These are shorter movie reviews that focus on specific areas or ideas in a movie. Rather than consider the movie as a whole, I will be highlighting a theme or two from the movie. This means that I may wander away from what the movie seems to be about and that could well be why the movie is here and not in the regular review area.

There is a certain quality of that is lacking in many actors; fearlessness. Many B movies queens display this quality by necessity. They only get paid when they work, so they take pretty much any movie that comes along. But once an actor gets overly identified with a style of character (Jack Nicholson for example), they rarely get a chance to play against type. One of the reasons that Nicole Kidman will be considered a great actress in the long run is her wide variety of roles. Molly Parker shows this same bravery by playing a rather demented character in Kissed. Rarely has necrophilia been presented so acceptably in a film. Paul Bartel carried it off in Mortuary Academy, but that was mostly spoof. Kissed presents it as a viable alternative lifestyle. Molly’s character is shown in prologue scenes to have a fascination with death and ritual. On one of her trips to the morgue with flowers from her father’s shop, she finds out about a job opening and applies for and gets her dream job. A few years later she is attending a college course on anatomy when she meets a med school dropout and falls for him. The relationship between the two is ill-defined as she seems to love him and has sex with him, but does not experience the rapture she finds in the arms of dead guys. Early on she confesses her peccadillo to the dropout who immediately is captivated by the idea. Molly is glad to have a confidant, but is disgusted when he says he wants to try it.

Based on the directors later work, I have a feeling that the necrophilia is a stand in for being gay. Molly’s complete acceptance of her lifestyle and her response to her boyfriend’s interest in it become a little more understandable in this light. The notion that having a homosexual relationship will help you understand or be accepted by someone who is gay, is wrong. It is pretty much an either/or situation. Kissed plays out as a tragedy and there are not many laughs in it, but it is a very enjoyable film. Like many Canadian films, there is almost no music and much of the music you do hear is provided by radio and record players in the scene.

After directing a lot of TV episodes, bland westerns and a Bob Hope special, Sam Peckinpah took a flying leap into movie history with The Wild Bunch. I first saw this movie in 1978 during a film class in college. I dragged myself to class that day after a night of drinking. The movie starts by showing our heroes in military attire and we assume them to be good guys. As they ride in to town they pass some children who are laughing around a dirt pit. Inside the pit there are scorpions battling with red ants, both groups are circled by fire. Needless to say, this got my attention. By the time they make it to the bank and William Holden tells his men "if they move, kill 'em", any remnant of a hangover was driven from my head. The Wild Bunch is set in 1913. The West was settled but still not tame though the days of real outlaws were coming to an end. The characters are surprisingly likeable considering that they are homicidal maniacs. At times it is not an easy movie to watch, but not for the reasons it originally upset people. The violence and casual brutality that so outraged some people during its original release seem quite acceptable to modern eyes. But the treatment of the horses is especially cruel. Stuntmen know what they are doing, both in the risks they take and the way they take those risks. Horses don't. While I don't go as far as some people do in the area of animal rights, I found myself a bit shocked by the tripwires used in the movie. In the Behind the Scenes footage there are more examples of the horses being put in harm's way for the movie. This treatment of animals was typical and it would be another 10 years before the use of trip wires was effectively banned in movies.

Nonetheless, this is still a great movie. In a genre that used to clearly define good guys and bad guys, the Wild Bunch has neither. The good guys set the trap for Holden and his crew knowing that the townsfolk would get caught in the crossfire. The outlaws' code of ethics is based on honor and loyalty, but they are even less concerned with killing innocents. Sometimes Holden's character is just so macho, you have to laugh, and though he certainly shows empathy occasionally he never shows weakness.

This is the original 1954 movie that spawned Godzilla two years later and countless rubber suit monster movies after that. Expecting your typical Japanese monster movie, I was unprepared for weightier aspects of this film. You still have everyone's favorite giant dinosaur trashing Tokyo and lots of tanks and guns being fired uselessly, but this is not a sympathetic Godzilla. Make no mistake about it, he is war incarnate. There is no mercy or compassion in Godzilla as it relentlessly crushes and burns buildings. No effort is made by the filmmakers to tone down the result of this kind of destruction. Indeed, we see a mother holding her two children and trying to comfort them as their impending death approaches in the form of Godzilla. Despite the frantic efforts to evacuate the city, in every scene of destruction there are people fleeing. A scene set in the hospital shows a doctor scanning young children with a geiger counter. As the device clicks frantically, he looks at a nurse and sadly shakes his head. Clearly this means that the children would die of radiation poisoning. Godzilla is a stand-in for war, nuclear war. Filmed ten years after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, these scenes of destruction must have been painful for the Japanese audiences to watch. Instead of my normal amusement at seeing a guy in a rubber suit demolish a city, I was horrified.

