too shabby either. Robert Downey Jr IS Iron Man/Tony Stark and that’s the main reason the movie works so well. I have a friend that claims other than Batman Begins, this is hte best comic book movie he’s ever seen. To clarify that statement I’ll just say this, Tony Stark/Iron Man is the star, not Robert Downey Jr. Supporting cast members Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard, and Jeff Bridges all turn in really good performances.

In closing, Iron Man follows a pretty steady formula from start to finish but if you’ve seen another comic book movie in the past, you’ll know what I’m talking about. WARNING GEEK MOMENT AHEAD - If Iron Man is your favorite Marvel character then the absence of a ‘true’ Mandarin might be a big disappointment but the subtlety of inclduing his 10 rings in the story was nice touch to build on for the sequel.

If fast paced action with very little build up is the corner stone of your viewing pleasure, Iron Man will not be for you. But, if solid story telling, character development, plot devices and a great pay off are more your style, you’ll love it. OR, you’ve been dying to see this movie for 2 years, then you’re definitely Golden!

This is not that movie. YOUNG AT HEART (Also known as YOUNG@HEART) is a documentary about a New England choral group comprised of seniors citizens (Average age: 80) who sing a variety of contemporary songs in concert, including ones by The Talking Heads, The Ramones (”I wanna be sedated!”), Sonic Youth, James Brown, and yes, The Rolling Stones!

Directed by Stephen Walker, this was originally a BBC documentary, expanded to feature length. Bob Cilman, the director of the choral group, formed it in 1982 and it’s continued ever since, with various members.

The group has toured in Europe, although this movie follows the seven weeks preparing for a concert in their home town. Along the way they do a little Jailhouse Rock concert at a nearby prison.

Some songs give them a lot of trouble in rehearsal (”Schizophrenia” by Sonic Youth, and “Yes We Can Can” by The Pointer Sisters in particular), and there’s actually some suspense in whether or not they’ll be able to pull it off.

This is a funny and poignant film about not assuming you’re Too Old For That Kind Of Thing. One outspoken woman in the group is 92.

In some cases the members are fighting the clock, hoping their health permits them to be able to perform, or indeed, hoping that they’ll still be among the living come concert time.

This film is a delight, and there’s no other way to put it:

YOUNG@HEART ROCKS!

Richard Jenkins, a character actor whom you’ve probably seen in a lot of movies but didn’t know by name, plays Walter, a widower college professor in Connecticut. His wife died some time ago, and now he’s just going through the motions, teaching classes he doesn’t care about.

When a colleague asks him to present a scholarly paper at a conference in New York City, he goes to his second apartment there which he hasn’t been to in months if not longer.

To his (and their) great surprise, he finds two people living in his apartment, a Muslim couple living illegally in the U.S. Tarek is a drummer from Syria, his girlfriend Zainab is from Senegal in Africa, in a relationship that would raise eyebrows from some other Muslims.

They first assume he’s a burglar. As it turns out, they’ve rented the apartment in good faith from a con artist who somehow had the keys.

They vacate the apartment, but when he sees them out on a street corner obviously with no place to go, he offers to let them stay for a few days until they can find another place.

Gradually friendships grow between the couple and this guy. He discovers an interest in
drumming, and Tarek begins to teach him to play the drums.

Complications ensue when the INS becomes aware of Tarek’s illegal status.

This is a quiet, touching movie, that revolves around realistic characters from entirely different walks of life coming together.

Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay picks up right where the previous movie left off. And I mean literally. When we rejoin the boys we are treated to what happens after you eat 30 White Castles. And that pretty well sets the tone. If you thought the original was politically incorrect and risque, well let’s just say they really raised their game in the sequel. They pushed the R-rating hard with some downright raunchy moments.

So, the boys are back from White Castle, and now they’re off to Amsterdam to find Harold’s would-be girlfriend and of course partake in some legal weed. In today’s world, airline passengers get a little nervous when they see anyone who looks Arab on their flight. And Kumar just cant wait til they get to Amsterdam so he is caught trying to strike a high-tech bong which everyone thinks is a bomb. Next thing you know the boys find themselves in Guantanamo Bay and “hilarity ensues” as they try to escape and clear their names.

If you’re easily offended, stay home. And this is definitely not the movie you want to rent and show during the holidays with Grandma, Aunt Bertha and Uncle George. Otherwise you may find yourself being dragged to church by your ear. Also, there’s not many ethnic groups that aren’t made fun of at some point during the film. And oh, by the way, it’s freaking hilarious!

