In 10 Words or Less
Dave Foley, Har Mar Superstar and porn stars

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: The ‘80s, mockumentaries
Likes: Sex comedies, Dave Foley, Har Mar Superstar, porn stars who can act
Dislikes: Dopey comedy
Hates: Inconsistent concepts

The Movie
Sometimes one sees a movie star they respect and wonder about their choice of roles. One such person is Dave Foley. A member of The Kids in the Hall, he has a permanent spot in the comedy hall of fame, one cemented by his time on News Radio. However, he's got something of a low batting average, taking on an incredible number of roles, including some severe low points, hitting a nadir with his part in Uwe Boll's disastrous Postal. I...Read the entire review

Fubar: Balls to the Wall:
Deaner is my kind of guy, a Canadian hesher bass-player and all-around dude who only wants to drink beer and worse. After getting a little money he immediately heads out to buy a B.C. Rich Warlock bass guitar, "the evilest bass you can buy with money." "What kind of bass can you buy without money?" asks his friend Terry. What kind of stupid question is that? It's just the kind of balls to the wall stupidity you'll find spread throughout this 85-minute movie like bacon-flavored mayo on a pimento loaf sandwich. Damn, now I'm hungry.

Me? I'm the kind of guy whose intimate knowledge of Canadian comedy begins and ends with Doug and Bob McKenzie, those famous '80s hosers from SCTV. So, even though Fubar II (as it was originally titled) is a sequel to a mockumentary from 2002, most Dean and Terry fans are likely too young to have enjoyed Doug and Bob's heyday. It's no pro...Read the entire review

The Movie:
One would expect a film called Zombie Women of Satan to be a little... silly. And probably vulgar, and violent, with lots of buxom women running around with few or no clothes. And the film has all of these elements. Unfortunately, its jokes fail at least as much as they succeed, and the self indulgent script can't quite bring all of the elements together to make what could have been an exploitive zombie masterpiece.

The film centers around a travelling burlesque troupe, consisting of their leader Johnny Hellfire (Seymour Mace, also a co-writer), Pervo the Clown (Warren Speed, also co-director), Harmony (Kate Soulsby), Zeus the midget (Peter Bonner), Damage the strongman (Joe Nicholson) and their guest artist Skye Brannigan (Victoria Hopkins), lead singer for some sort of goth girl's group. The group is incredibly excited to snag an interview on the internet TV show of one ...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Kalamity is a film with great performances, and an intriguing visual style. It dwells on themes of love, betrayal and friendship that everyone can relate to. It has a lot going for it. So why does it fall so flat?

Nick Stahl plays Billy, a young man who has just broken up with his girlfriend Alice (Beau Garrett) and has come home to spend some time with family and friends to get over the whole affair and put his life to rights. But things are a bit different back home. His friend Stan (Jonathan Jackson) has been dark and moody since he broke up with his own girlfriend Ashley (Alona Tal) a few months ago, and quite recently has gotten downright hostile.

As Billy tries to work through his own troubles, and perhaps patch things up with Alice, he and Christian (Christopher M. Clark), another friend and roommate of Stan's, try to figure out just what is bothering their pal, a...Read the entire review

Stonerville:
From the POV of a hack staring down a plain-looking DVD-R containing a movie called Stonerville, about which one finds very little on the Internet, things seem mildly intriguing. Intrigue is sorely lacking from life when one spends one's time reviewing DVDs for free. So when the movie starts on its own, and eventually the words Slam I Am appear during what might be the credits sequence - words which might be the movie's other title or just weird supergraphics meant to confuse - when these things happen, fate's weird design has given your movie, which we'll call Stonerville, a head start. Toss in recently deceased star Leslie Nielsen doing his patented deadpan/addlepated introduction and simply coast to the finish line.

