40 Days and 40 Nights (no stars)
Directed by: Michael Lehmann
Written by: Rob Perez
Starring: Josh Hartnett and a bunch of people I don’t care about
Rated R (Nudity and the Fall of Rome)

Never in my life have I been so offended by a movie. I’ve seen Pink Flamingos, which features acrobatic genitals, a morbidly obese woman in a playpen eating eggs and a drag queen eating dog poop. That didn’t offend me. I laughed the whole way through Natural Born Killers. However, this seemingly innocent ‘romantic comedy’ made me want to destroy everything around me.

I wish I could say that I’m not mincing my words. Obviously, I have to. Which is probably for the best.

If you don’t know the premise of the movie already, good for you. Matt (Hartnett) is a slut. He has been single for six months and is having sex with any female in sight. But, oh, the poor guy is still hung up on his ex-girlfriend. So, even though he’s a huge whore, he gets freaked out after the act, and sometimes during the act since he’s still thinking about his one true love. He confides his problems to his brother, a priest-in-training. Matt then decides to do the ‘unthinkable’ – no sex (or sex-related activities) for 40 days! But, then he meets a girl, starts liking her a whole lot, and, for some reason, feels compelled to lie about the fact that he’s taken a vow of celibacy for Lent. People are betting that he can’t make it. Stuff happens, and I hate this movie.

From a technical standpoint, yes, this movie was well made. Clever edits and sight gags. Better than average. The acting was well done. The writing wasn’t terrible. It was a bit dated (Matt is a ‘dot commer’), but, it was fairly snappy.

However, this film made me sick.

It made me sick on many different levels. It sickens me when people are reduced to nothing more than their most base urges. Yes, people get horny, but that’s not the primary motivation in people’s lives. I refuse to believe that it is. There are schools of philosophy that teach that we are little more than pleasure-seeking machines. I disagree with those schools greatly.

While I am not the most religious person in the world, I don’t stand for religions being debased in this way. Any religion. It’s one thing to make a religious satire like The Life of Brian or a song like “Every Sperm is Sacred”. It’s quite another to pass off a vow of celibacy for Lent as being equal to the temptations Christ faced while fasting in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights. It’s one thing make the suicide scene in M*A*S*H look like “The Last Supper”. It’s just plain wrong to make Josh Hartnett into a Christ-symbol by being handcuffed to a bed so he won’t break his vow.

Sex, or the lack thereof, can be a very, very funny thing. “Seinfeld” did it very well on at least two occasions. The “Master of My Domain” episode is a perfect example of this. So is any episode of “Benny Hill” or “Laugh-In”. Things like that deconstruct sex, show just how silly and stupid and just plain fun it is. 40 Days and 40 Nights elevated it to such a level, made it the primary focus of every character in the movie that there are no redeemable people in the movie. Everyone in the film is a slut, or wishes that they were. I wish I were kidding.

The movie hates women. Which sickens me even more. I’ve been watching the Fight Club DVD for about a week. Fight Club features such lines as “If I had a tumor, I’d name it Marla,” and “We’re a generation of men raised by our mothers. Maybe another woman isn’t what we need in our life.” It has nothing on 40 Days. One scene in 40 Days features 2 women trying to regain the ‘power’ of withholding sex back from Matt by making out in front of him to make him break his vow. Another has a woman spreading her legs to show off the tattoo on her inner thigh, making the most unsubtle innuendoes ever, and then making a photocopy of her butt, just in case he changes his mind. The female lead, Erica, is frustrated because she has such a great relationship with Matt, but she isn’t having sex with him. Fine, we get the point. It’s not just men that think about sex. But, why portray women as being men without the same anatomy? As I stated earlier, everyone in the movie is a slut. A trollop. A whore.

What sickens me the most is that this movie will make lots and lots of money. It comes out less than a week after Fox aired a show about a bunch of fat people gorging themselves on mayonnaise, hard-boiled eggs and butter to prove who was the most deserving of being executed by John Doe from Se7en. Now, we are treated to a movie that reduces the audience to nothing more than genitals with bodies attached, and tries to make us laugh about it. It takes one of the most sacred times of the Christian year and turns it into a joke. It takes the concept of strengthening yourself through self-denial and turns it into a parlor game. Perhaps I’m being puritanical. Perhaps I should lighten up. Perhaps I’m just waiting for the return of vomitoriums so we can continue gorging ourselves until our society collapses under the weight of its own excesses.

Did I mention that this movie offended me?

Queen of the Damned *
Directed by: Michael Rymer
Written by: Anne Rice (novels), Scott Abbott and Michael Petroni (screenplay)
Starring: Stuart Townsend, Marguerite Moreau, Aaliyah, and Vincent Perez
Rated R (It’s about vampires AND rock and roll.)

“You should see what I didn’t write.” – George Bernard Shaw, responding to a woman who said that his review of a play was too harsh.

According to fans of the Anne Rice Vampire novels, this particular movie was either going to be really good or really bad. No middle ground. I can’t claim to be a fan of Ms. Rice’s books, but I am a fan of movies. This one is bad.

Sometimes, when a book is adapted for a movie, it works, like with Jurassic Park. Other times, it doesn’t, like with Rising Sun. With Queen of the Damned, I suspect that the movie just happens to share the title with a book of the same name. My first clue is this: the movie is based on Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles – a series, rather than on Queen of the Damned, the novel.

You may have seen Interview with the Vampire, which was a good movie. Forget anything about that movie, because it doesn’t apply here.

Here’s my synopsis, so you’ll know what you won’t be missing. Lestat (Townsend) is bored with being a vampire. It’s oh so lonely, you see. And boring. And he’s an extrovert. So, he decides to sleep for a century. All of a sudden he’s awakened by the magical power that is to be found in the current neo-goth-metal movement in Top 40 music. He decides that he wants to be a rock star in a goth band, and sing goth songs for all those kids who dress in black. So, he does. Then, we meet Jesse (Moreau), who is apparently a vampire researcher-in-training. But, see, she was raised by vampires, and then... Probably dropped off at an orphanage. That’s never explained. Jesse thinks that she’s found some sort of Vampire Secrets in The Vampire Lestat’s lyrics. That’s what he calls himself – The Vampire Lestat. It’s also the name of his band. Dude has an ego. Jesse’s mentor, David (Paul McGann) explains that everyone already knew that, and what’s more, he has Lestat’s journal! Lestat was made a vampire by Marius (Perez). Who happened to have the mother of all vampires in his basement. Akasha (Aaliyah), for some reason, is in love with Lestat. But, she’s a statue. Jesse tracks Lestat down in London, stuff happens, Lestat decides that he wants to bring the vampires out of hiding, stuff happens, he has a concert in Death Valley (which would clearly melt any TRUE goths, what with their penchant for wearing black leather and/or latex), Akasha shows up, makes Lestat her king, blah blah blah. It really doesn’t matter, because the movie just isn’t worth your time.

So, was there anything good about the movie? Yeah. The set design. Aaliyah’s costumes. And Stuart Townsend has the androgynous good looks to be a goth rock star. That’s it.

What was bad about the movie? You might want to grab a soda or something. This could take awhile.

First of all, just the acting. Lordy, what a mess that was. EVERYONE speaks with an Eastern European accent. Even though Lestat was French, and Akasha was Egyptian. There’s little-to-no inflection in the lines – it’s not like the actors are just reading the script, it’s more like they’re trying to out Bela Lugosi each other. They’re so impressed with their accents, that they forget to change the pitch of their voices.

Secondly, the lapses in ‘vampire logic’, for lack of a better term. There are certain things that we all know about vampire mythology. In one scene, Akasha tears out the heart of a vampire and eats it. But, the heart is still beating. Vampires do not have a heartbeat. They have no pulse. And, the movie never should have happened in the first place. In the backstory, we see Lestat chained to a bed after drinking the blood of Akasha. He clearly should have died, since vampires need to sleep in a coffin. In yet another scene, Jesse walks, unescorted into a vampire bar. Somehow, she only gets strange glances from the vampires. As we have seen in other vampire movies, vampires have other senses, and can smell blood from a long way off. Jesse should have died before she left. But, she makes it out just fine.

Thirdly, Lestat is not a jerk. Like I said, I’ve not read any of the Chronicles other than Interview, but, from what I understand, Lestat is a colossal jackass. He hates everyone except himself. Yet, we see him having actual feelings for mortals. Ugh.

Fourthly, there was no gay romance. Interview (the movie) was basically an exercise in mainstream homoerotica. Interview (the book) had Lestat and Louis sharing the ‘blood’ of a young man (and if you don’t catch THAT metaphor...). And yet, even though Lestat in Damned was a Bowie-esque androgynous rock star, he only preyed on Backstage Bettys.

Lastly, just because I don’t feel like writing anymore, the special effects just weren’t all that special. The entire special effects budget went to one shot. It’s fairly impressive, but the rest of the effects are just rotten. The makeup was pretty rotten, too.

If you’re a fan of the late Aaliyah, just rent Romeo Must Die. That one has Jet Li in it. You’re guaranteed some great action sequences. If you’re not a fan hers, then, just skip this movie. Please. As for me, I'll take my filmed vampires on Tuesday nights with Joss Whedon as the executive producer.

Hart’s War ***
Directed by: Gregory Hoblit
Written by: John Katzenbach (novel), Billy Ray and Terry George (screenplay)
Starring: Colin Farrell, Bruce Willis, Terrence Dashon Howard, Cole Hauser and Marcel Iures.
Rated R (It’s a movie set in a POW camp that isn’t run by Col. Klink)

Before seeing this one, I was somewhat... I don’t know. I mean, for me, WWII ended with Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line. We don’t need to make any more movies about The Big War. Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and The History Channel have told us pretty much everything there is to know about the war. Yes, there are still some great stories to be told, but, they belong on PBS. Hollywood is in desperate need of new ideas.

With that out of the way, I wasn’t disappointed in Hart’s War. See, it’s not really a war movie – it’s a courtroom drama with the war in the background. Mostly.

