Crank
This is the honest to god IMDB plot outline for "Crank".

A hit man (Statham) learns that a poison injected into his body will kill him if his heart rate drops slows a certain point. Now he must exact his revenge on the people who injected him before he takes his last breath.

It's Speed only without the bus!
I'm supposing that "his heart rate drops slows a certain point" means he has to keep his heart rate up, not down, although that might make a good movie too. Then again, I think that Warhol already tackled this territory pretty successfully in "Sleep". How much must it suck to have a major grammar problem in your plot synopsis on IMDB? Think about all the work that goes into making a movie, even a crappy one like this (or maybe especially a crappy one like this) only to have it presented to the public as if the studio couldn't afford to hire a copy editor! Gotta hurt.
Crank is an early leader in the "most unintentionally homoerotic movie of the year" award (also known as "The Gladiator"). It's an action movie about maintaining an erection, if you think about it.
"When those guys are shooting at me it really gets my heart rate up! Hey, maybe I should get out my OWN gun!" and so on.
prereviewer - Joe McKay 8/29/06

Invincible
Of all the former boy band members you want to see smacked upside the head by a defensive lineman is Marky Mark on the top of your list? Mine neither. They should have let this movie stray from the original "true" story a bit more. In Invincible, Mark Walberg makes the football team (miraculously, and with the guile and support of his drinking buddies) but he only covers punts. For non-football fans this means he's on the "special" team - and that's "special" as in not as good, like when you put it with "Olympics". In MY version of invincible it would have stared Justin Timberlake, and he would be the clutch third down "over the middle" receiver. His nickname would be "hands" or "nails". There would be an undercurrent of naughty "don't ask don't tell" homosexuality like there is in the boy band culture. It'd be really fun. No, instead this movie is bittersweet. For invincible seems at first like it's about being invincible on the football field, but really it's about being invincible ... in life. Yuck! This movie is really all about his relationship with, well it's gotta be his father. Double yuck. You can count the number of lines that the female lead actor has on one hand. And at least three of those five are going to be about (or during) sex.

Oh, and for the record, vincible is a word. Vincible - (of an opponent) able to be overcome or conquered.
Football player: I'm gonna fuck you up, punk!
Justin Timberlake: Dude, you are so vincible, and I am like totally invincible.
Dammit, I'd pay real money to see that movie.
prereviewer - Joe McKay 8/17/06

World Trade Center
I've got an idea for a box office smash: piss people off by blending straight-up fact with here-say, innuendo, paranoid conspiracy theories. Yeah! Toss in the word "hero" a couple dozen times, add some snippets of hand-held camcorder action, hopefully throw in a cockpit terrorist P.O.V. of the crash (has that been done yet?) cut along with President Bush reading to a kindergarden class and Bruce Springsteen hard a work with a guitar and a notepad. What an awesome movie! Take the kids*! Question authority! Stir up my emotions and blur my sense of moral responsibility! I'll take a jumbo popcorn with that.
*this is rated PG-13, not suitable for children who have an undeveloped concept of "enemy"
prereviewer - Matt King 7/22/06

My Super Ex-girlfriend
Apparently domestic violence is funny if you follow this clever formula: Make sure everyone's white, the woman is beating up the man, and there are lots of special effects. Turns out the idea of a white woman being enraged and violent is so absurd that there is at least 90 minutes of comic material there.
What if Uma (or at least it looks like her in the commercial) was going psycho on Chris Rock instead of pasty white boy Luke Wilson? Or Uma could be Chris Rock and Luke Wilson could be The Rock. I know, a gay superhero, what am I thinking? But the tag line writes itself - Rock Hard Action/Comedy. Or, Between TWO Rocks and a hard place. Nice.
Instead we get Uma and Luke. Luke played the same role in old school - dopey victim of his circumstances with a charismatic cartoonish two dimensional friend. In this case the friend thinks the violence is "sexy", so Luke gets no help there. Uma's character's anger is never explained, although there are some painful menstruation jokes that will only be funny to the rare thirteen year old boy who gets it.
What's going to be interesting is to see how this movie falls back on the "true love conquers all, just be true to your inner emotions" theme that all modern comedies must adhere to. And by "interesting" I mean excruciatingly painful and boring.
There is one funny scene where she throws a shark through his bedroom window. Sharks, especially out of context, are funny. Landshark? Funny. Sharks with lasers, sharks in tanks with lions? Funny, and funny. And a shark through a bedroom window will also be funny. But if you're a prereview fan you'll be anticipating my next question. When will sharks themselves jump the shark? Soon readers ... soon. And when it happens there will be this sort of sonic boom of irony. Listen for it.
prereviewer - Joe McKay 7/20/06

Lady in the Water
Paul Giamatti stars in this unexpected spooky sequel to Sideways, directed by the master creation of Hollywood press agents, M. Night Shamalyan. Giamatti has now graduated to full on drunk. He has given up writing and is now pool-boy for Melrose Place. Man does he drink. And stink. Heather Locklear can't believe she has to live in an apartment complex with this whiney piece of midlife crisis crap, so she drowns herself in the pool, um, naked. Now things get spooky. When Giamatti drinks his Mad Dog, he starts to see dead people. Actually, he sees the entire cast of Melrose place as they were in the early 1990's. We don't know if they are alive or dead. Whoa. That M. Night Shamalyan pulled it off again. What a genius of horror. He's the next Wes Craven.
prereviewer - Matt King 7/20/06

Taladega Nights
I keep seeing the billboard for this movie Taladega Nights with Will Farrell as I'm riding my bike out to Brooklyn over the Manhattan Bridge -- looks like some kind of Days of Thunder meets Smokey And The Bandit meets Armageddon deal, right? -- that should be the end of this review, but ever since I saw it, the damn title's been stuck in my head. Taladega Night? What's a Taladega Night? Taladega Night? Taladega? Tala-dega. T-a-l-a-dega. Tldg. Night? And why is he dressed up like an astronaut?
I call a friend of mine who works the box office at the Sunshine Landmark here on Houston to find out what this thing is all about. To my total surprise, she has no clue! I ask this ticket-taker guy at Film Forum -- I'm there to see this hugely over-hyped B&W Army of Shadows thing -- but he's never even heard of it! Nobody seems to know! I try to Google/Froogle/Moogle/Doogle/Loogle whatever it, but it doesn't even have its own website yet! Even you, prereview, even you've never heard of it. Have you?
So, my thinking is like, what in the name of the Holy Ghost is going on here exactly? This word "Taladega" sounds so familiar to me, but am I the only one who even knows it's a word? Even if I were, surely somebody must have heard about this new Will Farrel movie. And most of the time Will Farrel movies are pre-reviewed like 13 years before they hit the "big screens." How come NO ONE has TAKEN THE TIME to REVIEW THIS MOVIE yet? Am I the only one supposed to know about this movie? Is the billboard pointing into a special dimension that only I can see into? Or out of?
Weeks passed and I had given up hope of ever finding an answer, when a friend took me to this online 'movie bible' site on his Web TV unit and all of a sudden out of NOWHERE this ad for THE MATADOR pops up in the center of the screen and I forget all about Will Farrell for like 15 seconds because HOLY FUCKING SHIT have you or has anyone seen this movie yet??? It's got GREG KINNEAR, PIERCE BROSNAN AND HOPE DAVIS in IT! I'm watching this totally jaw-dropping streaming preview and already I can tell it's easily "The Best Performance"...."Pierce Brosnan has ever given".
But wait: Pierce Brosnan's BEST PERFORMANCE is in the FUCKING PREVIEW TO THIS MOVIE? [Note: It's already been released (in 2005) so I couldn't pre-review it here.] All I can say is, "Keep your eyes out for it," as they say in the bullfights, and then "Grab this one by the horns"..."And enjoy the ride", as they say in the preview.
After they tell you that, the clip gets totally Meta because Pierce Brosnan is actually playing some kind of crazed and belligerent Will Farrell character. Like, an off-the-set kind of Kenneth Anger-y Hollywood Babylon drunk and mean Will Farrell. Which is so wholly believable it's creepy. The only thing that stops Will Farrell (Pierce Brosnan) from killing every living creature in the entire world is that everything he tries to shoot blows up before he has the chance to pull the trigger. Wow!! I'm like, What a fucking METAPHOR for this guy's LIFE.
And then it all came back to me: That Taladega Night. The beach in the distance. Sitting back on Pierce's yacht with with Will and Penelope and their kids inside eating huckleberry breakfast... It seemed like we were all just kids really -- kids who'd had too much to drink -- and all of a sudden the world turned over on itself, and I was about to puke, and Will comes careening around the side of the hot tub with a loaded pistol in his hand and at first I think he's gonna shoot us for some reason and I'm about to say 'Will What the F?" but then I realize he's shooting the people BEHIND US because they're trying to climb up onto the boat, and I'm like 'Ahhh', but they blow up before he can shoot them anyway, and it's just like that Gettysburg movie all over again and we have to tip over the hot tub to put the fires out on deck.
I also found this recipe for an awesome cocktail they used to drink during the AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, but I forgot what it's called. I think you'll like it, too:

1 c Sugar
4 ea Cinnamon Sticks
3 Lemon Slices
2 c Pineapple Juice
2 c Orange juice
6 c Claret Wine
1/2 c Lemon Juice
1 c Dry Sherry

Boil first three ingredients with 1/2 cup of water for 5 minutes. Remove lemon slices, any seeds, and cinnamon sticks. Heat the remaining ingredients until very warm. Do not boil! [Though it just said to Boil! WTF] Combine with the syrup and serve very warm.
Where'd they get Pineapple Juice during the American Civil War anyway? Hawaii wasn't even a place yet!

Very Sincerely,
prereviewer Richard L. Burtleheimer Film Critic (Freelance - NY, US) 7/12/06

SNAKES ON A PLANE!!!
Another home run for the Saturday Night Live farm system! Not since "A Night at the Roxbury" grand slammed the box office back in 1998's has the SNL crew showed such promise at the plate. After all, who could forget John Goodman's famous frightful skit about a fearful flight with a King Cobra proclaiming the prophetic "It's Me!!!" I can't!

This time around, a thinner, starker protagonist has been found in the duty-free Samuel L. Jackson as da MAN hell-bent on saving the high-flying crew and in essence humanity from these reptilian invaders. (Remember "V" anyone?) Bobby Canavale, straight off of "Third Watch" and the New Group's "Hurly Burly" takes a good turn showing how a(s)pt he is at handling snakes. Fans of this will love other SNL studio classics like "The Ladies' Man," and "Superstar." I can't wait to see what SNL pitches next!!!
prereviewer - Stuart Green 7/11/06

Little Man
Dustin Hoffman plays a 72-ton elephant-pickle who can't hit himself in the nuts with an ice-axe. Ahrrrggghhh! My HEAD! AAAAAAHHHHHHH! My fucking ASS! If you watch this movie, YOU WILL DIE. I am currently partly dead from accidentally watching a trailer for this movie. If I tell you anything about anything that actually happens in this movie, I will lose my right index finger. If you watch this movie and survive, you are the first member of the next evolutionary step of humanity, and you will destroy us all and die alone. Sony will be (finally) banned from the earth after the 500th human (accidentally) watches this movie and dies.
prereviewer - Hawkeye Parker 7/07/06

Casino Royale aka: Blond, James Blond
I'm a fan of casino movies, and I am also fan of actual casinos. I've seen more than my fair share of both, and am not a richer man for it. But one thing I've learned is that neither ever get it right: real casinos are never packed chock full of beautiful people walking around in tuxedos and drinking martinis, and casino movies never seem to pull their cast of extras from the local Walmart. I suspect Casino Royale, the new James Bond movie, to be no different. Enter dashing James, in a white tux, sipping a watered down martini (this is what "shaken, not stirred" implies) betting big on a pair of twos while glancing in the reflection of his wristwatch at some terrorist, seated behind him. But wait, could a terrorist be so beautiful? Yadda Yadda Yadda. Look for a supper slo-mo scene featuring James flying though the air, blazing guns held sideways, while money and poker chips hang about him in suspended animation. Expect some attempt at humor featuring the word "Come" at the craps table. There must be a Russian Roulette scene, with some bad line like "Are you willing to up the ante?" And as far as the female antagonist goes, let her calling card read "Betty Bigs." This is James Bond, after all.
prereviewer - Matt King 7/07/06

Spiderman 3
With great power comes great responsibility - that was the message of the first two Spidermen movies. The superhero cannot enjoy his gifts because of his overbearing responsibility to the public. Only problem is "Batman Begins", and the new "Superman Returns" both take on and expand upon this theme so now Spiderman has to be even MORE brooding and the responsibility has to be even GREATER. It's a three way arms race of moping brooding crybaby superheros. Spiderman three's poster has him sitting in the rain, all alone, like a wuss. Two hours of Toby Muguire crying - high drama for some, but not my cup of tea. If I had super powers I would do two things.

1. I'd demand a modest but fair salary from city hall. Maybe I could be a "consultant to the chief of police" or something. Get me some health insurance.

2. I'd tell girl I love about my secret identity and let her deal with it. If I she's so great then shouldn't she be able to bear some of the burden? It's not 1955 any more.

With these things out of the way wouldn't that greatly reduce the stress? I'd go see the stress-free Spiderman movie in a second. He's supposed to be a sassy smart-mouth back talking crime fighter, not a crybaby wuss who sits alone in the rain listening to Morissey on his ipod.
prereviewer - joe McKay 7/01/06

Snakes on a Plane
First movie title to prereview itself. Genius! But there is no way this movie will live up to the hype. Although I did see a clip on YouTube where the snake handlers were stuffing a giant 400 pound snake into the overhead compartments. That's pretty scary. I'd say save this one for DVD and then ONLY watch it with the director's comments turned on. No need to hear any dialog (except, of course, for "get these motherfucking snakes off this fucking plane")
prereviewer - joe McKay 7/01/06

The Da Vinci Code
Tom Hanks plays a professor who travels to rich locales steeped in biblical history to unravel the greatest cover up of all time: that the Da Vinci code was actually a shitty book. The movie opens with Hanks lecturing to his class that unlike in the movies, in the real world, "x never marks the spot" and "x-rays of priceless paintings don't reveal enigmatic clues to religious conspiracies of epic proportions." Just as his father goes missing, he receives a strange package containing his father's notes on solving the riddle. Now, to find his father he must accept the creepy offer from the German-backed collector of antiquities, and sure enough, before he can even say "Nazi," an x-ray of a painting reveals enigmatic clues to religious conspiracies of epic proportions. Hanks soon finds himself knee-deep in flammable sewage with a beautiful blonde under the city of Venice where he utters the unforgettable line, "I don't mind rats so much, but holy cow do snakes give me the heeby jeebies."
prereviewer - Guray Alsac 5/12/06

Nacho Libre
Jack Black makes himself a dang quesadilla in this follow-up from the makers of Napoleon Dynamite. Meet Nacho Libre, scrappy and aspiring Mexican wrestler who has the superhuman ability to crack the air with a flex of his butt-cheeks. It was unclear from the preview just what Nacho Libre ringtones I can expect to be inundated with in the weeks to come, but what was clear was that Jack Black's usual high-energy supercharged performances will be a perfect match for the nuanced comedy of Napolean Dynamite. Production has already begun on the next two movies in this franchise: Ferdinand Majestic and Leopold Hotpocket.
prereviewer - Guray Alsac 5/12/06

Goal! The Dream Begins
I'm a soccer fan, so it's nice to see the sport getting some Hollywood love, but I have to say, when will we finally realize that the bicycle kick is not the end-all be-all of soccer moves? A slo-mo bicycle kick scoring the game winning goal is NOT (I repeat NOT) the equivalent of the knockout punch at the end of a Rocky movie. It's actually a pretty silly move to try in a game and there are much more beautiful (and triumphant) ways to score a goal.
prereviewer - Guray Alsac 5/12/06

Breakfast Club 2
Johnson is a rich software dude.
Claire is married to Johnson, and yes they have had sex, and she shops and neglects their kids.
Andrew is gay, is a firefighter and pole dances at night.
Bender struggles with alcohol and rage, he receives birthday cakes in the shape of women's breasts.
Ally sheedy's character has a couple tatoos, made some attempts with her art and has settled down to be a graphic designer IN AFGHANISTAN.
And the principal is going to retire, but has had some dreams and visions in an Ingmar Bergman "Wild Strawberries" kind of way. So he understands the self-created emptiness of his life only in time for a small (maybe not even worth it) bit of redemption that only serves to amplify his loneliness. There is no bull, there are no horns.
prereviewer - Hannah Naughton 9/28/05

The Man (Samuel L. Jackson and Eugene Levy)
In an unprecedented cost saving move, New Line Cinema is releasing a major motion picture consisting entirely of stock footage. Combining cutting room floor reels of Samuel L. Jackson from Shaft and of Eugene Levy from American Pie, they have created a movie with a price tag so low, they'll make a bundle even if just 2 people in all of North America see it. This movie will earn a technical Oscar for Best Editing of a Fractured Pile of Dog Poo.
prereviewer - Guray Alsac 9/13/05

Corpse Bride
In order to complete the last movie of the inevitable Tim Burton DVD box set, production was allowed on the newest creation to come out of Tim's mind, which is completely indistinguishable from every other creation to come out of Tim Burton's mind. Burton is working in a visual aesthetic so narrow that he may actually go down in history as the only artist to never actually grow artistically. As for this movie, the audience experience will be ruined by the nagging question, "Is this computer animated? Oh, wait, that looks like clay. No wait, it's CG. Wait, how the f-?"
prereviewer - Guray Alsac 9/13/05

Flightplan
Jodi Foster boards a plane with her daughter but then mid flight, oh-no, her daughter is GONE! What? How can that be? But it's true!
Then the flight attendants and fellow passengers and even the captain pretend that they never even saw her daughter! Hu? OR DID THE DAUGHTER NEVER EVEN EXIST AT ALL? O.M. fucking G.! The big question becomes, does Jodi see dead people, or is everyone on the plane fucking with her head. The movie is going to try to twist and turn you one way or another but that will only work if you (in your wisdom) haven't seen either Sixth Sense or The Others.
For what it's worth I'll say that she's sane and everyone's messing with her. Or to put it another way, everyone on the FLIGHT is in on the evil PLAN. I think they've got the girl stuffed in an overhead compartment. Hope she's still breathing because contents can shift during flight and she might get crushed alive. Although, if that were the case the movie would be called CRUSHED ALIVE.
prereviewer - Joe McKay 9/10/05

Harry Potter 4
Many a joke's been made about Harry's burgeoning sexuality, but it ain't going to be funny watching it actually play out before your eyes for two and a half hours. You think the BJ scene in "You and Me and Everyone We Know" was awkward, you have not seen nuttin' yet. British teenagers having sex is quite possibly the most uncomfortable thing known to mankind. First off, Harry is NOT gay or TRANSGENDER, nor is ANYONE ELSE. Wizardly children are not allowed to be a visible minority, let alone gay or freaky. Hogwartz's Asian Lesbian Leather club is a lonely place indeed.
No, it turns out that Harry has very particular dating rules.
1. no fat chicks.
2. she has to belong to the right faction, this isn't Romeo and Julliet, (although a double suicide might be a nice way to end the series).
3. She has to have some sort of magical past that endowes her with incredible misitical powers. She must be seem almost, but obviously not actually be, more powerful than Harry.
4. She must eventually die.

Other than that this movie will be exactly the same as the last three.
prereviewer - Joe McKay 8/28/05

DOOM
Turn left go forward turn right go forward. If anything jumps out, shoot it in the neck (if it has a neck, if not shoot it where it looks like there is a significant cluster of nerves). Repeat. Can you believe they're making a movie of Doom?
Actually if they made a real movie of Doom it'd be frickin' great. What if all you saw of the lead character was his gun? Awesome right? And it was 15 hours long but you only got about 2 minutes of plot an hour? Epic!
But the rock is in this and I think they're going to insist on giving him "face time".
Sigh.
prereviewer - Joe McKay 8/28/05

Super Cross
I didn't actually open the Quicktime trailer on this one...I'm prereviewing from what looks like an 8k gif on the Super Cross webpage. My first impression was that this is going to be a loud-ass movie. Ever been to a Moto-cross event? Loud and stinky, and that's just the fans. If the internal combustion engine is the environmental dog that Al Gore suggests, the 2 stroke dirtbike engine is the rabid Chihuahua of them all. I'd like to think that this movie features teenage boys doing their best impressions of themselves riding wheelies on their motorcycles, like air guitar. You know what I mean, hands on the phantom handle bar, with the inevitable "wiiiniiniiiniinin" sound that is supposed to approximate the whine of a popped clutch and screaming small-bore Japanese motor. I'm getting pumped up just thinking about it. In fact, when I saw the advertisement, I mistakenly read the byline as "Hear Nothing. Risk Everything." My bad. It's "Fear Nothing," duh. So onto the film. Opening scene? The camera is looking up into the dark empty space of a Super Dome, stadium lights just gracing the edges of the shot. In glorious slow-mo, a half-dozen 250cc bikes fly through the air in silence. When they touch down the silence is broken by the roar of the crowd and the noise of the bikes. The arty part of the film is over, what follows is 1:45mins of product placement, flying dirt, testosterone driven rivalry and the occasional cleavage shot. Wiiiniiniiiniininiiiniinin! Wiiiniiniiiniininiiiniinin!
prereviewer - Matt King 8/11/05

The Jim Jarmushe movie with Bill Murray
"Coffee and Cigarettes" was the worst piece of pretentious drivel ever made. And no, I'm not breaking my golden "no real reviews" rule because I never saw it. But tell me I'm wrong!? ... Didn't think so. So given that, Jim's got some work to do to bring me back and I'm not sure this movie's going to do it. Bill Murray? That Caddy Shack guy will never be a real actor. Okay, he was pretty good in Ghost Busters but what has he done lately?
I've got my finger on the pulse of the movie industry, baby. And I'm BACK. Just like Paul Newman in the Color of Money. All sexy and old and worldly and shit throwin' down wicked bone crushingly cunning Prereviews that these new hipsters can't keep up with because I'm the (what's the word for it? ... Oh yeah.) MAN! And check it! No more counter, I'm flying without a net! Fear me world!
prereviewer - Joe McKay 8/10/05

Penguin Movie
Does one penguin trudging hundreds of miles through the driven snow and ice look much like another? Looks like you get to find out sucker! Good news is that some of them are going to die horribly and dramatically.
Okay I'll admit that penguins are pretty cool and I'm just jealous. I can't swim for shit. Especially in cold water. B-fucking-rrr, cold blooded freaks.
prereviewer - Joe McKay 8/10/05

Brother's Grimm
Yeah, go with grim, really really grim. Devastatingly horribly grim.
prereviewer - Joe McKay 8/10/05

The Longest Yard Remake
I never saw the original, which was a gritty prison / football drama. The longest yard stared a young Burt Reynolds doing his best Cool Hand Luke in an attempt to ease his career away from the "Smokey and the Bandit" movies. The Longest Yard was trying to one-up North Dallas Forty in meanness - hence the prison part. Burt's character finds inner peace and becomes a model prisoner through his appreciation of the game. In the sequel (also starring Burt Reynolds) exactly the same thing will happen only we won't see Burt's ass on account of it no longer being the seventies, and Burt's ass no longer being the big ticket draw it once was. Remember that? When Burt's ass was somehow going to make up for all the male oriented porn? good times.
I just found out that Adam Sandler and Chris Rock are going to be in this too. So this movie is going to be a funny gritty prison football drama remake that is somehow faithful to the original? Dang, that might actually work, although messing with the format didn't bode well for the Steppford Wives when they tried to turn that remake into a comedy.
prereviewer - Joe McKay 3/23/05