But Stonerville is really weird, too, and neither title fits. The movie's a bit like Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Harry hasn't heard from Kelley in something like thirty years, and when he does, the guy's literally calling from his deathbed. "Do you remember the night we almost killed Kagan?" he asks. Harry does. "I'm going to hell for it," Kelly tells him. Harry's pretty sure he is too. But Kelley's guilt and fear gets Harry thinking, and he decides maybe it's time to deal with what happened that night, all those many years ago.

It's an intriguing set-up--the return of sins from the past is a venerable construct. Bette Gordon's Handsome Harry takes that notion into some fairly familiar areas, but does so in a skillful manner. The script is problematic, to be sure, but the sturdy performers (Gordon has assembled some of the best character actors in the business) and the sure-handed direction manage to ride those bumps out with grace.

Harry (Jamey Sheridan) is divorcee, ...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Director Peter Bratt's La Mission played on only a handful of screens back in April, but looks to find new life in home theaters. The director's brother, Benjamin Bratt, stars as Che Rivera, an ex-con and recovering alcoholic living in San Francisco's vibrant Mission District. Rivera wants to bolster his relationship with son Jesse before he goes to UCLA, but is blindsided by the revelation that Jesse is gay. At times melodramatic, La Mission is nonetheless an earnest look at Rivera's struggle to overcome his prejudice and support his son.

Despite his hard-living past, Rivera is a prominent member of his tight-knit community, and is often found playing pick-up basketball with his buddies or working on lowriders with his s...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Directed by Tiller Russell, The Last Rites Of Ransom Pride does a decent enough job of convincing us that it takes place in Texas even if the credits make it pretty clear that it was shot in Canada. Tint the picture enough and give it a sort of dusty look, and voila, rural Canada all of a sudden becomes rural Texas circa 1912 or something close to it. The opening drum and guitar music track doesn't sound all that authentic, but beggars can't be choosers, right? Oh, and the opening narration that tells us how the narrator was eleven years old when General Batista slaughtered her village and killed her daddy doesn't sound all that Texan either, more like an actress faking it, but hey, the visuals aren't half bad.

The movie, for what it's worth, begins when a woman named Juliette Flowers (Lizzie Caplan) decides to bring the body of Ransom Pride (Scott Speedman) back to...Read the entire review

THE FILM

Playwright Tennessee Williams could never be accused of subtlety, building a historic, adored career on the wings of southern-kissed hysteria, often pitched to the rafters. "The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond" has been described as a "long-lost" project, scripted by Williams while riding the waves of success that followed his "A Streetcar Named Desire" triumph. It should've stayed lost. A rambling, zombified pass at Williams-certified melodrama, the film is an absolute chore to finish, even while boasting a few fine performances and the luscious humidity of 1920's southern comfort.

Fisher Willow (Bryce Dallas Howard) is a socialite without a proper muzzle. Fearful of facing the year's calendar of parties alone, Fisher enlists the help of Jimmy (Chris Evans), a handsome farm hand burdened with an alcoholic father (a typecast Will Patton) and a mentally ill mothe...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

There was a time when Merchant-Ivory productions pretty much personified the notion of the art film. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, their elegant, intellectual dramas served as an alternative to the noise of the multiplex; their films were independently financed (though often picked up for distribution by major players), and their biggest successes--pictures like Howards End and The Remains of the Day--met with rapturous reviews, respectable box office, and Oscar glory. In many ways, they were the chairmen of the board of alternative cinema. And then Pulp Fiction happened...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Anthony Hopkins, Laura Linney, Charlotte Gainsbourg (Antichrist) and Alexandra Maria Lara (Adolf Hitler's secretary in Downfall) are excellent supporting players in director James Ivory's The City of Your Final Destination, a well-shot drama that lacks emotional punch.

Younger-than-he-looks Omar Razaghi (Omar Metwally) is a 28-year-old college literature professor stuck in a rut. The film appropriately opens to find Razaghi knee-deep in quicksand after losing the dog that goes with the house he ...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

The opening sequence of Peter Bratt's La Mission bursts with music and energy reminiscent of a 70s picture--indeed, the cue he chooses (Curtis Mayfield's "Kung Fu") would have been right at home in any number of blaxpoitation flicks. It's appropriate, because La Mission has a specifically low-budget energy--it's rough around the edges, and amateurish in places, but it has a genuineness, a heart, and a low-to-the-ground spirit that usually gets bled out of bigger, more polished entities.

