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“F**k.”

     That is the first line of dialogue spoken in Outlander.  Jim Caviezel, you see, has just crash-landed his spaceship in Norway in 709 A.D., and through some kind of technological miracle, he implants the dialect and language spoken at that time, in that place, into his brain.  So now he can communicate with the viking barbarians who inhabit that land.  And the first word he says is “f**k”.  If you’re the type of person who would wonder whether Norwegians of 709 A.D. knew the word ”f**k”, or used it, then this is likely not the movie for you.  If, however, you are the type of person who raises a clenched fist at the TV and celebrates lines like “f**k”, then you may well love this film.

     Outlander comes out on DVD May 26th from Alliance Films.  It is described as “Beowulf meets Predator” on the DVD box.  That IS a fairly apt description.  Predator was a pretty badass movie where cartoonishly tough guys hunt some kind of super-killer being through the woods.  And Beowulf is a movie about cartoonishly tough guy vikings that can be enjoyed only if you don’t, in any way, take it seriously.  I would not be surprised if the entire concept behind Outlander was some studio executive saying “you know what would be cool – Beowulf Vs. Predator“.  That is apparently all the thought that actually went into this movie.

     Frankly, Outlander is a dreadful movie.  It’s silly, it’s totally stupid, and it spends a lot of time throwing melodramatic nonsense around the screen with no regard for anything resembling logic.  However, I enjoyed it.  Like Beowulf, I am not 100% sure that the filmmakers had their tongues in their cheeks for this one.  But I watched it as though they did, and on that level Outlander is reasonably enjoyable.  This is just a really kinetic, foolish B-movie.  It proves that Jim Caviezel doesn’t quite have the star power or cachet one would expect after playing Jesus, but that he can still carry a B-movie on his earnestly silly shoulders.

     The basic premise – get this – is that Caviezel is some kind of space explorer who, for some reason, crash lands back in time in Norway.  He implants viking language and dialect into his brain, and then sets off after a beast.  This monster has come with him, on his spaceship, and is now loose in the area, slaughtering entire villages and indiscriminately killing everything.  We learn how dangerous it is right away, because it appears to have killed a whale and then spit it up on shore.  Whether it actually eats the people it kills is irrelevant.  It is merely a killing machine, and that’s all we need to know.

     In fact, we don’t even really see the monster until about an hour and ten minutes into the film.  The rest of the time, it blends into the background (like the Predator), becomes invisible, and kills people from outside camera range so we don;t see it.  This, of course, heightens the anticipation for the Big Reveal of the creature, which is decidedly disappointing.  It’s very CGI-looking whenever we see it in its regular state, and the rest of the movie is mostly flashes of it rather than the full creature.  When it’s in camouflage mode, it appears to be just a flashing display of LCD lights, like a sign outside a Las Vegas strip club.  And only Jim Caviezel, the former Jesus, can save the vikings from Girls Girls Girls and the free Roast Beef Buffet.

     So, not only do you have to be someone who can watch a movie with your tongue in your cheek, and also someone who enjoys lines like “f**k”, you also must be the kind of person who believes that a sign outside a strip club could eat vikings.  And you can’t be someone who wonders why, when he is constantly wearing crazy sci-fi spaceman armor, does Caviezel never put on a helmet to go into space, or how the viking women ended up wearing so much makeup in 709.  The only important viking woman is Freya, played by Sophia Myles, who is kind of like a low-rent Keira Knightley.  Which actually works for me a lot, because I like Myles.  And I hate Keira Knightley.  She is, of course, the love interest who is hot for this stranger when he shows up, then she hates him, then eventually she learns to love him.  Wait – this seems familiar, doesn’t it?

     Well, to some of us it does.  This is virtually the exact same plot as Army of Darkness, the sensationally tongue-in-cheek B movie from Sam Raimi to close out his Evil Dead trilogy.  Where Bruce Campbell gets somehow sent back in time and unites two warring clans to fight the army of the dead.  In this case, it’s Jim Caviezel instead of Campbell (no improvement) who unites the two warring tribes to fight this giant monster.  They call him “Outlander”, instead of “strange one”, and his girlfriend doesn’t turn into a demon, so they aren’t exactly the same movie.  But really, Outlander is Predator meets Beowulf meets Army of Darkness.  And I smile a nerdy smile, because this makes me a little bit happy.