Sherman's March a classic prereview
This is the ultimate in documentary style narcissistic navel gazing. There are even, quite literally, several long probing shots of the filmmaker's navel. The movie pretends to set out to follow the trail that this union general Sherman took at the end of the Civil war. Sherman was a bastard who killed everything in his path, (even little kitties), as he marched his troops southward. However, it turns out that much of the destruction from the march has been built over (seeing as it happened well over 140 years ago) and the trail has gone a little cold. So the filmmaker ends up in South Carolina stumbling around in a parking lot behind an Ikea having a nervous breakdown about some completely unrelated white-boy angst driven crisis. The Whole Sherman thing, it turns out, is just a metaphor! Ooooh a metaphor, I've never seen one of those before! You must be the best fucking documentary filmmaker ever! Along with the author's discovery of the metaphor, he's also the first person in the history of forever to have an unhappy childhood. Hey, why don't you hop back in the car and go confront dad? That'll make for a good ending to your documentary and you can cry on the way.
The big confrontation with dad is ultimately unrewarding leaving the possibility of a sequel.
prereviewer - Joe McKay 2/20/05

Die Hard IV (Die Harderer)
So I hear that Die Hard IV is being filmed and I'm thinking, God, do I have to go see this in the theater or should I wait for it to come out on TV? Wait, you mean DVD. No, TV. If I have the flu, or I'm feeling lazy and so inclined to channel surf, there is a good chance I'll end up finding Bruce Willis blasting, crawling, diving or hurling his body out of harm's way. He can't seem to go near a damned airport or skyscraper or what, subway, or something without a gajillion dollars in damage being done, and countless innocent one-liners destroyed. I think there may be Die Hard channels dedicated to rotating between his first 3 DH films. The best hing is they are heavily dubbed. But I'll still watch. The appeal, I think is in the "Yeah, Right" moments, where he drops 5 floors down an elevator shaft and catches on a tiny ledge with his fingertips, or when the force of an exploding airplane blast pushes his ejector seat into the stratosphere. The first Die Hard was not as bad. There were some MacGyver moments that were not so outrageous. Wait, this prereview is all screwed up. I'm sick with Die Hard flashbacks. Doesn't he always have a "person of color" sidekick in his movies, lending a helping hand? This is turning into a nightmare for me. I feel so conflicted. My prereview is this: Die Hard IV will be obscenely bad, but somehow enjoyable if only because you know Bruce knows this is his last hoorah, and every attempt will be made to make him look physically fit, if not "hard." A few questions, though: will a child - gasp - actor be involved? Will the DH mold be broken, and action travel to foriegn soil? Will the bad guys in question turn out to be...women? Holy crap, maybe G.I Jane will kick his ass. That would be cool. Oh, and I keep thinking of some joke about Died Hair IV and Bruce being bald, but it doesn't seem to work. Like Meat the Fuckers.
prereviewer - Matt King 2/12/05

Star Wars: episode whatever
Lucas has learned his lesson. He overused computers to the point that it ruined his last two films. From Jar-jar to crappy looking blurry robot armies to confusing laser battles - it's all been bad. For the last Star Wars movie Lucas has decided to take a departure and not use computers whatsoever. After several months of rehersal Star Wars : Episode Whatever was shot in one take on a sound stage in Hollywood. Actors used minimal costumes and props. Light sabers were cardboard mailing tubes, blasters were pointed fingers, and the sound effects were people going "buzzzzz" and "zap". Lucas, with bravado and daring, is proving that the important part of good movie making is the story and not the special effects. Surprisingly, the budget for this movie is still well over 200 million and, (perhaps not quite so surprisingly) it still sucks. Turns out Lucas wouldn't know a good character or story line if they took turns keying his Prius (license plate CAR2D2?).
prereviewer - Joe McKay 2/10/05

Meet the Fockers
Sorry for the double posting on this one, but I wonder if anyone has noticed that if you say "focker" out loud it kinda sounds like "fucker"? Too bad, sounds like some comedic gems were just waiting to be mined there. Oh well,

Is there is a porn movie now called "Meet the Fuckers"? Or is that just too easy? Maybe it's "Meat the Fuckers".
prereviewer - Joe McKay 2/06/05

Constantine
This is not the story about the 2nd century Emperor of Rome who violently pulled Christianity up from cult status to bona-fide government sanctioned religion with bake sales and everything. Although, it will use some wild and wooly catholic voodoo to fill in the larger holes in the plot, as any good horror movie is want to do. I bet that pisses the church off more than anything. Every time one of these Catholic horror movies comes out some action news "five on your side" reporter trundles down to the church to ask the usual "hard" questions. "Does the Church still Perform Exorcisms? Will Holly water REALLY kill demented beasts sent from Hell to inhabit the earth? Are you screwing any of the Choir boys again?"
Keanu Reeves plays this guy stuck between heaven and hell. There are lots of sucking wind vortex things with nasty human sized bats in them constant(ine)ly reaching out from hell to get him but he is able to remain on terra firma because he has magnetic suction boots and a good soul. He can't get into heaven because he's moody and depressed. Only happy people can get into heaven, it turns out. Kind of a catch twenty-two there, but if you look hard you'll see that organized religion is full of them.
prereviewer - Joe McKay 2/06/05

Sideways
These two guys go to "wine country" (already I hate it) and meet these women. The one guy is getting married and is having a "fuck for the road". Everybody is very smart and witty clever things are said between the tastefully shot lovemaking montages (very little skin or live audio on account of one of the lead actors is married to the director). They drink a lot of wine but nobody gets drunk, or if they do it's charming and nobody gets sick. Then the one woman finds out her new boyfriend is getting married and hits him with her purse. I'd have done a lot more than that, but hitting with a purse is a good first step I suppose. Yet, there's no real lesson to be learned here. We're not very sympathetic to the betrayed fiance or the new "girlfriend". We're supposed to chuckle and shake our heads at the silly little man and his philandering ways, but will we? Oh yeah - and when you leave the theatre there's a guy handing out twenties if you'll just tell everyone you meet how good this movie was. That's the only way to account for the positive press and "buzz" this movie has created. They even got to my roommate, the bastards. He spent the money on beer and refuses to give me any! See what this movie is doing to people?
prereviewer - Joe McKay 1/29/05

The Million Dollar Aviators' Baby
Hillary Swank and Leonardo DiCaprio are two scruffy WWII pilots who have each successfully bare knuckle boxed their way to the Air Force Flyweight Championship, where the the prize money (or "purse") is a million dollars and a shiny new wooden airplane. The movie plays out much like "Rumble in The Jungle" with both characters being Ali. The night before the big fight, however, their camp is shelled, and all hell breaks loose. Leo and Hillary are simultaneously blown into the same foxhole, and after a couple of minutes of close quarters punching, they make sweet love (Hillary is really a girl!). The big fight is rescheduled for a month later, but in the meantime, Hill discovers she's pregnant and doesn't know what to do. Does she tell Leo, and risk having him cancel the fight and ruin their chances at the million bucks? Or does she let her fetus get knocked about by her secret love and fly them all far, far away in the new plane?
prereviewer - Matt King 1/26/05

A love song for Bobby Long
Scarlett Johansson and an old alcoholic Vinnie Bobarino are forced to live in a house together in New Orleans. Oh, and another guy for some reason. It's sort of a "last person standing gets the house" kinda thing. Scarlett Johansson ends up winning and the guys go away. Then on a warm New Orleans night as the hot salty air blows in off the bayou she beckons me to ... Hey, what the hell are y'all still doing here. Leave me (us) alone. Yeash.
prereviewer - Joe McKay 1/26/05

Mission Impossible 3
Speaking of Scarlett Johansson, she's supposed to star in this too. Will this be Scarlett's over-exposure moment? Remember when you saw Toby McGuire one too many times and you started to hate hate hate him? He was cute too once. In MI#3 these things will happen. Tom Cruise will be forced to rescue Scarlett (the daughter of a foreign diplomat) who is dating an evil heroine dealer / international super spy who is far too old for her. Tom will smuggle her out of a fancy-dress party by pretending to be a waiter. A helicopter will crash with Scarlett Johansson's father on board. She will witness the crash and while it saddens her it will also strengthen her resolve. Tom Cruise will be both clean-shaven and not. There will be a moment when Tom and Scarlett can be seen on a security camera. We will see them on the monitor but the security guard will not, however, there will be no real tension because the soundtrack is playing "breaking into the secret headquarters" music (techno) not "uh-oh we might get caught" music (scary violins). Scarlett will dress slutty and Tom will admonish her. They will drive backwards really fast, then hand-break while whipping the wheel around realizing a perfect 180. With this move Tom will have proven a point and won and argument. They will not screw, and there will be less sexual tension then you'd expect (its what separates the MI series from the Bond movies). They will look down from a great height, unsure of the next course of action. We will never see Tom eating.
prereviewer - Joe McKay 1/26/05

Doctor Zhivago a classic prereview
Zhivago (Klaus Kinsky) is a manic germanic physicist in a wheelchair who creates paper zoetropes and delights the village children with animated dancing ponies. He is a kooky loner but the village belle is nice to him anyway. She is betrothed to a fresh-faced young soldier who gets called to the front. Dr. Zhivago goes somewhere high up with government connections and behaves with inscrutable eccentricity, running A-bomb calculations by day and spinning ever more elaborate zoetrope animations by night. The belle's beau goes MIA and she comes to the city to find him, but has no luck and ends up working as Zhivago's housekeeper. By the end of the film Dr. Zee holds the fate of the world in his hands. To detonate or no? The young beau shows up in Zhivago's study, all spit and polish, with one arm in a sling and a gun in the other hand. Also about two-thirds through there's a big long tank ride in the desert.
prereviewer - Sally McKay 01/03/05

Fat Albert
Fat Albert comes to life by jumping out through the T.V. and into your living room. Or he would if he didn't get stuck half way on account of him being so darn fat! Oh damn that's funny. And now he's REAL so his fatness is even funnier! Flabby funny fatty fat fat. One time the whole gang tries to get into this little car ... but not fatty fat fat Fat Albert! He's just too Darn fat! Dang that's funny. And how about his friend with the hat? That sure is a hat! Hatty hat hat with fatty fat fat! Trying to get into cars and shit. Gonna be a great movie.
update Kristin thinks this is going to be better than the catroon because it's real funky people and real funky hats.
prereviewer - Joe McKay 12/28/04

Hitchiker's Guide to the Gallaxy
This is really a report on a group prereview when I went to the movies over XMAS. The opening scene is of earth from space. "What a Wonderful World" is playing and the earth looks quite lovely, suddenly it explodes and then just as suddenly stops. The words "Don't Panic" flash over the still image of the earth exploding. At this point several people in the audience who know the book realize that they are going to make a Hitchhiker's Guide movie and vocalize, what can only be described as "oohs and Ahhhs". They like the idea. We get a few more seconds of trailer (it's only a 30 second tease) and then at the bottom of the screen is the Disney logo. Someone yells out "oh my god it's Disney!" Everyone laughed and groaned and all agreed that this means that it's going to suck massively.
prereviewer - Joe McKay 12/28/04

Meet the Fokkers
I didn't like "Meet the Parents" when I saw it in the theater. Yes, I saw it in the theater...laugh all you want. I thought that DiNero did a horrible job playing the conservative ex-CIA dad to Ben Stiller's usual Ben Stiller character. But then a few months ago, I saw it again on DVD and laughed my ass off. It was Owen Wilson that did it for me. In the sequel, I doubt that our crooked nosed blond will appear, because in this version the budget has been blown on Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand: aka the Fokkers. I still want to see this, mainly because I've never understood what the big deal is about Babs Streisand, and I feel that this is my chance. For a real preview, I suggest you see "The Birdcage" with Robin Williams and the guy from The Producers, the one not married to the Square Peg. I think these will be very similar movies if you switch gay jokes for Jewish jokes. I wish I could draw a diagram here, explaining what I mean, but I have to go build a wood burning stove out of two old 55 gallon drums. If you don't get this email, Joe, its i because there is too much snow on the satellite dish.
prereviewer - Matt King 12/13/04

McKnight
Thirty years have passed - MacGyver and Michael Knight (aka Knight Rider) are neighbors. Both are in their early fifties, and both have lost all support for their causes. Michael Still has kit but Bonnie and the team are gone due to budget cuts. MacGyver was never able to catch on to the home computer wave, and younger hackers soon took over the mantel of Mr. Fix anything. Michael and MacGyver hate each other. Each reminds the other of the failures they have become. Michael is forever tinkering with Kit in the front yard, letting oil drain directly into the sewer system (just to piss off "Mr. Environment" next door). Kit is not programmed to deal with change very well and the relationship between car and driver (like a loveless marriage) has soured over the years. MacGyver is divorced and lives with two teenage sons that he hates but tries really hard to love. Truly though he hates them and it's eating him up inside because he's not very good at pretending all the time. Nothing good happens. At one point some common enemy forces the two together but instead of bonding they end up hating each other more.
In the end Kit fatally runs over MacGyver but before the "accident" MacGyver cunningly put bleach into Kit's gas tank, which in time corrodes the wall of the gas tank allowing small metal flakes to enter the engine and completely destroy it. Michael kills himself that evening.

Okay yes I completely made that up. But it sounds good no? Sort of Slackers meets middle age super heroes? Oh shut up. Naysayer.
prereviewer - Joe McKay 12/11/04

Indiana Jones 4
wow. another indyjones? well, it must be the midlife crisis jones. he's older now, back at the university,now when the movie opens he's actually sleeping with a student. and what do you know, he's got a plucky research asssistant who kind of reminds him of himself as a young man. of course they don't get along. Its the fifties now, and the rooskies have replaced the nazis as enemy of choice. Their ESP experiments and sputnik innovations are bearing fruit: they have tracked down evidence of lost civilization evidence of pre-historical alien human contct that has given rise to our entire western culture. Its Angor Wat in Cambodia. French Mercenaries, French gals. The young Ho Chi Min, the young Rober Kennedy (CIA operative). the Young John Glenn, ace fighter pilot. A terrifying dash through the laotian jungle with the petrified remains of an ancient Hmong princeling, who turns out to have tentacles and suction cup feet. Indy and the grad student reconcile over a waterfall, hanging on to Simone, an unbeliveably sexy existential philosopher they picked up at the French embassy in Saigon. The whole thing just about writes itself. Oh and now there are whacky jet planes instead of prop deals.
prereviewer - Matt Freedman 11/25/04

Closer
Two rich 30 something couples end up having a complicated love square. The man from couple A who is an artist and therefore highly desirable and spectacularly fuckable makes a series of giant cibachrome prints of the head of the woman from couple B. Then he says "You women don't understand the territory because you are the territory." That's some deep fucking macho artist bull crappy right there. Grade-A shit.
I've actually seen this trick tried in real life. When I was in art school this guy unveiled his thesis show, a series of giant paintings all of the same (unsuspecting) fellow student's head. She wasn't impressed, but she herself was an artist, which skews the experiment somewhat. Try that shit on the general public and you'll have nuttin' but lovin'. Anyways, the woman from couple B is Julia Roberts. I just can't see her as anything but a high-class prostitute ever since Pretty Woman came out (except for Erin Brockavich where she was a high class prostitute fighting corporate crime). I'm sure the other actors are famous too - some may even be European.
The Woman from couple A is very cute because she has "a perfect face". Then to top it off she changes her hairstyle to suit her mood. Brunet when she's sad, blond when she's sexy and red head when she's feeling sassy and carefree! But will it be enough? The classic good looks of Julia vs Constantly Changing Hair. It's a tough call.
The man from couple B is the big loser. His lines go something like "DID YOU EVER REALLY LOVE ME?" and I think he says it to both women during the course of the movie. He looks like he sells insurance and wouldn't know a giant cibachrome print if it bit him in the ass. Sucks to be you dude.
prereviewer - Joe McKay 11/15/04

National Teasure
The Biggest Problem with National Treasure is the title. It's way too vague. I think "Help! There's a secret ancient alien teasure map written on the back of the Declaration of Independence" would be much better. Gives you more of an idea of what you're in for. Can Nicolas cage return to the action movie acting form he was in during the "con-Air " heyday of his career? Or have classy self-referential artsy roles forever tainted this one time action hero. I think that we'll all be pleasantly surprised. Nick still knows how to sleepwalk through a movie and pick up a paycheck, have no fear.
There will be a great scene where Cage has to shoot the president in the neck with a sleep dart to (somehow) save his life from the bad guys. He will say some clever line like "Sleep is for the living, Mr. Persident". Don't worry, it'll all make sense in the context of the movie.
prereviewer - Joe McKay 10/27/04

Ocean's 12
I hope Ocean's 12 is going to rock, because I loved the first one. I know what you're thinking....Brad Pit and the guy from ER, Matt, have you lost your critical edge? But the fact of the matter is I LOVE CASINO MOVIES almost as much as I love casinos. Here's the problem, though: I'm not sure this is a casino movie. In fact, when someone told me they were coming out with Ocean's 12, I though it was a joke. Obviously this will be a caper movie, I'm just hoping it is not as bad as The Italian Job, though I think that O's 12 is set in Europe. What I hope for is a collection of smartly dressed characters who have endless resources and the best of luck, who steal loads of cash from an operation that is already shady to start with. Like a good looking Robin Hood, with lots of Robins. And it needs to be funny. It can't just rely on Brad Pitt's dimples and the other guy's...whatever...charm. And the techy stuff should be just beyond belief, but not so outrageous that it is impossible or makes the impossible too easy. And of course, there has to be a twist at the end. Not a chase scene with Mini Coopers, but a real "wow I didn't see that coming" switcheroo that is better than, and entirely different from all other caper movies.
prereviewer - Matt King 10/27/04

INSIDE THE EYE OF JEANNE
It starts as any other normal day watching the NOAA website to see which direction schizophrenic Jeanne is going to turn. Crazy enough, she does a corkscrew & heads STRAIGHT FOR FLORIDA! AAAAAAAAAAAARGH! The water cooler debate is whether the Republicans are orchestrating the hurricanes so that the blacks & hispanics that live in delapidated homes lose their voter registration cards after their roofs blow off & aren't able to vote, or if maybe al Queada is plotting them to 'git' us! Regardless, Gov Jeb Bush gets more air time & figures out a way to flash negative subliminal messages about John Kerry at each press conference, sure to turn the 537 ballots in G Dubs favor. After the on-air orgy of the newscasters, storm trackers & on-location morons setting up pictures in front of palm trees leaning in the wind & talking about Cat 3's, outer bands, & the "idiots" out driving around... we are left ! to go back to work tomorrow regardless if bridges are open or power has been restored. Just so "the man" can make his end of the month bonus. Go see it now, because it might not happen for another 10 days!
prereviewer - Elizabeth Kylander 9/29/04

Wimbledon
Question: would sex with Kirsten Dunst improve your tennis game? You may think that this is the central question to Wimbledon but then again you are shallow and selfish. The far deeper and more important question is; would sex with Kirsten Dunst improve her tennis game? Now there's a quandary worthy of a movie.
This movie represents a changing of the guard of sorts - a sappy British romance without Hugh Grant. Too old, it would seem to play romantic lead next to Spiderman's girlfriend and pull it off without being creepy. Kinda sad really - like when they get a new James Bond. The new guy seems adequate enough - thin, dopey, gooey British good looks in a "help me I'm malnourished" kind of way, but will he really be able to replace Hugh's loathsome quirky smile?
prereviewer - Joe McKay 9/23/04

The Terminal
There is this dumb foreign guy stuck in an airport terminal because his dumb country is stuck in a war. The opportunity to advertise your brand starts here...Coffee house, burger bar, bookseller, clothing company...etc. The smart but mean wannabe airport manager guy takes it personally that all the people who are employed at the airport that don't like him seem to love the dumb foreign guy. But wait, the dumb foreign guy isn't so dumb... he gets the pretty girl, Zeta wassname a country valley girl, and freedom (kind of) and the power crazy airport guy is made a fool of!! laugh? I did but only at Speilberg. Oh and the Indian dude spinning the plates!!
prereviewer - Wayne Marshall 9/05/04

Hurricane Frances Prereview
Coming to a peninsula near you is Hurricane Frances. I know what you think, "But a storm is not a movie!" Ahhh, but it is! This is America, where we name our storms. So the nation is watching as Frances takes on the mighty Andrew like so many barroom brawls.

