Did John Waters sell out? Or did our ever-more-metrosexual age merely render him irrelevant? Certainly long before Hairspray took up residence on the Great White Way in 2002, Waters had abdicated his throne as America’s elder statesman of underground smut in favor of a more lucrative career as a neutered…
Avant-Garde 2: Experimental Cinema 1928-1954 (Kino) Cashback (Magnolia) The Contract (First Look) Crazy Legs Conti: Zen and the Art of Competitive Eating (Blue Underground) Five Dedicated to Ozu (Kino) The Host (Magnolia) Live Free or Die (THINKfilm) The Long Weekend (Lionsgate) The Monster Squad: Two-Disc 20th Anniversary Edition (Lionsgate) The…
The less said about the plot of the long-fabled, finally arrived Simpsons Movie the better. I know this instinctively, as a member of that particular segment of geekdom most psyched and apprehensive about its unveiling. I’m talking about the people who ask, “Does it suck?” and then prayerfully add, “Please…
Genius weighs heavily on a child prodigy who longs to be “normal” in this charming Swiss import from veteran director Fredi M. Murer. Kicked out of kindergarten for being too smart, Vitus is both a brilliant mathematician and a musical virtuoso — but he is still a child emotionally, something…
When first we meet nine-year-old Joshua Cairn (Jacob Kogan), there’s not an ounce of rambunctiousness in him. He’s a superior pianist, natch, and brainiac to boot, with his hair perfectly coiffed and his skin a pale shade of corpse. Joshua is more a parody of a pint-size horror-show monster than…
Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (Shout!) Avenue Montaigne (THINKfilm) Baxter (Lionsgate) The Best of the Colgate Comedy Hour (Passport) Beer Drinkers in Space (Tempe) Birdman & the Galaxy Trio: The Complete Series (Turner) Esther Williams: Volume 1 (Warner Bros.) Gunsmoke: The First Season (Paramount) The Happy Hooker Trilogy (MGM) The…
Red Dawn: Collector’s Edition (MGM) John Milius’s 1984 war pic was a mighty bonkers release even back then; not since the Fifties had something come down the pike so rife with Commie paranoia. Russian and Cuban forces invade the United States with tanks and choppers and the whole shebang, only…
I wanted to hate I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, truly I did. Two straight guys pretending to be gay (insert fiscal excuse here); been there, done that (insert all known variants on The Odd Couple here). Rampant homophobia hiding behind liberal pleas for tolerance — blech. And it’s…
Napoleon Dynamite looks like Cary Grant next to the hero of this Kiwi quirk-a-thon: a hulking, sullen creep named Jarrod (Jemaine Clement, costar of HBO’s new Flight of the Conchords) whose goony, sulking, petulant, selfishness, and dweeby videogame obsession somehow works like Spanish fly on mousy burger-flipper Lily (Loren Horsley)…
The magic has returned to the Harry Potter franchise — albeit magic of the old, black variety. The darkest and most threatening by far of the five Potter films, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is also the only series entry outside of the third, Alfonso Cuarón’s Harry…
Mike Enslin, the travel writer played by John Cusack in 1408, could use a better travel agent. Every hotel room in which he finds himself booked is said to be occupied by the ghost of some suicidal creep or a murderous goon who left behind a pile of bodies in…
Transformers twiddles its big, fat, stupid robotic thumbs for the better part of two hours before jabbing them into your eye socket and finger-fucking your brain in the last twenty minutes. Yes! It’s torture enough waiting for the iPhone and the second coming of Jesus without wondering when, exactly, this…
Still an all-American bloodhound after all these years, Bruce Willis’s Det. John McClane begins Live Free or Die Hard sniffing around a Rutgers-Camden parking lot and busting the frat boy who has been trying to cop a feel off of his daughter Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Oh, Dad! Since much…
A blitzed-looking man stumbling out of a screening of this dreadful excuse for unromantic comedy volunteered that the best part of the movie was when Robin Williams got socked in the jaw. Couldn’t agree more, but if you like your Williams spewing rat-a-tat gags and substituting stand-up for acting, you’ll…
Chancer: Series 1 (Acorn) Available solely in the U.K. for years, this is a small-time release featuring a modestly big-time star at the get-go of his career: Clive Owen, looking all of 12 years old and 73 pounds, is a sacked investment banker who winds up in the employ of…
Baa Baa Black Sheep: Volume 2 (Universal) Baseball’s Most Unbreakable Feats (Shout!) Batfink: The Complete Series (Shout) Disappearances (Universal) Dora the Explorer: Summer Explorer (Paramount) Degrassi: The Next Generation — Season 5 (Funimation) Dream a Little Dream 2 (Echo Bridge) Driving Lessons (Sony) Eureka: Season One (Universal) Filmation’s Ghostbusters: Volume…
We’re Americans. We go into other countries when we need to. It’s tricky, but it works.” So declares Michael Moore in the midst of his new documentary, Sicko. Moore may be riffing on the war in Iraq, to name only our most recent intervention, but he’s actually referring to U.S…
“Anyone can cook, but only the fearless can be great.” So goes the personal mantra of the late celebrity chef Auguste Gusteau, whose disembodied spirit materializes — Jiminy Cricket-style — to guide the rodent hero of Brad Bird’s Ratatouille toward his goal of gastronomic excellence. He also seems to be…
Originally set to be released during the Oscar-bait months as an odd sort of counterprogramming, DOA is likely to work far better in the season of sunshine and school breaks. Corey Yuen (The Transporter) delivers one of the year’s purest entertainments, the best butt-kicking PG-13 bikini jigglefest since the first…
Maybe the reason summer movies tend to be so bland, bloated, and generic is that we’re a captive audience. Where else are we going to go on a blazing 100-degree day? And the truth is, maybe our standards are lowered ever so slightly by that cool rush of conditioned air…
Black Snake Moan (Paramount) The best place to see Craig Brewer’s mash-up of blood-boiling exploitation elements would be a Mississippi drive-in circa 1972. His tale of a black bluesman (Samuel L. Jackson) who chains up a seething, scantily clad cracker nympho (Christina Ricci) would’ve had the lot under martial law…
The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3: The Complete Series (Shout!) Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (Anchor Bay) Dead Silence (Universal) Echo & the Bunnymen: Dancing Horses (MVD) Film School (Docurama) Frankenstein Conquers the World (Tokyo Shock) Going Under: Unrated Version (Blue Underground) High School Musical: The…
