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THE PINK PANTHER 2: When an actor is so closely associated with a role the way Peter Sellers was as Inspector Jacques Clouseau, attempting to replace him with another comedian (even one as gifted as Steve Martin) risks trampling on the very memory of what made the films successful. So it’s tempting to dismiss both films in this franchise reboot sight unseen, if only to preserve those precious slapstick experiences. But as a comedic foil for the next generation, I’m sure Martin’s take on the bumbling French detective is perfectly acceptable. In fact, this second installment adds a supporting cast that takes much of the weight off his shoulders, including Lily Tomlin as a Clouseau’s frustrated political correctness counselor and Alfred Molina as one member of a detective “Dream Team” charged with hunting down another master thief on the loose. I’m still not sure why Martin took on the challenge of topping Sellers classic creation; it’s really a no-win situation. While his gift for spasti...

INKHEART: Movies have turned to literature for inspiration since the very beginning of cinema. And although success in both mediums is measured by the same barometer – good storytelling – films can often get by on a sliding scale of style over substance. With Inkheart, director Iain Softley certainly has his heart in the right place adapting Cornelia Funke’s novel about Silvertounges, rare individuals who can literally bring books to life when they read out loud. Brendan Fraser plays just such a man, who unwittingly reads a trio of villains into the real world while his wife is sent back into its pages, setting himself and his daughter on a quest to track down the rare volume and rescue her. Although Fraser has more than a decade of experience starring in similar family friendly fare, it’s actor Paul Bettany (A Knight’s Tale) who shoulders most of the dramatic weight as Dustfinger, a mysterious magician who simply longs to return to his comfortable literary surroundings. Inkheart, like...

THE SEVENTH SEAL: When a film becomes as iconic as The Seventh Seal it runs the risk of becoming an unwatchable antique. Like a piece of fine china kept behind protective glass, audience’s tend to admire it by reputation rather than dusting it off and appreciating the actual craftsmanship that went into its creation. Certainly, Ingmar Bergman’s film has much more to offer than its oft-repeated image of Death as a pale, moon-faced chess player. In fact, much of The Seventh Seal carries over the blissful joie d’ vive of the director’s previous film, Smiles of a Summer Night, only balanced with the thematic weight of religious meditation and questioning of faith that would mark his later work. But there I go again, making the film seem like an unwieldy, unwatchable chapter of cinematic history rather than a living, breathing entity unto itself. Frequent Bergman collaborator Max Von Sydow is charged carrying the weight of the director’s loftier ideas in the form of Antonius Block, a knight...

TRUE BLOOD – S1: The death of the vampire has been greatly exaggerated. In fact, with the success of HBO’s latest series and the teenage tsunami that is Twilight, you could say that the undead have never been so healthy. Of course, both Stephanie Meyer’s work and True Blood emphasize the more feminine aspects of everyone’s favorite bloodsucker, turning up the heat on Sookie (Anna Paquin) and Bill’s (Stephen Moyer) interspecies flirtation like a cat on a hot tin roof. Taking full advantage of pay-cable’s forgiving sex and blood standards, producer Allan Ball has fashioned an adults-only version of Dark Shadows. And like most soap-operas, the real appeal lies in getting to know the characters, like our herione Sookie Stackhouse, a mind-reading waitress, Jason, her oversexed brother, Tara, her smart-mouthed friend, and Bill, the gentleman vampire who comes strolling into town for the first time since the Civil War. Relevant social drama plays out in the background, with vampires fighting ...

WOODSTOCK – 3 DAYS OF PEACE AND MUSIC: If there’s one thing we can all take away from this historic amalgam of mud, musicians and unsullied idealism it is this: boy, those hippies smelled bad! Thankfully, the new collector’s set doesn’t come in a scratch ‘n sniff package, but that’s about all it doesn’t include. Of course, the main attraction is the documentary itself, which waffles between iconic concert film (Joe Cocker, The Who, and Jimi Hendrix perform, among others) and warts-and-all time capsule of the Love Generation’s greatest success. This director’s cut adds quite a bit more to the film, allowing director Michael Wadleigh to insert several extended montages (like the post-fest, post-apocalyptic clean-up sequence) that studio suits suggested he trim in the theatrical release. And a full disc of extras adds even more, including 15 never-before-seen performances from the likes of Credence Clearwater Revival and The Grateful Dead along with a heavily edited From Festival to Featu...

THE SWEET PUSSYCATS: The world probably wouldn’t be a whole lot different without the Italian Sex Comedy. But it would be a lot less fun. Graced with the presence of the luminous Edwige Fenech, The Sweet Pussycats follows the genre’s standard operating procedure, with several suitors pursuing several scantily clad ladies who have their own romantic agendas. The set-up this time revolves around a pair of aristocrats fighting over the rights to a local castle who pledge to bequeath the estate to whoever can bed a pair of local virgins first. Fenech plays a visiting ex-lover who is looking for her own angle, while a handsome nephew is the story’s wild card, attracting the attention of every female character in the film and threatening to ruin the contest before it’s even begun. For all the flesh on display (Fenech fans take note, she bares quite a bit more than usual), director Josef Zacher’s production is fairly chaste, more interested in slapstick and sexual innuendo than the act itself...