We’ve always said if you’re going to go over the top, you’ve REALLY got to go over the top. Ladies and Gentlemen, Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay went over the top, jumped back over and did it again. We saw it with a decent sized audience and the whole theater was laughing. Our sides were hurting by the time it was over.

This is a 5 star movie. We’ll watch it multiple times. We’ll have to because we keep missing lines because we’re busy laughing and wiping tears from our eyes. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you might even feel inclined to vomit. Go see it!

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.

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.

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.

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.

There’s a new outbreak of the plague in London, and the Powers That Be have reason to believe there’s a cure in Scotland. So they send in Major Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra), who’s part Mad Maxine, part Snake Plissken’s hot sister, and all woman.

And she’s got the best prosthetic since Rose McGowan’s machinegun-leg in PLANET TERROR.

It turns out there are survivors, and they’ve gone part Thunderdome punk-cannibals, part Renaissance Festival.

It’s no great movie, but it’s got some pretty good action sequences, culminating in a big road chase/battle ala ROAD WARRIOR.

And the movie works a bit in GRINDHOUSE country, but less self-conscious.

They don’t live in caves, but you get the idea.

Roland Emmerich (INDEPENDENCE DAY) directed this epic. If you’ve seen THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, you know scientific accuracy isn’t his strong point. The depiction of prehistory is pretty fanciful, and yes, those are the Egyptian pyramids you see in the trailer. Some people believe that the pyramids are far older….about 7500 years older, in this case… than they really are. Roland Emmerich must be fascinated with the pyramids, with this and STARGATE. Well, why not. In effect, this movie is a mashup of real Stone Age history crossed with civilizations out of CONAN THE BARBARIAN.

This feels a bit like APOCALYPTO. Primitive guy has to journey across lands unfamiliar to him filled with dangers.

The special effects are pretty spectacular. Mammoths, saber-tooth tigers, and several other prehistoric monsters I won’t mention by name so as not to ruin the surprise. As far as a travelogue for what it might have been like to encounter these creatures, this is fun stuff. The mammoth hunt is like the buffalo hunt in DANCES WITH WOLVES gone wild.

The actors are largely hidden behind grime, although Camilla Belle still manages to look pretty. She’s wrapped up in skins though; there are no fur bikinis like Raquel Welch sports in ONE MILLION B.C.

The story is pretty basic. A bunch of members of a guy’s tribe, including his best girl, are kidnapped by a powerful and technologically anachronistic tribe. So he sets out to get them back. Various big things would like to eat him or stomp him flat along the way.

You’ll see some criticisms of this movie that are silly: People complaining that the characters speak English, for example. Well, we don’t know what languages they spoke 12,000 years ago, so either they speak English, or it’s going to be “Ook ook ock ock” for an hour and 45 minutes. I for one vote for English.

More problematic is the New Age (or New Stone Age) mystical mumbo-jumbo. You’d think living in a world with prehistoric monsters would be enough to drive a story, but this brings in a lot of psychic visions and prophecies that seem to get fulfilled randomly for no particular purpose.

Also, pointing out inaccuracies in a movie like this is like shooting fish in a barrel, but I wanted to make one observation: When these guys are in the mountainous north, they encounter mammoths, but when they get to what one day will be Egypt, there are also mammoths. Why aren’t there elephants? Because the people who wrote this movie don’t realize that elephants were also around 12,000 years ago.

Still, it’s a fairly entertaining romp across a prehistoric land that never existed as shown.

I’m giving this 5 stars, and I’m not even that much of a U2 fan. It’s as good as a concert film of a rock concert can be. You get the experience of being in the audience, and you get the feel for what it would be like on-stage. That it’s in 3-D is just an added bonus.

There’s no backstage drama, no tour bus angst, no hotel room introspection, no rockumentary moments ready-made for the SPINAL TAP treatment. It’s all concert, the whole film, with a lot of energy.

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.

When a patron (Mia Farrow) threatens to tell their boss (Danny Glover) unless they can hand her a videotape of GHOST BUSTERS by 5 PM, they take a video camera outside and shoot their own version. Needless to say, costumes, special effects, and production values leave a bit to be desired.

Then they shot another. And another. These homegrown versions become so popular with their patrons that they end up restocking their shelves with their own versions of movies like ROBOCOP, RUSH HOUR 2, DRIVING MISS DAISY, 2001, KING KONG, ROCKY, BOYZ IN THE HOOD, and THE LION KING.

This may appear at first glance to be a madcap Jack Black comedy, and the movie spoofs are funny, but the movie is really more of a Frank Capra-style fable. It’s kind of sweet.