Benjamin Bratt (the director's brother) plays Che Rivera, a reformed "O.G" and recovering alcoholic who has lived for years in San Francisco's Mission district, driving a bus and raising his son Jesse (Jeremy Ray Valdez). Jesse's a straight-A student about to graduate from high school and attend UCLA on scholarship; basically, everything he's done has been for his father's ap...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

This review is based on a promotional disc and is only reflective of the final product in terms of the movie itself. I cannot rate technical or bonus features.

Omar Razaghi is a college professor hanging on to his job by a thread. When word comes that the family of a famous author he was hoping to write a biography on has refused to grant him authorization, Omar fears this is going to be the end of him. Hoping to stop being the eternal screw-up and turn things around, Omar leaves his truly awful girlfriend behind and heads to Uruguay to try to change the estate's mind.

The author at the heart of The City of Your Final Destination is an invention. His name is Jules Gund, and he only wrote one book, a tell-all about his own parents called...Read the entire review

THE PROGRAM

James Van Der Beek is a name that most viewers associate with his late 90s/early 00s role as the title character on "Dawson's Creek." Seven years after that show left the small screen, Van Der Beek's body of work has never been the same. Like many before him, Van Der Beek appears to be trying to break the teen star image that launched him to fame but sadly pigeonholed his acting talent. "Formosa Betrayed" is just the type of movie to silence the naysayers and those who cant separate the actor from the character (Dawson Leery). However, the film itself ends up becoming a new hindrance to Van Der Beek's chance of making a big name for himself.

Set in the 1980s and based on true events, "Formosa Betrayed" follows all the conventions of a politica...Read the entire review

Author's Note: Since this review is based on a screener copy, all evaluations of video, audio and extras are subject to change, should we receive the final shelf copy.

Screen Media has released Crazy, the 2007 indie bio-pic of legendary country/jazz guitarist Hank Garland, starring musician/actor Waylon Payne and Ali Larter. A standard, thoroughly familiar (yet superficially enjoyable) bio-pic, Crazy does sport a better-than-average production design for a low-budget entry, along with an infectious soundtrack that will no doubt spur on viewers to sample Garland's talents. A buy, though, will depend on how heavily you're into Garland or the two stars.

According to Crazy, Garland's story begins in 1945, when 15-year-old Hank wows ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Written and directed by Australian filmmaker Steven Kastrissios, The Horseman follows a single father named Christian (Peter Marshall) who works in pest control but decides to take his life on the road when he learns that his daughter has died of a heroin overdose. Christian is shocked to learn that not only did she have a drug problem, but that she was willing to work as a Z-grade porno actress to make enough extra money to support it.

Christian learns this the hard way when he sees a tape of her in action - a tape that showed up anonymously in the mail - but this inspires him to head out across the seedy underbelly of the area to start piecing together who was responsible for this and taking an eye for an eye. Unsure of anything other than that he wants to make someone pay, he sets out on a rather reckless mission, meeting an eighteen year old runaway named Alice ...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

What the hell happened to Robert Townsend? I'm not asking it as a rhetorical flourish--it's a serious concern. What happened to him? When he burst onto the scene in 1987, as the writer, director, and star of the clever low-budget comedy Hollywood Shuffle, he was discussed in the same breath as Spike Lee; his follow-up, The Five Heartbeats, was a well-reviewed and more ambitious picture, even if it met with pretty limp box office. But somewhere along the way, he went astray (maybe it was The Meteor Man, maybe it was B.A.P.S., maybe it was his five-season family comedy The Parent 'HoodRead the entire review

The Movie:

Just the title alone, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, hints at a deep, dark interior world of fantasy and secrets. Oh, well. So much for truth in advertising. Writer-director Rebecca Miller, in adapting her novel of the same name, burrows into the psyche of a dutiful wife and mother, but the results are not terribly interesting.