RETURN OF THE GLADIATOR: “Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?” Lewd jokes aside, this latter day peplum is exactly the sort of thing Captain Oveur was talking about. Brad Harris stars as an ex-gladiator who rose through the military ranks only to be chosen for an undercover mission that utilizes all his old skills and contacts. Bearing its original title Three Giants of Rome, MYA Communications DVD is a pretty rough presentation, looking to be several generations removed from the original negative. But that doesn’t detract from the cheesy charm of director Bitto Albertini’s sword and sandal hijinks. The film adopts the breezy comic spirit of similar Spaghetti Westerns of the day, particularly in the form of actor Raf Baldassarre whose “thief with a heart of gold” character takes his fair share of punishment including being doused in urine. As the film’s lead, Harris certainly has the biceps for the part, but lacks that indefinable star quality. He’s merely a tool in Albertini’s ...

WANDERING GINZA BUTTERFLY / WANDERING GINZA BUTTERFLY 2: SHE-CAT GAMBER: While Kurosawa translated the clichés of the American Western quite successfully in a number of his samurai films, director Kazuhiko Yamaguchi lifts his inspiration wholesale from the Italian Westerns of Sergio Leone. Drifting into town with the same icy aloofness of Clint Eastwood’s “Man With No Name,” Nami (Meiko Kaji) becomes enmeshed in a local prostitution/gambling ring with rival mobsters fighting for control. A dangerous outsider with a criminal past, Nami eventually takes sides and takes down the bad guys; first with a pool cue...then with a sword. She-Cat Gambler follows a similar formula but adds an element of revenge and the kung-fu stylings of Sonny Chiba (Street Fighter). Both films unfold with a very deliberate sense of impending tragedy that defies and - depending on your tastes - confounds expectations. Be prepared for 80-minutes of foreplay with one marvelously bloody climax. Yamaguchi paints the ...

THE LEGEND OF BLOOD CASTLE: While director Jorge Grau’s The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue contemporized the traditional Hammer Films approach to horror, his previous film (produced just the year before. 1973) took on the studio’s gothic horrors head to head. Although a bit more slow-paced than most of Carrerras and company’s output, Blood Castle is a much more mature retelling of the Elizabeth Bathory legend than Countess Dracula, Hammer’s Ingrid Pitt project filmed two years earlier. Grau’s script is surprisingly subtle, adding in layers of complexity to a story that very easily could have succumbed to pure blood and guts. Discovering that the blood of a virgin will restore her youth, Erzsebet Bathory (a descendent of the blood-bathing original) convinces her husband to fake his own death and return to stalk the villagers as a “vampire,” draining the victims and donating the proceeds to his eager wife. The image of Bathory showering herself in blood from a sacrificial “hole” in the...

THE BURROWERS: It’s surprising that the Western and Horror genres don’t cross paths more often. Although there have been a few recent exceptions to the rule (Dead Birds was a valiant effort and Ron Howard’s The Missing certainly got a spooky start), J.T. Petty’s The Burrowers rides tall in the saddle as an excellent example of both. After a bloody attack against local settlers, a posse is formed to track down the alleged Indians responsible for the massacre and bring back the kidnapped survivors. Unfortunately, there are a lot worse things than Indians in the desert. And one by one, the searchers (make no mistake, there are plenty of John Ford references) fall victim to a pack of underground monsters who feed on rotting flesh. The concept sounds similar to Tremors, but the execution is worlds apart. There are no yucks to be had here, just an unrelenting sense of impending doom. Petty has the cast to pull it off with the sort of panache that deserves more than a direct-to-DVD premiere –...

BRIDE WARS: When this Kate Hudson / Anne Hathaway chick flick played in theaters last year, critics wanted more than a divorce – they wanted an annulment; pointing out the film’s shallow characters, weak script and curious lack of laughs for a purported “comedy.” All of which is true, but much more forgivable when you haven’t planned a whole date night around it. The story pits BFFs Liv and Emma (Hudson and Hathaway respectively) against one another when a clerical error schedules both of their dream weddings on the same day. When neither woman will back off, a battle of underhanded tricks ensues to sabotage the other’s special event. The scenario screams out for slapstick humor and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels-style plots, but Bride Wars doesn’t have the heart to be that mean-spirited. And therein lies the root of most of its criticism. Lacking the courage to become a full-blown satire or a low-brow spoof of the “Bridezilla” craze, the film waffles between tepid catfights and maudlin cosmo...

THE DANA CARVEY SHOW: Premiering in 1996 with Carvey as President Clinton suckling cats and dogs from his man boobs, this rather raunchy tribute to old-school variety shows was not necessarily the kind of thing people expected at 8:30 right after Home Improvement. The formula didn’t stray far from Carvey’s SNL origins, with an opening monologue (set against the most atrocious ‘80s stand-up comedian background EVER), live sketches and pre-recorded bits filling up each half-hour episode. And while much of the humor is dated (politics never age well...neither does a Church Lady top-ten focusing on Princess Diana’s “slutty” behavior), the prime-time players Carvey recruited make him look like a genius. Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert and Robert Smigel appear frequently, and Smigel’s Ambiguously Gay Duo – later a regular feature on SNL – makes its premiere. Carvey seems to be having a great time and some of the sketches are stronger than anything on Saturday night. In Germans Who Say Nice Thi...