Lt. Tommy Hart (Farrell) is, as John Fogerty would put it, a fortunate son. His dad is a senator. Which means that he will probably never see actual combat. Prior to the war he was in his 2nd year of law school at Yale. While driving a captain back to his base, the jeep Hart is driving is ambushed, and Hart winds up being interrogated and transported to Stalag VI A. The colonel in charge of the American troops is McNamara (Willis). After being debriefed, Hart is sent to bunk with the enlisted men, rather than the officers. “No room,” is the reason given. During the stay, two black 2nd lieutenants (Tuskeegee airmen, to be precise) are brought into the American camp. They, too, are sent to the enlisted men. Of course, this didn’t go well at all. One of the pilots is framed by Bedford (Hauser), and is executed by the German soldiers, thus setting things in motion for a court-martial trial for Lt. Scott (Howard).

I’m giving Hart’s War 3 stars. Of course, you know that already, since it’s listed at the top of this review. The thing is, while I liked the movie, there’s nothing really outstanding in it.

I like both Bruce Willises. I’m certain that there are two of him. Another critic (whose name I don’t remember) suggested it, and I think it’s correct. We have Bruce Willis, Actor, and Bruce Willis, Action Hero. BWA can be seen in “Moonlighting”, The Sixth Sense, and Pulp Fiction. BWAH can be seen in Die Hard With A Vengeance, The Fifth Element and Armageddon. Both are good. In Hart’s War, we seem to get BWA. Not exceptional BWA, but, the performance is solid. Colin Farrell has redeemed himself from American Outlaws. He has leading-man good looks, and I like him more than the current crop of teenie-bopper magazine cover models. While Terrence Dashon Howard doesn’t have the screen presence of Michael Clarke Duncan, he doesn’t stink up the screen. Cole Hauser plays a jerk well, and Marcel Iures plays a Nazi. The performances work.

I really liked the 1st and 2nd acts of the film. Most of the 3rd act as well.

The movie starts out by touching on some important issues that better works have brought up (friendly fire, institutional racism), but that’s really it. Racism is more a plot device than a central issue of the film. Lt. Hart’s struggle to prove himself worthy of his rank and to and to actually understand what happens in a war is good for awhile, but, alas, the movie shows its hand too soon. The movie ended like it had to, but I was somewhat disappointed, anyhow.

Hart’s War is probably your best bet this week. It’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s just not that memorable.

Slackers ***
Directed by: Dewey Nicks
Written by: David H. Steinberg
Starring: Jason Schwartzman, James King, Devon Sawa, Michael C. Maronna, Jason Segel, and Laura Prepon
Rated R (language, drug use, brief nudity, naughty bits, and it’s a college movie)

This, ladies and gentlemen, is not another teen movie.

It’s not charting new comedic ground, it doesn’t re-write the rules of cinema, and it has cheap laughs. However, don’t go into Slackers expecting Porky’s or American Pie. You’ll just be confused if you do.

Now, if you haven’t gathered it from the previews, here’s a synopsis. Dave (Sawa) and his friends Sam (Segel) and Jeff (Maronna) are scam artists. Not for the benefit of others, just for themselves. They don’t actually want to have to study for tests and such. They execute elaborate schemes to get what they want, whether it’s passing a final or getting a girl. They’re awfully good at it, too. Unfortunately, Dave gets caught by Ethan (Schwartzman). Ethan won’t expose the crew, provided that they get Angela (King) to be his girlfriend. On my signal, unleash wacky college pranks.

What the previews don’t show you is what makes this movie the best comedy I’ve seen this year. Any movie that has the audacity to use a symphonic version of “Baba O’Reily” by The Who as the opening theme has plenty to live up to. Fortunately, it does.

First off, the story is just different enough to stand out from the crowd. In PCU and Animal House, the wacky pranks were wacky, and enabled the guys to keep their charter/house. Everyone had fun at the big party, everyone got drunk, and, ooooh, did they show that crusty old dean. In Slackers, on the other hand, the wacky hijinks are a way of life for the gang. Slackers, my friends, is cleverly disguised film noir! Move the fellas from a college campus to the seedy underbelly of some unnamed American city. Instead of scamming grades, have them scam, oh, I don’t know, insurance companies. See where I’m going with this? Add the femme fatale, the desire for one of the hoods to go straight, and away we go!

Secondly, it changes the styles of comedy that it uses. It has fart jokes, and they work. It has bits of absurdist (think Monty Python) humor. Throw in some surrealism, some Benny Hill-style bawdiness, some Norm MacDonald catch-phrases, break the ‘fourth wall’ and add some quick-paced dialogue, and you get just the kick in the pants that ‘teen’ comedies have needed for a long time.

Thirdly, I loved the cast. I think that the only person other than Jason Schwartzman who could have played Ethan is Ben Stiller. You might have seen Schwartzman in Rushmore. Odds are that you didn’t, because the film, while quite good, didn’t really go anywhere in the box office. Trust me – he’s good. Michael C. Maronna is good too. You might have seen him from the Nickelodeon TV show ”The Adventures of Pete and Pete”. Maronna was Big Pete. You’ll recognize Laura Prepon as Eric’s girlfriend from “That 70s Show”. Devon Sawa is a teen heartthrob, but he’s able to bring the right degree of passion to the character. James King has the right degree of innocence and silliness to play Angela effectively.

What didn’t I like about this movie? The pacing seemed to suffer in the middle. Part of this may have been that in a traditional film noir piece, the middle is where the tension really starts to build. The beginning establishes characters and sets the ball rolling. In the middle, plot twists are added, one on top of another, until the climax and epilogue, when we realize that, hey, it’s Chinatown. That particular convention doesn’t really work with comedy.

I also didn’t really like the ending. Again, it’s probably a holdover from noir. It has a terrible film noir ending, but a standard college movie ending. It wasn’t a letdown, however, because, cinematically it was great. It was theatrical, rather than cinematic. It looks like I’m contradicting myself, but, trust me, I’m not. (You’re thinking right now, “But, you just said that it was great cinematically because it wasn’t cinematic. I don’t get it...” You will when you see it.)

Slackers isn’t a spoof. It’s not a send-up of a genre. It’s not strictly a college movie, and it’s certainly not a teen sex-farce. It’s not character driven, it’s plot driven. It’s film noir without the existentialism. Film noir-light, I guess. Go and see it, but, don’t put your faith in the previews. They’re not lying, they’re just hiding the best stuff.

A Walk To Remember ** (for men); ****(for women)
Directed by: Adam Shankman
Written by: Nicolas Sparks (novel), Karen Janszen (screenplay)
Starring: Mandy Moore, Shane West, Peter Coyote and Daryl Hannah
Rated PG (there’s some language, some implied drinking, and some smooching)

This wasn’t an intolerable movie. It has that going for it, anyway. I’ve seen worse, at least.

If you’re a guy who is dating, you will be seeing this movie. If you’re a guy who’s married, you might be seeing this movie. So, be warned: A Walk To Remember is a ‘chick flick’. It is not a romantic comedy; it is a romantic DRAMA. You will probably get jabbed and/or glared at if you are unable to stifle your laughter during the DRAMATIC parts. You might even get the silent treatment. Fortunately, I was able to view said film unencumbered by such things. Under the right circumstances, it could be a gut-buster. Even funnier than She’s All That.

In case you haven’t been able to discern the plot from the trailer, here’s how it breaks down: Landon (West) is a ‘bad boy’. This means that all the women in the audience love him. He has a fast car. He runs with a ‘bad’ crowd. It’s implied that he may have had a beer or two. He hates school. And his dad. He lives with his mom (Hannah). After a prank goes wrong, he is ordered by his principal to go to all of his classes, tutor poor kids on Saturdays, and take part in the school play. Jamie (Moore) is also involved in the school play. She’s the preacher (Coyote)’s daughter. Her mom died. Jamie likes astronomy, drama, tutoring and God. She’s a ‘plain Jane’. She doesn’t dress all fancy and she doesn’t try to fit in. That means that she will be the target of ridicule and hatred in her school, because that’s how things work. Things happen involving the play, the evil politics of high school society and various stock characters, and we wind up with a ‘romantic’ movie. Presumably some tears will be shed.

I have absolutely nothing against chick flicks. Some are very good, like When Harry Met Sally... and Pretty Woman. Some are guilty pleasures of mine, like Lucas. Some are loved by men and women, as is the case of The Princess Bride, Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink. Some are cleverly disguised, like Top Gun and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. A Walk To Remember, however, is none of these.

It tries. It really, really tries. It starts to ask some questions about things like the relationship between God and human suffering, but then it forgets about those things because they don’t photograph well, nor do they have catchy pop songs to go with them. It tries to restrain itself, but the sheer absurdity of what happens in the movie just pushes it over the edge into almost-but-not-quite-Lifetime-Movie-Of-The-Week territory. It just couldn’t help it.

Acting-wise, eh, it was there. I’ve never seen Mr. West act before, and I’m pretty sure that this was Mandy Moore’s first role, so I really don’t have a base to compare them to. Neither Hannah nor Coyote is phoning their performances in, but it really doesn’t matter, since their characters really don’t matter. Well, Coyote’s matters a little bit more than Hannah’s, but, really, this could have been set anywhere with the same results. There is, however, a clear distinction between not-entirely-by-the-numbers Hollywood and timeless stories.

Was the movie well-made? Well, it was OK. The photography was decent, and they didn’t use soft focus a whole lot. They did do some cross-fades (like during the ‘play’ scene – Moore is singing a song, and the screen shows a close-up of her face and a medium-shot of her standing on the stage) that were just a bit stupid and cliched, but, eh. The music was there to sell soundtracks and to tell the audience how it should feel. It didn’t really feel like it was a ‘part’ of the movie, it was just there. The pacing REALLY suffered during the third act, after the ‘bomb’ is dropped. Honestly, if you don’t see what’s coming, well, by golly, this movie is for you!

Females, especially teenage girls, will LOVE this movie. Men, if you need to score points, here’s an idea – why not rent a classic chick flick like some of those I’d mentioned? If, however, you must go to this movie, rest assured that it’s not unwatchable, but, please, contain your laughter.

Well, I’m back from hiatus. Been awhile since my last review, but I think I still have the knack for it. So, without further ado, here it is – the new review!