     Of course, every movie about vikings must present them as a drunken bunch of manly, tough, barbaric brawlers who entertain themselves by fighting each other.  If they weren’t like this, why bother putting vikings in a movie?  In this case, they entertain themselves with a strange game of running-on-shields-while-drunk, which does double duty as Caviezel’s initiation into the viking fraternity.  All of which lasts FAR too long and isn’t interesting at all.  It’s fun, but likely inaccurate, to believe that vikings were really like this all the time. 

     The point is, however, that Jim Caviezel (who plays a character named Kainaan, but I am using his full name because I prefer to think of him as Jesus) is accepted into the fraternity.  And now all the women are hot for him, and the kids all idolize him.  (Including one kid named Eric, who I think is supposed to grow up to become Eric the Red.  But no one explains.)  In short, he becomes David Caruso from CSI: Miami, only in Norway 1300 years ago.  And he unites the tribes, and fights the monster, and there is a decidedly cool sudden-beheading, and all the central characters get their final-meaningful-words death scenes, and everyone leaves happy.

     I can understand someone watching Outlander and being very upset about it.  You know, people who like their movies to be…good.  I get that.  If good is what you want, wait a week and rent Revolutionary Road.  But if you can laugh at idiocy, smile at unnecessary badass dialogue, and wink back when a movie winks at you, you may well enjoy Outlander the way I did.  The way I enjoy Steven Seagal movies.

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“Don’t hang around.  Don’t get interested.  Don’t make mistakes.”

     Every hitman movie ever made, at least every single one I can think of, opens with the personal code of the hitman.  The rules by which he lives, the moral compass by which he guides himself.  Usually, this serves to help us understand the hitman, and maybe root for him – sure, he murders people for a living, but he has principles.  And ethics.  Of a sort.  In a movie like The Professional, we appreciate his “no women, no children” rule.  In Killshot, the only real rules that Blackbird (Mickey Rourke) has are “don’t get caught, don’t get caught, try not to get caught, don’t get caught”.  It’s a pretty lame set of hit-man-rules, really.

     Then, of course, as in every other hitman movie, he kills someone in a way that is supposed to make us like him a little more.  You see, he lets the old man get dressed, and die with dignity.  And then, he shoots the naked chick who betrayed the old man.  That’s justice!  We like a man with these principles, don’t we!  Well…in this case, no.  At no point in the movie did I like Mickey Rourke.  In fact, every scene in the film makes him less and less likeable than the previous scene.  He still has a “code”, and his “rules”, but they are, as I’ve said, lame.  And they are also so ill-defined that his “goodness” or “decency” seems to be totally random throughout the rest of the movie.

     Soon, Blackbird has found himself a young apprentice.  Blackbird’s brother was recently killed during a hit (we see flashbacks and it’s supposed to add emotion to the movie, but it doesn’t), and young Richie Nix (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) reminds him of the dead brother.  So he decides to take Richie under his wing.  Which is a big mistake, because Richie is a total idiot, maniac, loose-cannon who is dumber than a box of Triscuits and dangerously unbalanced.  Gordon-Levitt is a good actor, but he plays Richie as a cartoon, a sociopathic dummy who could never be liked, or trusted, by anyone.  For a guy who lives by a “code”, and by “rules”, and who is apparently a pretty good hitman, Blackbird is doing something awfully stupid by joining up with Richie.  I suppose, to be fair, one of his rules was not “don’t be a moron”.

     Richie and Blackbird attempt to shake down a real estate agent, for some reason, even though we all know Blackbird thinks it’s a ridiculous and stupid idea.  But he goes along with it anyway.  And in the course of the shakedown, (which doesn’t work out as planned), they are seen by Carmen and Wayne Colson (Diane Lane and Thomas Jane), a separated married couple.  Of course, now the police have descriptions of both bad guys, but for some reason they decide that they need to kill the couple anyway.  Not a lot of this makes sense.  Were they really planning to kill everyone in the real estate office to begin with?  There were bound to be many many people who “saw their faces” – they went in at noon, for God’s sake!  Now the cops are after them, and their descriptions are everywhere, but they are still going after this couple because they “saw their faces”?  Well, now everyone has seen their faces.  The couple no longer matters, I would think.

     But, that’s what they do, something to do with Rourke’s “code” – leave no witnesses, and you can’t be caught, and so forth.  So Lane and Jane get placed in the Witness Relocation Program, the bad guys chase them, and there is a big shootout finale with obvious results.  A small digression here – in the past few years, Diane Lane has made Jumper, Untraceable, Hollywoodland, and this fairly bad movie.  For such a great actress, she seems to get few roles that suit her talents.  It’s too bad.  OK, back to Killshot.