Then came the kicker. Turns out that a local scientist has developed a weapon that will kill Godzilla, but he is concerned that if he uses it even once for a good cause, other people will take it from him and use it for nefarious purposes. Once again, the movie catches me completely off guard. During the creation of the atom bomb (even in its earliest theoretical planning stages), there was always groups of people who felt that the bomb was just too great a destructive force. While the general consensus is that using the bomb shortened the war, its use has not set well with a large number of Americans. And here in the middle of a giant dino movie, this dilemma appears. The creator of the weapon that kills Godzilla tries to keep his invention secret so that the next war won't be fought with weapons even more destructive than atomic bombs. When faced with either letting Godzilla (who represents war) continue or using his weapon thereby risking other wars with bigger weapons, he is deeply troubled. Finally, he creates the weapon, burns all research papers, and after successfully destroying Godzilla takes his own life. This seemed almost sympathetic to America's use of the bomb. The movie is a far cry from the hordes of movies that would come after it. The special effects are very poor even by the standards at the time and can detract from the intensity of the film, but this is not your average monster movie.

This one caught me by surprise. I knew very little about the movie except that it was directed by Paul Verhoeven, he of "Basic Instinct" and "Showgirls" fame. Our heroine seems unfazed by the war and not only survives during those troubled times but even fights back against the Nazis. If that were all there was to the movie, it would get boring fast. But almost immediately there are unsettling notes. The family that is hiding her because she is Jewish is forcing her to recite passages from the Christian Bible. Essentially forcing her to give up her beliefs in return for sanctuary. As the movie hits it stride and the action escalates, so does the theme of compromising to survive. In many ways, there are no good guys in this movie. Carice van Houten who plays Rachel Stein constantly displays a light-hearted continence, but occasionally it cracks and the worry and rage she feels shows through. Rachel becomes a spy for the resistance and ends up in an German officer's bed. While it looks to the outside world that she is a Nazi collaborator, she is in fact fighting the Germans. When the war ends, she is thought to be a traitor and must hide from the liberators while tracking down the real traitor to clear her name. When the Germans are ousted and the Canadian military takes over, the Netherlands populace takes out their rage on the people who worked for Germans. In a climatic scene, guards watching over the collaborators humiliate them for the amusement of some drunken revelers until the Canadians show up. I have to wonder how much of the disgust in that officer's diatribe is a reflection of what Verhoeven felt as a youth when he lived through the end of the war. As she is working her way into the German's trust, Rachel says to the officer, "our nations are so close, we are almost Germans already". As the movie progresses and the power shifts from the Germans back to the local government, we see that they too are capable of great cruelty. This subtext is what elevates Black Book up from being just another war story.

Over the years there have been attempts made to create cult movies. Usually they fail. There is a simple reason for this, the producers, directors, writers all tried to recreate a special movie. The conscious act of including specific types of scenes and characters pretty much kills anything that might have turned out special in a movie. "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", Animal House" and "Police Academy" all had numerous imitators that mostly fell flat. It is a little like listening to a friend who can't tell a story recount a funny event. The elements are there, but something is missing. Killer Pad is like that. They took lots of potentially funny elements and mixed them together and got brown (you know, like when you mix too many different colors together completely). For some reason, the movie got an R rating, though I haven't the faintest idea why. No nudity, no foul language, minimal gore, literally nothing that would need to be cut out to show on regular TV. The writer tried to give us three characters who are dumber than dirt. Apparently stupid people are funny. Not one to let a good line go, he has several characters say the line "she has a penis" including the guy who only spoke Spanish and the dog. Whatever Don Stoller (the writer) might have been going for is further confused by Robert Englund's pedestrian direction. The movie plods for set piece to set piece without taking advantage of any of them. I guess we are supposed to be like the heroes in the film, so starved for female flesh that the merest hint that we might see some will keep us watching to the end. Numerous times the main characters simply stop what they are doing and drool over the girls who are cleverly named Lucy, Jezebel and Delilah. This should tell you all you need to know about the movie: When the boys visit a porn shoot to hand out flyers to their party, the female pornstars are carefully staged so that you can't even see a hint of breast but the camera zooms in for a close up of the midget's ass cheeks hanging of his chaps. I believe I mentioned that Stoller likes to repeat his jokes? We will see those ass cheeks twice more in the movie.

