Ah, to be young, stupid, and horny. Never a good combination while looking for sex in all the wrong places. Just ask Americans Paxton (Jay Hernandez) and Josh (Derek Richardson), college buddies in Amsterdam looking for hot sex and legal drugs. Read the rest of this entry »

1997 may have come and gone, but Hollywood is still putting out the trash from last year. Last year, the disaster genre was revived (and immediately killed) by such entries as “Volcano,” “Dante’s Peak,” “Turbulence,” and “Speed 2: Cruise Control.” Mountains gurgled, planes crashed, and ocean liners became floating death traps. Read the rest of this entry »

A lot of films come and go at the box office so quickly that they have little time to make an impact. Most of them deserve their quick and painless death. Others deserve a look see, while a handful just seem to get lost in the shuffle. “Dangerous Beauty” is one of those films that came and went so quickly most people don’t even know it exists, which is a sad thing because the film is one of the year’s best. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s something to offend just about everyone in “South Park: Bigger, Longer And Uncut.” It’s rude, crude, vulgar, racist and sick. The sad part is that I enjoyed the film. I laughed a lot, and if it weren’t for the excessive musical numbers, I would have given it my highest rating. Read the rest of this entry »

In my lifetime, I have only had occasion to watch two movies through the gaps between my fingers, not counting the last three Pauley Shore films. Both “The Exorcist” and “Jaws” generated the unwilling response, perhaps because those two films managed to depict their fantasy world with such reality (okay, so the shark looks fake by today’s standards). Read the rest of this entry »

Making history come alive is always a daunting task, especially if the medium is documentary film. I can understand audience’s aversion to documentaries. Most of us associate documentaries with those grainy, black and white 16mm films we were forced to sit through in high school. You remember them, the ones with flat narration, grade school graphics and no sense of wonder. Read the rest of this entry »

Oh, the horror! The inhumanity! The drudgery of having to sit through another neo-noir thriller that barely has time to get on its feet before it stumbles under the weight of a top-heavy performance by Nicolas Cage, seamy direction by Joel Schumacher, and a patchwork script by that guy who wrote “Seven.” Read the rest of this entry »

ABOUT SCHMIDT (R)

Jack Nicholson delivers a heartfelt performance as Warren Schmidt, a 66-year-old insurance salesman trying to adjust to retirement and spending every waking moment with his wife Helen (June Squibb). Looking for meaning in his life, Warren decides to sponsor a Tanzanian boy, hoping that his letters and money will provide him with a sense of responsibility. Read the rest of this entry »

Some things in life bear repeating: A beautiful day; a good beer; A Charlie Brown Christmas Special; great sex; your favorite CD; winning the lottery. Read the rest of this entry »

“The Life of David Gale” is a prime example of what I like to call a windshield wiper movie: scrape away the thin layer of grit and grime and you can see right through it. Even though it pretends to be about something, Alan Parker’s death row drama-thriller ends up being about nothing. Read the rest of this entry »