THE HAIRDRESSER’S HUSBAND: Certain films require you to use an entirely different portion of your brain. So it’s understandable that director Patrice Leconte’s story of one man’s sensual obsession with female hairstylists can often feel like driving on the left side of the road or writing with the wrong hand. Quirky enough to induce a few giggles, artsy enough to make you think , The Hairdresser’s Husband dodges easy categorization, unfolding like a Gaussian daydream; part memory, part fantasy. Antoine’s (Jean Rochefort) erotic fetish pops up early in his youth and is rekindled when he meets Mathilde (Anna Galiena), who agrees on a whim to marry him. Reserving himself a seat to observe every customer, Antoine blissfully spends his days basking in the glow of his wife’s chosen profession. But is their all-consuming need for another enough to keep the relationship alive forever? Leconte’s film is “erotic” in the best sense of the word; one inch to the left or right and Antoine’s obsessio...

JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN: Although the two films couldn’t be more different in approach, Dalton Trumbo’s literary-minded attack on the architects of war shares the same agenda as Robert Altman’s M.A.S.H. which came out just the year before. And the presence of Donald Sutherland, playing Jesus as part of a hallucinogenic vision, only strengthens the counterculture comparison. Written in 1939 just before the US entered WW2, Dalton finally got a chance to adapt the material himself (his first and only film as a director despite having a celebrated screenwriting career) with Timothy Bottoms in the lead role of Joe Bonham, a young GI whose battlefield injuries leave him with no arms, no legs, and no face. Essentially a “piece of meat,” he’s kept alive for years in the backroom of a nondescript hospital where the medical personnel assume he has no brain function. However, Joe has in fact a very active mind which drifts through his past memories and meanders through an abstract landscape of fantasy...

CRAVING DESIRE: As the worldwide leader in film production for almost 100 years running, Hollywood’s ideas get copied a lot. And there is no better cinematic pickpocket than the Italian film industry. From Westerns to gangsters to cheesy sci-fi, there isn’t successful movie genre out there they won’t try to capitalize on. So even though Craving Desire was produced 6 year after the Michael Douglas / Glenn Close thriller Fatal Attraction, you can bet your sweet cannolli that somebody brought it up for inspiration. Directed by Sergio Martino, responsible for more than a few classic Italian gialli and poliziotteschi during the ‘70s, was well past his prime here, but manages to milk the most from a familiar set-up. Luigi (Ron Nummi) has a good job and a rich fiancé, but he risks it all when his first-cousin, Cinzia (Simona Borioni), shows up on his doorstep with a sob story. Soon, Cinzia runs him through a series of sexual games, sabotaging his career and personal relationships. Is she a nu...

THE CENTERFOLD GIRLS: It’s not often you watch a movie anymore and say, “Why the hell haven’t I seen this?” Thanks to cable, the internet and Wal-mart bargain bins, very few films of quality fly under the radar. But Dark Sky has unearthed just such a rarity with The Centerfold Girls, starring Andrew Prine as a disturbed stalker who tracks down each “girl of the month” to punish her for sins of the flesh. The slasher idea is really nothing new, but how director John Peyser tells the story is. The Centerfold Girls is broken down into three distinct parts like an old school anthology with each victim (a nurse, a model and a stewardess) inhabiting their own Tales from the Crypt segment. From a Manson family home invasion to an Agatha Christie-style who-dun-it, each third of the film has its own exploitation edge with Prine’s charmingly demented serial killer popping up in all three. The fact that each girl is being overtly punished for her sexuality gets the jump on conventional ‘80s slash...

SIN CITY: Many films have attempted to faithfully bring their comic book characters to life. Richard Donner’s Superman was always my personal reigning champ...until Sin City came along. More “translation” than “adaptation,” director Robert Rodriguez collaborated extensively with creator Frank Miller to recreate his nightmarish noir visions into a terrifying reality created almost entirely on a green-screen set. Working from three hardboiled stories featuring some of the ugliest mugs in the business (Mickey Rourke, Benicio Del Toro, Clive Owen and Bruce Willis), Sin City revels in its violent misogyny while it dazzles with a black-and-white tableau splashed with blood. Rourke’s segment, The Hard Goodbye, is the most effective. With his already disfigured face even more brutalized, the actor pummels his way through a variety of thugs (and a creepy Elijah Wood) to avenge the death of his angelic one-night-stand. And there’s no shortage of skin on display either, with Jessica Alba gyrating...

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL: Keanu Reeves is the unofficial ambassador for big budget genre films. His role as Neo in the Matrix trilogy all put his face on the dollar bill, and he seems to understand (much as Will Smith does) that sci-fi / fantasy films connect with audiences the way few other films can. And like Smith, his acting abilities have slowly evolved to a semi-professional level. Street Kings was the best performance of Reeve’s career, but it was a blink-and-you-miss-it kind of film. The remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still had the full power of Fox’s marketing machine behind it, grossed $230 million worldwide and a seemed to put the actor back in his element as an ambassador of an entirely different sort. Arriving on Earth inside a luminescent sphere with a 100 foot tall robot to back him up, Klaatu (Reeves) is mankind’s judge, jury and executioner, finding us guilty for ruining a perfectly good planet...something that is apparently pretty scarce in the universe. Reeve...

THE BROKEN: A thinly veiled adaptation of Jack Finney’s Body Snatchers, this one might be more successful than the inept big-budget remake of two summers ago. Lena Heady (The Sarah Connor Chronicles) spots her exact double driving down the street, but after they confront one another a car crash causes complete amnesia. Upon recovery, she realizes others are being replaced as well, including members of her own family. Writer / director Sean Ellis makes nice use of an old horror film standby – the evil twin in the mirror gag – and sucks the color out of his images to nice dramatic effect. Oscar nominee Richard Jenkins adds some authenticity to what is unquestionably the classiest film in this years collection. PERKINS 14: Proud to call itself the first “crowd-sourced” horror movie ever produced (which essentially means internet voters chose the cast and guided the story), Perkins 14 feels like exactly that. The first half-hour is an intimate battle of wills between the local cop whose ch...