     There is something interesting about Killshot, in that it is a story told mostly from the perspective of the bad guys, and the two characters who spend the most time on screen are the two most unlikeable characters in the film.  This is a rarity in movies, where the good guys and the heros get most of the face time.  However, there is nothing interesting, charming or compelling about the bad guys.  One is quiet, enigmatic and does many things that don’t make sense.  The other is stupid and unpleasant and a psychopath.  Neither are funny, neither are well-spoken, and neither have anything worth watching.  That’s why making them the stars of the film doesn’t work.

     For a movie with a great cast like this – Diane Lane is a terrific actress, Thomas Jane does a good charming tough guy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is one of the finest up-and-coming actors in Hollywood, Rosario Dawson has been magnificent in several films and Mickey Rourke is about the hottest thing going since The Wrestler, Killshot is pretty bad.  Not only does it waste all that talent, it also wasted an hour and a half of my time.  And I’m still pretty sour about it.

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“We need a culprit, Babine.  Without enough evidence to convict you, we shall have to blame another in your stead.  Your mother is a witch, I hear?”

     With those words, the evil priest convinces the village idiot to confess to burning down the church and killing the old priest, thereby condemning him to death.  Of course, the young man didn’t do it.  But growing up with a reduced mental capacity in a little village in Quebec where the citizens believe that his mother is a witch has not been easy for poor Babine, and the village is split over the young man.  Some believe that he is a kind, decent and gentle soul who could do no harm to anyone, and others worry that he might be a malignant creature born of his mother’s witchcraft.

     Babine is a fantasy-type movie in the vein of Big Fish, in that strange things happen that appear to be almost supernatural, but are just barely plausible enough to be real.  The new priest makes for a terrifically evil (although certainly cartoonish) villain, out to get Babine at all costs and hopefully kill him.  Vincent-Guillaume Otis, who plays the charming simpleton, does a terrific job being sweet and innocent and maybe a little mystical as well.  The rest of the characters in the movie are certainly vibrant, even though many of them are cartoonish as well.  But that’s the nature of the film.  Big, dramatic moments (including a hanging with a surprise ending) cloaked in humour and simple caricature.

     Babine is funny, it’s sweet, it’s certainly charming and many of the actors are terrific.  It isn’t exactly earth-shattering, and it feels a little too familiar to be great.  But it’s very good, and well worth a rental.  It comes out May 26th from Alliance Films.

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 ”What shape is on the top of the wishing wand?”

Year:  2009
Genre:  TV series, Cartoon, Kids
Country:  United States
Languages:  English, Spanish
Starring:  Caitlin Sanchez
Creator:  Eric Weiner
Run time:  98 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment
DVD extras:  Santa’s Super Scavenger Hunt, and three other episodes – “Rapido, Tico!”, “School Pet” and “Quack! Quack!”
Related reviews:  Dora Saves the Crystal Kingdom, Dora’s Christmas, Catch The Stars, Nickelodeon’s Animal Friends, Nickelodeon’s All Star Sports Day

     As I searched for the wishing wand with Dora, looking for the star shape on top, I was wrong so many times.  It was just a duck in a party hat.  Or a turtle with a noisemaker.  Then I learned that unicorns don’t come out in the rain, and I saw some flying babies, and a rainbow appeared, and I helped Dora and Boots the monkey sing “Rain Rain Go AWay” and “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and many other songs that I already knew.  I learned almost NO new songs while watching this DVD.  Which was a little upsetting.

     I did learn a little Spanish.  Like “feliz cum ple anous”…I think that’s close to right…those are the magical words I can say to make the birthday wishes of unicorns on Wizzle Mountain come true.  I also learned “donde estada excelsior”, or something to that effect.  That means, apparently, “where are the dinosaurs”.  I think maybe Dora needs to ennunciate a little better in Spanish.  I also learned that a “paper towel tube” makes an awesome “spotting scope”.  It wasn’t enough.

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      There are no subtitles to help us English folk when watching Le 7e Round on DVD, out May 26th from Alliance Films.  This is a boxing-themed miniseries from Quebec that ran on television in 2006.  The box set is three DVDs and 11 episodes with no subtitles, no dubbing, and no special features.  I can certainly recommend it to people who speak French, but for the rest of Canada it’s useless.  Too bad, because this is a pretty good sport series.  The boxing scenes are not fantastic.  Like, they’re not Raging Bull.  However, at the very least they are compelling and look realistic.  Like, they’re not Rocky.  And that’s a good thing.