George Romero, king of the zombie movie, has made five zombie movies now: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968), DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978), DAY OF THE DEAD (1985), LAND OF THE DEAD (2005), and now DIARY OF THE DEAD.

They’re all in something of a floating continuity; they all depict aspects of a zombie apocalypse, but since they’re filmed decades apart it’s not really the same zombie apocalypse, it’s always as if the dead began rising from the grave just a short while ago.

This time around, like BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and CLOVERFIELD, it’s told from the point of view of people with video cameras documenting the whole thing. Thankfully, Romero keeps the shaky-cam/motion-sickness cam to a minimum. These people can hold a camera steady, even when being pursued by zombies.

The college students are making a low budget horror film, when suddenly they get the news that, unbelievably, there seems to be a world-wide zombie epidemic going on.

One of them has an RV camper (and why a college student would have one is never explained), but a group of them pile in and try to make it back to their hometowns. In route they encounter a lot of zombies, and one guy keeps filming it all, planning to make a documentary from his footage.

This is a lower-budget film than Romero’s last one (LAND OF THE DEAD), but it works. The zombie gore seems realistic, even through the documentary gimmick.

The cast of relative unknowns is sometimes a bit shaky in the acting department; but then again anyone with a camera trained on them during a disaster might come across as a bit artificial.

At one point we get to see how the Amish handle a zombie apocalypse (surprisingly well, all things considered)!

And woven throughout is a wry commentary on how we’ve become obsessed with documenting ourselves on video and posting it on the Internet.

Look for a cameo by Romero in the film; he plays a cop at a news conference.

Romero has had a lot of imitators lately in the zombie movie genre. The homage/comedy SHAWN OF THE DEAD, the fast zombies of the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake and 28 DAYS LATER/28 WEEKS LATER, and I AM LEGEND.

But Romero’s zombies still hold their own. Like the tortoise vs. the hare, his slow-moving zombies know that, at some point, you have to stop running to rest, and they draw inexorably closer.

(At last year’s DragonCon, George Romero was there, and he was selling t-shirts that proclaimed FAST ZOMBIES SUCK!)

Maybe invisibility. I’d like to be a Human Babel Fish; able to communicate in all languages. In JUMPER, the superpower is teleportation.

David (Hayden Christensen) discovers in high school he can *BAMF*, like that blue guy in X-MEN. He leaves home, steals money from bank vaults, sets himself up in a fancy apartment in New York City, then spends his days jumping from place to place, surfing in Fiji, seducing a woman in a bar in London, sunning himself atop the Sphinx in Egypt.

He eventually meets up with a Brit Jumper named Griffin. What little exposition there is comes from him, which is unfortunate, because he talks with such a mush-mouth. For example, we learn that Jumpers have been around for centuries, and there is an age-old group that hunts them called the Plabbleblabbles. Actually, they’re called the Paladins, but it took about the sixth time he said it for me to be able to understand what the heck he was saying.

Now, a regular movie of this ilk might have given us some scenes of them discovering an ancient temple with carvings on the wall of Paladins chasing Jumpers. Or maybe a Medieval illuminated manuscript. No time, this movie has to get to more quick cuts of Jumping. So we just get, “Some guys hunt us.”

The main guy hunting them is Samuel Jackson. He’s kind of like the guy he played in UNBREAKABLE. He’s jealous of people with a superpower, and so he’s going to try to kill them.

Frankly, the protagonist is so unlikeable, I was rooting for Samuel Jackson.

Extraordinarily, nobody involved has the slightest curiosity about why there are people who can teleport. There’s no attempt at any sort of technobabble. I’d at least have liked them to bring in some Heisenberg-type character and then he could draw some equations on a blackboard and say, “I’m uncertain, in principle!”

Rachel Bilson plays a love interest.

Diane Lane makes a brief appearance, and is lovely as always.

This movie has nice special effects, but that’s about it. A protagonist who’s distinctly unlikeable; his fellow Jumper who’s also not very likeable but at least is a bit of a smart-ass, but should learn to enunciate. There’s no sort of “with great power comes great responsibility” lesson here. They like Jumping, they like stealing stuff, and they think they’re entitled. And there’s a complete lack of any explanation of any of this.

Directed by Ari Sandel, this is a concert tour film with Vince Vaughn, and four up-and-coming comedians: Ahmed Ahmed, John Caparulo, Bret Ernst, and Sebastian Maniscalco.