My guess is this: Everyone is going to leave the coastal regions of Florida, except for some oldey-timers who will get in slap fights with the Community Cops and wind up on the local news that nobody is around to see. Some news anchor will trek out to the most likely spot for something to collapse into the sea (that's why they call them anchors) and act like they are surprised at the huge "storm surge." A few surfers will likely be "lost" but who can blame them with the lousy surfing in Florida and all the talk of huge storm surges? The orchid population will be decimated, sending markets in Hawaii soaring. Plywood prices on the East Coast will soar like there's another war in the Middle East. People will get stuck in airports, watching the CNN channel for hours (shoulda gone to Vegas like me!). And in the end, this storm will be not as bad as Andrew, and will likely be forgotten by the media as soon as Bill Clinton's heart surgery creates better news.
prereviewer - Matt King 9/05/04

Suspect Zero
Ben Kingsley is an ultra-smart super cop trained in a top secret operation to see through the eyes of serial Killers. Unfortunately it makes him go a little cuckoo. To quote a crazy eyed Ben from the trailer, "they never taught me how to turn it off"! So disturbed is Ben that he goes on a killing spree of his own killing - get this - serial killers! The whole movie is shot in this gritty NYPD meets Silence of the Lambs kind of way which is a bit distracting because the plot is so fantastically stupid.
Ben, who over time has become his own worst enemy (a serial killer himself), can finally (ironically) for the first time in a long time see through his own eyes. Freed from his insanity he quits the serial killing spree on serial killers and enrolls in the local community collage fulfilling a lifelong dream to become a dental assistant.
William H. Macy, Ben's protege in the police who's job it has been to hunt down his former mentor is always just one step behind. Having scoured Ben's file Macy enters the same training that Ben did, only with cunning anticipation he studies to see through the eyes of dental assistants. Years pass - we see Ben studying hard and falling in love juxtaposed with scenes of Macy spending long hours in the lab with electrodes attached to his brain and images of dental tools being laser beamed directly onto his retinas.
Eventually Ben graduates and gets a job in a sleepy little New England town where he lives for years in relative anonymity with his new wife until one autumn day Macy shows up on his doorstep and [WARNING SPOILER] kills him.
prereviewer - Joe McKay 8/31/04

Point/Counterpoint: Anacondas

Pro		Con
"We got less than a week to get that orchid!" This, a rally cry from the insightful contemporary drama that is Anacondas, is a call to arms, yes; for without the antigen in the serum extracted from the rare Blood Orchid, thousands of innocent North Americans and Europeans will soon die of a rare tropical virus that spreads like some kind of virus through North America and Europe. And yet, in this multi-layered age of mass free market sell-outs, it is the globally pervasive post-millenial threat to the essential purity of the human soul that poses the most truly poignant form of destruction. "We got less than a week to get that orchid" is a heartfelt plea. The Blood Orchid, last living example of unique beauty, can only be found growing alone in the murky depths of the Amazonion jungle; a tiny, tremulous flowering, precariously hidden from the insidious avarice of human eyes. Prereviewer Matt King may be correct in his claim that this film is "full of big snakes that look stupid and aren't even scary." He fails to note, however, the heartbreaking truths of the tale, in which a plucky band of hackers, geneticists, and archaeologists' daughters face mortality in a gory, blood-soaked, romp/quest for meaning-in-the-mud, a paranoid yet personal, not-quite post apocalyptic race against time, and a human testament to the endless, bloody-knuckled scramble for pure and unmediated beauty. prereviewer - Sally McKay 8/22/04		I was in the garden a couple of weeks ago and a friend was there with her two daughters. They saw a little garter snake on rock and I went to pick it up to show it to the girls. Well, wouldn't you know it, that little bastard turned on me and bit my finger. It bled a little, but you know what? No big deal. I'm still here. And I bet if I wanted to, I could have killed it. But snakes aren't bad, so I didn't. They eat little critters, mice and bugs, I think. They're kinda like bats. Yeah, like they'd make a scary movie about giant bats. Sure, anything is scary if you make one big enough, or make enough of them, or have it kill people. Oh, go make a movie, I'm scared of bats.... When Anaconda came out back in 1997, the "giant snake movie with John Voight, Ice Cube and J LO" mold was officially and forever broken. But like many cinematic masterpieces, its reputation will now be tarnished just because the studios want to cash in on true brilliance. What's next, "Citizen Canes? I mean, now I'll have to buy the special edition Criterion Collection Anacondi box set, because you know this is going to end up as a trilogy. God. This movie's going to suck. Whoa. I just decided to watch the trailer (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0366174/trailers) for Anacondas now I find I was horribly mistaken. This is a remake of that artsy foreign movie Fitzcarraldo. The one about the crazy opera freak. I had no idea. I'm like, "Dude, don't step on Anaconda" and here I am with my big old foot in my mouth. Still, Fitzcarraldo II - even with a big snake - is not worth my ten bucks, because Ice Cube was nowhere to be seen in the trailer. Which goes to show Sally doesn't know what the hell she's talking about. When's the last time you got bit by snake Sally? Yeah, that's what I thought. Like they even have big snakes in Canada. I suppose if they did, the snake would move real slow because it is so cold. Then how would it get big? A polar bear could easily take out a slow snake. That'd be cool. prereviewer - Matt King 8/22/04

Surviving Christmas
Ben Affleck plays the happy-go-lucky, bursting-with-Christmas-spirit everyman pioneered by Chevy Chase. Apparently some people out there still haven't caught on to the fact that Affleck is pure evil, and this movie targets them. Affleck's family rolls there eyes as he forces them to sing "Oh Christmas Tree" for the fifth time. Suddenly, half-way through the third chorus, he flips and violently beats them all to death with a snow shovel screaming "you ungrateful whores!" Gary Sinise cameos as a truck driver in a Santa suit carrying bags of cash. A gun fight ensues in which Affleck's quicker reflexes allow him to walk away into the snowy night.
prereviewer - Guray Alsac

Without a Paddle
Without a Paddle is a comedy about three guys on a camping trip and I'm surprisingly optimistic about this one for some reason. I like both that one guy (from the scary movies and S.D. punk) and the other guy (from Buffy and other shit) for no real good reason. Maybe I'm upbeat because I was pleasantly amused by "Grind" one night (late and I was drunk) and this seems similar. Lots of gay jokes, but they're second generation gay jokes. There's this kind of nod to the fact that there's real sexual tension between buddies, even if it's never acted on. As if actually being gay is kinda normal and okay.
Without a paddle will be awful, but still way funnier than most of the summer comedies.
prereviewer - Joe McKay 8/18/04

The Village
Sorry to prereview a movie someone already prereviewed, but I don't have TV anymore and a passing thunderstorm has made it impossible for my satellite internet connection to open fandango or moviefone. Anyhow, I don't care, because I don't think there is a film maker alive that I detest more than M.Knight Shyamalan. His movies are so terrible, but so well funded, I think he must have sold his soul to Steven King or something. I mean, usually a great film maker has to be dead before their films are introduced as "Felini's 8 1/2" or "Kubrick' s 2001: A Space Odyssey." And yet this guy seemed to somehow get Bruce Willis (the Spruce Bruce?) to star in his first film - for at least what, 12 million?- and since then the world has been told that they need to get in line for "M.Knight Shyamalan's Next Whatever." And what the hell kind of name is that? Oh yeah, spooky sounding, all "night" and shit. After all the hype about Spruce's first movie, I rented it and it sucked so bad I had to watch the director's interview on the bonus dvd. What a pretentious bastard. He's like, "I used red to symbolize death..." and says this like he's Godard or something. So here's my prereview: A bunch of Puritains burn the friggen' village down after seeing another simple minded, sloppily written, intellectually insulting, heavy handed, symbol laden piece of crap cellulose projected from the dark woods of M.Knight Shyamalan.
prereviewer - Matt King 7/29/04

Open Water
This looks like the Blair Witch of water movies. Its a good idea, really. Instead of having the scary thing always off camera to the left or right, the scary thing is always down. The story is that a vacationing couple is left stranded in the ocean by their scuba guide (we've all had that fear, right?). I imagine that one of them gets cut, the blood attract sharks, and then all hell breaks loose. Or maybe the female is menstruating. There's a twist! Then they can have a conversation about how they didn't plan their vacation around her cycle, and not only do they not get to have vacation sex, they are now going to get eaten up by sharks! I'm wondering if the director will employ the Speilberg tactic of killing the audio when the camera goes under water (see the first 10 minutes of Jaws or Saving Private Ryan). That's pretty scary stuff. I'm sure it will be better than the Perfect Storm, which was not scary at all. And it will be way better than that Tom Hanks movie about the island. No, I think this looks good. But take your Dramamine! No tripod was used during the filming of this movie. Prepare to get nauseous.
prereviewer - Matt King 7/24/04

Thunderbirds
Wow.
This really is the stupidest idea ever. Live action Thunderbirds - with teenagers. Somebody really misunderstood what was so great about the originals. Thunderbirds are not go. Thunderbirds are stay and re-think that idea. Thunderbirds are "Sit in the corner and think about what you've done and don't come out until you're ready to say you're sorry and really really mean it." Thunderbirds are "if you do that again we're going to send your dog to a farm and not the nice farm we were going to send him to but a doggy work farm where nobody plays with him."
prereviewer - Joe McKay 7/24/04

Dodge Ball
Recent debate has been swirling about Ben Stiller's career. I contend that his wheels have safely touched down on the far side of the shark tank while others say that he is still in mid jump, sharks vainly snapping at his tires. To back up this argument they admit that while his romantic leads all suck, his silly "Zoolander" side still has some life left. Dodge Ball looks funny, as all comedies do in the commercial, but I say just wait. I think being the editor of TV commercials for comedies is like being the drunk guy at the party. Everyone's mad at you, but yet, they sill have to watch - then when they see the movie they go "oh yeah, I remember this part from the comercial, only the movie sucks so bad that in context it's not even funny. I think I'll go kill a guy."
prereviewer - Joe McKay 6/04/04

The Manchurian Candidate (2004)
At last they're remaking the Manchurian Candidate. I couldn't concentrate during the last one. "Why isn't it in colour?" I kept asking myself. "Why are all these old actors so young looking? where the fuck is the expensive car chase in the third act?" Fortunately it looks like they're going to make it all high-tech like they did with Enemy of the State. Nothing helps a psychological thriller like blue lasers and dry ice. Angela Lansbury will be played by Meryl Streep with great gusto. She'll even be doing her Angela Lansbury accent. She's such a great actor that if I think about it too much ... I cry.
prereviewer - Joe McKay 6/04/04

King Kong
The big secret of Peter Jackson's upcoming Kong remake is that he's gone "high concept." Instead of the CGI spectacular we're all dreading it's going to be a shot-for-shot remake of the 1933 original, a la Gus Van Sant's Psycho. Filmed in black and white, the stop motion animation epic will recreate Willis O'Brien's amazing effects work, down to the weird, perpetually stormy surface of Kong's fur (random tracks left by O'Brien's fingers as he repositioned the doll). The film will take even longer than Lord of the Rings to produce because stop motion is now hideously expensive, and much of the budget will go to research into original, lost techniques of filmmaking. Expect an NC-17 rating for racial insensitivity and the revival of racy pre-Code sexuality. Adding to the time warp factor will be the casting of Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange, reprising their roles from the 1976 remake. Why Kong, and why now? Jackson explains the film's timeless appeal with a quote from Dino de Laurentiis, producer of the '70s version: "Big monkey die, everybody cry."
prereviewer - Tom Moody 6/02/04

The Day After Tomorrow
Ha! This movie is going to rock! For those of you who don't know, I've gotten my skinny butt out of the city and headed to new digs in upstate New York. Just in time, too, 'cause it looks like y'all are gonna get yer asses kicked by a big tsunami or some such apocalyptic event. Well screw you! I'm building me an ark on my mountaintop! Sure, I may not have TV where I am and I may have to drive a half hour to find a movie theater - making this prereview business a bit more difficult - but when the big one hits I'll be laughing myself all the way to the feedstore. I'm stocking batteries and canned peas. I've got my own water supply. I'll grow my own rope, if I have to to. I've...oh, I got a little carried away...The Day After Tomorrow will be everything a summer movie should be: a big, loud, preposterous, overbudget, poorly acted, melodramatic, funny action/adventure/romance. I loved Independance Day for the same reason. Sure, its playing into the post 9/11 fears we have all internalized (what did Lenny Bruce say? we're all gonna what?) but I say bring it on! Catharsis is great! I'm not afraid to die, as long as I know everyone else is going down the drain with me.
prereviewer - Matt King 6/02/04

Spiderman 2
I have been amazed at the controversy swirling around Kirstan Dunst. Some guys think she's hot, but other guys just think she's weird. I mean, I know one guy who says Kirstan Dunst turns him off because she hyperextends her elbows. In the trailer for Spiderman 2, she essentially orders "Peter Parker" to kiss her. She is dominant. In a moment, the tables turn and "Peter Parker" saves her life through sheer physical strength and dexterity. He is dominant. This movie looks to be a paradigmatic, emotional thrill-ride.
prereviewer - Chris Bumcrot 6/05/04

The Chronicles of Riddik
One has to tip their hat to the truly awful. Craptacular movies so bad that they are not even worthy of camp derision. Colossal fuck ups that cost more than one Hollywood job. Alas, The Chronicles of Riddik will never quite sore to these heights. Domed to mediocrity it will only be a rocky cairn on the long lonely path of the dwindling careers of the last of a dying breed - the muscle bound idiot who can't act. In an age when spindly Toby McGuire and a wheel chair bound Captain Picard are a super heroes, where are the vigilante republican weight lifting idiots to go? Especially the ones who are doomed to play second fiddle to a former wrestler (a guy who's so cool that his first name is "The"). Van Dame to his Schwarzenegger as it were, only the stakes are so much smaller because that thin veil of muscle has been proven paper thin by the constant batterings of the "True Lies" of the 90's till even the most 13 year old of us are bored or jaded or both.
Where for art thou Rocky?
[Spiderman 2 is going to be stupid and predictable and Toby's career jumped the shark well before he mounted a triple crown winning horse, so keep your freaking pants on everyone.]
prereviewer - Joe McKay 6/04/04

Troy
Brad Pitt struggles valiantly against all odds to win the "Most Wooden Male Lead of 2004" but it's a tough battle seeing as he's competing with a big horse made of wood.
prereviewer - Ian 6/03/04

Hero
This looks unbelievable. I'm a giant fan of the one-man-standing-tall-against-unbeatable-odds action movies, and this is a one-man-standing-tall-against-an-entire-friggin-country action movie! Stunning visuals and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon fight sequences ensure that my theater experience will be a 2 hour long continuous orgasm of mind-blowing proportions.
prereviewer - Guray Alsac 6/03/04

Arthur
I'm a little confused by the preview for this one. It initially aims at factual credibility by claiming that historians believe the Arthur legends are based on actual people and that this is their story. But this is immediately followed by the usual scenes of beautiful but deadly bow and arrow wielding princesses and gory medieval battles with, like, 2 people standing strong against an army of 42 billion. (There's even a wizard!) So, uh, why did they even attempt the pretense of historical accuracy? Look, I'll gladly give you 6 bucks to see your knights dueling it out. But if you need to believe that you've told a true story because you spent an entire afternoon in the history section at Borders, understand that I'm not exactly going to go to the theater with a steno pad for jotting down facts.
prereviewer - Guray Alsac 6/03/04

White Chicks
This is that one where Marlon Wayans plays a bodyguard who must dress up as a valley girl in order to protect some... um... valley girls. So you get both gender swapping AND race swapping in one dumb-tastic movie. (They may as well have thrown in age swapping too.) I can't recall a single good movie in which an actor has had to spend 4 hours a day in the make-up chair and there not be any aliens or monsters. (Try as you may, Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence.) The thing I couldn't get over, though, is how freaky he looks as a white girl. I don't think I could watch this movie without expecting Captain Picard to walk up to Marlon Wayan's character halfway through and try to make peace with his people.
prereviewer - Guray Alsac 5/12/04

The Alamo
I've always thought that Pee Wee's Big Adventure portrayed the Alamo with stunning realism, and yet "The Alamo" the movie is set to open soon. This convinces me that big budget productions are doomed to follow the same trend that's been happening on Broadway for years: revisions and revivals rule! Wanna go hear Billy Joel songs? You'll know them all, you can sing along! How about a musical about ABBA? Yeah! I know them! None of that artsy original stuff. Wanna spend $30 over the course of three years to watch a book you've already read? No problem! How about another version of The Greatest Story Ever Told (a story that's told every year, on multiple holidays, with the same cast of characters)? Done. Now we get the Alamo. If one didn't suspect that this might be a bad movie, see the trailer. Someone actually shouts "Remember the Alamo!" while the battle is raging on. Are we idiots? We might not remember the historical details of the Alamo, but we ALL certainly remember that someone supposedly shouted "Remember the Alamo!" Apparently this was integral to the political dynamics of the situation. This was the "highlight" of the battle, I guess. In this version it happens at the very end of the movie, in the basement, near a bike.
prereviewer - Matt King 3/29/04

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
First-time director Terry Conran created this entire movie in a CGI program and then later green-screened in the actors Jude, Gwyneth, and Angelina (the latter with an unfortunate eyepatch, which may or may not be computer generated). Conran's technique is being hailed as innovative but I thought all films were made this way now. Like The Rocketeer, which the producers are hoping you've forgotten, it's set in what William Gibson once called "the Gernsback Continuum" (after pulp publisher Hugo Gernsback)--a kind of eternal 1930s future of giant "flying wing" aircraft, 80 lane highways, and enormous shoulder pads. Preview footage shows some cool robots, a phalanx of jets with folding wings, lots of Art Deco buildings, and the same shot several times of Gwyneth turning around in surprise. What this film doesn't have is Jennifer Connelly during her "buxom phase"--the one that came between her "resourceful teen" phase and later "weeping spouse" phase. This middle period also included Career Opportunities, which I haven't seen, and Dennis Hopper's The Hot Spot, which has a jawdropping nude scene.
prereviewer - Tom Moody 3/29/04

Soul Plane
You can look a long time at the Soul Plane poster and still have no clue about what's going on. It's definitely a comedy, there's a big ensemble cast and Snoop Dog is in it. The poster also features a big friendly pink jumbo jet. Tom Arnold is the only white guy. I'm hoping he's the overly nervous air traffic controller. "Dude, that guy has got to chill" says captain Snoop between pulls on a doobie. Are we really ready for airplane humor? I'm not sure that I am.
prereviewer - Joe McKay 3/27/04

You Got Served
Another tough dancing movie. Someone dug "Beat Street" out of the archives, blew off the dust and said, "y'know, we could do this again with modern music and fashion, and it would make some coin." I'm guessing our protagonist is some meekish wuss who relocates to "the streets" and after getting into a few scuffles at school and at "the club", he transforms into a dancing machine through many scenes of him working out in an empty warehouse with his mentor/possible love interest. The first love scene will occur at approximately 1:20 into the movie after some heart-wrenching tragedy like---his best friend is shot. He finally settles the score in a dance contest where he wins by injecting some old dance moves he learned back from his previous hobby/residence (suburbs). As a side competition, midway through the movie, will probably be a basketball game. He'll lose that one.
prereviewer - Collin Dwyer 3/26/04

Jersey Girl
Forget what you think you know about Ben Affleck. He gets portrayed as a gambling womanizing playboy superstar - but that's what the media wants you to see. In a way he gives in to that image, it's just too hard to keep fighting it. But Ben is really a smart and even brilliant actor and story teller. Yes, like many before him he's traded in his good looks to make his share of uninspired action movies and sappy romances, but it is not without purpose. He makes these movies to finance his smaller more "artistic" projects, quietly biding his time until he has enough to create his "vision" without having the studio machine getting in the way.
Jersey Girl is just that movie. Yes the T.V. adds make it look like insipid drivel with all the wisdom of a Pepsi commercial, but that's just because Madison avenue does not know how to deal with such a breathtaking and truly visionary experience. What Kramer vs Kramer did for divorce, what citizen Kane Did for [spoiler] sledding Jersey Girl will do for the oft misunderstood societal backlash against the super-hunky single dad trying to get back into the dating scene. Do not miss this movie, for it will change the lexicon of the American film experience as we know it. This is $10.25 that will change your life and make you a better person.
prereviewer - Joe McKay 3/26/04

Thinner
Thinner is the best workout tape EVER! It promises that you can get thinner just by pissing off a Gypsy, and it WORKS! Believe me, my friend tried it, lost 40 pounds in a month, and died!
prereviewer -Someone 3/26/04

IT
IT is a shocking documentary about serial killer John Wayne Gacy, a clown by profession who kidnapped and killed over 20 small children. I think it's time Hollywood told a story about a killer that actually existed! However, I don't see why it was nessecary to give John Wayne Gacy deformed, yellowed fangs.
prereviewer -Someone 3/26/04

Phone Booth
The plot's very interesting, featuring a sniper hired by Verizon to kill anyone using Bell telephone booths, thus giving them more business to their 50-cent payphones. Goddammit, I hate those 50-cent phones. The other day, I wanted to buy a candy bar, and had to make a phone call. If the phone had cost a quarter, I would have been able to do both, but when there was a 50-cent one I was like FUCK YOU and stole the candy bar and raped the telephone in the face. Yes, telephones have faces. I then took my $0.75 and gave it to a homeless man for a ticket to go see Phone Booth. Unfortunately, the ticket later turned out to be a bag of chips.
prereviewer -Someone 3/25/04

The next Girl Power movie
Who'd 'a thunk? The bland little girl who insists on playing a sport which only boys play winds up totally kicking ass -- and the more ass she kicks, the cuter she looks. By the end of the movie, after many glib scenes depicting struggle and injury (and not a few underwear revealing spills), well mixed with a burgeioning love-affair with a) her coach or b) her male antagonist, she looks just about as hot as a tom boy can get and she's winning some sort of medal or something. Oh, and I forgot to mention that she saved the vain bleach blond girl's life. OH, and also? Also we know the love affair is happening when the two of them have a good laugh together, probably when she falls on her really tiny ass and pulls him down with her -- that's always so cute -- er, and EMPOWERING!
prereviewer - Catherine Weaver 3/25/04

Scooby Doo II
I didn't know anyone even saw the first one, so how the hell did they get the greenlight for the second? I'm guessing the 1st one ended with Scooby & Scrappy locked in a cave with some monsters & that's where they are starting this one. After Shaggy & Velma (or Thelma?) appear on screen thru their drug-induced haze, they realize the pooches are missing. After a number of mishaps, including Shaggy hitting his head on something, running into a monster while trying to turn around only to run in place before making any forward motion, while the monster is walking toward him in slow motion - they find Scooby & Scrappy, give them their nyla-bones (which have replaced Scooby snacks) & head for home in the L.A. 'burbs.
prereviewer - Elizabeth Kylander 3/23/04

SEAN OF THE DEAD
Like Spaced but with loads of killings!
prereviewer - James Love 3/23/04

Neil Young Movie
The greatest thing about Neil Young is the worst thing about Neil Young, and it is usually described in the press as "grittiness." Here's a guy who is pretty homely, with a weird girly voice, who has made a living singing about the common man in America. Or below common man. Sub-common, greasy denim, junkie damp basement, farmer tan, Pork Cracklin' common. And now he's made a movie that is all about fighting the power. It might have something to do with Columbine, but I may be confused. It might have to do with Gulf War II, or someone who polluted something, the bastards. Whatever it is, man, this is going to be one gritty movie.

p.s. This film will be best viewed while squatting on one's "haunches" while drawing circles in the dirt floor with a bottle rocket, high on grandad's Oxycontin.
prereviewer - Matt King 3/15/04

The Passion of Christ
Many commentators have described Mel's 'Passion' as violent, bloody and gory, and have then gone on to wonder how this graphic torture reconciles with a Christian concept of compassion? Well, perhaps it might make more sense if you understood Catholic theology's densly woven array of contradictions. In order to begin to grasp these contradictions, as a starting point I could recommend what is one of the most surprising movies I have ever seen: 'Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist' (1997) : which starts out as a sado-masochistic documentary about a guy who hammers nails through his dick ("Ewww! Grosss!") and gradually transforms into a touching, poignant, deeply moving saga about the dignity and power of the human spirit in the face of the death. Within this documentary, the poetic mini set-piece about his childhood, 'Because', suggests that the concept of the 'Imitation of Christ' could taken literally: like Jesus, Flanagan transmutates suffering as a means to redemption, a concept perhaps somewhat alien to our modern consumer society. (Note: I am not personally in any rush to see Mel's 'Passion', though I will probably watch it on TV at Easter with my parents a couple of years from now. My favourite Jesus movie remains 'Last Temptation'. For that pure Catholic guilt experience, Bresson's 'Diary of a Country Priest' has just been released on DVD.)
prereviewer - Von Bark 3/15/04

Bruce Willis Movie
Bruce Willis is revising his most famous role as the character that defined his career. "Hooray", you're saying, "they're remaking Die Hard for the fourth time, and calling it Die Hardest and it's gonna suck but some rainy Sunday afternoon I'll end up watching the last third of it on T.V. waiting (hoping) for the baseball game to start, and be mildly amused for a while". And while to a point that's true, that's not the point we're looking for - he's also revising the roll of Jimmy 'The Tulip' Tudeski in the sequel to the "Whole Nine Yards" called "The Whole Ten Yards". Worst title since "Analyze That", but that's the least of your worries because now you're saying "what? I don't remember that movie at all!" And you call yourself a Matthew Perry fan! For Shame!
I had a lot of time to think about this prereview during Starsky and Hutch - God knows there wasn't anything going on on the screen to amuse me.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 03/09/04

The Prince and Me
Julia Stiles has to stop playing teenage virgins. She's like, what, 34 now? In this movie she's blue balling a real life prince! Wow, I wonder if they mean lady Di's kid? Probably not, I bet he gets plenty of action, plus he must have a copy write on like, the whole country. Probably they mean an American prince. Or maybe he's a prince from an underwater kingdom?! That would be sweet. (not Sponge Bob's "Bikini Bottom", but some other place with people in it.)
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 03/09/04

Castaway 2
The dude with the long beard and the tan who lives on the island in the first movie comes and kidnaps Tom Hanks and takes him back to that island place but this time Hanks has smuggled a lighter or some other thing like that with him (he has been sleeping with one tucked in his sock ever since he saw the first movie). Anyhow, when they get to the island they find that some holiday resort is being built there so Hanks and the dude with the beard team up to kick the developers out, after petitions and some kind of raffle it comes down to Hanks having to bare-knuckle fight the evil foreman of the building site, played by Robert Carlyle, for the rights to the island. At first Hanks is getting his ass kicked until the beardy dude tells him to use the force or some other bull and then he gets up and tears Carlyle in half, literally.