Black Hawk Down *** ½
Directed by: Ridley Scott
Written by: Mark Bowden (book), Ken Nolan (screenplay) and Steve Zaillian
Starring: Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, William Fitchner, and Sam Shepard
Rated R (Violence, violence and violence. If you take anyone under the age of 17 to this movie, you are a bad person. Seriously. There’s also some language, but, given the situations in the film, ‘Poo!’ and ‘Darn!’ really wouldn’t work.)

When I first saw the trailers for this movie, I was torn. The first thing I saw was ‘From the producer of Pearl Harbor’. I would have filed this movie away under ‘Bruckheimer really needs to get a clue,’ had it not been for the next sentence: ‘From the director of Gladiator’. “Hmmm...” I thought. “Ridley Scott knows how to make a movie, but Jerry Bruckheimer seems to have lost touch with reality. This could be interesting...” And, it certainly was.

Some background on the two men, for those of you who don’t pay close attention to the credits. Jerry Bruckheimer is an incredibly successful producer. Along with his late partner, Don Simpson, his productions are pretty much classic guy movies. Top Gun. Beverly Hills Cop 1 and 2. Days of Thunder. Bad Boys. Crimson Tide. Good, exciting, stuff-blows-up-real-good, summertime popcorn movies. However, since Don Simpson’s death, Bruckheimer seems to have been wanting to become something more than a producer of high-quality B-movies. It seems like he wants to make “important” movies. Which is why we wound up with the travesty that is Pearl Harbor.

Ridley Scott, however, is a fine director. An award-winning director. When his game is on, he makes movies that re-invent genres. Alien is probably the best monster movie ever made. Blade Runner, with all its sci-fi trappings, is an excellent piece of film noir. Gladiator re-introduced the ‘epic’ to Hollywood. He’s a director that knows what he’s doing.

So, what happens when these two work together on a picture? Something that is really good.

Black Hawk Down is based on actual events. In 1993, warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid declared war on UN forces stationed in Mogadishu, Somalia. US Special Forces were deployed to take Aidid out. The mission was supposed to last 3 weeks. The story here takes place during the 6th week. Things are already bad, on top of the 300,000 Somalis who have starved to death due to the civil war and Aidid’s interceptions of food. Special forces intel says that many of Aidid’s top advisors will be having a meeting on October 3rd. This intel is deemed reliable, since 3 sources have confirmed it. The good news? That many advisors in one place, if captured, should weaken Aidid’s power. The bad news? The meeting is right in the center of territory that Aidid controls. The plan is this: 1) land special forces troops, have them capture the advisors. 2) have 4 Blackhawk helicopters secure the building and surrounding area from the air. 3) move a convoy of humvees in to extract the prisoners. 4) get out in a hurry. Should take an hour, tops. It wound up being the longest sustained ground battle involving US soldiers since Vietnam.

The movie starts out as expected – we meet the principal characters, and see what they’re like. This wasn’t as effective as it could have been. The cuts between actors were too quick, and lots of them were yelling, making name recognition tough. Plus, they all had the same haircuts, and most of them were young and photogenic (meaning that they all looked the same). Fortunately, the film didn’t seem to be character-driven. It felt event driven. The beginning and the end of the film are the only places that Bruckheimer’s fingerprints are evident. Plenty of pop songs playing in the background, which I felt distracted from the film. Songs in a Bruckheimer production are only there to sell soundtracks. They don’t add anything to the film. The only other place I noticed the heavy hand of Jerry was at the end, when SSgt. Eversman (Hartnett) gives the ‘hero’ speech. You’ve all seen it in the previews – “... sometimes, it just turns out that way.” I don’t know if Eversman really said that or not, but it seems like something Bruckheimer would put in. If he really did make that speech, then he has my apologies, as he has seen things that I never, ever, hope to see, and has the right to say whatever he wants.

The main part of the movie is concerned with things after things hitting fans, literally and figuratively. We go from one bad situation to another, with scarcely enough breathing room to prevent becoming overwhelmed. Scott uses his Alien skills to great effect here. The tension never really lets up until the end of the movie. Sure, it’s quiet, but, you know that sooner or later another bullet or RPG is going to be screaming by, and people are going to get hurt.

Which brings me to the violence in this movie. Black Hawk Down is tough to watch. If you are squeamish, do NOT see it. Remember the Normandy scene at the beginning of Saving Private Ryan? Take the violence in that, but make it last for 120 minutes. Driving home from the theatre, I nearly became physically ill. People don’t just get hit with bullets and fall down, they get shredded, and their pieces hit the ground. Blood doesn’t flow, it shoots out of a body like a geyser. People lose arms and legs, and it is shown in graphic detail. This movie is not for the faint of heart. Do not let your children go to this movie unless you go with them. I can not stress this enough. This movie has the most violence I have ever seen on screen, which is why it is so good. War movies should be made as violent as possible, just to show what war does. During the Battle of Mogadishu, 19 American soldiers and 1000 Somalis lost their lives, and I’m fairly certain that they were all shown.

Black Hawk Down doesn’t get into a lot of the political issues surrounding Somalia and our involvement in it, which is probably for the best given what has happened since September 11th. It shows the futility of wars, and pays tribute to the soldiers who were involved in this one. It doesn’t pander, and it doesn’t demand that you stand up and shout “USA! USA!” It merely says “Hey. Here’s some stuff that happened. It was a bad, bad situation, but, these are Americans, and they were doing their job. It’s time to give them the respect they deserve.”

For the complete cast list, visit The Internet Movie Database For brief biographies of the men involved, visit the official Sony Pictures Entertainment site (note: this site requires Shockwave).

The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of The Ring ****
Directed by: Peter Jackson
Written by: J.R.R. Tolkien (books), Fran Walsh, Phillipa Boyens and Peter Jackson (screenplay)
Starring: Elijah Wood, Sir Ian McKellen, Sean Bean, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Orlando Bloom, John Rhys-Davies, Ian Holm, Liv Tyler and Cate Blanchett
Rated Pg-13 (intense battle scenes, and the fact that the filmmakers were faithful to the book)

Ross: “Hello? Didn’t you read The Lord of The Rings in high school?”
Joey: “I had (girlfriends) in high school.” – Friends

Wow. Wowie. Wowwowwowwowwow!

Hmmm... That’s not much of a review, is it? I should probably give some details and whatnot about what I thought of the film and why. And, I will.

If you’ve not heard of The Lord of The Rings, you’re probably not a geek. The classic epic is responsible for the world today. Wizards and dragons and elves and dwarves... these are all playable characters in the Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game, played by geeks the world over. Geeks who also read The Lord of The Rings, and went on to form software and hardware companies and became very, very rich. If it weren't for the books and the RPGs, you wouldn’t be reading this review on your computer. I’m exaggerating, of course, but the books have had a massive impact on literature and popular culture. If it weren’t for LotR, we wouldn’t have Harry Potter. It’s that simple. Led Zeppelin would have had fewer things to write songs about, and I’m guessing that the crown wouldn’t rest heavy on Conan the Barbarian’s brow, which would mean that we would be a world without Arnold Schwarzenegger. The series is that big.

If you are unfamiliar with the story, here’s a summary. Long ago, magic rings were forged and distributed to the races of the world: three went to the elves, seven went to the dwarves, nine for humans and one for the Dark Lord Sauron. The One Ring was the most powerful, and, naturally, evil. After a massive assault by the races of Middle-Earth on Mordor, where Sauron ruled, the One Ring was lost. Eventually, it fell into the hands of Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit. Bilbo (Holm) passed the one ring to his nephew, Frodo (Wood). Now, the battle in which Sauron lost the Ring did not kill Sauron – he’s just been biding his time and regaining his strength, and wants the Ring back. The only way to stop Sauron from getting the Ring and taking over Middle-Earth is to destroy the Ring. The only place that this can be done is in the Cracks of Doom – Sauron’s basement. Hobbits are small and not very tough. Clearly, if Frodo is to destroy the Ring, he’s going to need help. Gandalf the Grey (McKellen), Frodo’s hobbit friends Sam (Astin), Merry (Monaghan), and Pippin (Boyd), the elf Legolas (Bloom), the men Strider (Mortensen) and Boromir (Bean) and the dwarf Gimli (Rhys-Davies) form the Fellowship of the Ring. 3...2...1... begin adventure NOW!

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Lord of The Rings is an epic, widely regarded as a classic of 20th Century Literature, and has been studied even more thoroughly than the Star Trek universe. You can buy evlish dictionaries, runic dictionaries, and chronologies and histories of Middle-Earth. Fans of Tolkien’s universe range from people who have heard of hobbits to people who speak high- and low- Elvish with equal fluency. If Jackson and company screw up, then they have lost their primary fan base with this series. Fortunately, they didn’t screw up. In fact, they did everything but screw up.

As always happens when adapting books for cinema, things get left out, things get changed and things get moved around. I only noticed one adventure that was left out and one scene that was altered. These abridgements were minor and didn’t take away from the story in any way.

One distinct advantage that cinema has over books is that movies don’t have miles and miles of exposition. Do a cut, show some things, bang – story told in 20 seconds, rather than five pages. Jackson gets a +2 bonus to adaptation from literature.

Honestly, I could not find anything to dislike about LotR. Not a one. Some purists may complain about Arwen (Tyler) being given a bigger role – to them I say “Shut up. Liv Tyler is wonderful to look at, and, besides, you’re not the only audience. There are people out there who haven’t read the books, and some who haven’t even heard of them.”

Gladiator may have re-introduced the old-style Hollywood epic to cinema, but LotR shows how it’s supposed to be done. Old Hollywood epics, like Ben Hur and The Ten Commandments and Spartacus were big stories that demanded big visuals. LotR delivers. Epics demand big special effects. Present and accounted for. Epics demand clear direction and acting. Again, it has it all.