There are a few reasons to see this movie, but not that many. It is a Charles Band production, which should tell you something about the production values. This is one of those atmospheric supernatural thriller that doesn't have a real plot, or logic, or really anything interesting. It's main claim to fame is the fact that both Sherilyn Fenn and Charlie Spradling get naked. This is accomplished early on and then Charlie goes back to her job at the church to do a rush restoration job on a painting. Not surprisingly this turns out to depict a scene featuring a monster and Sherilyn's character. She rushes back to the castle in time to watch the final showdown but not really contribute anything to it. As near as I can tell, this was supposed to be love story. We are introduced to the girls as they are reunited at the castle. Seems like they are old school chums who have been out of touch for ten years. A mysterious band of traveling performers is playing in the area and are invited back to the castle for dinner. The performers spike the girl's drinks and then have sex with them. The magician turns out to be twins and the one with Sherilyn turns into a monster while having sex with her. After much wandering around the castle the curse is more or less explained and Sherilyn falls in love with the guy. Yup, that's right. After being drugged, raped, finding out the guy is cursed, and knowing that she will need to go to another dimension to stay with him, she falls in love. Mind you this happens in just 24 hours. There is enough mention of Sherilyn being "The One" to suppose that Fate was playing a part. Band did find an interesting location and a nice castle but the story is a little weak. Still for a Full Moon production, it is not bad. Charles Band is a journeyman director but I am not sure if I can remember any of his movies having a subplot. Meridian is just a sort of okay movie. Nothing really wrong with it, but nothing that great either.

So I'm watching the third installment in the Mummy franchise and I find myself enjoying it immensely. The pacing is great, the characters are dependable and their secondary problems minimal. The action builds quickly to the climax with a minimal amount of posturing and asides to the audience. Pretty much as soon as I am done watching it, I realize that this is a tailor made movie for me. It follows a strict formula that is repeatable. A reluctant hero, strong female characters who can take a punch, a camera that lovingly gazes over fantastic settings and then frantically documents the fight scenes, I could go on but you get my point. This is a well crafted piece of merchandize marketed directly to your's truly and a few million others. What I find so amusing about this is that I despise Country music for the exact same reasons I enjoy the Mummy and its ilk. Country music has a formula for a hit country song. In 1972 Steve Goodman and John Prine wrote "You never even call me by my name" which was an attempt to include all these cliches in one song. To quote Steve here are the key ingredients " That's a lot to get into one song. We left out all the good stuff. Dallas, dope, divorce, dead dogs, trains prison Christmas, mothers, farms, and trucks. Mothers, prison, trucks, trains, farms, Christmas, and dead dogs are essential, you can't have a good country song without them things. And with all due respect this song needs mothers, prison, trucks, trains, farms, Christmas and dead dogs". In 35 years the list has not really changed. John left out patriotism and God which were frequently featured back then and still are today. Country music has moved from being just plain corny to being a caricature of itself. The formula for making a Country song is so strict and played so dead pan that it is hard to tell a real Country song from a parody. But the audience eats it up. And as I am watching my Mummy movie I am realizing that just like those Country music fans, I am being swept along by a movie that was made by committee and a formula. The only thing I can say in my defense is "Country sucks! The Mummy rocks!"

What a great little film this is. Originally a 20 minute short, the director got some money together and reunited with the original actors to expand the film to feature length. The short was about a man who had broken up with his girlfriend and taken a night job at a local supermarket as the break up had left him with a bad case of insomnia. He develops the ability to stop time and takes advantage of this ability by using the store's patrons as models. I have no idea where this store is, but apparently it is frequented by an amazing number of gorgeous women. Seriously, the closest supermarket to the Playboy mansion could not be visited by more babes than this place. Our hero, who is actually an artist, spouts off about a woman he has always wanted to meet. As a painter, he would look past her mundane features and see the beauty in her soul. Of course, when push comes to shove does the painter sketch normal looking housewives? Mousy middle-aged women? Umm, no. He picks out a couple of supermodels. Amusingly, when we see our hero attending art school the model for his figure study class is an overweight flatulent old man. To be fair, the girl playing his romantic interest starts off looking very dull and uninteresting but blossoms as he begins to get to know her. The original short makes up the middle part of the feature film. The film starts with our hero getting yelled at by the woman he is breaking up with and the follows him as he mopes around whining to his friend about how sad he is. He takes a night job and that segues into the short film and then the final third expands upon the female lead's character with a predictable happy ending. Sean Ellis (writer and director) makes great use of a couple of visual styles that really capture the mood of the story without being intrusive. Well worth tracking down a copy.