This movie was nothing like I expected, I figured it would be more like Scooby Doo or something because I saw Scooby Doo around the same time as the first movie and I get the two confused. But it is nothing like that, there is no animated dog and that guy who used to host Sk8 TV isn't in it, which is good.
prereviewer - Owen Roberts, 03/09/04

Motherless Brooklyn
A "loose adaptation" of the Jonathan Lethem novel, written and directed by Ed Norton and set in the '50s rather than the present day. (No, not the Ed Norton that works in the sewers and is Ralph Kramden's best friend, the skinny one in Fight Club.) Norton also stars, as Lionel "Freakshow" Essrog, a detective with Tourette's who tries to find his boss's killer. You think I'm kidding about Norton adapting this, but, no, I got all this info off of his personal website. Fans of the novel--stop crying, right now. Blow your nose and look on the bright side. What were some of the cooler things in the book? (1) The comedy of having a big pottymouth lug from Brooklyn going into a post-counterculture Upper East Side Zendo that may or may not be a criminal front, sitting crosslegged on a mat with the Roshi's exquisite disciples, and trying not to swear. (2) The incongruity of a '90s story with many characters and scenes apparently stuck in a weird '40s timewarp. (3) The quasi-generational tension between two brothers, one a Sopranos-style crook and the other a hippie Zen master crook (spoiler, sorry). (4) Smart, funny references to recent pop culture (Mad Magazine's Don Martin, Prince) mediated through the main character's ongoing, inner-monologuic obsession with his own very of-the-moment disease. Well, by having it set in the '50s, all that stuff goes away, and/or makes no sense! Isn't that great? Don't you love it that rich Hollywood actors have the ability to destroy interesting books with their vanity projects? I sure do.
prereviewer - Tom Moody, 03/09/04

Failsafe a classic prereview
The room is full of consoles and blinking lights; monitors, and switches as big as dill pickles. The men are relaxed in shirtsleeves, legs crossed to reveal small bands of shin and argyle socks. It's nearing the end of a shift on yet another normal day. One light in the foreground is blinking rapidly, the camera picks it out, but the men do not.... Later in the film, a thin, somewhat haggard, middle-aged man takes off his glasses and wipes his forehead on his sleeve. He stares numbly at the small white dots moving across the screen in front of him. There is a muffled crashing sound and the room shakes a bit. The man, eyes never leaving the screen, robotically reaches for the telephone, and slowly lifts the receive to his ear. The telephone has a cable connecting the receiver to the base-set where the dial pad is located. You can hear the far away whine of sirens.
prereviewer -Sally McKay, 03/09/04

Neon Genesis Evangelion
(the Live-Action Feature, based on the Japanese animated series of the same name) This movie is being produced by GAINAX, the same nice people who produced the series. I've got just one thing to say, so that means I'll say it in multiple, irrelevant ways. First of all, Weta-Workshop (those guys that did Lord of the Rings) are on top of the Special Effects in this movie. Normally that would be a cause for me to rejoice.
However.
I'm fairly certain that, since this movie is going to be released as mainstream into American theaters, it will be "dumbed-down." This is a very dangerous action to take with such a volatile and wonderfully perfect series. You see, a two-hour movie can never convey the extreme emotional, psychological, and religious meaning that the animated series captured. It's impossible. So, I predict they're just going to focus on the giant robot-fighting. Pity.
I mean, why wouldn't they focus on the giant robot-fighting? If they focused on something else (like the IMPORTANT stuff), they'd alienate most Americans---because most Americans can't even begin to comprehend it. But, if they focused on the giant robot-fighting, they'd make more money---and at the same time, they'd alienate the rock-solid fan-base who had come to love Evangelion with all their heart and soul. So, they're pretty much screwed either way. Pity.
Oh, well. At least I'll get to see my Beloved Rei Ayanami on the big screen... and maybe I'll get to hear the Cruel Angel's Thesis in the movie theater... Oh! It sends shivers up my spine just thinking about it! Grr... they'd better not screw it up... dumb Americans.
prereviewer - Matt Swanner, Mississippi, USA 03/09/04
P.S. Yes. I am white and American. And I think we're all dumb. o.o;

The Station Agent
The formula is as old as time: otherwise ordinary movie + midget = instantaneous artistic credibility and funky offbeat flair. Judging from the preview, there are lots of soul searching walks along railroad tracks, which are always a good place to just let your mind wander and ignore your surroundings. Hearts will be broken and mended again, life long bonds will be made, and hot dogs will be consumed. Who knew rural New Jersey could be so emotionally complex?
prereviewer - Guray Alsac 03/07/04

Dark Window
A 40-year-old (!) Johnny Depo-Provera stars as Mort Walker (the creator of the beloved comic strip "Beetle Bailey") in an alleged thriller that looks like a cut-rate Stephen King plotline. Some guy comes to his door accusing him of ripping off one of his stories for his comic strip, and it turns out this guy is his deceased writing partner from "Hi and Lois", Dik Browne, because he has supernatural powers. It's a well-known fact that dead people who come back to life have superpowers and a vendetta to kill. They also have the ability to cause atmospheric changes that cause it to storm, as well as turn day into night, so most of this film takes place during a dark and stormy night. The movie primarily consists of Mort trying to hold his own and survive against this night-bringing and storm-causing zombie-ex-writing-partner in his little cottage in the woods. Lots of telekinetic glassbreaking, although Johnny Depo-Provera's dashing tortoise-shell spectacles are miraculously spared.
prereviewer - Secret Window 03/07/04

Scooby Doo 2
It was nothing special, except for the (SPOILER WARNING) final battle between Scooby Doo and obscure character Scooby Dum (if you watched the old cartoons you'll know who he is). It parodies all anime (the shouting of attack names is just too funny) and the conclusion of the battle is the funniest in cinematic history. Let's just say a very special guest is involved (hint: rhymes with harmaduke).
prereviewer - John Wallace 03/07/04

Shaolin Soccer
Another "kung fu fighting friends band together to form a soccer team, thereby applying their other worldly martial arts skills to the "modern" sport of soccer in order to beat another (evil) team that has done the same", movie. Or "Crouching Soccer Tiger vs. Hidden Soccer Dragon"
This movie was made years ago, but is just getting a wide release in North America now. Hard to imagine why because it looks like a crowd pleaser. Deadpan goofyness you can take your grandma to see, although it may confuse the hell out of her, but what doesn't these days? You really should call her.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 02/29/04

Starsky and Hutch
Bravo! Bravo!
A tour de force to be reckoned with in the new millennium. Finally some has done Dumb and Dumber smarter.
prereviewer - Andy Peel, 02/29/04

The Village
Actors you like engage in increasing amounts of perplexed anxious staring at something offcamera, while more and more hints are dropped at the jaw-dropping mindfuck that will be the film's ending: which, when it happens, is something you didn't see coming, but you don't really care all that much, because the plot has kind of got lost in the movie's utter, unabashed love for itself and its own genius; a love that manifests itself in some really nice sight gimmicks and a scene that all takes place in one shot, but also alienates anyone who is not M. Night Shyamalan. I have not seen any trailers or publicity or information for this movie, all I know is Shyamalan wrote and directed it, and henceforth the above information is entirely irrefutably true and correct.
prereviewer - Tom Goulter, 02/29/04

Wild Things 2
Better than you thought it would be, but that's because, being a sane human being old enough to see Wild Things without a parent or guardian, you thought this would be undebatably The Worst Movie Ever Made. This is not, in fact, The Worst Movie Ever Made (that honor still belongs to Ken Russell's Crimes Of Passion), but the fact that it's not even captivatingly terrible, just sadly misguided and soulless, just makes you pine even more longingly to get back the 90 minutes you spent on it.
prereviewer - Tom Goulter, 02/29/04

Walking Tall
Now here's a fresh idea, take a glistening steamy turd of a movie from the 70's and squeeze out a bigger, steamier turd with Rock in it. The only thing the original movie had going for it was the over the top, in-bred, redneck, southern peach that is JOE DON BAKER. JOE DON BAKER at least had the decency to be a good old dumb Southern fucking honkey that we upstanding northern dumb fucking honkey's could make fun of.
prereviewer - Ronnie Werner, 02/29/04

Scooby Doo 2
I saw Star Wars Episode 1 The Phantom Menace at midnight opening day after waiting in line for 7 hours. I'm in line right now for Scooby Doo 2. I hope it's as good as Scooby Doo 1.
prereviewer - Ronnie Werner, 02/29/04

Gremlins 3
ok im sure everyone remembers gremlins 2 and the fiasco that ensued so this movie has to be absolutely insane. I'm talking about these motherfuckers threatening to take over the world by slashing up our shins and constantly mating. then they build spaceships after they've wreaked havoc upon the earth to go mess with some aliens. then for 20 minutes the gremlins in the spaceship are rocking out to some jay-z and actually dancing and just livin it up! they get a little too crazy and jim "the smart one" tries to calm them down to no avail. they are gremlins for god's sake jim can't do anything but sit by the side and let them destroy each other. so for the rest of the movie it's jim, ray, patty, sanchez, and abe vigoda in a slow motion, crazy, free for all death match. unfortunately the ship runs into the sun in a twist that sanchez saw only seconds before his dramatic closeup....
prereviewer - mike jones, 02/27/04

Starsky and Hutch
Let me start with . . . I saw the the Starsky and Hutch ads and I have to say the retro TV shit is PLAYED OUT MAN. I'm thinking the nail in that coffin is gonna be "Good Times The Movie" or "The Return of Kotter Armageddon". Both films, oddly enough will star Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore both winners of the A&E least chemistry ever award.
prereviewer - Ronnie Werner, 02/27/04

The Passion of Christ
The Passion of Christ meets the EGO of Gibson, only in theaters, rented by churches. The Bible is the greatest work of fiction ever written so what the hell lets do it up Lord of the Fucking Rings Style. I can't wait for the Mary Magdalane figure with biblical whore action. The deluxe Jesus figure comes with a crucifix and special "bleed" technology. When you hoist him on the cross and tap the tiny nails into his hands he bleeds. Also available is the kiddie crown of thorns and the "Blessed" goblet that turns water into Kool-Aid¨ Brand drink. Rumor has it that Gibson is working on the sequel to Mad Max and "The Passion" titled "Mad Max - Revelations!". In it Gibson again teams up with Tina Turner and the mute monkey/gerbil boy to fight Satan, Darth Vader and Steven Segal. Filming is set to begin in October. Gibson is having no trouble getting funding because god told him that the Rapture will coincide with the film's premier. Talk about a win win.
prereviewer - Ronnie Werner, 02/27/04

The Passion of the Christ
ah jeez...so "The Passion" comes out...today? this blasphemous rant will send us all straight to hell. we all know the story, only now it's brought to you in original aramaic by Mr. Melvin Gibson and his christian marketing fanatics. 'nuff said. if it's not bad enough that he made william wallace walk the line of cheese, now he has to send jesus h. christ down it too. well...enjoy it with the bread and wine, or should i say (god help me!), the body and the blood.
prereviewer - the reverend christine k., 02/27/04

The Passion of the Christ
I should preface this by saying that not only am I not a Christian, I'm quite ignorant of the story of the bible. This is something I hope to remedy some day by taking a "Bible as Literature" class at the New School or by renting "The Greatest Story Ever Told". One thing I won't be doing is seeing Mel Gibson's new war movie about Jesus*. The tug of curiosity is pretty strong with this one, but I will resist and wait for the DVD double disc set with out takes and bloopers. I don't know if I should speculate as to the contents of this film because I think it has been already prereviewed to death by the media, clergy and many, many historical experts. One thing I can tell you from the various Access Hollywood segments I've seen, and something that has so far been overlooked by the press: Mel Gibson looks pretty dumb in a beret. It seems as though he wore one while filming every goddamned (whoops!) scene of this movie, and also in half of the interviews he's conducted elsewhere. I bet the crazy bastard actually got his own director's chair and one of those megaphones, as if the HAND OF GOD wasn't actually the one directing! Oh Mel! Try as you may, you will always be Mad Max to me.
*No actual martyrs were made while making this film.
prereviewer - Matt King, 02/27/04

Alien vs. Predator
I saw this poster in the theater and I was like, huh? In a bizarre twist of movies imitating video-games imitating movies imitating life imitating art (or something), it turns out this movie does exist. This should not be. It's like a geek's wet dream, only geekier and much, much wetter. How do we take the bad guys from an 80's movie about hunting bodybuilders in a present-day South American jungle and get them to fight the bad guys from an 80's movie about H.R. Giger and a pissed off space chick a few hundred years in the future? This movie has no plot, for one thing. If the concept of "plot" as a physical entity and this film were to intersect in space-time, they would almost certainly annihilate each other in a fantastic explosion. I think I will probably see this movie. Especially if it also contains an epic battle of the Enterprise vs. a star destroyer and/or Conan the Barbarian vs. James Bond. I expect you could count on at least one of those and not be disappointed. I would also like to see the ability to unlock the Terminator as a playable character. Wait - was this a video-game or a movie? I get confused.
prereviewer - Peter Cole, 02/25/04

Shrek 2
Left for dead by a secret agency that no longer needs him, Codename: Shrek must fight his way home to his love Fiona, losing a piece of his soul every time he must kill those who wish to destroy him. Will he arrive with his soul intact? Will Fiona accept the empty killing machine of an ogre that arrives at her door? And who, exactly, is the one-legged assassin sent to follow him, with the high-pitched tittery laugh? You want thrills--you want excitement--you want twists and turns that make your head spin? See Shrek 2: Assassination Waltz!
prereviewer - Bruce Kitun, 02/25/04

Star Wars - Episode 3, a time to kill, a time to jedi.
Big Ani decides to become asthmatic, kills Dooku and falls into molten jelly, Obi-wan kills the robots but realises after it's too late that he should have been killing clones,Yoda has a hip replacement operation, Emperor palpatine, acts like mister Burns, and says 'excellent' a lot, and padme has triplets she calls Luke, Leia and Han. This movie has everything. a large spaceship and a planet in it's first scene, Lightsaber duels galore, and a tragic death for Jar-Jar Binks, who dies while building the Millenium Falcons hyperdrive unit. The acting is as wooden as ever and the effects are outstanding. If you only see one movie this year, make sure it's a movie with a Star Wars trailer before it.
prereviewer - John Ryan, 02/25/04

Pardon mon Affair
Fans of this site already know how I feel about American made movies that are trying to look European, so when I saw a preview for "Pardon mon Affair" (that may not be the title now that I think about it) on the plane the other day I dismissed it for possible prereview material. You can only shoot so many fish in the same barrel. Hmmm. Well there's a metaphor in there somewhere and you get the point. Turns out they were showing the preview because it was the movie that they were about to play on the plane. Here are the two things I saw when I looked up from my book.
1. She was sitting at an outdoor cafe laughing with her friends but also flirtatiously catching the eye of a well dressed middle aged French guy.
2. She was buying a hat.
I think that was pretty much the whole movie, although they probably went to the beach in his luxury sedan, had a picnic and then rolled around in rose petals making sweet sweet amore.
(Those pesky fish were asking for it anyways).
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 02/25/04
Update - I'm back on a plane and saw the trailer again - it's called "Le Divorce" and that guy from law and order is in it!

Club Dread
Dred Scott is returned across the Missouri border to his slavemaster where he opens a nightclub and hijinx ensue. Eugene Levy returns in a historical version of his classic role in Club Paradise. Dred teaches Eugene how to windsurf on the Mississippi River and then Eugene discovers Marijuana in this zany period comedy.
prereviewer - Justin Hollander, 02/25/04

Hidalgo
Saw a preview for Hidalgo today. This movie is going to bite camel dung. Viggo Aragorn is a REALLY FAST horsey RIDER who is a NATIVE AMERICAN or something so he has a MYSTICAL CONNECTION with animals and stuff and he goes to Arabia with Hidalgo, his horsey best buddy to race against a bunch of Arabs who are BOUND BY HONOR except when they are DOUBLE CROSSING and he OUTRIDES a massive computer generated sand storm, and he kicks some Arab ass and the chaste Arabian princess loves him but of course nothing can come of it, but he wins the race anyway and goes home a hero but discovers that roles are DRYING UP as dry as the DESSERT SANDS.
prereviewer - call me Ishmael, 02/25/04

The Dreamers
Bernardo Bertolucci has a new one out, "The Dreamers" which sports the art porn rating NC-17. From the River Phoenix-ish boy on the cover of Time Out this week to the press ad photos of three (always three for NC-17) nubile androgynous sex pots draped all over each other, I think this is going to be one of those "old directors getting off on making young actors kiss" kinda movies. I'm talking about pouty swollen (from lovemaking) lips, heads thrown back in ecstasy (from lovemaking), glazed-eyed drug induced hair-tangling bed sheet-staining marathon lovemaking sessions. We all get to peer into the scene, turned on but also longing for the days when we had enough time and energy to screw for hours and hours and hours. I'm wondering whether there will be any moralizing in this one (something bad usually happens on film when the Passions rear their ugly heads), or if the happy three simply get to fornicate for fun while they can.
I'm rooting for the latter.
prereviewer - Matt King, 02/25/04

Fog of War
Robert McNamara, a prior generation's personification of the soulless, Orwellian-American killing machine, lets down his hair (such as it is) and channels a nation's regrets. Too little, too late, say some. A timely warning, say others. I guess Rumsfeld is supposed to be McNamara's heir to the throne of darkness. If Rummy decided to do a docu-confession 35 years after his wars, he'd be, like, a hundred and seven. My kids can PreReview it.
prereviewer - Chris Bumcrot, 02/09/04

Welcome to Mooseport
I thought we all knew that Ray Romano's head should never be larger than life size. Even watching the TV too close can be dangerous. Unless he spends the whole movie way back on the horizon this movie could cause great harm to people in multiplexes everywhere. If you really must watch this movie bring a pair of binoculars and watch the movie looking backwards through them (warning: a mistake here could be fatal).
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 02/05/04

Starsky and Hutch
Ben Stiller and that blond guy with the broken nose (Owen Wilson?). Both can be funny as hell when they're no acting alongside Jackie Chan or one of the "Friends." Looks like a winner to me. See, I AM pro-Hollywood. I DO like movies. Oh, and as far as what this is going to be about? Don't know. My only memory of the "real" Starksy and Hutch was that when my Grandmother's house burned down when I was a kid, her neighbors (whose house I'd never been in before) took my brother and me and in and set us in front of the TV to watch, you guessed it, Starsky and Hutch. Yeah, like kids would rather watch TV than see a bunch of firetrucks and the whole family goin' apeshit....
prereviewer - Matt King, 02/05/04

Catch That Kid
I haven't seen the preview, only the blurb-and-picture on moviefone.com, and I read a review or two. The merciless Village Voice ripped the director a new one, accusing the former Indie dude of selling out to Hollywood. The premise is morally shaky: a girl's mountainclimber Dad is sick so she and some friends rapel up and down the walls of a bank to steal money to save him. Also, the girl (from Panic Room) is too young to be wearing that much eyeliner and my mother would object. I really do like the title, though. Catch That Kid. That is just screamin' cute. I felt it was time I tackled a "lame prereview" so here it is.
prereviewer - Tom Moody 02/05/04

You Got Served
Not to be confused with "You've Got Mail," this looks like a breakdance movie. Actually it looks like a boxing movie, except they're dancing in the ring instead of fighting. Or maybe they fight, but they also dance. I think the proper term now a days is "Step." Stepping looks like breakdancing, but involves squads or teams or something. Lots of rivalry in the Step Community. There was a very popular cheerleading movie a year or two ago, and I hear they are making a sequel. I'm not sure what the connection is, but I think there is one. And wasn't there a dancing band movie, or was that also a cheerleading movie? Anyhow, I don't have high hopes for this one. The problem is plot. There simply shouldn't be one, but they will force some thinly veiled Romeo and Juliet crap on us, when we just want them to dance (and fight).

One more thing: I've been thinking about the possible history of the phase "You Got Served." Do you think it comes from the insult, "He served you (your head, ego, pride, etc.) on a platter" or could it come from "serving" someone a summons, as in taking them to court? Or is there a secret volleyball connection?
prereviewer - Matt King, 01/27/04

Resident Evil 2
My rule about turning video games into movies is the same as remaking old classic films. The crappier the original the better the remake. Resident Evil 2 the movie is going to be good because the camera won't get stuck so you can't see what's attacking the lead character, there isn't a 10 second delay every time someone walks through a door, and the hero isn't going to be shooting what appears to be exactly the same zombie over and over and over. At least that's the promise. Oh, and they'll be able to just step over obstacles that are slightly above knee high instead of having to find some other convoluted way around. That's what I think I'm looking forward to the most, the "stepping over stuff" parts.
RE1 had some nice bits. A guy gets sliced up by a lazer but we don't realize it until he litterally "falls apart", and the doggies were done well. I'm up for more of that.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 01/25/04

Touching the Void
I like movies with lots of snow in them. I think it has something to do with growing up in New England and waiting for school to be canceled (snow=good). I saw that IMAX film "Everest," in some Natural History Museum somewhere, I went to the theater to see that crap movie (I forget the name) about mountain climbing that featured the guy leaping 50 feet across a canyon, wildly swinging two ice picks and slamming them into a sheer wall like Spiderman. I went to the theater to see "The Claim" solely for the snow, and I even made an art piece (video, no less) that featured the first 15 minutes of Sylvester Stallone in "Cliffhanger." Given the consistency I've noticed and love in snowy films - "Its a Wonderful Life" excluded - I expect to expect to hear lines like "Watch out for that crevasse!" "No, I think we should keep moving." "You're (gasp) Not (gasp) Gonna (gasp) Die!" and "Tell her (them) I love her (them)." This is a documentary, I think, so I doubt there will be guns or bad guys (a further subcategory of snow movies: snow movies w/guns) but it will still be worth seeing. I only wish they waited until summer to release it, when the AC is turned up full blast and I don't have to go to school.
prereviewer - Matt King, 01/25/04

Hellboy
I play on a volleyball team here in New York, (some PreReview contributors are fellow teammates). After a game, it has become fashion to lie to team members who couldn't attend about the outcome. I don't know who's idea this was originally (I've got a sinking feeling that I'm not completely blameless, but well, it was really fun for a while). We recently won the finals, something we've never done in my tenure, and our delighted emails to teammates led to replies like this. "nice try kids - tell it to the judge." Obviously we had cried wolf way way too often. This was summed up in a great response from Chris. "We're in a post-ironic culture now, so you don't have to worry about fake outs." I'm taking this advice to heart, (partly because I was there and know that we won the finals, really, and that Chris is speaking from the heart ..... really.)
So for 2004 I'm trying to be a little more upbeat about my prereviews. I do like movies after all, something you might not glean from reading my posts. here we go.
Hellboy looks pretty sweet.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 01/14/04

Chasing Liberty
You brought her, you chase her.
prereviewer - Sally McKay, 01/14/04

Who Wants To Marry that dude from 90210
The only thing worse than reality tv are movies about reality tv. I think there are two of them coming out right now, both with the same plot. The other one has that guy from "That '70's Show" in it, but I'm talking about the one with that guy from Bev. Hills 90210. Brandon, I think. The one who blew his wad on race cars after the show closed and got in some horrible accident and almost died. Who the hell would want to marry him? I mean, Paul Newman is into race cars, but he's given millions to charity. Hell, I'd marry him and he's old. But Jason Preistly? This movie might have drawn a crowd 10 years ago, but pal-ease, this won't even help to satisfy the curious who used to watch him weekly. Anyhow, I'm not 100% (my info is from print ads only) but I think this movie is about a contest of some sort, with the winner getting to wed Shannon Doherty's brother. Not even worth renting.
prereviewer - Matt King, 01/08/04

House of Sand and Fog
Gosh Jennifer Connelly is purdy! Even when she's playing a sad, fucked-by-society, alcoholic loser, as she does in House of Sand and Fog, and she's wearing a frumpy oversized pocket tee and unfashionable jeans (yeah, you heard me, "unfashionable"), she's still prettier than Scarlet Johannsen in a Vermeer picture. Charlize Theron, on the other hand, is not screwing around in that other super-pretty-Hollywood-actress-gettin-all-serious-on-your-ass movie where she plays a serial killer lesbian ... she's almost not pretty there for a while. House of Sand and Fog has Ben Kingsley. He won the Oscar for Gandhi and then he disappeared for decades, until he figured out that he was supposed to play assholes (e.g., Sexy Beast), not saints.
prereviewer - Chris Bumcrot, 01/08/04

Cast Away
This is more in the nature of an anecdote. OK with me if you don't want to post it.
editor's note - Yeah, right.