The kicker of Pippa Lee, however, is that the blandness at its core is almost -- almost -- masked by such handsome presentation. Miller, the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller, keeps the pacing fluid and sprightly. She has assembled a superb cast and talented production team. The movie looks and feels as if it has something smart and provocative to convey. "Like many people," Pippa (Robin Wright Penn) tells us early on, "I have lived more than one life." Unfortunately, that pronouncement is about as incisive as things get. ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Animals have problems and some of them have gone through a lot of tough times before finding a loving home. Much like people, some of them have their issues. Before sitting down to watch this DVD set, I'd never before seen "Cesar Millan: Dog Whisperer", which gets to the root of the problem by simply watching the owner interact with their pet and/or taking in information about an incident and what happened afterwards. The guy isn't a psychic and doesn't likely have all the answers (some cases take more time), but he's obviously skilled and experienced at training dogs to break a cycle of poor behavior (or obsessive behavior) or work out behaviorial trouble that could be related to a past injury or other issue. Millan has a dog center in Los Angeles where nearly 40 abandoned dogs - some of them formerly tough - get along in a very calm manner with one another.

The fourth ...Read the entire review

There was a time when Merchant-Ivory productions pretty much personified the notion of the art film. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, their elegant, intellectual dramas served as an alternative to the noise of the multiplex; their films were independently financed (though often picked up for distribution by major players), and their biggest successes--pictures like Howards End and The Remains of the Day--met with rapturous reviews, respectable box office, and Oscar glory. In many ways, they were the chairmen of the board of alternative cinema. And then Pulp Fiction happened. Suddenly, independe...Read the entire review

The opening sequence of Peter Bratt's La Mission bursts with music and energy reminiscent of a 70s picture--indeed, the cue he chooses (Curtis Mayfield's "Kung Fu") would have been right at home in any number of blaxpoitation flicks. It's appropriate, because La Mission has a specifically low-budget energy--it's rough around the edges, and amateurish in places, but it has a genuineness, a heart, and a low-to-the-ground spirit that usually gets bled out of bigger, more polished entities.

Benjamin Bratt (the director's brother) plays Che Rivera, a reformed "O.G" and recovering alcoholic who has lived for years in San Francisco's Mission district, driving a bus and raising his son Jesse (Jeremy Ray Valdez). Jesse's a straight-A student about to graduate from high school and attend UCLA on scholarship; basically, everything he's done has been for his father's approval, which is why ...Read the entire review

Reviewed at the 2010 Florida Film Festival

Drugs, Judaism, brain-dead intellectualism, and pops of ultraviolence. "Leaves of Grass" isn't the new film from the Coen Brothers, but don't mention that little fact to writer/director/co-star Tim Blake Nelson. It appears working with the Coens on the 2000 feature "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" has rubbed off on the filmmaker, who molds a dark comedy in a frighteningly similar manner, minus the godlike tonal control that could shake some sense into this scattershot, criminally unfunny picture.

Bill Kincaid (Edward Norton) is an Ivy League classics professor facing a huge career upswing. When a phone call informs Bill of his twin brother's untimely demise in Tulsa, Okla...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Barry Levinson may very well have stumbled into a career renaissance, albeit in a slightly different career. He was one of the most consistently entertaining directors of the 1980s (his output that decade included Diner, Tin Men, Rain Man, and Good Morning, Vietnam). Then something went awry in the 1990s; he started turning out clunkers like Toys and Jimmy Hollywood and the criminally overrated Read the entire review

The Movie:

Far more popular in its native Canada than in the United States, The Trailer Park Boys have never the less found a cult following south of their homeland. The first film, Trailer Park Boys: The Movie found an audience on home video a few years back and now Screen Media Films brings us the latest adventures of everyone's favorite white trash Canuckleheads, Trailer Park Boys: Countdown To Liquor Day.