     Strong performances by Julie LeBreton, Sebastien Delorme, Denis Bernard and others keep the story interesting between the boxing matches, and at times they manage to make the show riveting.  What’s really good about the series is that it follows many different camps – boxers, trainers, families, women, dreams, aspirations and heartbreak.  The very first episode involves the death of a boxer as a result of injuries sustained in the ring, and the profound effect this has on everyone – his family, his coaches, and of course his opponent.

     Le 7e Round is a little uneven, but that’s OK.  At its worst, it’s melodramatic and it drags.  At its best, it’s pulse-pounding boxing matches and riveting life stories.  And it’s more often good than it is slow.  A well-acted, well-filmed sports miniseries, Le 7e Round is a great series for boxing fans.  And I love the fact that it boils down to a clash in the ring between the rivals who have held up the whole series – depending on the viewer, you could be cheering for either guy to win, because there is no clear good guy and bad guy.  That’s great.  It’s just too bad there are no subtitles or dubbing for the English audience.  I think they would like it too.

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 ”I’m never going to be OK that J.T.’s gone.  But Lakehurst didn’t kill him.  One psycho did.”

     Degrassi: The Next Generation is a series with a lot of balls.  It really has the guts to go all out with it’s subject matter, and as the series has gone on it has become better and better in that it feels less and less like an after school special.  Season Seven, out May 26th from Alliance Films, is the best so far, with the students from Lakehurst taking up residence in the halls of Degrassi.  Lakehurst was the school attended by the kid who killed J.T. in Season Six.  It has since burned down, and the students are now crammed into Degrassi, which has of course created a lot of tension.  This is a theme revisited many times over the course of Season Seven.

     At the same time, there are all kinds of themes one would expect in a Degrassi series – in the very first episode, there is a shocking date rape, as the virginal Darcy (Shenae Grimes) gets slipped a roofie at a party.  The second episode of the season deals with the aftermath of that date rape, and involves a suicide attempt, a chlamydia diagnosis, a gay breakup, podcasts and more Lakehurst-Degrassi tension.  All these themes will be revisited throughout Season Seven.  Not all episodes of Degrassi are great, in fact some aren’t even good.  But the great ones make all of Season Seven worthwhile.  It comes out on DVD May 26th from Alliance Films.

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 ”Get out of Dodge.”

     Gunsmoke, in it’s early years, was black-and-white in more ways than one.  Of course, it was filmed in black-and-white.  Season Three Volume Two, coming out May 26th from Paramount Home Entertainment, was filmed in 1958, after all.  But more than that, the black-and-white morality of the show is what I enjoy most.  Marshall Matt Dillon (James Arness) never ever questions his own judgement.  He never makes a wrong decision.  No matter how dangerous or fast on the draw the men are who go up against him, he is still more dangerous and faster.  This is a show that deals, almost all the time, in absolutes.

     Sometimes I find this comforting, sometimes I find it hilarious, and every now and then I find it disturbing.  For example, in one episode on this set, an innocent farmer is lynched by his neighbours, who believe him to be a horse thief.  It turns out that there is no horse thief, but that their horses just escaped and this man was bringing them back to their rightful owners.  After the lynching, the men responsible show up at the poor guy’s house to inform his family.  Like, geez.  We’re real sorry and all, but we just hung yer ol’ man from a tree der, and he be swinging in the wind right now.  Tough break, kid.  In this particular episode, the Marshal is simply trying to prevent the young boy from taking revenge.  In other episodes, he would have gone after the lynch mob.  Depends on the week.

     The freakiest episode is probably the one where a kid’s mom busts him out of prison, then the kid kills his own father, then the mom tries to take the rap for it, then the kid won’t leave, and his mom kills him, and then….well.  Western justice and all that.  That’s Gunsmoke for ya.  Some of the notable guest stars on this DVD set include Strother Martin and Harry Dean Stanton.

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“20 minutes of that sure doesn’t help a headache.”
“I can dig it.”

     Clarence Williams III sure knows how to deliver the line “I can dig it”.  He says it like most people use the word “like”, or “umm.”  It’s like his verbal crutch, and when he has nothing else to say, he “can dig it”.  Which leads to the use of the phrase in many moments that don’t make a lot of sense.  “I think I might have eaten some bad fish.”  “I can dig it.”  “My goiter is acting up.”  “I can dig it.”  “I’m thinking of switching toothpastes.”  “I can dig it.”  I don’t think this is entirely Williams’ fault.  In fact, it probably isn’t his fault at all.  I assume this is the fault of the writers of The Mod Squad, who really wanted to get as much cool-guy 60s lingo into the dialogue of the show, but only knew three cool-guy phrases and varations thereof.  Can you dig it?