Well, here I go again, stretching the limits of the PreVie genre. But this was hands down my most peculiar viewing experience of 2004 so far. I'll confess up front: I actually watched some of it. But not all, so I figure I can slip it under the wire. It's well under weigh when I start watching. After the initial catastrophe, the shipwreck or plane crash or whatever, but soon enough to see Tom Hanks get freaked out by his new island environment, and cut himself a lot. As time passes his hair grows (makeup by Monty Python), he paints a face on a (beached) volleyball which then becomes his constant companion. He finally gets fire. He builds a raft. All the usual shit. We see way too much of his sweating bleeding body. He's got an old pocket-watch that's miraculously still dry enough to have an unsmeared picture of Helen Hunt set into the lid. I flick around during a commercial and find _another_ Tom Hanks movie. I think, "What's with this? What'd he do, _die_ or something?" In this one he's clean-shaven, wearing tight jeans, and looking kind of spaced out, if not downright Gumpish . I flick back and forth between the two of them. In the first one he's spearing crabs, and eating them raw and gagging. In the second one he's at a buffet table with a platter of crab legs. He picks one up and looks at it, and then tosses it away. In the first one he rubs two sticks together so hard his hands bleed, and in the second one he's fooling around with a lighter, flicking it on and off. I think, "Hah! I'll bet when he was making the desert island movie he really wished he had that lighter with him." Movie 1: The raft makes it over the pounding surf, he gets out to sea, and loses the volleyball. Movie 2: He's in a taxi in the pouring rain. He runs up to a house, and who should open the door but Helen Hunt. Shit. It's the same movie. Started an hour and a half earlier on the second channel.
prereviewer - Jean McKay, 01/06/04

The Day After Tomorrow
"The Day After Tomorrow" is (I guess) based on the enduring classic novel of the same name written by Robert A. Heinlein. Heinlein is widely considered to be the "Soren Kierkegaard of Science Fiction" -- not as influential as Asimov and not as literary as Bradbury, just as Kierkegaard was neither as influential as Kant nor as literary as Nietzsche. I say the book is an enduring classic, because I read it when I was young and I have no recollection of what it's about. But anything which shows the world going to hell in a handbasket is just to my taste these days. I'm especially fond of stories where "the human race" fucks up big time, and there's nobody to sue or pray to when the bill comes due. We just have to take our lumps and perish from this earth. I'd like to see a movie in this genre called "The Day After Election Day."
prereviewer - Chris Bumcrot, 01/06/04

Holes
Well this could really be about anything, but turns out in fact to be about nothing at all. A bit disappointng that.
Now a film (it is a film isn't it?) called "Holes" is an obvious segway (is that spelled correctly?) in to talking about Courtney Love and friends, but I won't bother. I won't give her the satisfaction. Where does she get off anyway. I mean really, men, men, men, and the demon liquor (no doubt she has worse skeletons in her closet, no doubt indeed). Aren't there women too? And didn't I read something else about plastic? Well I do admire her though, tough as an army drill seargant, with the potty mouth to match. Not that I've ever met her though.. She knows what she wants, and how to get it... did I mention the liquor?...mat matt matt mat mattesttt matt matman amttm mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm will this get a prize?
prereviewer - Matthew (Matt) Woodruff, 01/06/04
editor's note - Holly shit what a late hourse entry. This instant classic is in the running in a bunch of categories! yes his name really is Matt, I've known him since preschool.

Torque
I'm a Motorcycle Fan, and by default I like motorcycle movies. Yes, I own both "Easy Rider" and "The Wild One" on DVD. So sue me. Really I'm just a wimp who relives his childhood fantasies of feeling "free" by imagining myself behind the wheel(?) of an amped up Schwinn. For those of you who haven't been paying attention, the new fad in biker movies is riding on top of tractor-trailer trucks, preferably while doing a one-handed front-wheel wheelie (the other hand holding a gun, duh). The New Motorcycle Movie, called "Throttle", or "Pumped", no - "TORQUE!" will feature such a stunt. The difference with this movie and Biker Boys is the re-introduction of the Chopper into the genre. See, Biker Boys (by way of 2Fast) brought into focus the popularity of Japanese Bikes (known in the business as Rice-Rockets). Sure these are fast machines, but some of us old schoolers are still into the V-Twin. The popularity of some cable tv custom chopper shows (along w/Gulf War Pt.II - Go USA) must have made the producers realize that they could double their money by including both breeds into the film. My guess is that there is a race-off between the rustic red-neck chopper guys and the inner-city crotch rocket thugs. A damsel will likely be involved, and someone will die.
prereviewer - Matt King, 01/05/04

The Nut Cracker
(I'm not really sure that this was ever made into a movie, but I'm pretty sure it was in like the 50's or 60's.)
The Nutcracker is to ballet what McDonald is to food. (I have to take a GRE test soon and need to practice my analogies.) Everyone always goes every year with their mothers and their daughters, and everyone talks about tradition and nobody has any fun, but they all pretend to for each other's sake. It's GREAT!
In the Nutcracker a little boy is trapped overnight in a toy factory where he is attacked by a troop of identical toy soldiers. If the toy soldiers are on skates then you are in for a real treat because you're at "Nutcracker on Ice". Eventually the boy is rescued by this dancing ballerina lady who seduces the soldiers into submission with her awesome girl mojo (she's got legs that go from here to ya-ya.) If the soldiers were on skates then the girl will be too - keep your eyes pealed for the panty flashing tight spins. Yes they do this on purpose, it's their little trick to see if you're still awake. Having escaped the soldiers they run into the Portly Mayor (who is somehow impervious to the ballerina's charms) and he throws them both in jail. Time now for some slower dancing in blue light (signifying sadness on account of them being in jail and all). Who then should show up at the cell window but a handsome prince, (he was drawn by the beautiful siren song of the saddened ballerina), and he busts them out. If this is "Nutcracker on Ice", look closely at the prince - even odds you're looking at either Brian Boitano or Brian Orser, isn't that exciting!? Wait till you tell all the kids at school! In any case the big finale is coming up, but don't get too excited because here the plot breaks down completely. Everybody dances with everyone else, the Mayor, the prince, the soldiers, the boy, and the Ballerina all spin around in a big happy bunch throwing out the last two hours of plot building without so much a glance back. Of course, in the end, it was all the little boy's fucking dream.
See you next year ... looser.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 12/ 25/ 03

Kill Bill Vol.2
Ironically sweet yet catchy music will be cleverly woven into a tapestry of overly bloodily slow motion sword violence. You'll be chuckling, grooving and squirming all at the same time. And if you're like me you'll be wondering what the hell's going on because you missed the first one.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 12/24/03

The Punisher
The MARVEL logo at the start of the trailer can be a bit misleading. In the theatre Kristin asked me "so his super power is that he's angry and he has guns?" Yup, but don't forget that he made his own t-shirt, that wasn't easy. John Travolta walks through another bad guy role, all hair and trench coat, trying his damnedest to be dynamic. You go girl.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 12/24/03

The Passions of Christ
The story looks a little thin but the special effects are going to be spectacular. It'll be the best movie since Titanic - "I'm on top of the world!"
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 12/24/03

Broken Lizard's Club Dread
Okay the trailer for this movie does not look great - it's a spoof of a slasher movie, set in a spring break tropical resort. We've seen this formula before, but this time it's from the creators of Super Troopers, so lets give it some leeway. We'd seen cops made fun of before, but we'd never seen them chugging Maple Syrup and pretending to screw grizzly bears.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 12/24/03

Butterfly Effect
That guy who is supposed to be the good looking one from "Dude Where's my Car" and "That 70s Show" finds a way to time travel by reading his girlfriends journal. It's not a comedy. A quote from the preview: "Everytime I go back in time to try and help someone something goes horribly wrong!" Uh...duh? I am so there.
prereviewer - Sally McKay, 12/18/03
editor's note - are not.

Cold Mountain
Cute little button noses and rumpled hair. Oh, my stockings won't stay up! Such a handsome fellow with his rakish hat and placid, empty smile. The movie is projecting on the screen, the audience is projecting whatever they like onto the bland and vacant characters. Remember that winter we rough-housed under the old patchwork quilt and you tickled me and then you told me that you loved me? Remember the day you came back to me forever, riding up over the ridge with the sun shining on your golden hair and we embraced and you spun me round and round? And then I snatched your hat and hiked up my skirts and ran across the fields laughing while you chased me and then pulled me down into the long grass and taped my eyelids open and made me watch this film over and over and over until I mustered a final bolt of telekinesis and tipped a metal filing cabinet over on top of you and you died with my name on your lips?
prereviewer - Sally McKay, 12/18/03

Live Action Astroboy
Hooray for computers. Everything animated is live action, everything live action is animated. You see the adds for Peter Pan? Yow, talk about crappy looking. The CGI flying boat looks like crap, the flying kid looks like crap, tinker bell will undoubtedly look like crap too. See, there's more computer animation in live action than there is, well, live action. Makes the whole term a bit problematic. Astroboy is going to be great though, way better than Peter Pan and here's why; propulsion. Astroboy has freaking rockets in his boots baby! He's not flying around with only the faith of 12 yr old girls keeping him afloat (gets you arrested in most states). He's got some gradeA Texas jet fuel at the bottom of his pants and slicked back hair gel keeping him as aerodynamic as a prepubescent boy can be.
What's the backstory about A-boy again? Is there a story? I bet they come up with a reason for him to fly around a lot. Can he do anything else? Can he talk? I know about this movie because Tom said that some nerdy kid in the video store said it was being made, and that's enough proof for this site.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 12/17/03

Stepford Wives
A particular friend of mine recently worked on the shoot of the trailer of the remake of the Stepford wives. An elegantly lit Nicole Kidman stood and looked vacant and creepy in a Stepford wife kinda way as the camera circled around her. My friend, who has a keen understanding of not only which side of his bread is buttered but the general direction in which that bread is coming from did not ask the obvious "Why remake a perfectly good movie?" question. Still the question must have been lingering in the air like stinky feet. The original worked so well because of pace. The impending horror, the slow dissent into evil, and the unhappy ending - very like other 70's horror (Rosemary's baby springs to mind). Now a days slow paced horror movies have to have a big big "twist" at the end like the one where the kid saw dead people, or The Others. The twist has to blow your mind, regardless of the humungous holes in the plot it leaves. (The idea is you'll be so numb from the twist that you won't start seeing the holes until you're several blocks from the theatre, thereby ensuring that your face will have the appropriately shocked and awed look for the people lining up for the 9:15 showing.)

In the 80's they made The Revenge of the Stepford Wives, The Stepford Children and The Stepford Husbands, all void of any script or suspense. This remake will be better than all three of these (some of those had Don Johnson in them) until the big twist ending: where all the wives are really - aliens, undercover agents, other men, ghosts, see dead people, terminators, junkies, Borg, dinosaurs, clones, superheroes, underwater, really on earth after all.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 12/07/03
update - They're remaking Battlestar Galactica where the cylons are ... hot chicks! (they were robots in the original). No I'm not kidding. I think we need to do a million person march on Hollywood.

Scooby Two
When I go see Scooby Two, I'll be going mostly because my pal M. worked on the set. Maybe I'll go with M. OK, so I fly out to Vancouver expressly for the purpose of watching it in the theatres with M. who will cringe and make the exclamations he makes when he is writhing in self-hatred: "oh my god" and "my lord" and "why did they... nevermind". I imagine looking over at him in the half-light and seeing him biting his nails, and this -- combined with his brush cut, thick rimmed glasses, and brightly coloured shirts -- will make me think that he is a Scooby Doo character himself. The Mystery of the Missing Months Of My Life I Will Never Get Back. The drama unfolding in my seat next to me is much more engaging, and I doubt that I will ever look at the screen for more than ten distracted seconds at a time. In fact, I smuggle a video camera in, and I tape M.'s reactions to the movie and post that to the internet as Scooby Two. People complain about it, and I write back saying that the sound's all there, and if you watch carefully you can watch a tiny reflection of it in M.'s glasses when he's not covering his face.
prereviewer - Jim Munroe, 12/07/03

Cheaper by the Dozen
Remember Home alone? The worst part of that movie was that the kid set up very complicated traps for the would-be robbers in a matter of moments. Same thing with Queer Eye for the Straight Guy - great show but there's this premise that it all happens in one day and there's just no way that it's true. Why not just tell the truth? It would be just as impressive.
There's a scene in Cheaper by the Dozen where Steve Martin is hanging by his ankles from a bear trap set buy his 12 children - as you cringe in pain at the cutesy sappy over acting* think to yourself "there's no way they ever set that up in four minutes," and cringe just a little more.

*and the kids are bad too.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 12/05/03

Paycheck
Ben Affleck gets paid, and it seems that after "Gigli" this is reason enough to make a movie. Knowing that the worse Ben looks, the better Matt Damon looks, I'm guessing this one is secretly produced by Mr. Damon. In fact, when Ben does get his paycheck in the final scene of the film, Matt is the guy handing it to him, delivering the line "How you them apples?" Wait, I think all of Ben Affleck's movies should be called Matt's Paycheck. And J-Lo's next album should be called Ben's Paycheck.
prereviewer - Matt King, 12/04/03

Mona Lisa Smile
Is anybody else so sick of looking at Julia Robert's teeth that just the sight of them on the cover of a magazine in the grocery store can make your jaw clench? No, then you'll love this movie. She directed and stars in it, so you just know it will be good and cute and clever.

Julia plays a schoolteacher at some kind of private school for pretty girls who wear colorful tams. The girls, especially the three prettiest ones, love her so much that they turn her drab, spinsterish life upside down and she meets a wonderful man and gets married and lives happily ever after. And all the girls go off to college where they meet wonderful college guys who they eventually marry and live happily ever after with. This movie will make you laugh and cry (and puke up your lunch).
prereviewer - Kathie Lambert, 11/28/03

Along Came Polly
Jennifer Aniston plays the title character, but Ben Stiller is the leading actor. He always "plays it safe" but when his wife sleeps with the scuba instructor on his honeymoon, Ben decides to bust out of his shell. He calls up the beautiful but unattainable girl from high school. Turns out she's wackier than a mule on crack! She makes him go to an "ethnic" restaurant. "Ben no! Your sensitive stomach! Have you gone mad?" says obligatory goofy (albeit plain) friend. Several long scenes now of Ben making faces on the toilet with farty-poopy sounds added in post production. Hil-arious. Later, upon advice from the friend, in an attempt to be "spontaneous", Ben lightly spanks Jennifer's perfect underwear clad bottom during a make-out session. Oh boy, she didn't go for that! Talk about hyjink! There sure is "Something About Polly", whoops, I mean, Polly sure "Came Along".

Ben, you're cut off. No more movies unless they have Owen Wilson in them. You could share a house with Jackie Chang (he's under the same court order).
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 11/25/03

THE HILTON SEX VIDEO, or, a shameless attempt to get more "hits"
So I was watching the end of Joe Millionaire II last night when I saw the commercial for FOX's new reality TV show. It will feature that anorexic PARIS HILTON living on a farm like "real people" might - pluckin' chickens, milkin' cows, etc. Supposedly we will watch her and another skinny blonde rich girl shovel manure for an hour every week (I'm there!) broken up by countless 30 second SUV commercials. All this makes me think that the PARIS HILTON SEX VIDEO was just a vehicle for this FOX production. I haven't seen the PARIS HILTON SEX VIDEO but I imagine it goes something like this: in/out/squeeze/rub/suck/lick/repeat. Is there something I'm missing here? Midgets? Livestock? Does she do it on a big pile of $100 bills? Little bars of soap? Does she do it in a Comfort Inn? I have a feeling that money can't by more orifices, so what's the big deal? There is no way in hell I'm going to DOWNLOAD THE PARIS HILTON SEX VIDEO. Not even if it was FREE.
prereviewer - Matt King, 11/25/03
editor's note - PAMELA ANDERSON

Big Fish
I have no idea what the hell this movie is about - if it is indeed a movie at all. I saw a single poster in the subway last night. It shows cartoonish back-lit trees whose branches spell out "Big Fish" and there is a silhouette of a figure between the "Big" and the Fish." Now, I was a bit tired when I saw this thing (having just come from the circus) but I'm thinking that the cartoon-man-silhouette might be someone tall and baldish, like Nicholas Cage. The image had a feel-good quality to it, all soft and yellowy. The title reminds me of all these stupid sports movies that have come out. Okay, I've got it: Nick Cage is a former star quarterback from some high school team, who used to be the "Big Fish" and now he's come home for Thanksgiving to see the "Big Game" and be reunited with his girlfriend whose husband just died of prostate cancer or something and Nick is a recovering alcoholic and the woman has a cute, now fatherless, child who Nick takes ice fishing and the ice cracks, the son falls in, is in a coma, Nick is "tempted by drink" but the boy wakes up, and yadda yadda yadda...puke.
prereviewer - Matt King, 11/23/03

The Cat in the Hat
That guy in the rubber cat suit is a pushy bastard. Hey, Asshole! Leave the kids alone!
prereviewer - Sally McKay, 11/22/03

Another pre-review for Cat in the Hat
Ron Howard didn't direct this movie, but something about it still stinks. Oops, did I say that outloud? I've watched the commercial a lot, but haven't been able to suppress my cringe-reflex yet. Those false eyelashes! That recycled mask from The Planet of the Apes! That fake British accent (or is that a dialect?)! Err, that's actually about all I remember...
prereviewer - Arlene Clement, 11/22/03

Cat in the Money hat
This cat and friends torture a fish and then go on a spending spree using a MasterCard. They go crazy with cleaning supplies and then head out to a fast food joint to find little images of them everywhere. Does the Suess family get a cut?
prereviewer - Heather Royce-Roll, 12/03/03

Garfield
Speaking of creepy cat movies, Garfield is due out in June of 2004. I think it's going to be all animated not like Scooby Do, but you never know. Bill Murray is in the credits, and I'm guessing he's the voice of the cat. Garfield always had only one joke, and it wasn't that funny. If rehashing 80's cartoons will make good movies then why don't they make a Far Side movie, or Calvin and Hobbes? Damn, I probably just made some snooping movie producer a million bucks. Hey asshole, get your own ideas! Piss off! Leave us kids alone!
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 11/22/03

Movie Of My Dreams
No French horns for voyages at sea.
No violins when things turn amorous.
No Pan pipes, ever, for anything. NO PAN PIPES. Even if Pan himself frolicks through the mis en scene, he has to be playing a kazoo or something. Or better yet, he could be knitting.

I want the credits in a bunch, fast. None of them showing up when the damn thing's already half over.

No actors I recognize, from anywhere (unless it's Kevin Spacey).

I want a pair of cocks for every tit. I'm not talking eroticism here, just simple statistical equity. Hell, line 'em all up behind the credits and get it over with.

I want to see that wonderful point where a fish (who has been hovering just below a pool in a stream, letting the current pass water through her gills, taking a breather [Hah!] from all that obligate swimming) suddenly decides it's time to move on, and torques that powerful muscle that we don't have and gets the hell out of there. Makes my tits shiver just to think about it. (Remember, that's _four_ shivering cocks.)

I don't care who wins.
prereviewer - Jean McKay, 11/20/03

editor's note - it's fine if you want to take all these liberties with the format and not actually prereview anything, but Kevin Spacy? If you're this close to condeming the whole medium, why not rent yourself K-pax, the Shipping News, and Pay it Forward and get it over with? Or maybe he stared in some creepy fish-porn movie that I never saw?