For the uninitiated, the movie (and the series it was based on) follows the misadventures of three friends who all live in the same Nova Scotia trailer park - a bumbling pompadour wearing small time pot farmer named Ricky (Robb Wells), his buff but rather dim pal Julian (John Paul Tremblay), and the strange bespectacled and kitten obsessed Bubbles (Mike Smith). The park is watched over in Gestapo like fashion by an alcoholic former cop named Jim Lahey (John D...Read the entire review

Women in Trouble is one of those movies that succeeds at nothing. No, not one that fails at everything, but a movie that's perfectly enjoyable without achieving any particular goal. Imagine one of those Crash-style ensemble movies, except the plot threads never intertwine. It's sort of bizarre: writer/director Sebastian Gutierrez pops his head in to examine these people for a short spell, and then ducks out before anything in particular transpires. Why these characters? Why now? I'm not entirely sure, but spending time with them certainly isn't unpleasant.

The "main" character, I suppose, is Elektra Luxx (Carla Gugino), a popular adult film star who has just discovered that she's pregnant. The pregnancy is kind of a MacGuffin: it motivates her to realize her feelings for the man who fathered the child, but is the pregnancy that big of a deal? Maybe I'm putting too much thought into it, ...Read the entire review

THE FILM

Robin Wright Penn (though now she's capped the Penn) has enjoyed a career of weepy, meditative roles that have made fine use of her expressive face and special way with sorrow. Wright's always been an excellent actress, but she's seldom offered characters that make the most out of her range. "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee" shakes Wright out of her sullen coma, bestowed a juicy role that magnifies her personality and ability to communicate the slow, dreadful burn of remorse. Wright is the miracle this picture needs, helping the material achieve an emotional tempo it wouldn't otherwise reach without her stellar contribution.

Pippa Lee (Robin Wright Penn) has found herself cornered yet again in life. Married to Herb (Alan Arkin), a much older man, the couple has moved into a retirement community to deal with his wavering medical condition. With children that igno...Read the entire review

The Movie:
With his film Death in Love, writer and director Boaz Yakin accomplishes a rare feat. He populates his story with self centered, manipulative nihilists who spend most of their time doing horrible things to themselves and others, and yet, while nihilism generally doesn't work in movies, and while the film itself is significantly disturbing, it works. One can't stop watching. The characters, as superficially contemptible as they are, intrigue us.

No character names are provided throughout the film, or in the credits, so in some ways it is difficult to write about. The story involves a Jewish family living in New York in the early nineties, mainly established by the fact that the first World Trade Center bombing is in the news. The mother of the family (Jacqueline Bisset) was interned in a Nazi concentration camp as a young girl, and had an amorous affair with the Mengele sty...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

What the hell happened to Robert Townsend? I'm not asking it as a rhetorical flourish--it's a serious concern. What happened to him? When he burst onto the scene in 1987, as the writer, director, and star of the clever low-budget comedy Hollywood Shuffle, he was discussed in the same breath as Spike Lee; his follow-up, The Five Heartbeats, was a well-reviewed and more ambitious picture, even if it met with pretty limp box office. But somewhere along the way, he went astray (maybe it was The Meteor Man, maybe it was B.A.P.S., maybe it was his five-season family comedy The Parent 'HoodRead the entire review

Yes, Dead Tone is a horror film "presented" by Flavor Flav, who refers to himself as "The Timekeeper" in a 10-second, horribly green-screened intro that features the beclocked rapper decked out in Dracula garb. A cursory IMDb search reveals that this is the third production in what's apparently a whole Nite Tales franchise, following a previous duology film (called Nite Tales: The Movie) and a six-episode TV series (not surprisingly, called "Nite Tales: The Series"). However, even before popping the disc in, I sensed that the branding had less to do with Flav's approval or even the involvement of in-common producer Deon Taylor, and more to do with upping the profile of a no-name horror release (like sticking "National Lampoon" on a frat comedy). Another IMDb and Wikipedia search later, and the truth is revealed: Dead Tone is actually 7eventy 5ive, a 2005 (!) horror film that...Read the entire review