Stand-up comedy is not the industry it was in the 1980s. These comedians have been around for 10-15 years each, and some of them may be headlining one week and working as a waiter next week. Vince Vaughn organized this tour to give these four guys a showcase.

In 2005 they went on a month-long 6000-mile bus tour, which happened to coincide with Hurricanes Rita and Katrina.

Also appearing are some friends of Vince Vaughn such as Jon Favreau, Justin Long, and Peter Billingsley (Ralph from A CHRISTMAS STORY, all grown up).

The four comedians: Ahmed Ahmed is of Egyptian descent, and much of his humor comes from the “Really, I’m not a terrorist” vein. Sebastian Maniscalco is from Chicago. John Caparulo is a Midwestern Everyman. Bret Ernest is a Jersey boy.

These are funny, talented, rude comedians. When it shows them on stage, the film is hilarious.

But it only shows us snippets of their stage show, quickly cutting away to other things.

Unfortunately, way too much of the film depicts backstage and what it’s like to be on a tour bus slumber party with Vince Vaughn and these guys. The film greatly overestimates how interesting it is to spend time with these guys offstage. These parts of the film come across as SPINAL TAP… only not funny.

That they managed to hit 30 cities in 30 nights is an amazing feat, and that must have been the impetus to document it. This must have been a grueling tour. But seeing behind the curtain of this tour isn’t that interesting.

I’m still recommending this mildly, because these guys are funny. I just wish the film had a greater ratio of on-stage comedy to off-stage time.

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.

We’ve added in Aqua Teen Hunger Force Vol. 5 so if you’re a fan, jump right on that. Otherwise the rest of the library is available for you to choose from. Same rules as usual, first eligible person to post in this thread saying what they want will get it.

FYI, we don’t particularly follow our “no spoilers” rule on these classic movie reviews, as you’ve had many many many years to see them. Though we aren’t doing a play by play either. And if you didn’t know Spock died at the end of Khan, you don’t care that Spock died at the end of Khan.

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.

In any case, it’s time to give something else away. Look through the prize library for new additions and see if you want something. If you do, then post a comment to this post and as long as your comment is the first comment, you get the prize.

Normal rules apply, see the prize library for details.

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.

When we catch up with Rambo he is still in Thailand just kind of living day to day. He has a boat which he uses to do things like round up cobras for the local shows. Meanwhile across the border in Burma there’s genocide going on with entire villages being wiped out in the most viscious manners possible. Enter some do-gooder missionaries who want to bring their religion and medicine to these villages. They need a boat ride and eventually talk John into taking them up there despite his warnings. Predictably, they get captured, and it’s up to Rambo to rescue them.

Ok, so the plot is pretty weak and predictable. The story exists only to setup one really large and long action sequence.

So, next question, can a 62 year old Stallone still pull off a believable John Rambo? Well, first off, Sly is in great shape for his age. And thanks to Grecian formula, he doesn’t look 60+ just yet. This incarnation of Rambo will use big guns when available and a bit of strategy instead of just gutting it out hand to hand against 100 men, but he can still outrun any explosion.

This is by far the most violent and graphic movie in the series. I believe Stallone intentionally went a little over the top, which is a smart business move as it keeps it from being just a lame sequel. Instead it’s a lame sequel with some of the most gruesome action shots you’ll ever see. Bodies explode as they step on mines, throats are ripped out and heads explode like ripe watermelons when shot with large caliber weapons.

We like a movie that knows exactly what it is and embraces it, that’s what is happening here. Even the radio advertising for Rambo is playing “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor”, and they do. People love a bad ass, and Rambo is still that. The audience we saw it with had quite a bit of clapping and cheering at the end. We give the movie 4 stars for being a good time. We’re glad they didn’t tone it down to a PG-13, the kids find their way in anyhow. And I confess to just sitting back enjoying myself thinking “uh oh, now you’ve pissed him off”, and then watching John Rambo do his thing.

Locations for the new flick have been released as well with filming in Austria, Italy and South America (I guess the person who wrote up the release things South America is just one country…)

In an interesting move, this movie follows directly on to the story of Casino Royale with Bond looking for the truth about Vesper, the one night stand he had that didn’t end up so well for the girl. This is a revenge tale, which goes well with the new “edgier” Bond franchise.

No word yet on if Q will return, but we’re keeping our fingers crossed. I don’t care how edgy Bond gets, he still needs his gadgets!

Quantum of Solace opens on November 7, 2008.

BTW, that poster doesn’t appear to be official, but it’s looks good enough to post.

This news is courtesy of MediaForGuys.com