In Zombie Strippers, I complained that the soldiers all looked like wimps and I had a hard time believing that there were capable of fighting their way out of a paper bag. In Honey Glaze, we see Dan Glaze (Honey's father) take on various thugs with ease despite the fact that he is a scrawny little guy. Here the incongruity is clearly played for laughs and it pretty much works. There are quite a few chuckles throughout the film, though it is not densely packed with jokes nor does it dwell on the jokes it does have to make sure we get the point. Nothing in the film is hugely funny, but most of the gags work well enough to at least be amusing. Clearly put together on a shoe string budget and undoubtedly featuring friends and family in many of the roles, Honey Glaze manages to be surprisingly entertaining. While most of the actors mercilessly chew the scenery, they play their goofy characters in a straight forward way. No matter how stupid their character's actions are, the actors play them earnestly. We are not talking great entertainment here but if you can handle the community theater feel of the movie, it is an enjoyable experience.

This is a Canadian film and like most of its kind, aurally it is a bit odd for American tastes. There are very few exaggerated sound effects and despite having a score by Oscar Petersen, the background music is very unobtrusive and frequently absent. The movie tends to be billed as a "cat and mouse" thriller but really Elliot Gould's characters holds all the cards all the time. Christopher Plummer's Rikel is a classless buffoon whose only response to a problem seems to be violence. The movie is pretty interesting in the way that Gould's character grows more confident as the story goes along and finally is capable of risking his life in the end game. There are a couple of odd twists where subplots are introduced but don't play into the story. When one of his office co-workers has an affair with another's fiance, he doesn't say anything nor does he use the knowledge to blackmail the guy into helping him out. I think this is intended to show Gould's control of the situation. While he might have gotten some benefit out of forcing the guy to help him, he would have created a greater risk of being discovered. Thus it was better to keep his co-worker's secret as well as his own. There are lots of cute women wearing lots of disco fashion. Frequently this type of movie will have a bit of exposition where the hero will pull all the pieces together for the audience, but Silent Partner throws in clues but leaves them to the audience to pick up on. The writer and director trusted that the audience would be intelligent enough to pick up on plot points that aren't specifically shown to them. The pace is a little slow and deliberate and it seems a bit sparse at times, but it is definitely worth watching.

Surprisingly good film about serial killer Ted Bundy. We never for a moment forget how creepy and dangerous Bundy is nor how quickly he will turn to violence. Bundy is portrayed as just plain crazy. We sense that he tried to have a normal life, but that he was just flawed on the inside and nothing was going to change that. Initially he is shown to have poor social skills and throughout the film he never shows the ability to maintain a normal conversation or relationship. As the film progresses he is shown being charming long enough to get a woman by herself and then attacks them suddenly and violently. The scenes of torture and rape are very brief and matter of fact. They are not glorified in any way and are not shot to pique our interest.

There is a small part for one of my favorite actresses, Tiffany Sheppis ( Corpses, Zombie Strippers). She plays a woman who is conned by Bundy into his car and then beats the shit out of him when she realizes she is in danger. True to form, she does end up with her shirt open defending herself in her underwear again.

I'll say one thing for this movie, a lot of the actors went on to long careers. Starting with Diane Lane who has a pretty impressive resume including "Unfaithful". But we also get to see 15-year-old Laura Dern, Cynthia Sykes, Christine Lahti, Elizabeth Daily and Ray Winstone. There are also uncredited appearances by Scream-Queen-to-be Debbie Rochon and Brent Spiner who would go on to play Data on SNG. All in all a truly impressive cast.

There is a lot that confuses me about the movie. It really wants to be a gritty movie, but treats some of its characters way too well. We are introduced to Fee Waybill's Lou Corpse as he is performing his only hit in a dive bar in a depressed steel town. He seems to be desperately clinging to the past and several times we see him talking to random people like they were Rolling Stone reporters. This is particularly amusing when one of them turns out to be a drug dealer. Diane Lane's character, Corrine Burns, seems delusional. She has lost both parents; her mom just a few months earlier. She has no job and no prospects and few friends. Somehow she gains the attention of some TV producers doing a story on the town and captures the attention of a regional anchor who helps make her a celebrity. Corrine mentions on air that she has a band and then gets the band a tour (without an audition) because of that mention. As the tour progresses the band gets a little better and steals a song from another group. Just when things look bleakest and the media attention seems to turn against them, their song goes to the top of the charts. As the credits roll we see the girls lip synching the song while dressed fashionably.