     Season Two, Volume Two of The Mod Squad comes out May 26th on DVD from Paramount Home Entertainment, and it (as one would expect) picks up right where Season Two Volume One left off.  It’s annoying to split up these series into volumes, instead of releasing the entire season all at once, but with The Mod Squad it isn’t so bad.  It’s not like there’s some big season-long plot that has to be followed, and each episode stands alone.  This volume starts off with an episode about a guy saving Pete Cochran from a mugging and then mysteriously disappearing.  The scrumptious Peggy Lipton doesn’t show up until the second episode, when she gets mistaken for a rich guy’s daughter and is kidnapped.  The Mod Squad remained a pretty good show through 1969 and 1970.  I can dig it.

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      Thankfully, on Paramount Home Entertainment’s Forever Funny TV Set, there is no Walker Texas Ranger to ruin the mood.  Instead, this is just a solid collection of the premiere episodes or pilots of some of the most classic comedies ever to grace the television sets of North America.  I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, The Brady Bunch, The Odd Couple, Frasier, Cheers, and Taxi are all represented here.  Now, Paramount also distributes The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, Happy Days and several other classic comedies which might have made a little more sense than Frasier, in terms of old-school classics, but I love Frasier.  So I won’t complain.  Much.  Here are the premieres, in chronological order:

     I Love Lucy (1951): 

     “Happy Anniversary, Ethel.”

     The very first episode of I Love Lucy sees Fred and Ethel fighting over what to do on their anniversary.  Fred (and of course Ricky) wants to go to the fights, while Ethel (and of course Lucy) wants to go to a nightclub.  Soon, the old cranky couple have decided to go sepearately, and Lucy stirs the pot by trying to find dates for her and Ethel.  Of course, this makes Ricky and Fred decide to find dates for themselves, which end up being Lucy and Ethel in disguise and…well, you can guess the rest, I’m sure.  We all know I Love Lucy, we all know it’s hilarious, and one of the best comedies ever.

     The Honeymooners (1955): 

     “You wanna go to the moon?  You wanna go to the moon?”

     Although Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason) is constantly threatening his wife Alice with phyiscal violence, he has, to my knowledge, never actually struck her.  At least, not on screen.  But The Honeymooners must at least present Ralph as a potential domestic abuser and a ticking time bomb of rage.  As he and Ed Norton (Art Carney) split the cost of a TV set, and then fight over what programs to watch, I got the sense that Gleason was, at any moment, capable of snapping and commiting a brutal murder.  And I found that hilarious.

     The Brady Bunch (1969): 

     “Dad’s gonna take the girls’ side on everything from now on.”

     I wasn’t aware that when The Brady Bunch began, Marsha wasn’t yet old enough to be smoking hot.  But she was still a little girl in 1969, when the show began with a wedding.  The man, you see, has a bunch of boys.  The boys have a dog.  The woman, obviously, has a bunch of girls.  And the girls have a cat.  Because men like boys and women like girls and boys like dogs and girls like cats.  And they are all going to live together after this big ol’ wedding, and hilarity will ensue!  In the meantime, the little kids say all kinds of cute and smarmy things, paving the way for the 80s and the Olsen twins saying “dude” on Full House.  Thanks a lot, Brady Bunch.

     The Odd Couple (1970): 

     “They think I’m a hypochondriac?  That makes me sick.”

     The people who made the Odd Couple TV show must believe that everyone tuning in already knows the whole concept, either from the movie or the Neil Simon stage play.  And they’re probably right.  I think we all know the idea.  Felix is neat and anal.  Oscar is slovenly and rough.  And they have troubles…the premiere episode of this classic comedy introduces the weekly poker game, the Pigeon sisters who live upstairs, and the angrily tolerant dynamic between Jack Klugman and Tony Randall.

     Taxi (1978): 

     “I’m playing the horse.”
     “Which end?”