Peter Jackson is the Kiwi version of Sam Raimi. Both started out in indie/cult cinema (Raimi with the Evil Dead series, Jackson with Dead Alive and Meet the Feebles). Both made a sudden leap into ‘legitimate’ cinema (Raimi with the fantastic A Simple Plan, Jackson with Heavenly Creatures) And now, both are directing all-but-guaranteed blockbusters (Raimi with next summer’s Spider-Man, Jackson with the LotR trilogy). Using a relative unknown to helm an adaptation of a classic is actually a good thing. A big-time director would be too tempted to put ‘trademarks’ into the film. Jackson is very much a part of a new ‘school’ of cinema. Naturally, when cinema first began as an art form, many directors were self-taught. They then passed this knowledge on to underlings, who carried on the traditions. Then true film schools were founded, etc., etc. In the 1970s, two new ‘schools’ of cinema arose – the film school student who loves movies, typified by Spielberg and Lucas, and the directors who learned how to make movies by making movies, typified by Scorsese and John Sayles (who both learned from B-Movie King Roger Corman). Beginning in the 1980s, yet another ‘school’ began to emerge – kids with cameras. These kids grew up to become Sam Raimi and the Coen (Fargo, O, Brother, Where Art Thou?, Raising Arizona) Brothers. Even though Jackson was half a world away from the kids with cameras ‘school’, he belongs with them. By making self-produced-written-acted-filmed-edited-everything-involved-with-the-film-films, the kids with camera school learned how to tell a story without wasting anything. This sort of economy is what an epic needs.

The acting is also very good. The casting was perfect. No one but McKellen could play Gandalf. While other actors could probably play Frodo, Wood has the right degree of ‘innocence’ needed for the character. Plus, there’s nothing like a fantasy film or a Star Wars movie for giving character actors and little people work.

This is a film that deserves to be seen. Don’t let the three-hour running time put you off. There isn’t a slow part in the film. It didn’t drag once. Besides, Titanic was over three hours, and you saw that, didn’t you? The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of The Ring is actually shorter, and it’s much better. Plus, there are two sequels!

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As a bonus, if you'd like to know more about The Lord of The Rings, one of the better sites is The One Ring.net. Of course, you could always read the books.

Not Another Teen Movie **1/2
Directed by: Joel Gallen
Written by: Michael G. Bender, Adam Jay Epstein, Andrew Jacobson, Phil Beauman and Buddy Johnson
Starring: Chyler Leigh, Jamie Pressley, Deon Richmond, Eric Jungman, Lacey Chabert, Chris Evans, Paul Gleason, Sam Huntington, Ron Lester, Cody McMains, Riley Smith, Randy Quaid, Chris Evans and some cameos
Rated R (nudity, teen-oriented comedy)

Don’t let the title fool you – Not Another Teen Movie is just that: another teen movie. The cast is photogenic, everything is predictable, there’s gratuitous nudity, and it all works out in the end.

If you’ve seen any of the ‘teen’ movies EVER made, you already know what Not Another Teen Movie is about. Take bits and pieces from (in no particular order) She’s All That, Cruel Intentions, Grease, any movie directed by John Hughes, American Pie, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Lucas, Rudy, any of the sports movies that didn’t star Denzel Washington or Gene Hackman, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Clueless, Bring It On, Can’t Hardly Wait, Pretty in Pink, American Beauty and Better Off Dead. Now that you’ve got those, and probably some that I forgot to mention, watch Airplane!, The Naked Gun, Kentucky Fried Movie, and Hot Shots!, and Dumb and Dumber, and then you have Not Another Teen Movie.

You already know the cast – they’re all stock characters. The Popular Jock (Smith), The Pretty Ugly Girl (Leigh), The Nasty Cheerleader (Pressley), The Beautiful Weirdo (Smith), The Obsessed Best Friend (Jungman), The Desperate Virgin (Evans)... just look at the movie poster. It has everything you need to know right there. You already know what’s going to happen, because it is, despite the title, another teen movie. The only difference between this and I Can’t Hardly Wait to Bring It to the Clueless Ridgemont High Breakfast Club is that the jokes in this movie are intentional.

Some of the jokes are clever. The school’s name is John Hughes High. The cafeteria is the Anthony Michael Dining Hall. Some of the jokes are laugh-out-loud funny. Some of the jokes are big-old gross-outs. And that's fine. Unfortunately, it’s all been done before, and better.

What was right with the flick? The soundtrack, first of all. Nearly all of the classic ‘themes’ are represented: “Don’t You Forget About Me”, “Oh, Yeah”, “Bizarre Love Triangle” – they’re all there, but they’re covered by bands like Orgy, Goldfinger and Face To Face.. The covers are good, but originals would have been better. The cast was also good. Mostly no-names, but no-names with some measure of comic timing and/or physical comedy skills.

What was bad? Some of the movies that were being parodied were wrong choices. Grease? Absolutely. She’s All That? More power to you. The Breakfast Club? Why? Better Off Dead? Wasn’t that a spoof in the first place?

Most of the time, Not Another Teen Movie is just awfully pleased with its own cleverness. Part of it seems like an homage to Jim Abrams, Jerry Zucker and David Zucker (the men behind Airplane! and The Naked Gun) put together by high school kids. The writers know what’s funny, but don’t know why a joke is funny, which is critical for a spoof. Airplane! worked because it was acted seriously. The actors behaved like they were in a disaster movie. When Leslie Neilson says “Don’t call me Shirley,” he’s not playing it for laughs, and that’s why the joke is funny, apart from the pun. When this flick is spoofing teen ‘dramas’, it works just fine. When it’s adding it’s own absurd jokes, it’s funny. When it’s trying to spoof a comedy, well, that’s just asking for trouble.

If you’re looking for an homage to a filmmaker, check out Mallrats (Kevin Smith’s tribute to John Hughes) or The People Under The Stairs (Wes Craven’s love letter to Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series). If you’re looking for a Cameron (Fast Times at Ridgemont High) Crowe fix, Vanilla Sky opens this week. If you really want to see a spoof, anything involving the Zucker Brothers is good (except for Ghost, which isn’t meant to be a comedy). If you want to have some cheap laughs, some occasionally clever pop-culture references and sight-gags, and some brief nudity, then Not Another Teen Movie is probably right up your alley.

Ocean’s 11 *** ½
Directed by: Steven Soderburgh
Written by: George Clayton Russel and Jack Golden Russel (1960 story); Harry Brown and Charles Lederer (1960 screenplay); Ted Griffin (Screenplay)
Starring: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Bernie Mac, Matt Damon, Scott Caan, Casey Affleck, Carl Reiner, Andy Garcia, Shaobo Qin, Don Cheadle, Edward Jemison, Elliot Gould and Julia Roberts.
Rated PG-13 (language, some violence. Oh, and the fact that it’s about one cool robbery)

“If it’s a remake of a classic, rent the classic!” – Jay “The Critic” Sherman.

OK, confession time. I’ve never seen the original Ocean’s 11. This probably makes me a bad person, and makes your trust in my ability as a movie reviewer very, very shaky. The original is, from what I’m told, a classic. It had the Rat Pack. Frank, Deano, Sammy. It defined cool. Cool didn’t even exist until the original came out. Oh, people thought that they knew what cool was, but they were living lies. Lame lies. Square lies.

Now, I’ve never seen the original. But, I liked the current version. Given the fact that the original is ALWAYS better than the remake, I can only assume that the original might even make me cool. Might.

Synopsis time. Danny Ocean (Clooney) just got out of prison for a con he pulled 6 years ago. He’s had a lot of time to think. Lots. And, he’s come up with a plan. A big plan. A cool plan. A crazy plan, man. He’s going to rob three casinos in Las Vegas on the same night. But, to do this, he needs to get a team together. A cool team. A crazy team, man. Not unlike Jake and Elwood Blues, he has to get the band back together. First up: Frank Catton (Mac). He’s the inside man. Next: Rusty Ryan (Pitt), a co-conspirator. Now: how to make this plan work. They’ll need money. That’s where Reuben Tishkoff (Gould) comes in. He’s a former casino owner, and, it just so happens that the three casinos Clooney & Company plan to rob belong to Terry Benedict (Garcia), the man who bought Reuben out. Reuben doesn’t like him, and gladly agrees. They’ll also need drivers and ‘utility men’ (my term). Enter Turk (Caan) and Virgil (Affleck) Malloy, a couple of bored citizens of Utah. Then we need some techies. Livingston Dell (Jemison) is a hacker and Basher Tarr (Cheadle) is a demolitions expert. They need a ‘grease man’ (the movie’s term) – someone who can get in and out of tight places easily. Enter Yen (Qin), a Chinese acrobat. Another inside man wouldn’t be bad, so why not get Saul Bloom (Reiner) – he’s got plenty of experience. And, someone with quick hands and an ability to tail people. That would be Linus Caldwell (Damon). Throw in a femme fatale named Tess Ocean (Roberts), make sure that she’s the ex-wife of Danny Ocean, and man alive, it looks like we have us one heck of a movie! Stuff is gonna get robbed, stuff is gonna blow up, there may be plot holes that we don’t care about, and, by golly, we’re gonna have fun!

I’m actually kind of glad that I went into Ocean’s 11 with a blank slate. Cinematic purist that I am, I was able to enjoy the movie without comparing it to the original. I can only hope that this remake is able to stand on its own merits, rather than suffer constant comparisons to the original. Much like The Shining or Fight Club – the books were excellent, and the movies based upon them were different, yet still excellent. You don’t say, “That’s not the way it happened!” when watching the movie versions. The books and the movies are two separate, yet equally rewarding experiences. Hopefully, this will be the same with the two Ocean’s 11.

What did I like about Ocean’s 11: 2001? Plenty. I like George Clooney. Especially when he’s playing George Clooney. He’s a handsome man, he looks like a classic leading man, but he doesn’t have a whole lot of range. And that’s just fine with me, frankly. Brad Pitt does a George Clooney impersonation throughout the movie, and, that’s cool too, man. Andy Garcia isn’t a ‘bad guy’ in the movie, but, he’s a jerk, because he doesn’t like Danny Ocean. Julia Roberts plays Supporting Actress Julia Roberts, rather than Melodramatic Romantic Comedy Julia Roberts, and looks good doing it. She’s not strictly eye candy, but she’s not a major player in this flick. I’m not going to do a run-down of each and every character in the flick. That would be boring for you. Just know that I didn’t see a single bad performance.