So here's the thing; this should be a bitter, sad movie and in the end it turns into a princess movie. Waybill's character's constantly acts as if the band is still on top and musically relevant. His absurd statements that the guys from the punk band are relying on a gimmick flies in the face of logic as we have just seen him performing in face paint. The lead singer from the punk band can't read. This is going to limit his employment chances but more frightening than that, he seems to be the guy signing the contracts. Early on we see that the girls have limited prospects for employment. They are living with relatives who treat them shabbily. When the band first performs, Corrine refuses to confirm to a certain style of dress and adopts a very distinctive look that captures the media attention and soon she has a large following of teenage girls dressing the same. Clearly we are going to see her slammed back down the way everyone else in the movie has been, right? Sigh, no. As the girls start to get famous, the media interviews Corrine's aunt who publicly admits that she said terrible things to the girls but now is so proud of them. She even says she wishes her sister could have lived to see the girls perform. After a disastrous show when their fans seem to have turned against them and we are sure they are doomed to return home as losers, we find out that their stolen song has become a hit and they become successful.

It is possible that the writers are just setting up the Stains up to be a one-hit wonder like the others, but I doubt it. It is possible that they are making some pretty nasty remarks about the power of the media and the public's gullibility but this feels like it slips away in the end. If the media is so strong, then why are the girls still popular after the media abandons them? I suspect that writer originally wanted to do something bleaker but got pushed to a happy ending. Still it has its moments (including watching Diane take a shower) but ultimately is worth watching more for the actors than the story.

In the end, I am glad I stuck through with this movie. The first bits are truly terrible. It plays out like a bad Saturday Night Live script. Will Smith's Hancock is a superhero who can't quite get things right. He usually saves the day but does so in a pretty destructive fashion. We see him drink, but don't see him drunk. While his decisions are questionable, we don't think of him as being mean or intentionally dangerous. Which would be okay, but we don't find him believable either. To make matters worse, Jason Bateman appears playing an extension of his Arrested Development character. Most of the scenes with the two of them are horrid. First of all Bateman is playing an honest PR guy (I assume this is meant as a joke, one which the filmmaker will repeat often) but most of all, I don't buy Bateman on the big screen. Some combination of voice, looks and mannerisms just don't do it for me.

The second half of the film changes gears as Hancock "grows up". We see some rather trite scenes of him overcoming his drinking problem and trying to be more a more responsible superhero and as the character gets more serious, Smith's portrayal gets better. And then Charlize Theron show up. It is not only that she is much more fun to look at than Bateman, she is a much, much better actor. Coupled with the fact that she has the best character in the film, she steals the show. As more of Mary's backstory is revealed Theron's acting changes, from a scared little wife, to a woman concerned for her family, to a concerned friend, to a superhero herself. Will Smith rises to the challenge and puts in a solid effort in the last half of the film even managing to get in a couple of decent jokes. For a movie that is one note for the first 45 minutes, it picks up the pace dramatically as changes and plot twists come up fast and furious for the rest of the film. Do they make sense? Oh, hell no. But hey, he's a superhero and no superhero has a believable origin story, so I'll let it slide.

One of the unspoken themes of the movie is that Hancock and Mary will get together again. After all, they are immortal and Ray is not. In a way, Bateman's weak acting matches with the story. From the instant we see them together, we think she is slumming. As Mary reveals more and gets more interesting, we really wonder what she is doing with that guy. And when Smith and Theron are sharing screen time with Bateman, it is painfully obvious that he is not in their league. I will give Bateman an out here. I think that he was hired to play his Mike character; a not very appealing character to start with and oddly less believable than the title character.

This is a special effects movie, but one of the funniest effects is Theron's cleavage. If you've seen Two Days in the Valley, you know that Charlize's breast are very nice, if not really large. In her superhero mode she wears a shirt with a deep plunging neckline that constantly has shadows on it. My bet is that these were digitally enhanced, not to make her breasts larger, but just more obvious. If so, that would a great gig. Still, it would be the second most enjoyable special effects job ever. Remember "Showgirls"? It was edited down for network TV and all of the productions numbers that featured naked people had bikinis superimposed on them. That would have been the best job ever and it must have taken years.

Given the number of movies that I watch in a year you'd think I would have seen this one before. There are reasons for it; primarily the more popular a movie is the less inclined I am to watch it. Popular does not equal good. Trust me on this, I speak from bitter experience; I lived through the disco era and still have nightmares about "Disco to the Beatles". Still as I had referenced it in a review of Stir of Echoes, it made sense to actually track down a copy.