Love Actually
This movie has a better chance than most of pleasing the audience because it has four charming vignettes about four different, extremely cute and mostly British, couples who meet and by some unbelievably quirky twist of fate end up falling in love. Also these stories take place at Christmastime which really ups the ante in the "feel good" department. The fact that Hugh Grant is one of the stars is almost compensated for by the presence of Colin Firth who we all remember tenderly as Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. There are, of course, some pretty women as well. To sum it up, Love Actually will warm the cockles of your heart (unless you're some kind of hard-hearted cynical bastard who doesn't believe in this kind of crap).
prereviewer - Kathie Lambert, 11/20/03

Man on Fire
Denzel Washington, who doesn't have a mean bone in his body, once again tries to play an angry tough guy in this movie about a bodyguard who f-s up and lets a megacute kid get kidnapped on his watch. After he recovers from the bullet the baddies put in him, nothing will stop him as he tracks down every one of the sick scum who took that beautiful little girl. Or boy. (It's hard to tell.) Of course, it's going to turn out that the kid is in cahoots with the kidnappers, and is actually a small adult masquerading as an ambiguously gendered child. And it's going to turn out that Denzel is actually the mastermind behind the scheme, only he doesn't know it because he has multiple personalities and it was one of the bad "alters" who ordered the child-snatching. At the climax, the small adult, who is also a therapist, will cure Denzel and the two will run away together.
prereviewer - Tom Moody, 11/19/03

Peter Pan
The classic tale is back with all its complicated Victorian sexual symbolism. You have a boy played by a girl (I may be confusing this with the preview of Man on Fire--they showed them around the same time), "lost boys" who never reach puberty, children flying through the sky in their nightclothes, a pederast-figure named Hook, and castration anxiety in the form of a body-part-removing crocodile. A little girl enters Never Never Land and must get home before her first menstrual period, lest all hell break loose with the boys. Remember the front page "asteroid hitting earth" stories that happened a few months before Deep Impact and Armageddon came out? Or the giant shark hooked off Montauk Point the summer Jaws 2 was released? (OK, the latter did happen, or they said it happened, but no reason you should know or remember it.) Call me a cynic, but I find it very strange that the media is gearing up for a Michael Jackson arrest frenzy just as Peter Pan is being released.
prereviewer - Tom Moody, 11/19/03

The Day After Tomorrow
The preview shows tornadoes convincingly destroying LA skyscrapers and a tidal wave engulfing NY skyscrapers. I'm thinking, "Hey, supposedly everything changed after 9/11 and we don't do this self-hating Independence Day shit anymore." Well, I-Day (and Godzilla) director Roland Emmerich is back with more latter-day Irwin Allen foolishness (better looking effects, though). The, er, adventurous quality of the science in this movie can be summed up in the following blurb from the Internet Movie Database: "A climatologist tries to figure out a way to save the world from abrupt global warming. He must get to his young son in New York, which is being taken over by a new Ice Age."
prereviewer - Tom Moody, 11/19/03

Bad Santa
Billie Bob Thornton represents a disturbing trend in Hollywood. He's a male actor that's supposed to be ugly and funny looking, but really he's a hunk. He's taking good roles away from honestly ugly, funny looking, hard working and often quite talented actors. Just because women have suffered through this syndrome for like, ever, doesn't mean we have to copy them. Hey, Rene Zellweger could play the fat chick who can't get a man - that'll work.
That aside, I guess I like the idea of an angry mean dirty Santa. Except you know he's going to be saved by either love or the X-mas spirit or god forbid both. If the end titles roll with B.B. Thornton drinking Jagermeister straight out of the bottle then this movie will be okay. Aw, I can't make up my mind in this PreReview. It's such an easy shot to take - we all know Christmas sucks ass. Fuck it.
Surprised I spelled Jagermeister right? I took me 20 minutes.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 11/18/03

Haunted Mansion
Roasted turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes with gravy, stuffing, pumpkin pie, ghosts and goblins, wait...what? Didn't we just have that holiday? What's up with Eddie Murphy doing a Halloween movie at the end of November? I'm starting to think that Hollywood has been taken over by a bunch of Canadians. Let's get this clear: Oct. 31st is the holiday where Americans release all of our pagan fears and cross-dressing desires out into the street, when we throw eggs at cars and beg for candy. Nov. 27th is when Americans slaughter millions of fattened turkeys and consume them in a 20 minute fit of pent up family aggression, after which we round out the weekend by going to see a movie and then going Christmas shopping in an effort to boost 4th quarter earnings. That both the first Thanksgiving and the Salem Witch Trials happened in the same state (and neither far from where I grew up) is no coincidence, but I'm sure this connection is never made in "Haunted Mansion." I'm with you, Joe. This Thanksgiving I'll drop my $10 to see "Elf" - another example of our freakish Holiday traditions, but at least appropriately timed (sort of).
prereviewer - Matt King, 11/18/03

Bridge over the River Kwai
A classic prereview
We've got to blow up that bridge over the river before the big weapons shipment arrives. But captain, it's swarming with guards 24-7...I mean, around the clock! I know, men, this is one is a volunteer expedition. We won't all be coming back. But I need at least six good men with me because, god help us, as long as there's a Mabel baking apple pie, a Billy on his paper route and a sweet little Susie playing with her dolly back home we boys have got a job to do over here and right now this bridge is it! Incoming! Incoming! (whine whine...boom! whine whine...boom!) (yelling and chaos). Help, me, oh god help me! Captain, it's Fletcher, he's on fire! Quick man, throw him in the river! Ah sweet River Kwai, you may be in enemy lands but yet you soothe the burning wounds of our fallen comrades with your soft waters. (lights a cigarette) Sigh ... nature knows no borders, there are no bloody battles pitting man against man, in your murky depths. Captain, there's a telegram sir. (pause pause, worried sweaty faces, pause pause). Men, this it. Let's take that bridge! (Roars of approval and throwing of hats). This one's for Fletcher! Follow the captain. Captain! Captain! he's our man. He may be smallish but he's got the plan! Good, men. We'll strike at dawn. etc.
prereviewer - Sally McKay, 11/10/03

Calendar Girls
Ordinary English people taking off their clothes. Again. At least that's the premise. Its really sexy English actors getting sort of naked but not showing everything. Wait no, it's cold, scary-smart, hard-as-nails repressed and smouldering English actors (Full Monty: Robert Carlysle, Calendar Girls: Helen Mirren) getting all warm and touchy feely in another safe, comedic, farce-romp chick flick. eugh. One the other hand I am, deep down, a chick and so will likely go to check out the effects of aging on some other people's bodies - Yes, I also take sneak peeks in the locker room, and yes that's free, but Helen Mirren does not belong to the same gym as me.
prereviewer - Sally McKay, 11/10/03

Master and Commander
The ship goes up. The ship goes down. Cannons fire, other cannons fire back, Russell Crowe looks H.O.T., but the water looks kinda fake - way too many computers are involved. There is a lot of wind and rain of course. The plot is kinda like that story about the dude who's hunting the whale, only the whale is a "mystery ship" that can fire back, and this movie isn't an allegory for anything - which is a big relief. Everything is historically very accurate and there are no ghost pirates or anything - also a relief. Big question, Crowe may be the master of his domain, but who's the commander?
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 11/06/03

Karate Kid III A classic prereview
I spent a night over the weekend at a fun music/art performance - Jamie Arcangel and the Arcangels had a nice bit where master guitarist Cory Arcangel dueled Ralph Macchio via video tape from the movie "Crossroads" (only to loose of course). Then later in the performance another band had a picture of Ralph from the original Karate Kid. Time to give Ralphie his props I'd say, but his only movie I haven't seen is the third K.K. so here goes.

I think this is the one where Karate Kid goes to Japan. Machio was 29 when he made this movie (he'll be 42 on Nov. 4th), so safe to say he's not really a "kid" any more. I think he takes some street kid under his wing, teaching the ancient art of "waxing on" and "waxing off" to the next generation. This film ran out of gas in the last film. There's something so sad about the last movie in a long series. Jaws 4: the Revenge, Rocky V, kinda makes you want to cry doesn't it? Jaws 4: the Revenge came out after Jaws 3D - now that's called milking a franchise. Anyways, Raphie boy and this street kid, played by his real son (okay that's borrowed from Rocky V) go to Japan to find his old master who went back to Japan to find legitimate acting work instead of the crap he was always type cast into here. They eventually find him doing diner theater in Hokkaido and decide to surprise him by getting a ticket and sitting in the back. During the third act of the play Karate Kid and Karate Kid Jr. stand up on their tables and do the signature "crane" stance from the original. Seeing their silhouettes the old master ...

Okay this is getting really silly, plus I remember now that he went over there because of a "lady". There's a lesson in all this somewhere - You can't wax off forever. Or you can, something like that.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 10/20/03

Three Coins in a Fountain A classic prereview
I hate it, I hate it. I'm resolutely not checking websites; wanna see if I can mine the source of this vitriol out of my naked memory. I've got a visual in my mind from a trailer (back when they were previews), of an American woman in front of a Roman fountain. Lots of traffic. The sun is shining. She has that skinny perky-bangs ponytail desperate neuroticism that characterizes pictures of Sylvia Plath. Maybe tortoise-shell glasses. And one of those hard boxy purses with handles that were impossible to carry without feeling like a dork. Somebody told me those purses are coming back, for crying out loud. Will we never learn? What else? There's Trevi, that's the name of the fountain. I learned that from Jeopardy. And then there's that wretched wailing song. "Three coins in a fountain, which one will the fountain bless? [yadayada unmemorable bullshit] make it mine, make it mine, make it MINE!" So what's going on? You've got three women, flinging away their small change, making wishes. What are they wishing for? You can bet, given the era, that it's not the Nobel in geophysics. And only one of them, apparently, can have her wish granted. Who made that rule? Where does this fountain get off? Anyway, you've got this aggressive moaning competition to see (odds are) who gets the man. Do I care? I'm not gonna rent it; it's more fun to just hate it. Who needs to snuffle around, yet again, in that regurgitated dog's breakfast of a decade that fucked over the distaff wing of an entire generation? Well, maybe not entire. But how many women do you know, who are 60 now, who actually have it together?
prereviewer -Jean McKay, 10/13/03

Solent Green A classic prereview
I know what everyone knows about this movie. Solent Green is the food that feeds the masses in the distopic, grey, hopeless near future. Most of the first two hours are spent with images of people dining on this government subsidized oobleck*. Then some clever misfit figures out that "Sloent Green is people" and runs around yelling such news like a broken record until he gets a sleep dart in the neck and the movie ends. It does bring up an interesting ethical question. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say "Solen Green was people"? You don't say that your hamburger is a cow, you say your hamburger was a cow. Unless they were dinning on live people but you'd think someone would have noticed that right off. When this movie came out in the 70's (a more innocent age of hippies and happiness) people left the theatre outraged and politicized, ready to strike down big brother at every turn. We were so cute.

* Remember this book? That was some creepy shit. Dr. Suess should've written horror si-fi slasher movies.
prereviewer -Joe McKay, 10/02/03

update - It's Soylent Green, and in the book it wasn't people, they just did that for effect in the movie. - Thanks Tom.

The Seventh Seal and The Seven Samurai A classic prereview
I've never been big on movies with number 7 in the title. I think because when I was a kid everyone would say that 7 was their lucky number. I mean, come on, is that the perfect marketing strategy or what? So I avoided these two classics, despite my education. I'll start with the Seal movie. Seal isn't in this, but there is lots of make-up in this movie. I think I've heard that there is some chess playing involved, like the grim reaper plays chess with you, a la "The Devil Went Down to Georgia." And I wouldn't be surprised if the reaper is the guy in the make-up on the dvd cover with his arm extended in a very dramatic way, like he's pointing to Bobby Fisher. "Sit Down! damn it!" the reaper booms with a Sweedish accent, "Over THERE!" I'm imagining that we get to see some pretty creepy reaper hands in close-up, touching chess pieces. I doubt that the chess playing is too exciting, unless they go to Washington Square Park where it seems like the chess playing is always exciting. Now, in the Seven Samurai, I bet there is some real excitement. I mean, we're talking SEVEN samurai, not just the typical 2 or 3. This was before Jackie Chan and before The Matrix, so these actors were probably really samurai. I have a feeling that since this is an "art film" the samuria go through some serious bonding issues. If there are seven of them, we could bet that at least one is gay, and comes out to the other six during the film. Oh, and if they are samurai, they must have the best swords ever, made from the best steel ever. I bet there is a scene with someone "folding steel" and another with someone cutting a person in half. That was the true test of a samuria sword, cutting a person in half.
prereviewer -Matt King, 9/17/03

Top Gun A classic prereview
This movie changed everything. It broke the back of the '70s "downbeat" trend, introduced "MTV-style" editing to the big screen, and etched the template for all future descriptions of military derring-do (climaxing in George Bush Jr.'s swagger on the flight deck). Tom Cruise never acted more like himself than in this movie, Kelly McGillis did as well as she could, and the Pentagon finally rebounded as the Ultimate Sex Machine after Vietnam kneed American manhood in the balls. The story is simple. Tom Cruise is a hot dog pilot and McGillis is his girlfriend. Tom has to go his own way, bucking the rigid hierarchies of the Navy. Trouble ensues when a Middle Eastern bad guy dictator (the first of many in movies) orders a strafing run against a ship patrolling the Mediterranean. The Navy brass wants a milquetoast pilot to put a "mild scare" into the baddies and remind them of their responsibilities under international law. But in a freak accident, the Navy's first choice for the mission dies, and Tom goes in. He brazenly bombs the dictator's compound, misses him, but kills his stepdaughter. The dictator retaliates by ordering the bombing of a PanAm plane. Tom Cruise is on board and defuses the bomb. The last thirty minutes are just shots of Tom Cruise flying through the clouds in his fighter jet while rock music plays.
prereviewer -Tom Moody, 9/10/03

The Jazz Singer A classic prereview
This was the first "talkie." It's a father/son tale that tugged at America's heartstrings. And its about a musician...Duh. The old guy wants his son to play traditional Klezmer or something, and the young son (Neil Diamond? uh....wait a sec. Did they do a remake? What the heck am I thinking?) wants to play jazz music. Somebody has a heart attack and their life flashes before their eyes. And they do it all in blackface. Ow...I'm so confused. -
prereviewer -Sally McKay, 9/09/03

Chucky A classic prereview
I've always liked the idea of a talking killer doll toy. But I anticipate problematic, unconvincing 'floppy leg' scenes. Like when they used to throw dummy's around in SCTV as stand-ins for the characters during fights. Floppy legs are fine for comedy but no good for horror. Not even black comedy horror. Remember the hand-puppet-like scuttling of the 'Gremlins'? Bad, and not in a good way.
prereviewer -Sally McKay, 9/09/03

Beach Blanket Bingo - A classic prereview
Was that a movie? Or a game show. Anyhow, I think this might be good for fashion voyeurism: sturdy foundational bikinis and knee-length trunks. Patterned hair bands. Surf dudes with crew cuts, shot in black and white. Teeth-grindingly tedious music, and plucky, pretty gals with lines like "All the kids are down by the fire pit." Actually I can't imagine sitting through the whole thing. I'm bored just thinking about it.
prereviewer -Sally McKay, 9/09/03

Schindler's List A classic prereview
Speilberg? ow.
prereviewer -Sally McKay, 9/09/03

GoneWithWind A classic prereview
It's the American civil war and there's a lot of dapper fellows in uniform hanging about sipping iced drinks on the porch swing. They don't give a damn. A rich bitch named Scarlet gets her come-uppance AND gets her man. The costumes are frilled and bowed and historically accurate. A black Nanny has a heart of gold. It goes on for three hours.
prereviewer -Sally McKay, 9/09/03

Birth of A Nation A classic prereview
I have always wondered about birth of a nation, which always confused me, never having seen it. I thought it was the birth of our nation, a revolutionary war epic but i found out as a youngeish adult that apparently the birth is of the other nation, the south nation. The people from Georgia and all that who got mad and tried to run away from us. And the maybe not that at all but the south nation after the civil war. I pick this up in hints from scholarly magazines. The klu klux klan is in it too, and they are the good guys. Its a toughie for the follwers of serious cinema because all its opinions are wrong but it is great movie. But then no one has ever seen it that I know of so maybe its not so great. Now suddenly I am having a memory surge. This is ver therapeudic. Maybe I have seen it. Or part of it. Or a movie very much like it. I see an old house with the southern family in dire poverty after the war, having lost all their slaves, waiting for their son to come home. Which he does, and then bad things happen. Perhaps this is themovie. It was pretty hokey. I knew an old man once who was the store keeper in Jaws who pulls on the police cheif's sleeve (Roy Scheieder?) and asks him if he had caught the shark yet. years before that the old man claimed he had also been an extra in bith of a nation, playing a small boy who watches as Paul Revere thunders by. And you see where my confusion comes from; even the people who were in the movie thought it was about the revolutionary war. Sometimes I wonder what movie the old man really was in, and whether it was any good or not. For that matter, I should rent Jaws and see if he was even in that. Maybe he was actually in a Fish Called Wanda.
prereviewer - Matt Freedman, 9/06/03

BUS STOP A classic prereview
Marilyn Monroe could really act. I mean REALLY. Her acting in this movie will tear you apart. She gets off a greyhound in the middle of nowhere and nothing happens. Because its very boring there. So hoping for a plot you watch it until the end, when she misses the bus and takes a cab. Its in the 50's so everything is really depressing but stylish. Its in fujicolor so it's even more depressing and more stylish. She is on her way out but cannot leave, people are really mean to her but she never falls from grace because she is an angel and she has made all this millionaire movies before that just exploited her gloomy skin. You will hate the guy hitting on her, because 50's fujicolor male B actors are not good looking, but whatever. Its absolutely positively NOT working. Favorite line: "I would love to leave but I'm so busy acting.
PS: you never saw casablanca? I mean, its a classic!
prereviewer - Nana Wuelfing, 9/03/03

Casablanca A classic prereview
Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacal star in this film noir classic. Bogart and Bacal are sitting out the war in a bar in beautiful Casablanca. Sam, the piano player (who only knows one song) gently tickles the ivories as a ceiling fans slowly turns in the hot and humid summer air. Drinks are mixed in their stainless steel drink mixers as the hours turn into days, days weeks, weeks month and so on (months years). Finally, action breaks out in this classic thriller, as Bacal decides to leave Casablanca on a plane. Bogart tries to convince her to stay, but she retorts the classic line "We will always have Paris", confusing the hell out of Bogart. "We will always have Casablanca!" he yells at the departing plane. "Did you think we were in Paris this whole time? I mean didn't the lack of, say, an Eiffel tower tip you off?" But his cries fell onto deaf ears as her plane disappears into the night sky. As the movie draws to a close, Bogart never knew weather his lover was stupid, confused, or maybe he just mis-heard her. The most important part of the movie, and this is the only trivia you need to know is that upon returning to the bar, he orders another drink, turns to Sam and does NOT say, "Play it again Sam".
prereviewer - Joe Mckay, 8/31/03

The Missing
This must be that awkward time between the summer and Thanksgiving when studios just don't know what to release, because I just saw a commercial for The Missing. Tommy Lee Jones and Kate Blanchet star in this moody adaptation of Jane Campion's The Piano. Jones plays Harvey Keitel, a powerful spiritual native "mystic" who takes piano lessons from Blanchet who subsequently falls in love (as if he didn't plan this all along) with him. He helps find Kate's missing daughter or finger, either of which were stolen by Kate's big bad husband. Jones gives said daughter or Kate a lock of his hair, which she uses to make a "dream catcher" and the three live happily ever after, each adapting to the other's "exotic" ways.
prereviewer - Matt King, 10/31/03

Radio
Cuba Gooding Jr. plays Radio, the retarded mascot of failing football team that is coached by aging astronaut, Jackson Pollack (Ed Harris). We get to see Cuba knocked senseless by a bunch of white overweight testosterone-fueled high school kids, as Jackson drinks himself silly and screws Peggy Guggenheim. It turns out that Radio has "the right stuff" and becomes an outsider artist superstar, which forces Jackson to kill himself by crashing the space shuttle into the football field. The movie closes with Radio climbing out of the crater. As he is hoisted on the shoulders of his art collector-teammates, he starts to weep, as Cuba* does in every other goddamn movie he's ever been in.
*see Denzel Washington
prereviewer - Matt King, 10/31/03

Alien (director's cut)
Ansel Adams is a landscape photographer. (MoMA Queens til Nov.3), Black and white... big mountains and shales and geysers. Lotsa pretty-great sublime, spooky, frozen-in-the-moment American nature moments. AA reprinted some of his famous negatives later in life. Here's what they said in the MoMA brochure: "To many of his admirers, these later revisions seem often to replace lyrical intensity with melodrama, and precision of feeling with extravagance." ouch. Here's a quote from Ridley Scott alien.com about the director's cut of Alien: "In looking at the film again, I became impatient with what I call my 'preambles'" - characters entering or exiting shots. "I was, perhaps, too in love with the sets and the lighting...We shaved things a bit...which creates a slight difference in energy from the 1979 version." I don't think we're gonna notice the difference. I'm going to see this cause A: favourite-movie fuck-matrix ripley cat class war in outer-space chick with gun kicks ass better than Uma-in-her-dreams cyborg scary milk robot self-destruct corporate fucks authority edge alien. B: must see it in the theatre. C: Will it feel different, remastered for 2003? Or will all the cells in my audience-brain have aged just the right amount to correspond perfectly with aging cells in Ripley Scott's director-brain? C: the preview online alien.com is great. Why so?....the most excellent keyboard sound of clickety-click-click-click. I never thought much about computer sounds in ALIEN before. Was I not paying attention? too young? Was my fear of parasitic monster egg sex demons misplaced? Should I have been more afraid of milky clicky cyporg computer monsters all along? See the preview ... it R.O.C.K.S. (and nobody can hear you scream). alien.com -
prereviewer - Sally McKay, 10/29/03

Stuck on You
The Farrlley Brothers can still raise my hopes it seems, despite all the crap they've made lately. The latest one has Matt Damon in it for God's sake. He's part of a conjoined twin, which the brother's seem to have doing all the things conjoined twins are not supposed to do - like pitching a baseball game. Pretty funny, but the trailer for "Me Myself and Irene" looked good too and it was bloody awful. Hey, wasn't that moment that Jim Carry's career Jumped the shark? Maybe this movie will be good by revealing to the sane world that Matt Damon's career should be over too.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 10/27/03

Gothika
I typed Gothika into my Sherlock dictionary and Lordy-be there were no definitions in there. Now fans of this site might have noticed that I play fast and loose with my own renowned spelling prows but I think the producers might've wanted to run that sucker through a spell checker. That aside, Halle Berry getting wet and running around in the rain does sound like a good premise for a movie. Besides, on the poster if you look closely, you'll notice that there are other actors in this movie (in the commercial you can see them running around in the background, also wet). Might get a bit thin after an hour or so, but I'm willing to give it some latitude. I think Gothika will be a-okay-ika.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 10/27/03

mystic river
Sean Penn used to play stupid violent guys. Now he plays smart guys who repress their violence. Clint Eastwood plays violent guys who repress everything else to the point where we can't tell if they have anything going on between the ears. Tim Robbins plays smart wimpy guys. Keving Bacon will always be Footloose to me. Put them altogether and what do you get? A big slop bucket full of overblown romantic twaddle. For those of us who can't stomach Schwarzenegger there's this stuff ... Even though I don't hit that guy, you all know I want to hit that guy, cause I am a real man. Suck it up baby. Pat me on the shoulder. Hold me while I cry cause I'm bearing the weight of the world. Send a video greeting card to the wife and kid back home. Doing god's work. Doing police work. Weeding out the scum. Hi Mom. Broad stroke, bring out the violins, faded blue jeans claptrap about what it is to be an American male.
prereviewer - Sally McKay, 10/17/03

The Human Stain
When you're a 73 year old college prof with a buried, possibly homicidal past and Nicole ("You Don't Want to Get Involved With Me") Kidman sleeps with you, stains happen. Or something like that. Kidman plays yet another damsel in distress with a violent husband/lover lurking in the wings, and once again a really old Hollywood leading man (Anthony Hopkins) romances a much younger actress, joining the Deadly Diaper Assassination Squad of Eastwood, Connery, Woody Allen, Robt. Duvall, and Michael Caine. The plot: Hopkins must kill Kidman's evil husband, just as he has killed before, back when the world was black & white and filmed with copious amounts of vaseline on the lens. So it's Hopkins's murderous past versus Kidman's murderous present and your murderous future when you strangle the theatre manager demanding to get your money back. (Damn, I should write these things for Mad magazine.) It's an A-List movie, based on the dutifully-reviewed novel by Philip Roth. Director Robert Benton and actors Ed Harris and Gary Sinise also have muchas gravitas. The preview is lugubrious as hell. No way I'm going.
prereviewer - Tom Moody, 10/17/03

The Elf
You know how when you wait patiently to transact some business with the elf down at the PGA Fan Club and try to offer a helping hand to her and the other members of her coven, and she brays in your face about some shit that ain't got nothin' to do with your shit? And how when you drag your sorry ass to the Castle Postage Stamp all hunched over and with tears in your eyes to consult with the Princess, and she tears a strip off you for being harsh and so quick to judge? And how when, a few weeks later, the elf initiates a new bondage and domination session on your ass in front of all your homies because your ass doesn't seem to have understood what her ass hasn't been able to express, then apologizes when she realizes that the orders she barks between visits to tigerwoods.com have indeed been followed, and that's supposed to make it all okay? Well, this movie is like that.
prereviewer - Michael Canzi, 11/22/03

Elf
I just saw "School of Rock" and there was the trailer for "elf" a film that looks like a decent Will Ferrel vehicle. He's doing all his physical comedy goofy stuff like you'd imagine, only around a Christmas theme. Great, go see it, whatever.
The combo of Jack Black being stupid and funny and Will Ferrell being stupid and funny has left me with a weird feeling. Where are all the women comics? Why don't they get to be funny? Is it me or have we taken a big step backwards lately? Like 9/11 got us so spooked that only men are allowed to be funny any more? Cheri Oteri could easily have had as big a career as Ferrell at one point in time. Now she'd be lucky to get a soap commercial. Maybe some of the women from Mad TV will be able to cross over into the movies (Deborah Wilson - Where the hell is she?).
Think about Jack Black - He's not a babe, I don't know who he's sleeping with, he's not on friends, and he's not Merrel Streep. How many female actors can you say that about?
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 10/13/03

Scarry Movie 3
Fucking bastards! Scarry movie 1 - stupid sexist evil movie but funny commercials. Okay my bad, but shit happens, ten bucks gone. Sarry movie 2 - stupid sexist evil movie but funny commercials. Yup I went to that too in a blazen effort to not learn my lesson. Now there are commercials for scarry movie three and lord help me I think they are funny. Somebody out there go see this fucking movie and tell me how stupid it is and put me out of my freaking misery and save me ten bucks already. Yeesh.
(I'll send you five bucks)
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 10/13/03