Cinematically, I loved it. Soderburgh seemed to blend ‘60s cinematography (French New Wave zooms, Kubrick-esque tracking shots and angles,) with a... ummm... It’s too early to say 21st Century style, so I’ll just call it a television sensibility. He knows when a shot should linger, he knows when to use a quick-cut, and he knows when to do a montage. The style never overshadows the story or the characters.

What didn’t I like about this movie? Well, not much. Personally, I think that classics should be left alone, so I guess I didn’t like the fact that this was a remake. I would have liked to have seen more of the planning of the heist, but that probably would have gone against the almost ‘innocent’ tone of the movie.

If you haven’t seen the original, by all means go and see this version. But only if you promise to see the 1960 version. If you have seen the original, use your own best judgement.

Behind Enemy Lines ***
Directed by: John Moore
Written by: Jim Thomas and John Thomas (story); David Veloz and Zak Penn (Screenplay)
Starring: Gene Hackman, Owen Wilson, Joaquim de Almeida and a bunch of Eastern Europeans
Rated PG-13 (I’d be ashamed to see a war movie that was rated below PG-13. If you don’t know what to expect in a war movie, you really shouldn’t be seeing this one.)

Bravo niner delta, what’s your vector, Victor?

You’ll hear lots of dialogue like that in Behind Enemy Lines. Military code talk is one of the coolest things ever. Vector, copy, come back, affirmative, negative, no-go, R(ally)P(oint)... That stuff is just plain COOL.

Back to the movie review. So – you’re making a war movie with airplanes. Let’s make sure you have everything you need. Stock footage? Check. Lieutenant with a ‘bad boy’ attitude? Check. Stuff blowing up? Check. Politically ambiguous military situation? Che – what? That doesn’t make sense. I mean, we’re America... (Don’t worry – We’re the good guys. It’s all the rest that’s ambiguous.)

See, Behind Enemy Lines is set in Bosnia during the ‘last’ days of the civil war in Serbia/Yugoslavia/Bosnia-Herzegovina. Chris Burnett (Wilson) is stationed on an aircraft carrier in the Adriatic Sea. The ship is commanded by Admiral Leslie Reigart (Hackman), who in turn is under the command of NATO, represented by Admiral Piquet (de Almeida). Now, Burnett is a bit of a maverick. Not like the Tom Cruise type – Burnett is tired of being in the Navy. He signed on to be a fighter pilot, not a sitting around on the ship pilot. In fact, he’s handed in his resignation papers. Of course, you can’t just leave in the middle of a mission. When the ship returns to port, Burnett is done. Reigart doesn’t really care for Burnett – he used to have potential, but now he’s just dead weight. So, in a bit of vindictiveness, Reigart assigns Burnett (a navigator) and his pilot, Stackhouse (Gabriel Macht), on a recon mission on Christmas. The recon? A lake. Lovely. But, radar picks up some activity. Activity OFF OF THE ASSIGNED COURSE. Now, we’ve established that Burnett is a maverick, so, naturally they do recon over there. They take pictures of mass graves. Then, they get shot down. BEHIND ENEMY LINES. This is not good. See, NATO planes were not supposed to be making fly-bys in that area. A peace treaty has just been signed, and things could fall apart at any moment. So, Reigart has a choice to make – does he risk the lives of thousands of people to get one man? Does he ensure peace and leave a man behind? We all know the answer to that.

Behind Enemy Lines is slick. It is very, very slick. Teflon. It looks like a video game. A really cool video game. Shifty frame-rates, cool filters, Matrix-style special effects, Saving Private Ryan-camera-effects, it looks way cool. It’s not universally realistic, but, stylistically it works very well.

The acting is also good. No one is going to win any acting awards in this picture, but, no one stinks. If you don’t know who Gene Hackman is, turn off your computer right now. You have some serious catching up to do. If you don’t know who Owen Wilson is, start paying attention. This guy is good. Very, very good. You may have seen him in Zoolander (he was the blonde model). You may have seen him in Shanghai Noon with Jackie Chan. You may have seen an underrated comedy called Rushmore – he co-wrote that. He’s just beginning to get recognition, and he deserves it. While I think he’s better in comedies, he’s no slouch as a leading-man-action-hero. Joaquim de Almeida doesn’t stand out, but you’ve seen him before. (He played Bucho (the bad guy) in Desperado.) And he's good.

So, that leaves us with the story. It must be tough to make a war movie now. WWII was easy – the bad guys were easy to spot. But, to make a movie based on any war post-1970 must be tricky. Things like finding ‘bad guys’ aren’t easy anymore. Even in something like the Gulf War. To paraphrase Mark Wahlberg from Three Kings: “I forget... Are we shooting people anymore?” The Balkan conflict was really, really tricky. First of all, there were three sides. Secondly, there was a huge history of racial strife in the area. Thirdly, NATO stepped in to prevent the war from spreading into Macedonia, which would have brought Greece (a NATO member) and Turkey (another NATO member) into the war against each other. Fourthly, keeping all the factions straight was very, very hard unless you studied political science. Behind Enemy Lines doesn’t get too bogged down in the details, which is good. Nor does it name real names. Slobodan Milosovic is not mentioned, but he is implied. The story is about an American airman in the middle of the conflict, but it’s not based on the story of Lt. Scott O’Grady.

What we have here is a slick, mostly non-political (there are some references to landmines being bad for children and other living things) war movie. It’s not perfectly paced, but it’s close. The cinematography is really, really cool. The sound design is good, too. And stuff blows up.

Spy Game ***
Directed by: Tony Scott
Written by: Michael Frost Beckner (story and screenplay) and David Arata (screenplay)
Starring: Robert Redford, Brad Pitt, Catherine McCormack, Stephen Dillane
Rated R (violence, some language, bad situations all around)

“What wicked webs we weave when we practice to deceive.” – A Quotation by something Shakespeare wrote that seems to make a good intro to a movie about espionage.

Spy Game is... well, just look at the title. It’s not a Merchant-Ivory costume drama. It’s a movie about spies. Actually, it’s a movie about when spies had to stop acting like spies in the early 1990s.

The year is 1991. The Berlin Wall is down. The first George Bush is President. And something not exactly nice is going on with the spooks at the CIA. Nathan Muir (Redford) is an agent, and is retiring. Today. He’s awakened by a phone call from the American Embassy in Hong Kong. One of Muir’s proteges has gotten into a bit of a mess in China. Seems that Tom Bishop (Pitt) was trying to pull a rescue operation in a Chinese prison, and things went poorly. This couldn’t have come at a worse time, as the President is just about to head to China to secure a trade agreement. The head spooks, led by Charles Harker (Dillane), want to know what Muir knows about Bishop. Muir wants to know what exactly is going on, and why the CIA hasn’t just pulled an extraction. 3...2...1... make plot twist go NOW!

Spy movies are convoluted, and they should be. Spy Game isn’t in the James Bond mode of spy films. It’s more of a Tom Clancy type story. More believable, but with fewer dangerously hot bad girls and explosions.

Spy Game is drenched in cinematic style. You’re always aware that you are watching a movie. But, that’s one of Tony Scott’s (brother of Ridley Scott) strong points. He also made Top Gun and Crimson Tide. He makes slick, commercial films. Sort of like a better version of Michael Bay. Surprisingly, the quick-cut style, wacky filters, and shifts of frame-rate work well in this flick. It looks good, it sounds good, and, feels good for ¾ of the movie.

Why only ¾? It’s not because of Tony Scott, or any of the actors. Redford plays a company man who knows when and how to cross the line, and does it well. Brad Pitt is Robert Redford if Redford had chosen to be a character actor instead of a leading man. Stephen Dillane is good at being slimy. So, it comes down to the story, then, doesn’t it?

And, the story is good, up until the end. Most of the movie is done in flashback, with Muir explaining his history with Bishop – from Vietnam, to Berlin, to Lebanon. Any one of these stories on its own would have made a pretty good movie on its own. Actually, Spy Game almost feels like a series of short films. The bits that happen in the film’s “present” are good, too. Up until the end. With the sort of build-up presented, you expect a bigger ending than what you get. The ending is (mostly) plausible, but, it needed something more. Explosions, or a shoot-out, or a fight, or something. It just didn’t feel right. It plays something like the espionage version of The Usual Suspects, only without Keyser Soze. Apart from that quibble, it’s certainly watchable, and, probably should be seen more than once, just to get all the details. I think I may have missed some, due to some technical problems that were fixed quite easily, but, they happened during the second reel when most of the exposition was going on. So, my suspension-of-disbelief was suspended, and the rest of my understanding suffered because of it.

Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone ***
Directed by: Chris Columbus
Written by: J.K. Rowling (novel), Steven Kloves
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Robbie Coltrane, Richard Harris and Alan Rickman
Rated PG (some gore, some intense scenes, no language)

Quidditch is the Best. Game. Ever.

So, I saw Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone. Sorry. I couldn’t think of a better intro than that. I’m trying to avoid things that have been said and will be said. Things like: “If you haven’t heard of Harry Potter...” and “Pottermania is sweeping the nation...” I saw Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone. Regardless of anything anyone writes or says about the movie, it will be a huge hit. Fortunately, it’s a good flick.