Years:  1978
Genre:  TV series, comedy, sitcom
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Danny DeVito, Judd Hirsch, Tony Danza, Christopher Lloyd, Andy Kaufman, Jeff Conaway
Eye candy:  Marilu Henner
Creators:  James L. Brooks, Stan Daniels, Ed Weinberger, David Davis
Run time:  30 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     The first episode of Taxi is a surprisingly sweet one, as Judd Hirsch runs off to attempt to re-connect with his daughter whom he hasn’t seen in fifteen years.  And of course, Tony Danza is a stupid guy and a terrible boxer, Danny DeVito is a tiny little loudmouth jerk, Andy Kaufman is just learning to speak English and acting creepy, Jeff Conway is an actor who gets no roles and isn’t very good, and Marilu Henner is the smoking hot woman who just started working as a taxi driver.  And they’re in New York.  And that’s the show.

     Cheers (1982):

     “A drunk?  A drunk?  Why, Sam was the greatest drunk there ever was!”

     The first episode of Cheers introduces Cliff and his stupid and questionable facts, Norm and his apathy toward his wife, Carla and her scathing wit, Sam and his womanizing, Coach and his idiocy, and Diane.  Mostly, the episode is all about Diane, who has come into the bar for the first time on her way to the airport with her soon-to be husband.  He is an intellectual, of course, and he will ditch her in the bar to go back to his ex-wife.  Of course.  So Diane sits there and annoys everyone in the bar for hours with her snobby holier-than-thou attitude, and eventually ends up with a job there.  And so began Cheers.

     Frasier (1993): 

     “My wife had left me, which was very painful.  Then she came back, which was excruciating.”

     The debut episode of Frasier opens with Frasier Crane on his radio program, explaining succinctly and in a neat little package why he left Boston and Cheers and moved back to Seattle for his own spinoff show.  Quickly, we meet neurotic Niles and space cadet Daphne and of course Frasier’s dad Martin, who moves in with his son in the first episode.  And the dog Eddie, who stares at Frasier.  And Martin’s chair, which drives Frasier nuts.  We don’t get to see Maris, but we know she’s a cold ice queen.  And Roz is sardonic and mean, but has a heart of gold.  Yep.

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      It’s cool to see the premiere episodes of TV series, and learn where they began.  Paramount Home Entertainment releases the Action Packed TV Set on May 26th, a single-disc DVD which features the premiere episodes or pilots of NCIS, MacGyver, Mission: Impossible and Walker, Texas Ranger.  Three of these TV shows were good.  And one was Walker, Texas Ranger.  Which, despite being the only truly irritating series represented on this disc, is also the only one that gets a two-hour episode as a premiere.  Three decent hours, and then two hours of Walker.  Ugh.  A brief rundown of each premiere:

     Mission: Impossible (1966): 

     “Your mission, should you choose to accept it…”

     The earliest show on the set, Mission: Impossible opened with an episode that introduced each of the characters and defined their roles.  Cinnamon Carter (Barbara Bain) is the smoking hot femme fatale who can get men to do anything she likes.  Dan Briggs (Steven Hill) is the leader – although he would prove to be a difficult actor and he did get replaced after the first season.  There is the disguise man, the strong man, and the electronics man.  There is a recording that gives them the mission before self-destructing.  There is the memorable theme music.  All of this is immediately introduced before the team gets down to the business of stealing missiles from a South American general.

     MacGyver (1985): 

     “Don’t tell me you know how to make a bomb out of a stick of chewing gum.”
     “Why, you got some?” 

     The greatest silly, cheesy show in television history, MacGyver kicked off with Richard Dean Anderson rescuing an unidentified man from some unidentified soldiers in an unidentified location.  Then, he rescued some scientists trapped underground by an explosion in a lab.  In the process, he stops an acid leak with chocolate bars, makes wisecracks, does a really cheesy and really long voiceover about a horse he once rode as a child, and builds a bomb using a jar of water and a cold pill.  He also saves the scientists, gets the girl, and escapes from the underground lab one second before the giant missile is to be fired into the location.  And so begain one of the greatest shows in all of television history.  Ahem.

     Walker Texas Ranger (1993): 

     “It is personal.”

     A TWO-hour debuit episode, this one is convenient because once you’ve seen it, you never have to watch Walker again.  This one has everything.  Chuck Norris depositing unconscious bad guys in the bed of his pickup truck.  Twice.  His partner is killed by some cartoon bad guys.  He goes on a mission of revenge.  He is the only one who knows what’s really going to happen, and he ends up alone trying to stop the elite team of former-CIA bank robbers.  The main cartoon bad guy runs out of bullets, so they close things out with a fistfight, where every Norris kick and puch is “for” someone.  “This one’s for my partner…this one’s for…”  You know what I mean.  And the old guy keeps tagging along to help, and the sidekick rubs Walker the wrong way, and the show ends on a freeze frame that is supposed to be funny as they bond.  Well, that’s it.  That’s Walker.  Now you never have to watch any other episode, ever.