QUANTUM OF SOLACE: The reinvention of Bond continues in this the first direct sequel in the franchise, picking up right where Casino Royale left off with 007 tracking down the mysterious organization responsible for his beloved Vesper’s death in the previous film. The plot is more convoluted, the villain – played by Mathieu Amalric – less memorable, but Daniel Craig sweats testosterone and rage with an intensity that rivals even the great Sean Connery. Director Marc Forster stages fight scenes with such authentic brutality you feel battered and bruised within the first 10-minutes. And the introduction of QUANTUM – evil acronym yet to be translated – suggests another long-running enemy for her majesty’s secret service to ferret out and destroy. But now that Bond’s unrelenting quest for vengeance has dragged on through two films, the franchise is in desperate need of rediscovering its sense of humor. Solace offers some closure to Bond’s formative years; here’s hoping the next chapter let...

A POLICEWOMAN IN NEW YORK: Although she doesn’t have the resume of a traditional “movie star,” there’s no denying that Edwige Fenech has carried her fair share of films. In fact, dozens of Italian thrillers and sex comedies were constructed around her shapely figure and impossible good looks. This release from MYA Communication is the third chapter in a series of slapstick adventures pairing Fenech with comedian Alvaro Vitali as a couple of clumsy cops on assignment in New York who just happen to be look-alikes of a mob girlfriend and his chief enforcer. Charged with bringing down the operation, Fenech relies on her ample charms and mean right hook to get the job done. Outside of Fenech’s circle of fans, the film doesn’t have much to offer besides ridiculously over-the-top sexual innuendo, bodily humor and non-stop racial stereotypes...all in good fun, of course. But only a stray line or two will actually inspire a chuckle. Most of the appeal lies in anticipating Fenech’s next costume ...

NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN: What makes a Bond film a Bond film? Is it the gadgets? The girls? The familiar 007 theme song? Or is it the man behind the gun? Producers of this 1983 flick were counting on the latter, having lured the original Bond, Sean Connery, back into the role after a 12 year hiatus. While Octopussy starring Roger Moore hit theaters the same year (and ended up grossing a bit more money), Never Say Never Again is a fine return to form despite lacking several staples of the franchise, including key cast members, the opening “gun-barrel” logo treatment and John Barry’s signature score. Connery’s presence alone ensures a more rough ‘n tumble approach to the onscreen action. A loose remake of Thunderball, the film one-ups the original in many respects including the health spa fight sequence that plays like a professional wrestling match. Kim Basinger pushes the PG-rating with an array of see-through outfits and Rowan “Mr. Bean” Atkinson provides comic-relief. An Atari-inspired ...

HAPPY-GO-LUCKY: How Sally Hawkins didn’t win an Oscar - let alone get nominated - for her performance as the perpetually perky Poppy in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky is almost inexplicable. Like Juno the year before, here we have a character so unique, distinct and overwhelmingly alive that she escapes the two-dimensional screen and lives on in our memories. Skipping through life with an unfailingly rosy disposition, Poppy’s day-to-day experiences bring her nothing but joy in even the most uncomfortable situations. But her weekly appointment with a driving instructor begins to cloud over her streak of sunny days, forcing Poppy to question if she’s truly happy with her life. While the British pepper nearly every conversation with the word “brilliant,” here the adjective truly applies. Mike Leigh’s film is a minor miracle of fast-paced conversations and unforgettable characters wrapped up in a script that never feels scripted. And even if Sally Hawkins never makes a film again, she’ll be f...

THE ROBE: Other than the box-office anomaly of The Passion of the Christ, biblical epics fell out of style with the death of old-Hollywood. But director Henry Koster’s film plays a larger role in cinematic history thanks to premiering as the first production shot in Cinemascope, the widescreen format that quickly became an industry standard. As for the film itself, it’s a rather plodding affair drowning in well-meaning but overacted sentiment. Richard Burton holds his own as Marcellus Gallio, part of the spoiled Roman elite, whose participation in Christ’s crucifixion “curses” him with a conscience. His rebirth as a true Christian makes up the second (less interesting) half of the film, leading towards a confrontation with the corrupt Roman ruler Caligula. Koster’s compositions certainly don’t take full advantage of the widescreen frame – a flat version was shot concurrently just in case the new format was a bust – but there’s still some grandeur to the proceedings despite all its flaw...

TWO EVIL EYES: The stories of Edgar Allen Poe seem to lend themselves to modernization and adaptation more so than other classic authors of the supernatural. Likely because Poe’s work largely describes internalized horrors; grief, paranoia and psychosis that stem from demons within rather than demons without. Director George Romero had already proven the anthology format was still viable with the success of Creepshow (1982) so his collaboration with Dario Argento (a reunion of sorts after co-producing Dawn of the Dead) made sense, turning loose two genre filmmakers in a playground of the macabre. It’s obvious Argento was the more enthusiastic of the two. His take on The Black Cat includes several references to other Poe stories and is executed with the sort of visual verve the director hadn’t shown in years. Despite fan disdain, Romero’s adaptation of The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar is a worthwhile attempt, turning the screws on a gold digging wife (Adrienne Barbeau) as she consp...