Now, the movie assumes that the audience will know pretty much everything about Harry and his friends. So, much of the film feels like Harry Potter and The Abridgement of The Sorcerer’s Stone. More on that later.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Potter mythos, here’s the setup. Harry (Radcliffe) is a wizard. But, he doesn’t know it. His parents were killed when he was a baby, and he was left on the doorstep of his closest relatives, the Dursley’s. Uncle Vernon (Richard Griffiths) and Aunt Petunia (Fiona Shaw) are muggles. (That’s wizardese for non-magic users.) And they hate anything that is out of the ordinary, including Harry. Harry sleeps in the closet under the stairs, and is tormented by his cousin, Dudley (Harry Melling). This has gone on for 11 years. One day, a letter arrives for Harry from the Hogwarts Academy for Wizards. This is not welcome in the Dursley house, you can bet that. Uncle Vernon wants nothing to do with these stinking letters, and, after much ado, he moves the family out to a house on an island where no one can deliver the mail. That, however, doesn’t stop Rubeus Hagrid (Coltrane) from finding Harry, and taking him to Hogwarts, after stopping in Diagon Alley to pick up his school supplies. Everyone, it seems, knows Harry, and the legend surrounding him. He was the only survivor of the attack that killed his parents. Harry, just 1 year old, seems to have beaten the greatest threat that the world of magic has ever faced – the dread Lord Voldemort, or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Harry has lots to learn about wizards, witches, and the world he now lives in. Fortunately, he has help from his friends Ron Weasley (Grint), Hermione Granger (Watson), Hagrid, and Headmaster Albus Dumbledore (Harris). Unfortunately, he also has to put up with Professor Serverus Snape (Rickman), Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) and his gang, and staying out of the trouble that young wizards and witches tend to get into.

For those of you familiar with the Potter stories, here’s a good place to resume reading.

Overall, the movie was very good. However, as I said, parts of it felt like an abridgement. “Well, duh,” you’re probably thinking. “They couldn’t put EVERYTHING in.” And, I agree. But, the things that were cut out were the things that I really liked about the book. Harry’s relationship with the Dursley’s, for instance. There is some very, very funny stuff to be found there. It also seemed like they made Harry “nicer” in the movie. He’s not a jerk by any stretch of the imagination. But, he gets into less trouble in the movie... OK, I have to stop this right now. I’m not trying to compare the book and the movie, I’m here to tell you about the movie...

I think I can continue now.

What was good about Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone? Many, many things. The casting was dead-on. Especially with the non-Harry characters. Emma Watson is perfect as Hermione Granger. Rupert Grint was also a great choice for Ron Weasley. Draco Malfoy and his gang are also played very well by those actors. And the actors (yes, actors) who played Harry Potter did fine jobs. Two people played Harry, because Radcliffe’s voice changed during the filming. So, in some scenes (I think I spotted one), Harry’s voice is done by Joe Sowerbutts. I understand that Sowerbutts also plays the voice of Harry in various other media.

The special effects were also quite good. Mostly. The mixing of real and computer-generated backgrounds and animations is good for the most part, but not universally. Some of the CGI characters were outstanding – Hagrid’s dragon Norbert and Fluffy, the 3-headed dog, come to mind as great examples. The Quidditch match between Gryffindor and Slytherin is lots of fun to watch, but not quite up to par with the previous ‘cool’ CGI sequence – the pod race in The Phantom Menace. Of course, since Industrial Light and Magic did the special effects for Harry Potter, it’s understandable, since ILM is working on another movie you may have heard of. Star Wars Episode II – Attack of the Clones. But, hey, the special effects do their job, and I’m not gonna complain. Sometimes it’s apparent that the people are acting in front of a green screen, but, for the target audience, they’ll be mind-blowing. Probably the best effect in the movie is Hagrid. I don’t know if they used CGI trickery, or prosthetic limbs, but Robbie Coltrane sure does look at least 8 feet tall. That’s certainly bigger than should be allowed. (The previous sentence used to prove that I am not a muggle.)

Go and see this movie. If for no other reason than you’ll be able to understand what kids these days are talking about. If you already know, you won’t be disappointed in the adaptation. If you don’t know, well, you’re in for a treat. And several more movies in the franchise.

One more thing: I saw the new Star Wars trailer. And, again, I'm not saying a word. There's also a hilarious Monsters, Inc. trailer.

Shallow Hal ***
Directed by: Bobby and Peter Farrelly
Written by: Sean Moynihan, Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly
Starring: Jack Black, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jason Alexander, Tony Robbins, and Kyle Gass
Rated PG-13 (language, adult situations, brief nudity)

Subtle is not a word one usually thinks of when you see the phrase ‘from the directors of Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary...’ or when you see that the two members of Tenacious D are starring in a movie by the Farrelly brothers. Oddly enough, it’s the only word I can think of to describe the humor in Shallow Hal. That just makes me feel all weird inside.

Here’s the spoiler-free synopsis of the movie... Hal (Black) and Mauricio (Alexander) are best friends, and both of them are unlucky in love. Mauricio is very, very neurotic. (Then again, this is they guy who played George in Seinfeld. Ever hear of that show?). Crazy neurotic. He’s trying to ditch his latest girlfriend because her ‘index’ toe is longer than her big toe. Hal aims far, far too high. “That Britney Spears girl is good, but she’s too muscular.” He’s completely fixated on how a woman looks. This doesn’t apply to his male friends, however. Mauricio has a very bad toupee, and another of his friends, Walt (Rene Kirby)... I won’t ruin that surprise. So, Hal has earned a shallow reputation, hence the title of the movie. Everything changes when his perceptions are altered by self-help guru Tony Robbins (played by Tony Robbins). Hal is now able to see inner beauty, which leads him to Rosemary (Paltrow). Rosemary is gorgeous, at least in Hal’s eyes. For the rest of the world, however, it’s a different story.

How is any of this subtle? You’ll just have to trust me on this. Don’t go into Shallow Hal expecting the sort of gross-out gags that the Farrelly brothers are known for. There are some cartoonish exaggerations in some scenes, but it’s not nearly as over-the-top as their previous films. The tone of the film is almost philisophical. That’s right – I used the P word in a review of a movie by the guys who wrote and filmed the ‘hair gel’ gag. Shallow Hal seems almost mature. I’m not entirely sure if that’s a good thing or not, but it works in this movie. ‘Do looks matter?’ It’s a tough question, and even tougher to base a romantic comedy around. In some ways, no, looks don’t matter. It’s what’s inside that counts. On the other hand, if looks didn’t matter, I wouldn’t be reviewing this movie in the first place. It’s a tough issue, and I’m not about to go into it, or divulge details about one of the best scenes in the movie.

As far as the acting goes, Jack Black is only beginning to be recognized by the general public. He’s been big in the undergournd for years, both with his band Tenacious D (which includes Shallow Hal co-star Kyle Gass), and as a bit player in movies like The Jackal, The Cable Guy, Mars Attacks!, and Bob Roberts. Black should have won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar® for his role as Barry in High Fidelity. He’s an amazing character actor, but I’m not sure he’s meant to be in the lead. Unless it’s in a Tenacious D movie. (If you know The D, you’ll understand.) Gwyneth Paltrow is flat-out adorable in this movie, and does some very good physical acting as well. Most of the time, we see Rosemary through Hal’s eyes, yet she’s able to act 300 lbs. quite well. Watch how she sits. Also watch her eyes. She has an amazingly expressive face. Jason Alexander seems to have become typecast as a neurotic little man. That’s ok, however, because he plays the role well.

It’s a short review because some of the things I’m trying to convey really need to be seen to be understood, and trying to describe some of the scenes will ruin the impact.

Monsters, Inc. ***
Directed by: Pete Docter, David Silverman, Lee Unkrich
Written by: Dan Gerson and Andrew Stanton
Featuring the voices of: John Goodman, Billy Crystal, James Coburn, Steve Buscemi, Jennifer Tilly and Mary Gibbs
Rated G

Parents – you might want to make sure that your kids don’t read the next sentence. The monster in your closet is REAL.

That monster is big and scary and is gonna make you scream and is gonna keep on doing it until you grow up. Tough. That’s the way it is. But, don’t think that it actually WANTS to scare you. It’s not mean, it’s just doing it’s job. See, that monster works for Monsters, Inc. Monsters, Inc. supplies all the power to Monstropolis, and your screams provide that power. Sadly, you haven’t been doing your job lately. You’re growing up too fast. You don’t scare easily. And, because of that, Monstropolis is in an energy crunch. So, when that big scary monster shows up tonight, make sure that you scream really, really loud. Just don’t touch the monster. Children are toxic. You don’t want to hurt the monster, do you?

You might want to take a quick break and calm your children down now. Reality is tough.

Much like the Toy Story franchise, Monsters, Inc. presents us with a look into a secret world. A world of monsters. Guess what? Those monsters are just like us, but not in a Twilight Zone episode kind of way. More like the going to work, having friends and families kind of way. Unlike most of us, however, the monsters are computer generated.

Synopsis time: Monsters, Inc. is roughly a day in the life of James P. “Sully” Sullivan (Goodman), and his friend Mike Wazowski (Crystal). They’re best friends, roommates, and partners at Monsters, Inc. (“We scare because we care.”) Sully does the actual scare-jobs, while Mike is, for lack of a better term, his crew chief. Mike handles the logistics, the paperwork (poorly), and everything else not involving the actual scaring of the children. Sully is the top scarer in the company, followed closely by Randall Boggs (Buscemi) – a sort-of cross between a gecko, a chameleon and a snake. The head of Monsters, Inc. is Henry J. Waternoose (Coburn), a crab thing. Waternoose is concerned both about the current energy crisis and about the quality of the new scarers. They’re just not all that scary, and tend to be just a little stupid and/or clumsy. Waternoose wants Sully to help train the new recruits, Randall wants to be in first place, and Mike just wants to make Celia (Tilly), a mix between Medusa and a cyclops, his girlfriend. Mike is in a hurry to get on his date with Celia and, once again, forgets to file his paperwork. Sully decides to do it for him. Mike left the paperwork on his desk on the Scarefloor.

Now, the mechanism by which the monsters emerge from a closet is this: a child’s ID card is scanned into a computer. An automated system then summons up the ‘other’ side of the closet door in that child’s bedroom. The door is inserted into a slot on the Scarefloor, power is applied to the door, a storage battery is attached to a receptical next to the door, the monster goes into the door, scares the kid, and comes out. No doors are supposed to be on the Scarefloor after the end of a shift. But, guess what Sully finds? He peeks into the bedroom, to make sure no monsters are present before he shuts the door down (so he doesn’t trap the monster). But, a big problem arises – the little girl (Biggs) that has that closet comes out, and into Monstropolis. This is not good. This is one of the worst things that could happen. And, she really likes Sully, whom she renames Kitty. Her name is Boo, at least according to Sully. Begin wackiness in T minus 3... 2... 1... make audience laugh now!