My initial impression was similar to getting hit on the head with a hammer. Does the word "subtle" even exist in Mr. Shyamalan's vocabulary? First their are the colors. Do not play any drinking game that involves alcohol and the color red appearing in this movie. You won't make it past the first half hour. I initially thought it was used to ward off ghosts, but sometimes it seems to attract them and then there is that red glass doorknob. Honestly, I think it is just to focus the audience's attention because we are pretty stupid and we'd never understand the movie without huge fucking clues. Then there is the sound. Toni Collette's character walks around in slippers for her first two scenes and we hear them scuff the floor every time she moves. Why? I don't know, the foley guy got really carried away (though I am sure it was at Shymalan's instruction). Then there is the problem of can the ghosts have a physical presence or not. Ghosts are the ones causing bruises and cuts on Cole, so it seems like they can. But then why doesn't anyone else notice. And I am not even going to get started on the "cold" issue. Other than to mention that Willis replays the "cold in here" comment on the tape recorder three times in a row.

And yet, I missed the twist at the end. Seriously how did I not see this coming a mile away? Possibly the horribly cloying direction the movie was taking robbed me of rational thought. This was like the prequel to "Ghost Whisper" and I was entertaining the notion that maybe the kid grew up and had a fiendishly successful sex change operation to become Jennifer Love-Hewitt. I was more annoyed with myself for missing the obvious than surprised by the twist. To add insult to injury, I then had to sit through not just the realization scene but the goodbye scene with his widow where Willis details the key points of the movie just in case we weren't paying attention.

In many ways The Sixth Sense is a very good movie. The acting is outstanding, visually it is very rich and the pace is good. There are lots of little clues hidden behind the big obvious ones that are quite satisfying. But still, it is a chick flick masquerading as a horror movie. Why is it that when an actor hams it up big time they get called on it, but when the director does it he gets nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars?

What on earth was I thinking. I am not really a fan of Giallo films, easily confused by Spanish films so why do I keep trying to watch French films. Especially the high concept ones. Honestly by now having seen a few of these I really should have learned. But, no. There's sex in them so what do I do? I watch the damn thing. Geez, what a loser. And speaking of losers, wait until you meet the hero of this epic. Martin is a philosophy teacher who seems to have a bit of writer's block and has stalled on his latest book. He goes to a party at his ex-wife's place where she tries to set him up with a young girl. Talk about a slam dunk, turns out she is philosophy groupie and makes it pretty clear that all Martin has to do is ask and she is his. And Martin insults her and ignores her. Instead he insists that his ex talk to him alone and clearly wants her to get rid of her guests. When she refuses, Martin leaves in a huff. While hanging around outside a sex shop, he spies an odd couple; a man in his 70's and a much younger woman. When Martin attempts to visit the old guy, he is informed by the local busybody that he died, while having sex, apparently kinky sex. Soon we meet the woman that fucked the old guy to death and we are underwhelmed. Cecilia is chubby, bland and though she insists on being 17 she looks about 10 years older than that. Yet Martin finds himself drawn to her in an increasingly obsessive manner. And if he was obnoxious before, he become so much worse once he falls for the girl. He tells anyone who will listen that he is obsessed with this girl that he doesn't even like. She is dull, she is boring, yada yada yada. He calls his ex-wife again and asks if he can come up and visit. She says no, he goes up anyway and then proceeds to discuss his sexual relationship with her dinner guests in graphic detail. Oddly enough, the guests all leave. And then Martin tries to force himself on the ex.

If I have made any of this sound interesting, I apologize. Martin is the least likeable character I have seen on film in a long time. We don't find out about his past, we never even get a hint about the book he is writing, we don't know why he is asked to leave the college, we don't find out why he is divorced. We are not once given any reason to like the guy. Though there are plenty of reasons to dislike him. Cecilia may not be the most attractive woman, but she is certainly not ugly and she wants to be his fuck buddy. She shows up at his place, they have sex and she leaves. She doesn't ask for money or to be taken out. She doesn't want a relationship and he should have enough brains to figure out that they have nothing to base a relationship on. Instead of taking this as the gift it is, he treats the girl, his ex, and everyone he meets like shit. And somehow we are supposed to care about him? We dislike Martin almost immediately and it never gets any better. Oh, and the sex is terribly boring.