     NCIS (2003): 

     “Get out of the president’s chair.”

     The first-ever episode of NCIS is totally silly.  A terrorist attack on Air Force One is foiled only by the cleverness and badassery of Mark Harmon, the only man smart enough to figure out the plot.  At the very last possible second, of course.  This episode features stock footage of George Bush walking around and doing stuff, and a bunch of scenes where the local cops, the FBI, the Secret Service and NCIS fight over jurisdiction at the crime scene.  We are supposed to believe, I think, that the NCIS, (the navy’s forensic team) is somehow a secretive, super-elite agency that is better and smarter and tougher than the FBI and the CIA and the DEA and the…other…organizations that I can’t think of right now.  But they get no respect and remain anonymous, and that’s how they LIKE it.  OK, fine.  But it’s pretty silly.  Thank God this show got better than the pilot episode.

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 ”Very odd, what happens in a world without children’s voices.” 

     Children of Men will invariably, years from now, be compared to many other movies.  It will be compared to the class of 2006 – was it, in fact, the best movie of the year?  Well, no, because it wasn’t The Departed.  But it was a close second. People will compare it to Blade Runner, Brazil and Minority Report, as it will be in the running for the best bleak Sci-Fi future world ever made. And it’s awfully close.

     Clive Owen has never been better than in this movie about the not-too-distant future where the women of the world have become infertile. When he meets up with the first pregnant woman the world has seen in eighteen years, her significance to mankind becomes obvious, and he must protect her at all costs. The future world is grim and amazingly realized. The action scenes have nice touches, like blood spatter the director leaves on the camera, and Michael Caine is excellent as always in his pivotal supporting role.

     Children of Men has one other terrific device, and that is the best use of popular music this side of Tarantino. I have never heard the Court of the Crimson King used so well, but the real musical highlight shows up about three times. It’s a bizarre, Scottish-sounding version of the Stones’ Ruby Tuesday.  A magnificently-shot, wonderfully acted bleak and brilliant 2006 movie, Children Of Men comes out on Blu-Ray May 26th.

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 ”There are matters at stake here that are a little bit above your pay grade.”
“Well, why don’t you tell the mayor to raise my pay grade to the proper level, and problem solved.” 

     Jodie Foster rarely takes on crappy movies. She picks and chooses, cleverly saving herself only for scripts she really loves. Sometimes that doesn’t work out, (The Brave One) but it’s rarely her fault. And fortunately, Inside Man was not one of the Foster films ruined by a director with his head up his butt.  That’s because the director is Spike Lee, and the man knows how to craft a movie. Foster is barely in the film, and although her scenes are memorable, she’s a throwaway character in the grand scheme of things. I just thought I’d mention her since her presence gives the movie a certain amount of credibility, at least moreso than Clive Owen does. In the grand scheme of things.

     And the Scheme of Inside Man is definitely Grand.  So many bank robbery-gone-wrong movies have been made, that it’s pretty tough to create something new, but Spike and his cast, led by Clive Owen, Denzel Washington and Willem Dafoe have managed to do just that with Inside Man. It runs more than two hours, but doesn’t feel long, because more and more layers of the story unfold with every passing minute. And while the end could have been a giant Usual Suspects type twist, Spike Lee wisely decides not to give in to that type of sensationalism.

     Inside Man is just a very good, well crafted, interesting movie with great actors.  It won’t be a classic, but it is worthy of Spike Lee’s repertoire.  It comes out on Blu-Ray May 26th.

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To hear the review     Some movies just don’t get the credit they deserve. That is because we look at them simply as movies. Take, for example Predator. A very good, high-octane action movie where an alien comes to earth to hunt humans.  But it is so much more than that.  It stars a former BC Lion and Oakland Raider, Carl Weathers.  Two admitted steroid users, Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger.  A former champion wrestler and a former champion bodybuilder, Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger.  And two future US State governors…Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

     Predator is not a movie, it’s a historic document! Not since Ronald Reagan appeared with future wife Nancy Davis in Hellcats of the Navy has there been a more significant on-screen duo! Predator does not belong on the shelves of Rogers video, to be purchased for eleven ninety-nine by some punk who just wants to see Arnie blow stuff up, no! It belongs in a time capsule, hidden deep within the earth, waiting for a future generation to dig it up and giving that future generation a chance to reminisce about the glorious luminaries, actors and politicians, who populated America in the late 80s.