The Matrix: Resurrection
I may have confused the title here with the third installment of the Alien trilogy, but frankly I'm too upset with this movie to give a damn. I saw a commercial on TV for the final dose of Keanu in black leather, and I must say this movie is going to suck. Really?, you may ask. Yes, really. For those of you who saw the second Matrix, I have two words for you: rave scene. You know what I am talking about.... Well, I caught a glimpse of more cave-dwelling hippies in the 30 seconds of the sliced and diced Matrix: Reloaded (no, that's not the title either) trailer. Did no one tell the director that the raving hippies had to go? Who didn't cringe during those slo-mo Keanu induced drum/dance scenes? Am I getting old? That's it, isn't it. I'm getting to be an old fart. Raves aren't fun anymore. I don't like Prada. White guys with dreads look stupid. Keanu is a himbo and I resent him for his sucess. I'm not cool. I should go to the gym or do push ups or something. I shouldn't watch so much TV. Do I look fat?
prereviewer -Matt King, 9/29/03

Under the Tuscan Sun
Here's the good thing about European movies, they're set in Europe. Europe is pretty and has "old world charm". There are fields of sunflowers and rose petals on beds and everyone rides one of those old heavy bicycles. Milk is still delivered by the milkman and nobody eats junk food. A European movie harkens the past without having to worry about the costumes and continuity problems of actually being set it in the past. Love is in the air in Europe - what may seem like a creepy pervert in North America is an old man overcome with "amore" in Europe. [note: none of this applies to England - England is where punk came from. People there still do heroine, the coal mines close, nobody does the dishes, everyone has problems, and it's raining. In fact when I say "Europe" I really mean southern France and Italy, and maybe parts of Spain and Greece]
Here are the two bad things about European movies, the language and subtext. The language is a problem because overdubbing sounds stupid and sub titles will kill your gross. Subtext can be even trickier. Sometimes in European movies there'll be a perfectly good story about this hot skinny babe who goes to the nude beach a lot only to have the second act be about "man's inhumanity to man" or "the intolerable suffering of a life lived alone" or some such theme that alienates the 15-25yr old target audience and ruins an otherwise perfectly good chubby, I mean movie.
The solution: American European movies. This is freaking' chick flick nirvana. No language problems, no subtext problems - just unadulterated Johnny Dep with his shirt off, white cotton pants fluttering in the sea breeze, pouring a second glass of Beaujolais to some beautiful French lady speaking English with an adorably cute French accent. In Under the Tuscan Sun the second act problems seem to be about fixing up a house (nothing a sweat drenched plumber can't fix, although there are hi-jinx as the women try to do it themselves. Don't forget it's "European" so you can get away with shit like this), and restocking the supply of rose petals for the daily life affirming "spin around in falling rose petals" that movie directors seem so fond of these days.
prereviewer -Joe McKay, 9/23/03

The Last (and I mean LAST) Samurai
What the hell? I pay my $10 to watch Kill Bill last night and lo-and-behold what do I see a trailer for but another friggin' samurai movie. Oh, don't worry, this one has a new twist. Instead of Japanese samurai, instead of furturistic Prada sportin' samurai, and instead of anorexic covergirl samurai, now we are going to get Tom Cruise the Civil War hero Samurai. So I'll ask again, What the hell? I think this movie is going to be a little like The Patriot, and little like Crouching Tiger. But does it matter? As we Americans (and maybe some Canadians) scramble for a proper fantasy in which to project our post 9/11 desire for dignity, honor and revenge, the Hollywood imagination seems to have stopped at the door of the samurai. Past present or future, you can't argue with the violence of these "noble warriors." Would a samurai fly a jumbo jet into the side of a building? Hell no. Samurais are polite. If anything they respect their enemies. Samurais might even go as far as to kill themselves rather than disrespect an enemy. They are stealthy but they don't hide, and they don't use RPGs or roadside bombs. They are smart and highly skilled, and they train for hours each day in the garden, like pro tennis players or golfers might. Oh, and they are clean! Samurais take baths and have cool outfits and they might spend a whole morning getting dressed up in silk before battle. And most importantly: when Samurais kill, they use blades so sharp that their enemies feel no pain.
prereviewer -Matt king, 10/27/03

The last Samurai
This prereview goes along with a big shout out to Tom Moody and Matt King, two of our biggest contributors. The Last Samurai stars Tom Cruise (America's, nay, the WORLD'S favorite action hero) as a Civil war vet (or America revolution - one of those) who has become a warrior for hire. The war being over for some time he makes his way to ... Japan! Hey, how hard could it have been in 1802 (American Civil War, 1861-1865)(American Revolution 1775-1783), to hop on a ship to Japan ... on a whim. Any-hoo, he shows up and start slicing and dicing for whomever'll hire him until one day he gets laid and discovers honor and must learn the true way of fighting and train in the rain a LOT. Eventually the big climactic ending comes along and he must fight the baddest guy (remember the guy who hired him when he first got to Japan). Tom kills lots of evil henchmen with his new supper-sharp folded steel sword (thank you Matt) and ninja-like moves, but can't seem to kill the ultimate bad guy until at the last moment he SOCKS HIM IN THE JAW! USA USA USA! You can take the boy out of the country but you can't take the country out of the boy.
prereviewer -Joe McKay, 9/17/03

Godsend
"He has his mother's eyes, his father's smile, and Haley Joel Osment's nightmares!" No, that's not really the tag line for Godsend, a movie about a clone who sees dead people. But that's the general idea. Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and Greg Kinnear lose their child in an auto accident and Robert De Niro, in career freefall, applies the medical black arts to bring him back. The "godsend" comes with a warranty expiration date. When the kid sees his first ghost, De Niro says, "I told you I couldn't predict what would happen to him once he passed the age when the original died." A disgusted Kinnear shouts, "I'm going to tell the world what you did." Grabbing his arms in a vicelike grip, Dr. Bob replies, "What we did." And again, for emphasis, "What we did." Turns out Bob mixed in some genetic material from that same serial killer that was in the last hundred movies, and the kid is seeing his victims. Or something. It doesn't get much crappier than this. (Heavily cut to avoid an R-rating.)
prereviewer -Tom Moody, 9/17/03

Whalerider
This is a film from New Zealand with a cute little girl who may or may not ride whales. There are definitely whales in the film, one of them is black and white and they're awesomely big when you see them on the big screen.
The cute girl's dad is pissed off because her twin brother died and left him with only a useless girl so the movie's mostly about her proving she can do all the traditional boy stuff that her brother was supposed to do. She looks really happy in the picture on the movie ad.
My ex-husband was "disappointed" by this movie so it's probably pretty much Hollywood schlock-free and even well worth seeing.
prereviewer - kathie Lambert, 9/06/03

Winged Migration
This is a movie absolutely EVERYONE IN THE WORLD LOVES. I mean everyone. Old ladies, young ladies, kids, men in retirement communities who wear lime-green sport coats, critics, others. They even get all weepy over this movie and say that it changed their lives. The reason they say so is 'cause in the movie you get to see birds fly. That's something you hardly ever get to see in real life. Birds never fly. But they do in the movie. And you know why? 'Cause some guy learned to fly and flew with the birds. They flew a long way. They friggin' migrated! Sad things happen to some of the birds. Some of them die. I know-- isn't that sad? Some of them just get real tired. You feel bad for the birds. But the guy who made the movie is pointing his camera at them the whole time. And flying too. It's nuts. I really gotta get out and see the movie, but I said that three months ago and then I went to see the pirate one with the great dental prosthetics instead. One day I'll see Winged Migration. I'll love it. You will too.
prereviewer - Rob Ackerman, 9/02/03

Cold Creek Manor
Harrison Ford is in this. He plays an average dad, looking perturbed. His lips move a little when he talks, which is quite heroic considering I heard that he had a stroke about 15 years ago and lost control of his facial muscles. Dennis Quaid is in this too. He plays an edgy working class guy. I think I saw a cigarette pack under his sleeve. Guess who else is in this? Sharon Stone! She looks hot (and matronly. Nice mom.). A family moves into a big old mansion. But then odd things start to happen like the curtains blow around in the wind. Not only that but theres a shot of a wall covered with polariods and newspaper clippings. I'm suspecting a scooby-doo style sheets and flashlight type ghost plot. They'll think Dennis Quaid is doing it all, but eventually he'll lose his life saving the kids from the real pyscho dad who used to live in the mansion many years before. Harrison Ford will successfully evince 'perturbed' in every single scene.
prereviewer - Sally Mckay, 8/29/03
cold creek manor addendum
Just saw another preview for this. There's no Harrison Ford, its all Dennis Quaid. Apparently they share the frozen-facial-muscle syndrome. Who knew...separated at birth?
Sally Mckay, 9/04/03

The Backyard
It would be nice if The Backyard was a short gay porn film set in suborbia. trysts in the tool shead and furtive gropings behind the gazebo, culminating with the shocking and potentially fatal misuse of a john deere tractor mower's leaf blowing attachment.

But I am suspecting either a horror movie - the swing set is inhabited by a demonic power which strangles children in the chains, and hurls adults onto tomato stakes. the slide is filled with razor blades and the evil dead lurk amongst the patio furniture - or a hauntingly sad, yet somehow life affirming examination of childhood. gently, yet unsentimentally, the young directtor parses his/her own sad upbringing in suburbia. all the quotidian joys and miseries so familiar to all of us are laid bare in this episodic little gem, especially moving are the shildren's performances, especially the little girl. who's winningly awkward style perfectly captures the anxieties and pleasures of childhood, albeit a childhood suddenly riven by unspeakable tragedy and then, redeemed, somehow, by the love and sacrifice of a total stranger.
prereviewer - Matt Freedman, 8/29/03
With this effort Matt has claimed first place in the Least Foreknowledge While PreReview Writing competition. Jean's PreReview of Daddy Daycare, wherein half the review was based on a web search which turned up the wrong Eddie Murphy movie is running a close second.

The New Coen Brothers Movie
I admit it: I went to see Seabiscuit. I won't comment on it, because of course this is not the proper forum, and besides, I wouldn't want to give away the ending (the horse wins). What I will say is that I got a sneak peak at the new Coen Brothers movie trailer. I was a little amped up for the horse movie (I have recently discovered horse racing, thanks to my summer proximity to Saratoga Racetrack) so I don't remeber the details very well. Something about a guy who wants to divorce his wife after he cheated on her. The handsome lawyer (I don't remeber who, but it wasn't a racehorse) meets/falls for the wife (Catherine Zita-Jones-Douglas) and all kinds of shit breaks loose. I think Billy-Bob makes an appearance, but I don't recall any other recycled cast members. But really, does any of this matter? We're talking the the Coen Brothers. There is no way in hell I'm not going to see this in the theater! (or at least rent it while it is still in the "New Release" section). All bets to win.
prereviewer - Matt King, 8/26/03

Underworld
Buffy has a lot to answer for. It seems by 1995 we'd digested the fact that vampires are supremely boring. Remember Bram Stoker's Dracula? Or how about Interview with a Vampire? Yawn and snore. There was that dreadful Lestadt thing too. Yeah, yeah they live forever...its all just a thin excuse for costume drama: bring on the waistcoats and cravats! Then Buffy came along in 1996 and it was actually good cause the vampires were just bit parts and hardly anyone wore pirate shirts. But then....the Angel spin off. He lurks in the shadows and wears leather pants. And now, Underworld. More pasty, humourless folks with black nail polish, and buckled boots. And...of course...capes. Again with the capes.
prereviewer - Sally McKay, 10/03/03/

Underworld
Yup, it looks a lot like the Matrix only with vampires and warewolves. Turns out to be a Romeo and Juliette love story too. It won't be the first crappy movie this year that looks a heck of a lot like the matrix (Martix Reloaded) or the last (Matrix 3: It Was All a Dream).
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 8/26/03

Underworld update
On the poster in the subway by my apartment someone crossed out the "world" of "Underworld" and wrote "pants" in it's place. They also drew a penis coming out of the woman's crotch which is also (inextricably) a killer whale. This movie might not be so bad if it is inspiring such wiedrness already.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 9/09/03

Matchstick Men
In Ridley Scott's "Matchstick Men," Nicolas Cage teams up with his daughter Alison in winning-combination. Cage is a smooth, slick operator (more of a real con man!) who finds he has the responsibility of Alison Lohman, a nine-year-old orphan (Addie). Not just any orphan, but Addie is a prococious, cigarette-smoking one! Their odyssey of con jobs seems one adventure (or "mis"adventure) after another. While at times quite funny, the movie will also have its poignant moments, moments that will indeed capture the sensitivity of senstive souls. Madeline Kahn plays one of Cage's girl friends Trixie Delight (whom Alison sees as a threat to their relationship), and Sam Rockwell steps in as a mean-spirited, crooked Missouri sheriff! Alison will win an Oscar for her role.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 8/20/03
Thank to Bill Hobbs for inspiration.

2Fast2Furious and The Italian Job
I'm a sucker for suped-up compact imports. I mean, hey, who the hell could have predicted that one? I have a sick fascination with those loud mufflers and decals with Calvin pissing on a Ford emblem and "Ain't Skeered" tattoos. And rims! I'm into skinny tires with expensive rims, and brake shoes that match the color of the car. But did I see 2Fast2Furiuos? No. I was 2Late. Now I'm waiting for it 2come out on video. Vin Diesel is not in this one, which is a real shame. What I am hoping for is a fast action thrill ride (always a thrill ride), complete with hot import-under-the-semi action, glimses under the hoods of nitrous breathing Honda Civics, the girl dropping the hankie, the foot hitting the gas, the car going off the cliff. Wait, perhaps I'm thinking of "Rebel Without A Cause". James Dean died in an import, right? He was drunk, but he wasn't skeered. Oh, and speaking of little cars ! (and imports), I was also 2late for the "Italian Job". I really wanted to go see that gem. Think about it: Dirk Diggler and Klute together in a film with "Job" in its title! All I know about it is that there is a chase scene involving Mini Coopers, a la the "Bourne Identity". But regardless of its title, is there any chance that this film was made outside of California? Can Mini Coopers be injected with nitrous? Would Vin Diesel fit into a Mini Cooper? If Vin Diesel and James Dean raced, who would win? Now that I would pay to see.
prereviewer - Matt King, 8/17/03

The Lord of the Rings part 3
WARNING SPOILERS
I've been doing a bit of snooping on this one - digging under some rocks and seeing what crawls out if you will. Just seeing where my natural journalistic talents take me. I think you'll be impressed.
Scoop # 1 - I've managed to get the down-low on the title - it's "The Return of the King". If you saw the first two movies, and were watching very closely you'll know that they are probably referring to either Aragorn or that other guy, Strider. Still, it could be some new character ... intriguing.
Scoop # 2 - Golumn is back! This proves my theory that Golumn was way better than Jar Jar, because while Jar Jar was all but written out of Episode Two, they've brought that golumn dude back for an even bigger roll in LOTR3. That's awesome! Kudos to the writers for knowing a good thing when they see it.
Scoop #3 - Better than T3. I know that's a pretty tall order but word on the street is the writing team have been working up a killer original script for LOTR3, not just having Gandalf and Frodo doing some of thier clasic lines only this time with silly glasses on. (Mind you having the big G come back in LOTR2 was like, total expected)
Scoop #4 - There's talk about a LOTR4 already. The cracks of doom turn out to be on another planet, and Frodo and the gang have to cross vast wastelands and suffer great peril on their way to the space port. Sound like fun! I hope they give Gimli a blaster.

Okay, enough of that. Does anyone care about this movie? All I want to know is how much of the insufferably boring 80 page "return to the shire" they're going to do. Oh and the spider killing scene should be fun. Wish they'd kill a hobbit or two to go along with her.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 8/15/03

The Order
Have you ever noticed that only two guys do narrations for movie trailers? No women, ever, it's just these two guys. There's the tenor-voiced, lively guy who does the Miramax arthouse pics and the Sony Classics. He has a little lilt in his voice, as if everything in the movie is so wonderful he can't wait to tell you about it. Then there's the guy who does all the action and horror movies, a rich baritone who makes everything sound dire and melodramatic. This movie, The Order, employs the latter guy. It's the latest in a series where there's a Satanic plot within the Catholic hierarchy and a conscientious priest who must stop it. The trailer shows us demonic markings being analyzed, then scenes of the priest being warned not to dig too deeply, then a montage of clips that get shorter and shorter and faster and faster until the action crescendos and the screen goes black and That Voice says, as you know it will: "The O-oo-rder." Sure made me want to see it.
prereviewer - Tom Moody ,8/15/03

That Pixar fish movie
Someone said to me, "what you haven't seen it?" and I felt a stab of doubt. I also used to believe that awesome animation was always cool over-and-above despite stupid boring plot. But then I saw Monsters Inc. I'm sticking to my prediction that this fish movie is gonna have all the not-so-buried boring class-and-race-isms of Lion King, combined with such a predictable, vapid colour scheme that even the cool effects will underwhelm us all. yawn. Sally McKay
prereviewer - Sally McKay, 7/27/03

Freaky Friday
A little piece of me is already melting deep down inside. Nothing beats trading bodies plots (a la: BIG, and that other one with the exact same plot as BIG that came out at the exact same time and had Judge Reinhold instead of Tom Hanks - or was it the other way around! psyke! and also, of course, the all time classic Jodie-Foster Freaky Friday). Mother has to play in the school rock concert! Daughter has to take little brother to dentist (or something). Everyone learns a lesson! Bring it on.
prereviewer - Sally McKay, 7/27/03

Editor's note Here's what E Online said about both movies;
Judge Reinhold and son (Fred Savage) switch brains by accident, and dad has trouble maintaining his uptight life. - 1988
A little kid gets trapped in the body of a grown man (Tom Hanks), and he succeeds famously in the toy business. -1988

Britney Spears movies
I've heard two movie rumors about Britney this week, just after I was wondering if her career was over (haven't seen a new Pepsi add in a while). Both of these rumors have "nail if the coffin of a dwindling career" written all over them but you never know. The first rumor is about a Dukes of Hazard movie where Britney plays Daisy Duke. She'd be all wrong for this. First off, her butt is the wrong shape. If you're going to fill out a pair of Daisy Dukes you need a little junk in the trunk. Plus you need to be coy, able to put together a transmission blindfolded, and willing to marry a guy who's name rhymes with "penis". Britney would make a much better Bo Duke - she has his smile and swagger. Let's face it guys, Bo was the real cute one the whole time anyways and with this new wave of heterosexual values supposedly sweeping the nation, I think it would be morally wrong if we didn't make him a chick. If they do a Dukes movie Daisy should be a CGI character kinda like Scooby-Do was. There's no other way to fill that roll, I'm sorry. (Plus the car should talk).

The other rumor was about an upcoming NASCAR movie. Truth is it's probably the same movie, but I'd rather that there were two. I love racing movies - Driven was the worst piece of crap, very fun - check out Driven's mistake list on www.moviemistakes.com, it's pretty entertaining. And Rolling Thunder! mmmm. Cruise's first after Top Gun and a blatant attempt to cash in on the theme of loveable and talented but wild Maverick and fast moving dangerous machines. If Britney drives I might go see this, but not if she's a wife or worse the team owner (see Cameron Diaz's icky performance in "Any Given Sunday" to see just how bad this could be). I think she should drive and sing at the same time. Or she could drive and the car could sing. Guess the consensus is Britney Spears or no, we need more talking car movies.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 8/01/03

Tron 2.0
Tron 2.0 (or Tron: Killer App) will be directed by Steven Lisberger the director of the original. Yes that's right PreReview fans, I have my facts straight. The title, the alternate title, the Director. I'm pulling up my boot straps, smartening up this heap of poorly-spelled drunkenly-written clam dip. Or something like that.
Unfortunately, with no commercials or anything yet, I can't write a real good prereview on this one - but shit, Title and Director is more info than you usually get so shut the fuck up.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 7/27/03

Kill Bill Vol. 1
Have I mentioned yet that Chas. Angels II was my, like, most favoritist movie of the summer? That's not a review, Joe, just an opinion w/o details. I bring it up because Kill Bill seems like it could be very Charlie, if you catch my drift. I'm expecting the Angels with less glam, more swearing and blood. Oh, and expect many, many, many products to be placed. My dream is that Tarantino relaunches the career of a lost 70's heartthrob, as he did with J.Travola in Pulp Fiction. Another Sweathog, perhaps? Yeah, picture this closing scene: Uma Thurman in perfect digital slow-mo, razor sharp hammered/folded samurai sword in hand, slices through three thugs-of-various-ethnicities in one pass. We see their bodies slowly separate just after her sword hits scabbard, reducing them to a pile of torsos and legs. Riding a huge stallion -no- pimped-out lowrider El Camino, is none other than Ron Palillo (aka Arnold Horshak). His whiny voice has been dubbed over by James Earl Jones. He cooly rolls down the window, hits the hydraulics, leans out to Uma and says "Let's Split, Sweet Thang."
prereviewer - Matt King, 10/21/03

Kill Bill
Lanky actress/model Uma Thurman plays a sword-wielding assassin in this movie where generic hiphop music blasts from the speakers and pretty women fight. Quentin Tarantino's sharp ear for dialogue appears to have deserted him. Lucy Liu: "You didn't think it was going to be that easy, did you?" Uma: "You know, for a minute there (ironic little chuckle) I kinda did." Right after that exchange the trailer ends with a peppy R&B horn riff and not once, in the unfortunately too many times I've seen it, has anyone in the theatre laughed or said "Cool." Just total silence till the next preview. Apparently the movie's so long they're releasing it in two parts, like the Matrix Reloaded and LOTR. This is stupid and self-indulgent except Quentin "made" Miramax so they owe him. Anyway, it's a wire fu/revenge movie and Uma studies with an ancient Chinese master and runs up a stair rail and battles an army of guys in black suits who look like Agent Smith, only from Hong Kong (one scene--a fight in a suburban home--briefly shows some of that Pulp Fiction flash). In the second movie Uma fights Shelob on her way into Mordor and, no, wait...
prereviewer - Tom Moody, 7/27/03

The Cat in the Hat
A few Christmases back the Onion ran a picture of Jim Carrey in full Grinch makeup with the caption "Another fond childhood memory destroyed." Well, they're baa--aa-ck with another Seuss adaptation, this time with Mike Myers in the ridiculous get-up. More frenetic CGI foolishness worth skipping; I recommend renting the 5000 Fingers of Dr T instead. TM
prereviewer - Tom Moody, 7/27/03

The annoying guy
The annoying guy from that horible sitcom is in a stupid movie where he relives his childhood. Might have a few chuckles. He was in the Chris Farley movies. You'll know what I'm talking aobut when you see it. On a Plane. (Cool, where you goin'?)
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 6/05/03

Annoying guy update
I was watching daytime T.V. - the "news" but it was really gossip. The Gossip lady was friends of the annoying guy and had been at a screening the night before. she said it was really great, then made a joke about how her strapless dress made her boobs look small, then talked about how she was one year sober today and everyone cheered. It was very confusing. I'm still confused.