THE SINFUL DWARF: Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off sin I go! Actually, poor Olaf (Torben Bille) is just the muscle behind his dope-smuggling mother’s master plan to pimp out unsuspecting tenants in her boarding house and turn them into junkie sex slaves. Between clients, Olaf steals a moment or two to torture his mother’s pets with his collection of wind up poodles, monkeys and choo-choo trains. It’s all morally despicable - much like a John Waters movie played straight – shot through an inch-thick layer of drive-in sleaze. Torben’s crooked smile and threatening limp are actually less disturbing than the parade of simulated (?) sex scenes that manage to make every naked body unflattering besides lead actress Anne Sparrow. The Sinful Dwarf could make for a crude, campy party flick if not for its mile-long mean streak...but that, of course, is exactly what makes it so infamous in the first place. Severin Films DVD presentation is a flecked, grainy affair that looks like it was found in a pedophile...

MARLEY & ME: If we really need a tie-breaker to decide which household pet deserves the honor of “Man’s Best Friend,” Marley & Me should fit the bill. I mean, you don’t see any tearful goodbye to loyal cats. The only thing preventing them from killing us all in our sleep are opposable thumbs. But Marley & Me digs a bit deeper than your usual Beethoven flick, with Owen Wilson in the lead role as a newspaper columnist who finds his voice by chronicling family life through their household pet. After the first half-hour of pratfalls and puppy jokes, the film settles down to tell a mature story of family life and the sometimes manic juggling act necessary to keep wife, kids and career in perspective. It’s not what you’d expect from a movie that was marketed as cute escapist entertainment. In fact, Marley & Me might make you reflect on you own life more than most Oscar winners, just by virtue of the mirror it holds up to our own plans, dreams and ambitions for our families an...

THE FRENCH CONNECTION: Is there any more iconic city in the history of cinema than New York during the 1970s? The urine-soaked streets, oppressive grey architecture and flashy hoodlums combine to create a unique stage for the typical cops ‘n robbers story to play out. And director William Friedkin’s The French Connection is the best at capturing the city at its worst, shot with an “induced documentary” style that pre-dates Paul Greengrass’ Bourne films by three decades. A bookend to producer Philip D’Antoni’s previous hit, Bullitt, which shares its raw, unglamorous approach to the cop genre, Friedkin’s film swept the ’71 Oscars with a bullheaded performance from Gene Hackman as “Popeye” Doyle, a racist, womanizing, single-minded thug who just happens to wear a badge. Roy Scheider is his long-suffering partner who goes along for the ride in their pursuit of an international drug smuggling conspiracy. It’s difficult to comprehend how radically different Friedkin’s approach was at the tim...

SEX DRIVE: Like Paris Hilton jokes and the last five U2 albums, the teen sex comedy is essentially played out. After five American Pie sequels and dozens of National Lampoon knock-offs, the traditional coming of age story is about as welcome as a case of crabs. Which makes the expectations for Sex Drive - the story of one virgin’s interstate quest to lose it with his online hook-up - lower than...well, the next American Pie installment. So perhaps that explains why writer/director Sean Anders film is, if not a total success, at least surprisingly amusing in a “been-there-done-that” kind of way. The cast falls into comfortable stereotypes: the aforementioned virgin, his ridiculously hot but unfortunately platonic BFF, and the requisite “Stifler” character (this time played against type by Clark Duke). But what really gives Sex Drive a fatty are cameos by Seth Green and James Marsden, the latter reaching heights of obnoxious onscreen a**hole brother greatness previously held by Bill Paxt...

SCORPION WITH TWO TAILS: A giallo without sex and violence is like a Big Mac without the “special sauce.” Why bother? And this made-for-TV miniseries adapted into a theatrical feature just doesn’t generate the explicit thrills fans have come to expect from the genre. The involvement of director Sergio Martino (Torso) and writer Ernesto Gastaldi (The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh) only adds to the disappointment, since both men are responsible for some of the most memorable entries in the Italian industry. The story sends our potentially psychic protagonist from New York to Italy after her husband (John Saxon in a very brief role) is murdered upon discovering an ancient Etruscan tomb. From there Gastaldi’s script splits into a smuggling sub-plot, murder-mystery and supernatural thriller, with none of the elements ever really gelling coherently. No one says a giallo has to make sense – in fact, some of the best ones are a confusing mess – but Scorpion with Two Tails falls short in two many ...

FRENCH CONNECTION 2: Pity poor John Frankenheimer. Four years after the original French Connection earned scads of money and worldwide acclaim, the journeyman director was chosen to stage the sequel on the streets of Marseilles as “Popeye” Doyle (Gene Hackman) continues his pursuit of escaped heroin smuggler Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey). While the docudrama style is carried over with no trouble, the script by Alexander Jacobs (Point Blank) is a stop-and-start affair that keeps our protagonist prisoner for nearly half the film. Kidnapped and fed a daily diet of heroine, Doyle is turned into a passive junkie then released to suffer the agony of withdrawal. This gives Hackman plenty of rich acting material to work with, but cheats the audience out of the expected car chases and masterful cat-and-mouse scenarios of Friedkin’s original. As a form of closure, French Connection 2 fits the bill just fine, but as a well-rounded follow-up it can’t help but suffer by comparison. Fox’s Blu-ray tr...