Ennui is a term that means loss of interest in life. Boredom, depression, just general disinterest in the things that make life worth living. I don't know if I'd call what Martin sufferers from ennui. Normally I think of a person in the grips of ennui as being bored and not likely to seek out other people or want to interact with them. Martin on the other hand is constantly harassing the few people who can stand to be around him. Our hero is way too interested in himself. I thought that either he had not even started on his book and was lying to everyone or he had gotten the book to a point and realized it was terrible but did not know how to fix it and all the other stuff was just his way of avoiding what a screw up he was.

I am not going to bother with a full scale review of this movie; it has been done multiple times and there is not a lot new to say about the movie. There is a reason that this movie set off a trend, it is a good movie that had great timing. Released just about the time computer geeks were getting noticed (probably actually written because of the headlines at the time), it struck a chord with many people because of its basic theme and then hooked them by actually being worth watching. The original script was apparently pretty weak and watching the deleted scenes reinforces this point. The studio apparently wanted a money loser to offset a hugely successful film and so picked a bad script and a director with a loosing record and then ignored them. Of course before you can sing the reprise to "Springtime for Hitler" they had a hit on their hands. Because they were ignored by the studio the director and a few truly talented actors created an exceptional film. Immediately after its release there were movies copying it to cash in on its success. These, of course, missed the bits that made the movie special but faithly cloned the plot. Even the sequel "Nerds in Paradise" was a pale imitation of the original. We really rooted for Gilbert, Lewis, Poindexter and Booger. It helped that their antagonists were jocks who treated everyone around them badly and really who doesn't like seeing the guys on top kicked into the mud? As the title implies, the nerds only acted after the insults and injuries and did nothing to provoke them.

Which brings me to the reason I am writing this. The Winter Olympic Games have recently ended and I came across a couple websites making insulting comments about the figure skaters. They criticized the Russians for their costumes and music, hosted videos of the falls, questioned why the male skaters had such big butts, and stated that the judges were stupid for not scoring the Americans higher. The Russian costumes? They dressed like Australian Aborigines and performed to didgeridoo music. A couple of clicks were all it took to find out that Traditional Folk Music was selected as the theme for all dance competition skaters. If the Russians looked borderline racists, they were not alone. Skaters hitting the ice? Big competitions requires big tricks, playing it safe will not get you on the podium. I'll not comment on the skater's butts as it is a pointless personal attack. Needless to say anyone who doesn't understand the nature of competition and demonstrates a lack of understanding of the rules of the sport has no business questioning the decisions of the judges. Normally I would dismiss this as being just more stupid shit on the internet, but I got to it from a geek site. Making fun of something without even doing the basic research necessary to understand it and not even applying a little logic to it? I point out again, a geek site linked to the videos and comments. Seems like the sense of entitlement that made the jocks in ROTN such easy targets has found its way to a new group. Perhaps it may be a little strange for someone who writes a website dedicated to bad movies should make these comments. Maybe so but I watch these movies with a relatively open mind. I look for something good in the movie and I applaud anything clever or original I find. Oh, yeah, sometimes I rip on a movie and I know how much fun that can be. Still it bothers me that a group of people who have been picked on themselves would so quickly insult another group. At any rate, if you have not seen this movie, you should. If you are at the top of the food chain and feeling smug, perhaps you should rewatch the movie and concentrate on why Lewis is the good guy and Stan is the bad guy.

Ah, Zoe Bell. One of the all time great stunt women, Zoe is now working in front of the camera as an actress. And not doing too badly. The movie has its silly bits. In particular Zoe gets stabbed in the head and spends the first minutes of the film with a knife sticking out of her skull. It starts to give you the impression that the movie is going to be comedic. You quickly realize that they are going for a comic book seriousness which makes the knife gag seem less odd but still it induced a giggle instead of the intended chill. Zoe handles the character shifts pretty well, but as the character never really becomes sympathetic and remains dangerously prone to violence the entire movie, Zoe doesn't have to really stretch as an actress. Still she handles the action hero better than most actresses I have seen. Partly this is because Zoe is the only one who looks like she could kick someone's ass. I don't gamble, but I'd still bet the farm on a Zoe Bell vs Jennifer Garner fight.

While I enjoyed the movie it was not until I was watching one of the extras that I realized what bothered me about it. In the extra we watch Zoe move smoothly through a series of moves with two opponents. Clearly we are watching three professionals rehearse. Yet in the movie the fight scenes tend to be chopped up with dozens of quick cuts. We rarely see Zoe in a full body shot. Either the director did not know how to work with a real actress/stunt women or the design of the movie had already been set and they did not want to change it. The fight editing was more suitable for a regular actress than for someone with Zoe's skills and strength. The movie is worth seeing for Zoe alone and is a decent movie in its own right. Clearly meant to be a set up for a series as the final scenes are not an ending at all. It is obvious that she is planning on continuing to rid the world of bad guys.