In his introduction to one of the more recent editions to The Princess Bride, William Goldman talks about how the actual production of a movie is the least important step, like "a factory putting together a car". His rationale was that if you started with the right script, hired the right director and crew and cast the right people, the actual shooting of the movie was little more than the outcome of all that potential and talent that had already been built up; it should all come together like a Swiss watch. If I were to borrow that analogy and take it a step further, Weather Girl has hired a good cast and a competent director, who make the experience of the movie seem reasonably pleasant, but the screenplay -- the engine motivating this production -- is problematic and not as innovative as it should be.

These days, the "car situation" is complicated by the fact that, nine out of ten in...Read the entire review

THE FILM

"Lymelife" is certainly an impassioned motion picture. However, it's not exactly a revolutionary one, guiding the viewer back into the cancerous heart of suburbia, circa the hazy, crazy 1970s. Brought lucidly to life by director Derick Martini, "Lymelife" suffers from a case of the blahs reaching from story to performance that holds it back from becoming the truly soulful, penetrating experience it aspires to be.

Growing up on the fringe of a burgeoning upscale Long Island housing development, teenaged Scott (Rory Culkin) can only bear silent witness to the chaos around him. With his father (Alec Baldwin) cheating on his mother (Jill Hennessy) with a co-worker (Cynthia Nixon), his conflicted older brother (Kieran Culkin) on break from his controversial military duty, and his object of desire (Emma Roberts) preferring the comfort of older boys while her father (Timothy Hut...Read the entire review

Nature's Grave:
As J-horror remakes have petered out into 3rd-gen direct-to-DVD sequels and the inevitable move to other parts of 'The Orient', and '70s and '80s stateside reimaginings have begun to scrape the ridiculous bottom of the barrel, it's only natural to see cinematic recidivism light out for other territories. Up next appears to be a series of Australian-helmed remakes of Aussie exploitationers from those self-same '70s and '80s. First we have this fairly successful remake of eco-terror feature The Long Weekend, redubbed here as Nature's Grave.

Artfully staged by director Jamie Blanks and DP Karl Von Moller, with an eye for tension and foreshadowing, Nature's Grave starts out as Peter (Jim Caviezel) cruises home to pick up his wife Carla (Claudia Karvan) for a camping weekend with some friends. Our first tip that something might be amiss for this upcoming week...Read the entire review

The Movie:

When The Wedding Bros first came in the mail, I saw that one of its stars Dan Fogler (Kung Fu Panda) appeared to be a dead ringer for a younger Maury Chaykin (I'll pause while some of you Google him). I found this pleasantly surprising. Then I looked on the back of the DVD case and noticed that the film claims to be "in the vein" of Step-Brothers, Wedding Crashers and I Love You, Man. But those are lies. The only thing this film has in its "veins" is sickness...something more similar to a strain of meningitis. Maybe they were thinking of a different movie when they added this phrase.

The film was written and directed by Michael Canzoniero and Marco Ricci, whose previous collaboration was on the 2002 independent film Hyper. The Wedding Bros takes place on Long Island,...Read the entire review

Three popular clichés come together in the indie comedy-drama Lymelife (2008): coming of age, suburban ennui, and 1970s nostalgia. Co-written with his brother Steven, this directorial debut from Derick Martini about two intertwined nuclear families coming apart is set on Long Island over Thanksgiving week, 1979.

The principal protagonist is 15-year-old Scott Bartlett (Rory Culkin). Through by-the-numbers plot development, over the course of the week Scott covers all the coming-of-age clichés: overcoming a school bully, boozing and smoking dope, losing his virginity, and finally seeing his parents and their friends for the flawed human beings they really are.

The object of Scott's emerging lust is his classmate Adrianna Bragg (Emma Roberts), who already exhibits a maturity far beyond Scott's. His mother, Brenda (Jill Hennessy), is an alcoholic, manic-depressive homemaker, nursing a l...Read the entire review