MIRRORS: There isn’t a lot of hope for horror out there right now, what with the SAW franchise still running at full steam and most of the classic directors like John Carpenter and George Romero long past their prime. But Frenchman Alexandre Aja made a case for himself with High Tension and the better-than-it-should-have-been Hills Have Eyes remake. He returns with an original story about an ex-cop turned security guard (Keifer Sutherland) who falls victim to some haunted mirrors in the decrepit department store he’s been assigned to patrol. What lurks on the other side of the polished glass now threatens his friends and family unless he can find a way to break the curse. Aja’s film has fun with the endless possibilities of being killed by your own reflection - actress Amy Smart’s bathtub demise is particularly gruesome – and his camerawork shows his previous successes were no fluke. But he should have held a mirror up to the script, which was co-written with usual partner Levasseur. A...

AMUSEMENT: During their hey-day in the late ‘60s British film studios specialized in horror anthology pictures, gathering up four or five scary stories loosely tied together in a Twilight Zone-type package. And for half its running time, Amusement admirably carries the torch, putting fresh spins on urban legends like “The Hitchhiker” and The Babysitter” with the sort of class and style you’d never expect from a direct-to-video film. Then the script (by Jake Wade Wall of The Hitcher remake) just takes a 90-degree turn in favor of Saw-inspired torture and a cackling over-the-top villain right out of the Adam West Batman era. This inexplicable tonal shift from old-school scares to sado-horror is disappointing, but it doesn’t diminish the wet-your-pants effectiveness of the film’s first two chapters, including a particularly chilling “evil clown” sequence sure to inspire a few phobias. Even the acting by the typical troupe of too-good-looking teen actors is above par. All the more frustrat...

SUPERCOP: The Dragon Dynasty label has done a darn good job of bringing important and not-so-important Hong Kong flicks into the Region 1 market, doling out milestone releases from Shaw Brothers, Jet Li and Jackie Chan in sparkling new special editions. Supercop (aka Police Story 3) is at the top of many a fan’s list, so it’s a bit surprising to see what’s included here is only the Dimension re-edit job that was released in the US after Jackie became more of a household name. I’m not sure what’s missing, but it’s certainly not action scenes. Moving beyond his one-on-one fight films, Jackie works on a much bigger scale here; think Die Hard meets Buster Keaton with a truly spectacular finale involving cars, truck, helicopters and a moving freight train. But the film’s biggest asset is the chemistry between Chan and co-star Michelle Yeoh who match each other kick for kick and gag for gag. The best Jackie Chan films find a remarkable balance between punches and punchlines and Supercop is n...

DEXTER – THE FIRST SEASON: It goes without saying that only a pay-cable network would have the courage to adapt author Jeff Lindsay’s books about a serial killer who channels his evil urges for the good of mankind...or at least the greater Miami area. Actor Michael C. Hall imbues the role with singularly sinister appeal as a forensic investigator who moonlights under the radar of his cop co-workers. But when his bragging rights are threatened by a flashy rival sociopath, Dexter’s secret life is threatened with catastrophic exposure. Using large chunks of the book’s first-person narrative verbatim, Dexter retains the same “man-fiction” appeal by stretching out the mystery over all 12 first season episodes. Some of the subplots are a bit contrived, but the core relationship between Dexter and his deceased father (James Remar...played in flashbacks, obviously) who trained his son to prey on the scum of society is fascinating stuff. Without a doubt one of the best seasons of television eve...

The untimely demise of indie DVD distributor NoShame Films left a hole no other company has been able to fill. Specializing in Italian cult and classic releases, there were a plethora of titles still in the hopper when the curtain was drawn...titles few others would have the courage to release. So, like the miraculous happy ending of some breezy comedy, it comes as no small relief to see MYA Communications pick up the baton and race across the Region 1 finish line with four relatively obscure Italian titles, each with a great deal of niche appeal. Most notable is Dario Argento’s Door into Darkness, a 2-disc set that includes 4 episodes of the famous horror director’s foray into television production. Milking his international title as “The Italian Hitchcock,” Argento serves as the host of each story and directs (under a pseudonym) the episode entitled “The Tram” about a murder committed in plain sight on a crowded trolley car. Pushing the limits of acceptable TV violence, although far ...

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS: Director Peter Berg’s spot-on adaptation of one of the better true sports stories of the last century is as much an anti-sports film as it is a monument to the politics of hard-nosed high school football in the great state of Texas. The film doesn’t pull any punches in its portrayal of the use and abuse of 17-year-old boys in a game that means more than just boosting school spirit. Between college scouts, local radio and TV news, the players have the weight of their entire careers riding on every single play. Berg’s approach captures the action on and off the field with the same high-energy documentary approach. The quick-cutting and whip pans could very easily have come off as overproduced Tony Scott visual dramatics, but the film stays honest throughout, riding on the shoulders of Billy Bob Thornton’s understated performance as a coach who feels just as much pressure as his players. Friday Night Lights trades the usual sports-movie inspiration for introspection i...