     Some day this film will be remembered in the same way as Hellcats of the Navy.  No, that’s not true, because Predator will actually be remembered.  And Arnie was actually (I mean this) a better actor than Reagan.  Some day, it will rank up there with This Is The Army, featuring Reagan and Joe Louis.  No, I’m wrong again.  Predator will rank much, much higher than that piece of junk.  Some day, it will be as much a part of the cultural fabric of our neighbours to the south as Sweet Home Alabama!  I got that right!

“I was born to be kept.”

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     Kept And Dreamless, out May 19th, is the latest edition to First Run Features‘ excellent Global Lens collection.  The film, from Argentina, is a terrific story of the love and struggles of a mother and a daughter during Argentina’s economic depression in the 1990s.  Eugenia is a nine-year-old girl whose mother, Florencia, is addicted to drugs.  In the movie, it appears that she is addicted to cocaine, although her coke addiction is different than most others I have seen on film.  Florencia appears to sleep almost all day, never gets up for anything (especially for her daughter), and is in a constant state of lethargic stupor.  I suppose what kind of drugs she takes isn’t a particularly important detail, but her state reminds me more of heroin addicts than of coke heads.

     Young Eugenia is basically the mother in the house, while Florencia is the daughter.  Eugenia makes tea for her mother, wakes her up, cleans the house, makes her own food and coffee and gets herself to school and back.  They live in a slum, where neighbours stop by.  There is a nice old lady who lives nearby, who stops in frequently to hang out with Eugenia, mostly because she misses her own children and grandchildren so much that she projects a lot onto Eugenia – yet another strange situation that puts pressure on this poor nine-year-old.  Then there are the men, some of whom deal drugs, others who pay Florencia for sex.

     For a movie with such dark subject matter, Kept And Dreamless manages to maintain a reasonably light tone, and there were moments in the movie where I actually laughed.  Young Eugenia, in a sweet touch, draws on her passed out mother’s face – it seems to be a way for her to lash out angrily while still remaining tender and gentle.  But soon it becomes clear that these two young women (and her mom is still a young woman) can’t keep going like this for long.  Florencia makes a half-hearted attempt to get a job, getting hired on by an old school friend of hers, a beautiful and seemingly successful “kept” woman.  Of course, her life is not as rosy as it appears to be either.

     In the end, Kept And Dreamless loses a little steam.  The colourful characters, and the warm yet disastrous and destructive relationship between Eugenia and Florencia, are glossed over a bit as the movie makes an effort to end on a high note with a hopeful and happy tone.  I suppose I don’t want a movie to end with a brutal death or something dreadful, but I thought this one could have ended stronger.  The fact remains, however, that the bulk of Kept And Dreamless is strong, moving and powerfully dramatic.  Highly recommended.

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     Bunny Chow is a film from South Africa about three stand-up comedians and their buddy who go on a road trip to the Oppi Koppi music festival.  Buddies-on-a-road trip comedies are nothing new.  Remember Road Trip?  That was one…but rarely are they this smart and compelling.  There is nothing terribly ambitious about Bunny Chow (named after a sandwich crammed with curry sold in South Africa).  It doesn’t re-write the book on comedy, on road trips, on sex-crazed young men or on humorous dialogue.  But it works, and it works well.  This movie is very funny, thanks almost entirely to the three comedians, David Kibuuka, Kagiso Lediga and Joey Rasdien.

     Bunny Chow comes out May 19th from First Run Features, and it is charming, funny and vivid.  I say vivid, even though it is filmed in black and white, because the movie crackles with a youthful energy as these guys meet girls, get girls, lose girls and bond with one another over the course of 95 minutes.  The dialogue is sharp and witty, and on occasion absolutely hilarious in a 40 Year Old Virgin sort of way.  Most of the dialogue is in English, although there is a little bit of Afrikaans and Tsotsi Taal that comes with English subtitles.  Although the characters have thick accents and occasionally need subtitles even when they speak English, most of their profanity-laced banter requires no translation.

     The characters do all the things comedians on road trips are supposed to do – have sex with women, get chased by husbands and hot chicks with guns, do drugs and argue about sex.  But most of that stuff is incidental and doesn’t form the entire plot of the movie, like so many of Bunny Chow‘s American and Candian counterparts.  Instead, the movie rests on the charm of the actors, the bond between the characters, and some funny and insightful dialogue.  And on those strengths, without breaking any new ground, this movie works and works well.