Joss Whedon TV Series

I know, I know. FIve years and over 100 episodes and all I do is a couple of paragraphs in Short Takes. Well there is a reason for it. I am mostly going to be commenting on my overall impression of the series. Joss Whedon is a semi-god to most geeks and a quick Google search on just his name brought up 1.5 million hits. If you want to read about the details of any of his endeavors, there are plenty of other places to look.

Angel is a spin off from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and set in the same "Buffyverse" with a few crossover characters. As with BTVS we are expected to believe that our heroes and only our heroes have noticed that the world is infested with demons, vampires and other assorted monstrosities. While there is a thread in the first season that features a cop, this is dropped at the end of that season. It should be noted that the other cops thought that she was crazy for believing in the supernatural. Pretty much all of Whedon's characters are manic/depressive. Granted that when bad shit happens to these guys it is not of the lightweight variety. Death and betrayal are frequent visitors. During the first season we are introduced to the cast and then after a ton of very interesting backstory on Doyle that clearly would have lead to any number of stories down the road, Doyle is killed off and not brought back. His name is mentioned numerous times the next season and we see the effect of his death on the other members of the team. This is actually done pretty well. But the tone of any given show will shift dramatically from very light to very dark. Angel himself occasionally shows that even though he is good now, the depth of his anger can be shocking.

Actors must love working with Whedon. He plans ahead and his characters all change. Amy Acker's character Fred is a perfect example. She is introduced as an escaped slave living in another universe and it takes her several episodes to recover. Her character becomes more confident and her role with the group changes as more responsibility is given to her which causes other changes as does the introduction of a love triangle. In the last season she is killed by an ancient god that takes over her body and Aker gets to perform dramatically differently. Which she handles very well. With the exception of Angel himself, all the good characters go through fairly dramatic changes, the evil guys pretty much stay evil and self serving.

What is unclear is what the fighting is all about. Sure, I know it is classic good vs evil, but there are higher beings involved on both sides and it is clear that they have considerable power over the mortal realm. So what exactly is going on. Are the humans just pawns in a game between immortals? Do the concepts of good and evil translate to higher planes of existence? If you live forever and have great powers, do the affairs of mortals impact your thoughts? Could it all just be a drinking game for the gods? We won't even get into the "prophecy vs free will" debate.

Much like the Angel series, this is just my overall impression of a TV series. As this series also has a five year history and over 100 episodes, don't expect much in the way of details. There are certain similarities to Whedon's series in that there is a long and complicated story arc that was planned out from the very beginning. The series creator, J. Michael Straczynski, did much of the writing for the series and was even able to complete his story arc despite a couple of actor changes and almost getting cancelled after the fourth season. This allowed him the chance to drop hints in the early episodes that might not get explained for a year or two. Great fun for fanboys who rewatch older shows and find references to much later shows.

Doing a minimal amount of research on the show's creator reveals that he is basically agnostic or an atheist. I believe that the reason that this information is so easy to find is because of how strongly based on religion the show is. At first watching the series confused me; why so many references to God? After watching a lot of episodes, it started to become apparent that while he was envisioning an overall deity, he was not specifying a religion. In the same show you might see religion as a good thing and a bad thing. One example featured an AIDS type disease that was 100% deadly for a specific alien race. Their populace believed it was a curse from God visited on the impure. So their reaction to the disease was to pray for forgiveness. This did not work and the entire race was wiped out. During the same show humanitarian help was offered by members of a different alien religion. Help was also offered by beings with no specific religious affiliation, they just knew it was the right thing to do.

Someone with a strong religious basis would have a hard time writing this episode (or in fact many of the numerous episodes that feature religious subject matter) because of their internal bias to their beliefs. Someone with no religious belief would look around him in the real world and see so many different religions and theologies that he might wonder about their root causes. He has populated the Babylon 5 universe with variations of the religions we are familiar with including Buddhism (M'nbari), a variation of the Muslim warrior religion (oddly, also M'nbari), pious Christianity (the aforementioned now extinct race), and a scholarly monk caste (Earth) but mostly the advanced races seem to favor a belief that the universe itself is sentient and is using life to learn to understand itself. As with the Buffyverse, this makes me wonder what would happen if the the universe got bored or found its answers. Also, I am a little offended with the idea that some people are made evil and some good just to help some deity find itself.