Overall, Monsters, Inc. is very well done. Then again, it was done by the same people behind the Toy Story franchise and A Bug’s Life. And, it’s certainly in the same vein. The writing is tight, the pacing is perfect, and the characters are entertaining. Most importantly, it won’t make grown-ups stupider or bored. There are times when the movie is a bit dark in tone, but not too much, and certainly not too intense for kids.

As far as the animation goes, well, it’s PIXAR, for the love of pete! It started off as a subsidiary of Industrial Light and Magic. Of course it’s going to be outstanding. However, the competition is tougher in 2001 than it was in the late ‘90s. Square Pictures' Final Fantasy raised the bar considerably in terms of what can be done with computer animation. Sully is a hairy monster. Hair all over. It’s so close to being done right that you can just feel it, but it’s not perfect. It’s not distracting, but it’s not quite perfect. Yet. But, in terms of the light-sourcing and the ‘physics’ that the monsters obey, it’s dead on. Same with the facial expressions. Even though Boo looks like a plastic toy (this could be by design, of course, since it’s intended to be cartoony, while Final Fantasy went for realism), the range of emotions she’s capable of displaying is amazing. Then again, PIXAR was able to make a desk lamp convey emotion (in the groundbreaking Luxo, Jr.). You’re not going to go wrong with seeing Monsters, Inc.

And now, for something completely different: ANOTHER REVIEW!

You might have heard rumors, or even read that Monsters, Inc. will be the only film to feature the Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones ‘teaser’ trailer. You heard right. I saw it, and I’m not saying a thing, cuz I’m a jerk like that.

The opening titles for Monsters, Inc. had a decidedly retro feel to them. The titles are done in a ‘cut-out’ fashion. Not like the kind featured in South Park, but in the mid-‘60s cartoon short-feature sort of way. When you see it, you’ll think of something, but you won’t be able to put a title with what it reminds you of. Unless it does. If you can think of the title, would you let me know? Cuz it’s driving me crazy!

Another thing adds to the retro feel – an animated short before the feature!

For The Birds ***1/2
Directed by: Ralph Eggleston

The ½ star at the end is for the feathers. Jaw-dropping.

I really can’t give a synopsis for a short. It’s birds on a wire. There’s no dialogue, because they’re birds. It’s just really, really funny. Funny in an old slap-stick way, and funny like previous PIXAR short features. You can catch a shortened version of it here. Be warned, however, that it takes quite a while to download, and you need Quicktime to view it.

From Hell ***
Directed by: The Hughes Brothers
Written by: Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell (comic series); Terry Hayes and Rafael Yglesias (screenplay)
Starring: Johnny Depp, Heather Graham, Ian Holm, Robbie Coltrane
Rated R (It’s about Jack the Ripper. And there’s some brief nudity and drug use.)

Welcome to London 1888, ladies and gentlemen. What a grand city she is! Everything you could possibly want can be found within her borders. We have the latest and most effective psychological therapy ever discovered – the prefrontal lobotomy! A tap-tap here, and a tap-tap there, and one more tap-tap on this side and voila! The patient is cured! And, look at how civilized we are – take this young man, for instance. John Merrick was trapped in the hell of the freak show. But we will civilize him yet! Don’t be alarmed by how he looks – he’s not an animal, after all. He is a man! We have gaslight in the streets, and London has no prostitution. Oh, there are some... unfortunates... but pay them no mind. What a time to be alive! Unless you’re an unfortunate, of course.

The legend of Jack the Ripper is a horse that just won’t die. More than 100 years after his crimes, we still don’t know who he was, how many he was, what he was or why he was. Oh, sure, we have plenty of suspects and rumors (Lewis “Alice in Wonderland” Carroll, Prince Albert Victor, a conspiracy involving the British Monarchy), but we are no closer to finding out the truth than we were in 1888. Which means that we can still bring it up again and again.

From Hell, at least in comic form, has been cited as being probably the closest to the truth as we will ever get. How many comic books can you name that have bibliographies? As far as the movie goes, well, it is plausible.

Now, I’m sure we all know at least a little bit about Jack the Ripper. “He” was the first documented serial killer. “He” killed prostitutes in London’s East End. “He” didn’t do it very nicely. And, “he” got away with it. That’s pretty much all anyone knows about “him”. From Hell is a mystery because it has to be, but it's not a whodunit. It also attempts to show what Victorian London was like. It wasn’t pretty. The industrial revolution was still new, poverty was rampant, racial tension ran high due to Jewish and Oriental immigrants, the monarchy was not yet a figurehead, and the world was rigidly divided into upper and lower class. Middle class didn’t even exist. All of these facts are important to the story.

And that story is this: A prostitute has been murdered in London’s East End. Brutally, methodically, and a ‘trophy’ was taken. Enter Inspector Abberline (Depp). Abberline is known for his ‘visions’, which are aided by the use of opium or laudanum. These visions have helped him solve cases in the past, and his partner, Sgt. Godley (Coltrane), is confident that they can help in this case. As prostitute after prostitute is killed, more clues and patterns emerge. It’s obvious that the killer(s) know anatomy very well, and have plenty of money. This would indicate a cultured person. But, no civilized person would do such a thing! Preposterous! Police Commissioner Warren (Ian Richardson) suggests that Abberline concentrate on Jewish butchers, or ferriers. Tradesmen, yes, but a gentleman? Certainly not! Hmmmm.. But, wait! We have some peculiar witnesses – not to the murder of the first prostitute, but to a rather strange event. An event that seems to involve the Special Branch (think FBI). Mary Kelly (Graham) knows that something strange is going on. The rest of her friends are of the opinion that the press should be told. Mary thinks that this Inspector Abberline might be their best bet – for the sake of protection. Protection from the Nichols gang – wanna-be pimps who are demanding protection money. The plot gets deeper and deeper, but manages to stay less confusing than JFK.

Visually, the film is effective, if not affective. The comic was done in black and white, but the movie is in color. The opening sequence is good at establishing the squalor and claustrophobia of London’s East End, and remains consistent throughout. It’s not striving for realism, necessarily. It’s not expressionistic, but it is good at evoking the desired mood – bleak. The violence is well done. It’s not subtle, but we are spared seeing what “Jack” actually did.

Plot-wise, the movie works. The tension never really reaches a fever pitch, but, we know most of the facts already. We just want to see who did it “this” time. And, we want to know if it will have as happy an ending as it can.

From Hell isn’t horror, it’s not really a mystery, it’s not suspense, it’s not a costume drama. It’s historical fiction, and it’s well done.

(If you’re interested in knowing more about Jack the Ripper, I suggest going to Casebook.org.)

Bandits ***
Directed by: Barry Levinson
Written By: Harley Peyton
Starring: Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Cate Blanchett and Troy Garity
Rated PG-13 (language, adult situations, violence)

Fall is probably my favorite season of the year. There are all sorts of boring reasons that I could list, but the one that you’re probably most interested in (as you’re reading this) involves movies. Summer is over, kids are back in school, and Hollywood starts bringing out ‘riskier’ films. The costume dramas, the Robin Williams dramatic pieces, the Mirimax Oscar Contender ® -- things like that. Now, while Bandits probably won’t win any awards, it’s a character piece that would have been overlooked in the summer.

By character piece, I mean that it shifts genres. The previews look like a heist/caper movie with a romantic comedy subplot. Those previews aren’t misleading. However, what they don’t show is that the romantic comedy is more along the lines of Being John Malkovich than the collected works of Julia Roberts. More on that later.

Bandits is about 2 bank robbers – Joe (Willis) and Terry (Thornton). As is usual in heist movies, they want to go straight. Which takes money. Which means robbing banks. Joe is the muscle, Terry is the brains. Terry’s plan: daylight robberies. They kidnap the bank manager the night before the robbery, and spend the night with him/her, and then, before the bank opens, have the manager open the vault and give the ‘all-clear’. Works like a charm. Terry’s plans are great. Until Terry gets hit by a car driven by Kate (Blanchett). Terry, you see, is a hypochondriac, and thinks he received a concussion. Kate, on the other hand, is massively depressed. Not the most rational pair. Kate drives Terry back to the hideout, where she meets Joe and Harvey (Garity). Harvey is Joe’s cousin, a wanna-be stuntman and their ‘front man’. Terry knows that an outsider in the mix is a bad thing, Joe wants to sleep with Kate, Harvey is dense – LET THE FIREWORKS BEGIN!

Probably the best part about this movie is the actors. Billy Bob Thornton is an amazing character actor. Just look at Slingblade. Bruce Willis can play nearly any role you put in front of him, and play it well. Cate Blanchett is a name that isn’t familiar to most moviegoers, but she’s really, really good. (She was Queen Elizabeth in Elizabeth, a psychic in The Gift, and will either be praised or pilloried by geeks when she assumes the role of Galadriel in the upcoming The Lord of The Rings trilogy).

Another big plus in this movie is the focus on character rather than plot. George Bernard Shaw (a playwright) once said that he hated plots. He just put characters into a situation and watched what happened. That’s what we see in Bandits – we don’t get massive amounts of detail about the planing of the heists, we don’t have a moral. It’s not like it’s a Martin Scorsese movie. What we have is a strange marriage/love triangle thing (ala Being John Malkovich or Chasing Amy) that works because we believe the actions that the characters are performing, and we believe the actors that are playing the characters. The principle characters are well written and well rounded.

This review is shorter than previous ones, but, honestly, there isn’t a whole lot of detail that can be written about. I don’t have the words to describe character interaction, and the subtleties therein. Stuff blows up, guns are involved, but the focus is on character.

Don’t Say A Word **1/2
Directed by: Gary Fleder
Starring: Michael Douglas, Famke Janssen, Oliver Platt, Sean Bean, Skye McCole Bartusiak and Brittany Murphy
Written by: Andrew Klavan (novel), Patrick Smith Kelly and Anthony Peckham
Rated R (violence)

Well, I’m back. This is my first review in nearly half a month, so let’s hope I haven’t grown rusty.