Yeah, I need a job.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 7/11/03
Dickie Roberts (AKA the annoying guy)
Nobody writes a good "stupid guy" script any more. Take stupid guy and have him do stupid stuff. Great, now 40 minutes are gone. What next? Stupid guy has to "straighten up" to get the girl. She's only there for motivation for stupid guy so he has something to do for the last 40. Okay - also only show T.V. ads from the first 40 minutes, never from the crappy sappy tacked on love scenes. Will Farrell Streaking makes you think that Old School will not suck ass. If the ad had scenes of Luke Wilson trying to look sinscere and sappy over and over it would have A: Fairly represented what the movie was about and B: saved you 11 bucks. Orange County had scenes in it's commercials that were never in the movie at all. Were those scenes Fuckead Collin Hanks trying to act? No! They were of Jack Black lighting his farts (or something funny). Do I care that kind hearted pretty girls can see that although Adam Sandler's character is a bit of a goof ball, he really has a heart of gold after all? Again, NO! Only Adam Sandler cares if Adam Sandler gets laid. The movie going public want to see him hit someone in the nuts (again).

I've got a radical idea - for the last 40 minutes, make the girl have like, a part with lines and shit. SHE COULD BE STUPID TOO! It's friggin' genius. If Dickie Roberts has no love interest then give it a try, but if they tack on a chick for motivation to stretch out what would otherwise be a high-concept five minute SNL skit then let it pass, (and let it pass you will).
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 8/26/03
Gigi
Ben Affleck is not gay. He is in this Movie Gigi with his NEW GIRLFRIEND J-low. And they are having capers, wait they're in a caper - with the mafia and everything. That's not Gay. Besides J-low dated P-diddy and he's the not gayest person in all of America. Have you seen his videos? Way not gay. Just because Ben is in touch with his feelings and he's from Boston and he's like BEST FRIENDS with the totally hunky Matt Damon (also probably not gay).
Did you see Eyes Wide Shut? Gigi is going to be just like that because Tom Cruise and that Australian woman were in it and they were a couple (and nobody ever said that Tom was gay). The poster at the bus stop by my house features J-low's right breast and it's got a tremendous amount of lift to it. Some would suggest photoshop had a hand in there but I say it's all natural, baby. Ben isn't gay, and J-low isn't getting old - HER TITS ARE AS PERKY AS EVER! HORRRAY! Nothing about Gigi is going to shake my heterosexual foundation upon which I have built the house that is my life, and for that I give it a super-duper two thumbs up.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 7/11/03
update: Or "Gigli" if you prefer. yeesh. - 7/27/03

The Enforcer
Nice t-shirt dude.

That's it. That's all we saw. This guy's t-shirt is supposed to get me excited? All the buzz at the water cooler is supposed to be about ... a t-shirt?
Shit.
I have a t-shirt.
You wanna impress me, show me a waterbed or something I don't already own.

Wait, it wasn't "The Enforcer", damn what was the title. Someone write me if they see the preview - I saw it while at The Hulk.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 6/24/03
Seatriscuit
Okay, take Jeff Bridges and put him on a diet already. He's been about 25 lbs too heavy in every movie he's made in the last 10 years. And he's just one character in every movie. What's less than one-dimensional? Answer is - JB.
Next character to hate - purely for miscast reasons. Spiderman - that Tobey kid. He plays the jockey who rides Seabiscuit. Ummm. Let's see. From what little I know about horse racing, I know that the jockey is usually herve - villachaised. Let's be serious. Tobey has about 50 lbs on any jockey that ever lived. At that, they might as well cast Jeff "my ass is the size of the brooklyn" Bridges as the jockey. Damn them.
Plot development. I see a horse being cast off to the slaughter house or getting ready to be shot. Why? I'm not really sure. Could be cause he's white. Either way. Insert spoiler here. Horse does not get shot. Horse is saved. Horse takes massive amounts of ephedrine and runs the best races of his life. And all that toting a fat jockey on his back. Imagine if the load was smaller? How much faster could that damn horse have run?
Oh - relationship drama too. Brooklyn and his wife have issues. I'm sure Tobey gets involved. And there's got to be a cantankerous Mickey Rooney like horse handler too. Better make him a person of "color". Oh wait, I meant black. Yeah - like any self respecting black person is gonna set foot into that theatre. Not unless they thought the title was Free Biscuit. Damn. That was racial. Okay. Do over.
... into that theatre. Not unless it's got Wesley Snipes in the lead and Vanessa Williams as the evil semi-clad femme fatale.
Regardless. Saw the preview. Hated it. Kill the horse. I could use the glue.
Hi Ho Biscuit!

prereviewer - "the offender", 6/24/03
David asks that he go by the moniker "the offender" in case he offended anyone. Always willing to oblige Mr. Murphy.
Pirates of the Caribbean
When I took one of my kids to see the preachy Hollywood one where Jim Carrey is God and the only redeeming thing about the evening was the trailer for PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN which I'm happy to announce will be THE BEST MOVIE EVER MADE. Yes, that's right. Better than CASABLANCA, better than THE THIN MAN, better than the one with the sled. Maybe even better than THE WIZARD OF OZ. First, it's got that really hot new British chick that was in BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM. She looks like Winona when Winona was at her most totally hottest. It's gonna be worth it just to see her all scared and panting and stuff. And Johnny Depp has got great whacked-out eye makeup and is looking for this one particular piece of Aztec gold which is irrefutably crucial to his existence for some reason. I think it has something to do with saving the British girl. Yeah. She's in a warm humid dungeon wearing a clingy linen dress and he needs that piece of gold to get her free, so he's gotta kick the asses of a bunch of pirates who happen to have supernatural powers because they're dead. Or something. This is the kind of movie I look at with awe and wonder because, I mean, how in the hell to they DO this sort of stuff? It's so unapologetically wasteful-- the pyro effects and the impeccable art direction and the extreme CGI morphing that looks so magical. This movie is so spectacularly fantastic that my thirteen-year-old daughter already has the poster on the wall of her bedroom! What better proof could I possibly offer?
prereviewer - Rob Ackerman , 6/10/03
Rob Ackerman lives on the Upper West Side and hasn't seen hardly anything lately except L'AUBERGE ESPAGNOLE which he thought was pretty charming and lovable even if it didn't add up to much.*
* editor's note - Watch it there bub, that sounds almost like a review.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
(Or, Indiana Jones' aging grandfather and the temple of computers). Sean "I refuse to die" Connery battles with and against a host of computer generated characters each one wackier than the last. This movie has all the appeal for me of those virtual reality roller coaters they have at amusement parks now. You get to pretend you're in a roller coaster - your chair shakes (this is important, it's what makes it "virtual") and you sit too close to a screen (the "reality" part). Often the theme is something like "Roller Coaster in Space". Most convincing thing about these rides is the authentic puke smell that the underpaid ride operator considers "not his fucking job, man" to clean up. Remember when Fabio got hit in the head by a goose when he was the guest on the maiden voyage of a Six Flags roller coaster? Now that was virtual reality. If this movie can promise me that, with every screening, some minor celebrity will be temporarily stunned by a goose, I will gladly change my mind but until then, I can smell the stale puke already.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 6/05/03
Joe recently rode the Cyclone at Coney Island, which although gooseless, is scarrier than it looks. (reviewing roller coasters is okay)

Crappy Kevin Costner Movie
Absolutely freaking fucking nothing redeeming about this stubbled hunk of crappola. Yes we're due for a good western (go rent "The Claim" it was pretty good in a "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" kinda way - and I'll bet you missed it.) Kevin mumbles his whole way through this movie, both his lines and his directing. RUN IN FEAR! Water World on land ... RUN!
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 6/05/03

The Last 29 Days
I'm cheating a little with this one but who cares. The Last 29 Days is already on DVD here in Europe so I've been asking around and here's the jist of it. Zombies that can run. Yup that's the big twist. Hard to believe nobody thought of that before actually. The movie starts out with this guy all alone in the city and then he finds out he's not alone (YAY). Then he finds out his new friends are zombies (bit of a bummer but no biggie) Then he finds out they defy all logic by being able to run (now it's brown trouser time).
The adds make it look like there might not be a super happy ending because it's all British and shit. Don't hold your breath is the word on the street.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 5/01/03
Update: This is really wierd but in the US they're releasing it with the title "28 Days Later". Maybe on the 29th day a Queen Victoria zombie and a Winston Churchill zombie go on a brain eating rampage and they felt an american audience wouldn't understand the references. That must be it, they're always underestimating the intelligence of the american movie going public. Bastards.
From Justin to Kelly
I did not go see the girls-on-surfboards movie "Blue Crush" last summer, and I fur-sure won't be paying hard earned cash for "From Justin to Kelly." But who needs to pay for it when I can watch "Entertainment Tonight" for free? From what I have gathered on the tube - and I think I have seen the entire movie - this is going to suck. It stars Kelly Clarkson, the winner of "American Idol" along with Justin Guarini, her runner-up. Last year millions of Americans called in and voted these two as the best/cutest somethings, and now they have their own movie. So what happens when two teenagers get rich and famous overnight? Apparently they get fat. From what I have seen on TV, they must be getting paid in pudding. And I think Justin had discovered marijuana, because in every interview I've seen (perhaps one a day) his eyes are all puffy. Back to the movie: It is perpetually sunset. A bloated Justin and Kelly are in love, and sing. But they have difficulties, and sing about them. Then they make up/make out, and sing. Intercut this with plenty of teen girl masturbation fantasies: frolics in the surf, a romantic sailboat cruise and perhaps, if we are lucky, a tandem bike or bareback horse ride (with singing).
prereviewer - Matt King , 5/04/03

T3
I'm thinking this is going to be the coolest thing ever. Why? The five magic words that guarantee successful movie entertainment: "Mysterious Robots From The Future". That and the other five magic words: "Killer Robots from the Future". T3 will have both. Mysterious robots from the future are scary but end up being good, and killer robots from the future are bad and must be defeated, and it is in the complex interplay between the two kinds of robots from the future that the whole of the human condition can be limned.
What we are looking here for is for the T3 makers to up the ante from the previous T movies' use of mysterious robots from the future and killer robots from the future. Schwarzenegger made the all but impossible transition from killer robot from the future to mysterious robot from the future in the first two movies, which gave everyone a reason to see the same movie twice and feel they were seeing a new movie. It also-being a good robot-laid the groundwork for his emerging political career. Now in T3 he will be a mysterious robot from the future again, meaning a good robot, meaning potential Governor of California. How he well battles the Killer Robots from the Future will go along way towards determining whether he gets to live in Sacramento for four years. So big things are at stake and they need something new and compelling for T3, not so much that it would rock the boat, just enough to talk about and buy a ticket for. This is what I am looking forward to:
1)Mysterious Hot Chick Robots from the Future
2) Killer Hot Chick Robots from the Future.
Let's face it, all the Terminator series is lacking is hot chick robots: They have nowhere else to go; they've done everything else. The tough thing is, how does Arnold battle hot chick robots-some of whom are bound to be hot for him-and keep his Republican base in line? He's got to strip down once or twice early on so we can see his heart trouble hasn't turned him into a geeky liberal tofu chewer, and the hot chick robots he is battling will have to strip down a few times to reveal some chrome bumper action. But not too much. Twelve year old boys have to be able to pay their way in and voting grandmas can't be annoyed. This is movie making at its most complex.
But I know they can pull this off, because they are all geniuses. As I see it, the film will unfold like this: First some Killer Robots from the Future will crunch around a ruined city on human bones shooting their guns as they stomp about, and then there will be a really big explosion. Arnold will show up and stomp around too and we will think he has become a Killer Robot because he will be wiping people out but then it will turn out that nothing we were watching was AS IT SEEMED. And nobody really got kiled and Arnold isn't a kiler robot after all. Then and only then will the Hot Chick Killer Robots From the Future show up, and Arnold who now again a Mystery Robot will have his hands full for awhile, first being pushed around by them but then getting the upper hand, one way or the other. After he whips the Killer Hot Chick Robots he can be governor and deal with fake energy crises with his mighty powers. Which will be cool too.
prereviewer - Matt Freedman, 4/27/03

Charlie's Angels
I saw this trailer about 8 months ago and I swear that one of the angels rescued the other two angles who were falling off a bridge by picking them up with a helicopter. But that can't be possible. The rotors would shred them to bits. Maybe she turned the helicopter on it's side so they fell into the door. She must be a good pilot to pull that off. I can't remember for the life of me. I remember that the drop seemed awful long.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 4/27/03

Dumber and Dumberer
This is a spectacularly bad idea. Remake my favorite comedy since "The Jerk", only without the original actors. Stupid stupid stupid idea .. oh wait. Maybe that's the point. Why did I like the original? Because he tried to impress the girl with his "rapist's" wit. Yes I'm in a quandary. All my spidey senses are telling me to run, but I have a nagging doubt, "maybe this will be the best dumb guy movie ever made, ever." dude.

prereviewer - Joe McKay, 6/05/03
Wow. I already prereviewed this movie and forgot till I posted it. must be Carma.

Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle
I should start right out by saying that I did see one of the Cremaster movies a while back, but I don't know which one and I don't remember if I saw the whole thing. I'm guessing that any one serves as a trailer for the others, so I think this is still a PreReview.
If there is any major question brought up by Matthew Barney's magnum opus, it is this: why do CD players have a "shuffle" feature while DVD players do not? At first I was thinking that instead of paying $10 a pop for the other four Cremaster movies, I could simply rent "The Lord of the Rings" and turn the sound off, perhaps watching it while listening to Bjork. But that would make too much sense. So I'm proposing that the next line of DVD players come equipped with a Cremaster button, randomly shuffling the scenes of any movie we wish. But not just any movie. We know that if anything, Mr. Barney has particular tastes. That is why I am proposing the following, just as a suggestion, for simulating your own Cremaster with one of these newly enhanced DVD players.
Shuffle the following:
Cremaster 1: The Clash of the Titans or Joseph Campbell's Mythos
Cremaster 2: When Animals Attack: Things We Can't Show on TV Vol. 2
Cremaster 3: Sports Illustrated Greatest Moments of the NFL Vol. X
Cremaster 4: any film with "Lord" in its title
Cremaster 5: The Never Ending Story
But this is a PreReview, so I should at least comment on my anticipated reaction to the films: I'm going to enjoy them immensely, then complain. Why like them, you might ask? For the same reason that everyone else likes them: you get to sit on your ass for two hours and look at art. Have you been to Chelsea lately? It takes four goddamn hours to trek around those barren streets. And furthermore, there is no train that dumps you off near any of it. Sounds like a good reason to go to Film Forum to me. Why should I take a train ride to the Guggenheim, spend $15 to walk down a spiral ramp when I can save $5, get off of my feet and eat Goobers in the dark? Forget the money, forget the good looks, Matthew Barney has us beat because people (including myself) are lazy bastards who like to bitch about successful self-indulgent superstars. See you there!
prereviewer - Matt King , 5/10/03
Matt lives in the lower east side of Mahattan, and works about five blocks from his apartment. Chelsea is a 15 minute walk from his house. The Cremaster series is playing at a theater between him and work (the only theatre it's playing at - anywhere).
Daddy Daycare
Well, they've sure taken the pulse of the movie-going public: Domestication of the Male. (Arnold did it first, nya, nya.) Cute kids, talking animals. Pot-shots at elitist schooling (with a Famous Actress headmistress, so she can't be all bad). Interesting how the google-hits for Angelica Huston hyperbolize, euphemize, and otherwise circumvent(ize) the question of whether she's attractive ("angular" is big), before they light on the relatively safer ground of Is She Still In Famous Daddy's Shadow.
The thing that stays with me from Beverly Hills Cop is the rivetting athleticism with which Eddie Murphy wore his blue jeans. Doubt if we'll see much of that here, judging from the stills. The dog looks to be the same one that starred in Peter Pan. I'm so tired of talking dogs. My favourite movie animal appearance was when that guy tried to jump-start the dog's heart with the two ends of a lamp cord, in Something About Mary, and the dog flew up and whapped the ceiling.
Here's what would make me go to it: the still of the breakfast nook. I'm a sucker for breakfast nooks, yes, and this one appears to have all the appealing elements. There's that puke-making everything's-right-with-America morning sunlight that drenches Driving Miss Daisy, for one thing. And it's coming in through VENETIAN BLINDS! Yay! Venetian blinds in black-and-white, hallmark of film noir, surly private detectives with scruffy scrotums (they sleep on the sofas in their offices, there's no shower, how could they not be scruffy?), transmogrified by the magic of colour into the domestic world of corn flakes, jammies, cute lines for the kiddies before Daddy goes off to work. Or in this case, I gather, stays home.
I'm stuck with the stills. Every time I try to run the trailer, from whatever site, I get knocked off-line. Is Somebody Up There trying to tell me something? Is there a God, or do I just need an upgrade?
prereviewer - Jean McKay , 5/06/03

Willard
Crispen Glover cast as a scary rat dude. Sounds like a win win scenario. But will it be shivery/scary-like-the-Shining, or cutsie/creepy-like-Edward Scissorhands? My hunch: Willard will fail to dive to the depths of truly terrifying but rather skim the surface of goofy goth. Pity.
prereviewer - Sally McKay, 5/01/03

Bruce Almighty
Maybe in a parallel universe there is a version of me that will not see this movie. How do I get into that world? Sigh. I KNOW that the preview has the funniest bits. And they aren't even all that funny. Jennifer Anniston! eugh. That chick doesn't have a funny bone in her body. And Jim Carey really consigned himself to the doghouse with that yawnsville drek of a movie called Me, Myself and Irene. BORing. not worth renting. This one is going to be just as bad or worse. But the sad fact is that in this universe, the quarks that make up Sally McKay are set to spin on a collision course with a screening of Bruce Almighty. The really sad fact is that I will undoubtedly laugh out loud. Perhaps even more than once. AND I will retell parts of it to my friends. Thank goodness I have patient friends.
prereviewer - Sally McKay, 5/01/03
Teenage girl goes to Europe (I can't remember the title)
The one line that really stood out from the commercial was from this Italian guy saying to the heroine, "You've come all this way, why not see what the real Rome is like?" And then they go zipping off together on his scooter. There's a ring of truth to this dialogue, that could only ring truer if he had his dick in his hand. This is one of those movies where a young girl learns a valuable life lesson - be yourself, quirks and all, and the boys will like you all the more. This is not such a bad lesson for the young, and the young at heart in all of us*

* Results may vary. Works better if you have perky little "I'm going to be seventeen forever" breasts, and don't mind giving BJ's to Italian street kids behind the Trevi Fountain.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 4/27/03

Hulk
The best part of the original Hulk shows was the fact that when he turned into hulk, he was just a big guy painted green. The Hulk was a strange super hero, and it only worked in a campy way, even back then. If they make the hulk "digital-Hulk" its going to suck suck suck. Theres a reason you don't see images of him yet, - he's going to look stupider than Scooby Doo did.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 4/27/03

Update on 5/05/03
I saw a new preveiw today when I went to Xmen2 (I won't comment on Xmen2, it's not the nature of this web site to write informed reviews). Hulk looks pretty silly if you ask me, although better than he might have. Indeterminent size, but at the largest he's on the Godzilla scale. Picking up tanks and tossing them around and what not. The original Hulk could lift up a small car (a brown gremlin sticks in my mind for some reason), but he certainly couldn't throw it. It was part of the charm of the show, working every plot around a reason why they all of a sudden needed something done the average forklilft could do.

Hulk Rebuttal I'm not sure I agree that the comic book Hulk was that weak. I seem to remember a Kirby era Hulk vs Thing battle with the tops of buildings being torn off. That said, I too saw the HULK trailer and was amazed by his variable size. Once you get past the Hulk as a SEGA character in live-action space, the movie looked pretty entertaining. I'm glad they went back to "Bruce" Banner after the '70s TV show thought it was too gay (or Australian?) and changed it to "David." But I don't like that actor much. I still get hives thinking about him drawling the line in Black Hawk Down: "You can talk about politics and all that shee-it but when you get down to it, it's about the man next to you." Yes, the only really good reason for war is male bonding. Also, always happy to see Jennifer Connelly in a movie. I'm one of the select coterie of guys that went to see her bad movies just to see her (I am not, however, part of the cult obsessed only with her breasts). I'm glad that her underground status belatedly catapulted her to Oscar-winning status.
prereviewer - Tom Moody,5/107/03
Hulk Rebuttal Rebuttal
Hulk Vs Thing. Those were good times. I always kinda hated the x-men because I thought they were ripping off Fantastic Four especially with the "lasers for eyes" guys. The thing was way better than Hulk, a big pile of bricks that didn't need some stupid excuse to get angry.
Joe McKay,5/107/03

Holes
Is this a horror movie for kids? Weird.
reviewer - Joe McKay

Dumber and Dumberer
Saw an add finally. I've known for a while that it's going to be a prequel, an interestingly stupid idea. The commercial reveals that it's not the same actors, but guys dressed up to look like them. This is a blindingly stupid twist and having said as much, I'm really intrigued. There's going to be no middle ground for this movie, it'll either be brilliant or god awful. (When has a comedy sequel ever not sucked? Maybe we're due!)
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 4/27/03

The Real Cancun
You are going to leave this movie saying, "Not enough tits". I know it doesn't seem like it but it's true. Why make a reality T.V. show a movie? Tits, tits, tits. The minutia of talking, drinking, driving around, and dancing are going to bog down an otherwise brilliant idea. Why did you go see this movie in the first place? Because "Girls Gone Wild Snoop Doggie Dog Style" sandwiched between Pottery Barn purchases on your mom's Discovery card statement is going to be a wee bit conspicuous. But telling your mom you're going to go see "Holes" at the megaplex is a lie with no victim, (and a clever joke, but I don't think you'll see any, just tits, and not enough of them).
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 4/27/03

Xmen2
The best part of the superhero movie is when we and they discover their abilities and try to figure out how to use them to fight evil. Places a real burden on the sequel because you can't do that twice. Looks like X2 is going to try get around this by having new young xmen come to the school. I hated the Muppet babies, and will hate this.
In the first one the special effects got so out of control by the end that it took you out of the movie - big blobs of energy attacking other (good?) big blobs of energy, with occasional jump cuts to the actors with pained expressions on their faces. I kept thinking, "Is something going on I should know about"? Those "blob of energy" wars only work in manga. I hope they don't resort to that again. Still, it's nice to see that the always hunky Wolverine is going to get a lot of screen time.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 4/27/03

Matrix Reloaded
At the end of the first Matrix Neo realized that he was a God. That's one heck of a hole to write yourself out of if you want your sequel to have, say, a plot. They've got a pretty high special effects bar to jump over too. Will I be there front and center? Yes indeedy.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 4/27/03

NEW! Matrix Reloaded
I just saw a really long trailer for this release that pretty much spoiled all the surprises. Usually they do that when they know the movie's lousy, so this doesn't bode well. Here's what I remember: Hugo Weaving can replicate himself many times over; in one scene a pile of Hugo Weavings explodes upward in a mushroom cloud. There are these two albino guys with dreads running around; not sure if they're Agents. The spider robots bore down through many layers of machinery to invade/infest Zion, which is a big reddish-hued cave full of thousands of CGI people. The elderly black lady is back, and tells Keanu that only he can save Zion. Heavy CGI shot of Keanu landing on top of a speeding car on the freeway and pulverizing it. Lots of shots of Keanu flying through the air in that long black John Woo coat. Only one shot of Cowboy Curtis, I mean Lawrence Fishburne, looking very, very tired.
prereviewer - Tom Moody, 5/03/03

Identity
In the commercial, the number 9 on the hotel door swings upside down to become a 6, changing the "identity" of the room. Wasn't that a major plot twist in another movie? Like L.A. confidential? Or Barton Fink? I can't remember. I think this whole movie is going to feel derivative though. John Cusak is one weird mo-fo.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 4/27/03

A Mighty Wind
I'd watch Eugene Levy and Catherine O'hara do their taxes. Singing about train wreaks and coal mining disasters, (in the same song) might be even better.
prereviewer - Joe McKay, 4/27/03