BABYLON A.D. – There’s something about flawed science-fiction films that appeal to my gentler nature. Like Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce or David Twohy’s The Chronicles of Riddick (which coincidently also starred Vin Diesel), Babylon A.D. is a patchwork of inspirations lifted from better films. Yet those individual parts are often captivating unto themselves. Such is the case with director Mathieu Kassovitz’s adaptation of Maurice G. Dantec’s novel, which blends cyberpunk, political commentary and old fashioned American action movie clichés into a distinctly European package. Kassovitz’s film is genuinely intriguing for the first hour, establishing Vin Diesel as a bald bad-ass ex-smuggler hired to escort a young girl to New York City, the lone technological bright spot in a world razed by war, poverty and corruption. Their journey to America is well-paced, well-shot and well-designed with enviable photography by Thierry Arbogast (The Fifth Element). But once our characters cross the border t...

RIGHTEOUS KILL: In his prime, Robert De Niro could elevate a curse world to the level of Shakespeare’s finest prose. The passion of his convictions was such that it didn’t matter what was being said, it was how the line was delivered. If nothing else Righteous Kill proves he can still swear like a truck driver when the script calls for it - and there’s even a glimmer of the old intimidating thug cemented in many a Scorsese movie. But truth is director Jon Avnet’s anonymous cop thriller could have starred any two actors and inspired about the same amount of apathy. De Niro and Pacino are longtime partners on a serial killer investigation; the victims, all criminal scum deserving of their fates. Played out in a video confession in the opening of the film, De Niro confesses to all the murders, explaining his vigilante justice as cop’s vengeance against a faulty system. Trouble is, he’s now been charged with investigating himself and jeopardizing his partner’s career in the process. Righte...

THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH: Having already put Mick Jagger’s rock-n-roll mystique to good use in Performance six year earlier, director Nicolas Roeg found the ultimate embodiment of all-things extraterrestrial in David Bowie, casting him in the title role of a visiting alien who conquers then eventually succumbs to the American dream. Or so a critical reading of the film suggests. Based on the novel by Walter Tevis, Roeg’s approach to adapting the material is not unlike Kubrick’s metaphysical take on Arthur C. Clarke’s text of 2001, following the same linear path but with no identifiable road signs or landmarks. The Man Who Fell to Earth is one of the ‘70s last truly laudable experiments in auteur cinema, alternating between cynical social satire and pointedly honest human emotions. As he did in Don’t Look Now, Roeg captures relationships in their most raw form; sex as a contradiction of sensual sterility, love as a necessary byproduct. Indeed, Bowie’s earthbound ET buys and sells peopl...

FEARLESS: When this Jet Li spiritual epic hit theaters in 2006 it was a headscratcher for American fans used to seeing the star paired with the latest gangster rapper in some hip-hop monosyllabic action flick. Fearless, however, will be very familiar to anyone familiar with Jet Li’s earlier work or even the kung-fu crossover Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Li plays the role of Huo Yuanjia, the real-life founder of the Jin Wu Sports Federation, which united Chinese martial artists at a time when foreign rule ridiculed the native athletes. While this culminates in a four-on-one battle by film’s end, director Ronny Yu breaks the rest of his film into easy to swallow chapters. First, Yuanjia’s arrogant quest to become the top fighter in his province, involving some amazing choreography high atop a wooden structure. Second, his eventual fall from grace and spiritual penance spent farming in the rice fields of a quiet country community. And third, his return to the ring ...not for personal v...

THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA – PRINCE CASPIAN: Just so you understand my personal bias, I wasn’t much of a fan of the first Narnia installment, detailing the adventures of four British siblings who fall through a magical wardrobe into a kingdom full of talking animals, white queens and a lion Jesus voiced by Liam Neeson. Its heart seemed in the right place, but the resulting battles and lessons learned seemed so bland, the entire affair would have been more at home on the BBC. The sequel shifts the focus onto hunky Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes) who seeks to regain his throne from a duplicitous uncle by inspiring all the displaced Narnians to rebel against the ruling authority. The end result is, you guessed it, more battles! Jaguars, pigs, centaurs, and rodents go toe to toe (or hoof to hoof, as the case may be) against an army of bad guys with a pretty impressive body count. Director Andrew Adamson may have a knack for producing computer generated beasties on a budget, but his fight sequenc...

FRED CLAUS: Holiday movies are a nice racket for a comedian. Just ask Tim Allen, whose time spent in a fat suit has almost certainly paid for a comfortable retirement. But Vince Vaughn would seem an unlikely choice for kid-friendly entertainment. His fast-talking, obscenity-laced schtick would be more suitable for an anti­-Christmas movie like Bad Santa rather than a pull-the-heartstrings family classic. So Fred Claus tries to have it both ways. There’s no questionable material here; Vaughn reigns in his cynical streak just enough to ensure everything is kept under the PG limbo stick. But the actor only comes alive when he’s able to vent with his trademark enthusiasm, whether he’s on the run from an army of Salvation Army Santas or stuck in a sibling therapy session with other brothers from famous families (Roger Clinton delivers one hell on an inspiring monologue!). Unfortunately, the magical moments in Fred Claus are few and far between, bolstered by cartoon sound effects and some ex...

HELLBOY 2 – THE GOLDEN ARMY: Iron Man brought in the big bucks and The Dark Knight became a bonafide sensation, but for my money Hellboy 2 was the superhero movie that really delivered the goods last summer. You think making a guy in a cape look believable is tough? Try bringing a 10-foot tall cigar chomping demon to life...and making him your hero! But director Guillermo del Toro is at the top of his game, reuniting the cast from the first film and adding interesting new characters like Johann Krauss (voiced by Family Guy’s Seth MacFarlane) which ensures the sequel isn’t just more of the same. In fact, the plot is filled to bursting with fantastical monsters of myth and legend – enough for an entire Hellboy trilogy – which have declared war on mankind after years of subjugation. The only thing standing in their way is Red (Ron Perlman) and his team of supernatural superheroes. Universal’s Blu-ray sets a new gold standard for current releases on hi-def, sporting a huge documentary (we’...

UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: Produced under the Carolco banner, a testosterone-heavy independent who owed their existence to Stallone and Schwarzennegar, Universal Soldier should have been the perfect opportunity to stuff both action icons in the same picture. Instead, we get second-tier studs Jean Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren facing off as resurrected super-soldiers who wage their own personal war 20 years after killing each other in Vietnam. This was actually JCVD’s most memorable role to date, stealing a bit of Arnold’s Terminator mojo to play a bioengineered zombie with butt cheeks you could bounce a quarter off of. Director Roland Emmerich (who moved on bigger, better and more ridiculous things like 10,000 B.C.) gives everything a tremendous sense of scale. Of course, when your leading man is a full two-feet shorter than the bad guy, that might not be such a feat. Newcomer Ally Walker, who never quite managed a film career, actually makes all the baloney somewhat believable as the mo...

BLOODY MOON: While most of director Jess Franco’s fame (or infamy) springs from his sloppy erotic work of the ‘70s, turns out the prolific hack missed his true calling. Bloody Moon may be a rather generic slasher cribbed from the Halloween and Friday the 13th playbook, but Franco actually delivers some suspense and creative gore amidst the usual T & A and POV shots. The girls attending the International Youth-Club Boarding School of Languages (I wonder if they’re still taking applications!?) are being stalked by a faceless killer who punishes their overt sexuality with various gardening tools One of them even allows herself to be tied down on a stone altar right next to a power saw. We’re not talking Ivy League material, here. Yet Franco’s photography is much better than average and his story is moderately coherent (something to do with incest and a big inheritance), both of which are a big step up from his usual low standards. There’s nothing really to recommend Bloody Moon unless...

THE PAUL NASCHY COLLECTION: In a Halloween season curiously bereft of Euro-cult titles, BCI’s Paul Naschy Collection may be the best box set out there! Featuring five titles from Naschy’s hefty supply of ‘70s exploitation shockers, these all feature the actor sans fur (unless you count facial hair) in roles outside of his most popular creation, the werewolf Waldemar Daninsky. In Horror Rises from the Tomb he plays dual roles as the reincarnated warlock Alaric de Marnac as well as the modern naïve ancestor who awakens him. Vengeance of the Zombies deliver “three-times the Naschy” as a Hindu spiritualist, his voodoo abusing brother, and Satan himself. Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll is a well-done Argento knock off retitled House of Psychotic Women for the American market. Exorcism jumps on the William Peter Blatty bandwagon (although Naschy claims he wrote it three years earlier) but manages to differentiate itself without resorting to pea soup. And finally , fast-forwarding to the ‘80s, H...

THE INCREDIBLE HULK: With superhero movies riding a wave of unprecedented popularity, Universal decided to have another go at adapting one of Marvel’s first comic creations, despite the fact that director Ang Lee’s version limped out of theaters in 2003. Execs came up with a new recipe: director Louis Leterrier (Transporter 2) was brought in to pump up the action while Edward Norton was hired to keep things classy. The result see-saws between some interesting character work by Norton as the beleaguered Bruce Banner, a man who’ll do anything to avoid getting angry and unleashing his gamma-powered alter ego, while Leterrier is only too happy to oblige by staging some smashing good fight scenes between Hulk and the Abomination, another gamma-irradiated freak of nature. The film rushes from scene to scene with a pace that suggest some heavy cutting (indeed there are 40-minutes of deleted scenes included) and the tone can’t quite decide on Iron Man irony or Dark Knight drama. But it’s a pas...

THE STRANGERS: When it comes to horror films, there are really two distinct types: the gothic creature features that ooze slime and invade from some parallel dimension or the “real world” monsters who lurk at the edges of your neighborhood. Both are fun, but the latter tends to be more disturbing. The Strangers stalks the same streets as John Carpenter’s Halloween, offering no explanation for the vicious actions of its main characters who hide behind masks and terrorize a young couple at 4am at the dark end of a dead end street. When the victims ask the inevitable question “Why are you doing this to us?” the answer is frighteningly obtuse: “Because you were home.” First time writer / director Bryan Bertino turns the screws beautifully for the first 45-minutes, creating a tragically real relationship for our doomed couple (Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman), giving the audience a stake in their survival. He then proceeds to scare the pants of you with nothing more than footsteps, squeaking d...

INDIANA JONES & THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL: I’ll be upfront with you, I didn’t really want another Indy movie to be made. The Last Crusade had enough engine trouble as it was; after 20 years of waiting, I wasn’t confident the franchise engine would even turn over. And from a screenplay standpoint, Crystal Skull is most definitely running on empty. Lucas’ insistence on incorporating ancient alien invaders seems too far afield from Indy’s usual supernatural quests and trotting out fan favorite Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) for a 3rd act reunion seemed like desperate pandering. Yet, Crystal Skull plays better on Blu-ray, one-step removed from the unattainable expectations that a fourth chapter was bound to generate. The effects, which the film leaned far too heavily upon, seem more subdued and Spielberg’s shot selection more impressive (that image of Indy silhouetted against an A-bomb sky is a doozy!). Individual scenes are easy to criticize as being beneath the modern forerunn...