Don’t Say A Word is a thriller. Well, it looks like one, anyway. It has grit, rain, creepy phone calls, paranoia, all the things that should be in a thriller. But, it’s lacking two key elements: thrills and tension.

Here’s the synopsis (yeah, my style is coming back to me now...): Dr. Nathan Conrad (Douglas) is happily married to his wife Aggie (Janssen) and is madly in love with his daughter, Jessie (Bartusiak). Conrad is a psychologist who is known for his ability to work with teenagers. He’s in his own practice now, but he used to work for the State of New York. On Thanksgiving Eve, he gets an emergency call from one of his former colleagues, Dr. Sachs (Platt). Sachs needs Conrad’s help in reaching a girl named Elizabeth. Elizabeth has been in institutions for the past 10 years, beginning shortly after her father died. Her records show mental illness after mental illness – post-traumatic stress disorder, paranoid schizophrenia, catatonia. Not a healthy girl, but non-violent, until just the other day, when she nearly killed a man with a razor blade. Without Conrad’s help, she’ll be drugged up and locked away for the rest of her life. But, as Conrad soon discovers, she might be faking most of her illnesses. He has little time to worry about that, however, as the next morning, he discovers that his daughter has been kidnapped! He gets a phone call from Patrick Koster (Bean), and receives instructions. Get a number out of Elizabeth’s head, and you get your daughter back. Don’t say a word to the police. None of this is a surprise, as we’ve seen the trailer for this movie.

As I said before, this movie looks like a thriller. But, it doesn’t feel like a thriller. Conrad is working under a strict timeline. He gets Koster’s phone call at 10 am, and he has until 5 PM to get the number. But, the pacing is all wrong. I never got the sense that time was running out. Yes, a thriller should build slowly, but it shouldn’t keep the same pace the whole way through. It spent the right amount of time on the build-up, and then kept on truckin’ at the same pace the whole way. Which meant that you were able to spot the ‘thrills’ coming a mile away.

The last half of the movie just felt contrived. Yes, it’s a movie, suspension of disbelief, etc., etc. But, the unexpected should fit within the framework of the universe that the film creates. Se7en worked because we believed in John Doe. We didn’t know how he was able to do what he did, but we believed he could do it. Psycho worked because we believed that Norman Bates was just that insane. We’re given little bits of information about the antagonist’s past (Doe’s diaries, Bates’ mother). We don’t get the same thing with Koster. While Sean Bean is a good character actor, what his character is doing doesn’t make sense with what we know about the ‘world’. Oliver Platt is a fantastic character actor, but he’s mostly wasted in this movie. And I didn’t buy Murphy’s portrayal of Elizabeth.

Don’t Say A Word isn’t without its good points, however. Skye McCole Bartusiak could go far, provided she doesn’t take ‘kiddie’ roles. There’s something in her eyes that hints at big things to come. Haley Joel Osment things. Kirsten Dunst things.

For the most part, however, Don’t Say A Word makes a good effort, but falls short of the mark

Due to the recent tragedy, Captain Corelli's Mandolin was not reviewed this week. The movie wasn't recieved by The Hangar in time for me to review it, due to the halt on air traffic. Sudios have shifted release dates for other movies, but, make sure you check back here every week, so you'll know what's coming out, and what I thought of it. :)

Rock Star **1/2
Directed by: Stephen Herek
Written by: John Stockwell
Starring:Mark Wahlberg, Jennifer Aniston, Zakk Wylde, Jason Bonham, Timothy Spall
Rated R (brief nudity, rock and roll lifestyle)

Briefly, Rock Star is a fairy tale. It's not really about rock and roll. It's about a male Cinderella (a Cinderfella, if you will, and if you don't mind a Jerry Lewis reference) who, instead of marrying a prince, marries a rock band... but at what cost?

This movie has several hurdles to clear -- This Is Spinal Tap, Wayne's World 2, and "VH1's Behind The Music". The audience already knows what happens in a rock and roll band. Thankfully, the movie isn't out to top anything or be a cautionary tale. It's just there to entertain.

If you've seen any trailers for this movie, you'll know what the story is: Chris Cole (Wahlberg) is the lead singer of a Steel Dragons tribute (NOT cover) band called Blood Pollution. When the lead singer for SD is fired, Cole is recruited to join as the new lead singer. Begin rise of fame. During his career with SD, his relationship with his girlfriend/manager Emily (Aniston) is strained. Will things work out? Will Steel Dragons be able to keep fans with a new lead singer? WILL HAIR METAL SURVIVE? All of these questions will be answered in the movie, if not here.

Although the movie is based around a fictional band, certain activities didn't need to be made up. Just as Hannibal Lecter is a combination of several serial killers, Steel Dragons is based on several metal bands. Nods are given to Judas Priest, Black Flag, Metallica, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Guns 'n' Roses, Van Halen, and probably a host of others I can't think of right now. Adding to Rock Star's r&r credibilty is the casting of Zakk Wylde (one of Ozzy Osbourne's guitarists) and Jason Bonham (a drummer, and son of late Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham). So, the music is going to be of high quality, regardless of your feelings towards hair metal as a genre.

The movie is set in the mid-1980s, when post-glam hair metal was making big strides in top-40 music. This distinction is very important. Steel Dragons is not Twisted Sister or Motley Crue or Judas Priest or Metallica. It's more in the vein of Def Leppard or Winger or Bon Jovi. Girls will like this band. Cole (who is known to the public as Izzy) will not scare girls like Lemmy from Motorhead. The time that the movie is doubly important in that it happens before hair metal becomes a parody of itself, and, even more importantly, before the dread beast from the Northwest emerges from Seattle. It happens during the glory days of hair metal. Power ballads? Absolutely. Guitarists moving in unison? You bet. Tight leather pants? Oh, yeah. Once upon a time, this was actually cool, and not campy or homoerotic. Well, in retrospect, it was always homoerotic, but girls still liked it. And, that's what rock and roll is all about.

However, it's not what the movie is about -- it is about, to steal the tagline, "a wannabe who got to be". Here's where the movie tends to disappoint. The cast was incredibly talented, but the characters are fairly one-dimensional. Which is not to say that the performances were bad -- some of the scenes were incredibly passionate, but I would have liked to have seen more character in the characters. Chris Cole is, to put it bluntly, a geek. He knows things about Steel Dragons that would put a Trekkie who sleeps in his Spock ears and could write a 20-page dissertation on why Kirk is a far better captain than Picard to shame. Details about the color of the thread in costumes, what year and tour a particular outfit was worn, not to mention lyrics and choreography. This kid is devoted to his dream. Emily has a head for business, and is devoted to Chris. I really would have liked to have seen more backstory between these two characters. As they were written, however, I felt just a little bit left out. The character of Miggs (Spall) however, was just about perfect. He is THE roadie. Not the god-of-all-roadies that we saw in Wayne's World 2, but just a guy who can get the job done. And, of course, as this is a fairy tale, he is as close as we come to a fairy godmother.

If you're looking for a good character study within an industry, watch Boogie Nights. If you're looking for a date movie, Rock Star is probably better. And less awkward.

Jeepers Creepers *** ½
Written and Directed by: Victor Salva
Starring: Gina Phillips, Justin Long and Patricia Belcher
Rated R (violence)

Perhaps ‘horror’ is too strong a term for Jeepers Creepers. It’s got some scares, some icky things happen, but it’s also got laughs. It’s not a comedy, however. The closest I can come to describing it would be a mix between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Stephen King. The ‘bad thing’ is a supernatural, unstoppable demon-thing, but it has personality, and the film is one of the most original thrillers to come along in years.

I won’t bother with a plot summary, because part of the fun in a movie like this is not knowing what is going to happen. Instead, I’ll set the stage: Trish (Phillips) and her brother Darius (Long) make a particularly gruesome discovery in the basement of a church. Bad mojo go now!

Jeepers Creepers doesn’t try to be ‘hip’ or ‘edgy’ or any of the other buzzwords that usually surround movies like this. It doesn’t break the ‘fourth wall’ and make self-referential jokes about rules or things like that. It doesn’t promote the soundtrack. If anything, it’s a throwback to what a ‘horror’ movie was before Freddy and Jason and Michael Meyers. That’s right – there were horror movies before slashers existed!

Jeepers Creepers hearkens back to the creature feature. It’s not as nail-biting as Alien or The Thing from Another World (remade by John Carpenter as The Thing), but its heritage is clear. The task at hand, however, is how to make a creature feature work in 2001.

Salva’s answer is: less is more. Less gore, less violence. Most of the violence happens off-screen. We see the results, but not the actual act itself. And the blood can probably be measured in pints, rather than gallons. What we’re left with is atmosphere. (Watch out – I’m gonna be jumping media here...) In ‘survival horror’ video games like Resident Evil (which is being made into a movie) and Parasite Eve, the really, really scary parts are when you see that something has happened, something very bad, but what, exactly is unclear. Sure, a zombie breaking a window right in front of you will make you jump, but when you see broken furniture and blood on the floor, that’s even more creepy. You’re fixated on what MIGHT happen, what COULD happen. The tension keeps building, and that’s where the lasting appeal lies. Not in how much gore you can put on the screen, but in how far you can stretch the tension and the audience.

Another thing that modern horror audiences expect is a motive. Norman Bates was insane, Freddy Kreuger was out for revenge, the xenomorph in Alien was a predator – what of the Unnamed Terror in Jeepers Creepers? Well, if you realize that the title of the movie is also the title of a song, that should point you in the right direction. So, we have the why, but not the WHY. Why does it need to do these things? I smell a franchise, and, unlike I Know What You Wasted Five Bucks On Last Summer, this one could be really, really good. A mythos needs to be fleshed out. Questions need to be answered. Trust me – when you see this movie, you’ll want to see more.

Jeepers Creepers isn’t Night of the Living Dead by any stretch of the imagination. Nor is it The Sixth Sense. It’s aimed at teens, but it’s not over-burdened with brand-names and postmodern humor. It’s a little bit campy, but not a parody of the genre. The campiness actually makes the film work better. It’s a traditional summer horror flick. And by traditional, I mean one that would have been part of a double-feature at the drive in. William Castle is probably sleeping soundly tonight.